I recently viewed the older (1973) version of
The Wicker Man--the one with Christopher Lee. It is about a fictional betrayal that takes place on an island called Summerisle in Scotland on May Day. The movie’s burning man ritual did not follow the decanates so closely as in the newer version with Nicholas Cage, but the movie is full of other “Bardic Astronomy” type ideas. The island’s culture is far from ours. We need to first consider our calendar and the origin of it to understand the dates and motifs in the movie.
March Hare and April Fool
Some old cultures began their year on the winter solstice, others on the spring equinox, still others started on lunar events. It appears we at one time began our year on the winter solstice. Because we have not corrected the calendar for a while, the year now starts about 10 days after this astronomical event.
If the year began ON the winter solstice, the spring equinox would always be a quarter of a year later. I believe the ancient bards were using a 360 day year. At the end of the year there would be a five day period when they would wait for the solstice. When the solstice was detected (perhaps by measuring a shadow) they would start the new year.
They had 36 ten-day weeks. Each week was assigned a decanate constellation beginning with “the Raven” and ending with their equivalent of “Coma Berenices.” This would always put the spring equinox between the hare decanate week and the cave decanate week.
There is a bardic “Underground Journey of Ishtar” story. The constellation Auriga was interpreted by some as a cave--it is the cave that Odysseus enters when he encounters the Cyclops and the cave Siegfried enters to kill the dragon Fafnir. Auriga was also the cave that Ishtar entered. Today rabbits are associated with Easter or “Ishtar.” A hare is not a rabbit. The hare constellation Lepus however could also be a rabbit, so I’ll treat them as one and the same. Easter at Lepus/Auriga would be Ishtar entering the cave on the spring equinox to go underground and visit her sister. The decanate on one side of the boundary is the hare, hence rabbits and rabbit holes for hiding Easter or “Ishtar” eggs. The decanate on the other side is Auriga--Ishtar’s cave. Ishtar would at the spring equinox begin her underworld journey. Three months later, at the summer solstice she would die and resurrect. She returns six months after she left on the fall equinox. This way, spirit would leave the world during the hot summer and return for the cold winter. The winter was associated with the cold and the feminine.
Today, the month before this boundary between the 90th and 91st day is March and the month after is April. The hare decanate can then be called the “March Hare.” What if the March Hare tricked Ishtar into leaving for the summer? Ishtar would leave and the Hare could take over while she’s gone. Ishtar would have been fooled into going on her journey by the hare.
Let’s go a little further and create a hypothetical religion of the March Hare. He’s a wise trickster who tricks spirit into leaving on the spring equinox and takes over while she’s gone. We could celebrate Easter as the date that Ishtar was tricked down the “rabbit hole” of Auriga. We could have secret pictures like the one below with a hare in the shadow and rarely tell anyone about our crafty and secret March Hare religion:
We could also place our March Hare in children’s books like
Alice in Wonderland, a story of a young girl’s journey into the underworld. In movies,
Star Trek's intelligent "Spock" and
Star Wars' wise "Yoda" would have long, pointed, hare's ears.
Ishtar would thus be fooled by the hare (in the hare's version of the story). The day after this 90th and 91st day boundary is April 1. The April fool originally may have been some mythological character who was tricked in this way down the rabbit hole of Auriga.
May Day
In the USA, May Day became a minor holiday around the second war. Below is a picture taken in 1912. Notice how many maypoles there are and the fireworks.
That maypole is the phallus. The strings are the semen shooting out of it. Semen is where we get the word “seminary” A seminary is a school for the training of priests, ministers, or rabbis. May Day is a phallic holiday.
Correspondences
On the spring equinox, the year has always changed from one group of correspondences to the other. The year changes from cold to hot, from bird to snake, from yoni to lingam, from female to male, and from heart to mind all at the spring equinox. There was a religion of being a cunning and crafty mind oriented person. The Wicker Man movie is about that religion. It is my March Hare religion that has an April fool victim.
Snake Bird
Lingam Yoni
Male Female
Mind Heart
Hot Cold
Much of my analysis uses the above correspondences--some symbols of this religion are the snake, the phallus, the male and the mind.
In this movie the world is viewed as the carcass of some great "Being" that died long ago. Somehow it either died on its own or was killed. It is the original death of a spirit that brought the world into existence. It is the death or killing of Osiris, of Ishtar, of Jesus and others. The movie is about this old cosmology. In the Wicker Man movie, Sgt. Howie is a Christian. He likely celebrates Easter. He even might have gone to seminary before becoming a police officer. He is essentially one of the heathens on the island but does not know it. When he sees the Wicker man in the distance, he says “Oh God! Oh MY God!” as if it is HIS god.
Sgt. Howie
May Day is later than April Fool’s day. The motifs in
The Wicker Man are just like the earlier described spring equinox betrayal with emphasis on the March Hare and a cave but instead the event occurs on May Day. I believe May Day is a reference to the most famous of the “March hare/April fool” betrayals. This betrayal occurred on the spring equinox the Great Year switched ITS correspondences. There are evidently people (in my hypothetical March Hare religion) that think there was a similar but greater and civilization-wide betrayal three zodiacal ages ago when the spring equinox crossed the Gemini/Taurus boundary. They believe the GREAT YEAR switched correspondences when the Sun during the spring equinox went from Gemini to Taurus (and the decanates went from the Hare to Auriga). Instead of one person betraying another, betrayal occurred on a civilization wide basis. One group of people had the idea they could rule the others by using their minds and betraying their hearts. This is the last apocalypse.
The March 21st Spring Equinox
If we started the year like normal ancients, the equinox would always be at the 90th/91st day boundary of March 31/April 1. Our calendar is off a bit. SkyGlobe software for simulating the sky uses this calendar. If you look the spring equinox up in a book like
The Farmer‘s Almanac, our spring equinox will be on March 21st. We can simulate the equinox on this calendar date pretty easily using SkyGlobe software.
A Trip to the North Pole
In the northern hemisphere, it gets warm in the summer and cold in the winter. The North Pole is no different. A difference between the continental US and the North Pole is that during the winter on the North Pole, you can’t even see the sun. During the summer you see the sun all the time. In the winter the sun is below the horizon. It is dark for six months and then it is light for six months. The day is six months long and the night is six months long. Noon during the six month daytime happens on the summer solstice when the sun is highest in the sky. Sunset occurs 3 months later at the fall equinox. North Pole midnight occurs when the sun we can still see in the continental US is at its lowest point in the sky. North Pole sunrise occurs on the spring equinox. With SkyGlobe software, we can go to the North Pole a little before March 21st and watch the sun rise by pressing the “d“ button and moving the day forward until the sun rises.
Wasn’t that exciting? The sun rose on March 21st. The calendar is off about 10 days from March 31st.
The exciting thing to me is that SkyGlobe software allows us to go many thousands of years into the past or future and in this way find that year’s spring equinox according to our calendar. It is an old DOS program and I run it on a VISTA machine with a DOS emulator called DOSBox.
In our culture it has been a secret when the sun went into the new age. I believe it happened in the year of 9-11. Let’s use 2001 for the year the sun went from Pisces to Aquarius. (I found this approximate year by exploring the distant past with the software.) Let us subtract 2,160 years for each age and get the year of a famous March Hare/April fool betrayal long in the past.
(2001-(3*2160))=4,479 BC
Let’s go back to 4,479 BC and look at the sunrise on the North Pole. I am simulating the sky three zodiacal ages before 2001. We are going back 6,489 years from 2010.
Here is that sunrise:
The sunrise on the North Pole happened on May 1st! Isn’t that a coincidence! There are a lot of variables in this, but what we are left with is the software simulating the spring equinox 3 ages ago apparently on May Day. See the Milky Way there--it is the boundary between the two sets of correspondences. The sun during the spring equinox then went through Taurus then Aries then Pisces. I believe it finished Pisces in 2001 and is now early in Aquarius. Because of “precession,” the date slowly crept back to March 21st. Of course, different calendars would be in use between then and now.
The Wicker Man movie is suggesting this connection. This is WHY it has March Hare and April Fool motifs in a May Day celebration.
To our March Hare religion, the most famous spring equinox or “Easter entering the cave day” would be the one that occurred on May Day. May Day appears to be the brainy people’s date for the spring equinox three ages before 2001 when the Great Year changed correspondences from heart to mind, female to male, cold to hot, bird to snake. THAT May Day sent the whole world civilization down the rabbit hole. I didn’t write the software. I think it uses JPL’s data. (The JPL that was begun by the brainy person named Jack Parsons.) Curiously,
Alice in Wonderland begins on Alice's birthday, May 4.
Let us continue the “Bardic Astronomy” analysis of the Wicker Man movie. I’ll have to retell parts of the story.
The movie takes place at Summerisle, an island in Scotland.
(Summerisle is a Pisces/Aquarius island. In Bardic Astronomy terms this refers to three things, a human life, the civilization and the cosmos. In a human life, it is the boundary between adolescence and early adulthood. This is why all the people at Summerisle seem to be preoccupied with sex. They have been “kept” somehow at the adolescent/adult boundary. In a civilization, this time is when it is half way through its 25,920 year cycle, at the boundary between Pisces and Aquarius. That is the current time in OUR civilization. Our civilization has not yet become an adult. Our adolescent civilization is running amok. It is difficult to tell where the cosmos is in the cycle. It appears to be somewhere after Pisces/Aquarius because an adult cosmos has resurrected--we are the resurrection. Summerisle and Pisces/Aquarius both exist at the bottom of the world tree. Many places we know are conceptually like this, one might have a village around a totem pole. Our tree is the cross. Churches often have a cross on the top of their steeple. Gathering at a church is like gathering at the bottom of a tree. In Europe you can ride a train and pass countless villages all with their churches at the top of the local hill.)
Each year on the (Pisces/Aquarius) island called Summerisle there is a May Day festival and rite that is thought to influence the next year‘s crops.
(That earlier picture of May Day in the United States shows the festival RECENTLY in OUR culture. I believe the May Day festival has been recently de-emphasized in our culture to hide the phallic correspondence of our religions. Similarly, Easter has been moved away from the March 31/April 1 boundary to different dates to keep us confused and away from connecting it to planetary astronomy and the Great Year.)
Sgt. Howie
Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward) from the West Highland Police arrives on the island of Sumerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowen Morrison. She was thought to be a local woman’s daughter.
Sgt. Howie finds the woman, May Morrison, and asks about her daughter. The woman’s daughter is not called Rowan but Myrtle. The mother takes Sgt. Howie into a back room. The daughter Myrtle is there. She was 9 years old last Thursday. (The 9th decanate down from the Sphinx of Virgo/ Leo is the hare.) The daughter is drawing a hare when the Sgt. comes in. The Sgt. asks Myrtle “Where is Rowan?” Myrtle says Rowan is "A hare in the field."
Green Man
The Sgt. needs a place to stay, the next scene is at the Green Man Inn. (The Green Man is another reference to the “ground zero” of the religion of mind. The Green Man is a Pisces/Aquarius motif. It is the bottom of the world tree. The eyes of Osiris inside the Djed Pillar (the world tree) from the Dagon (Pisces/Aquarius) to the Sphinx (Virgo/Leo) are the eyes of the Green Man. The whole island lives at Pisces/Aquarius, at the bottom of the World Tree.)
Everyone at the Green Man Inn is having a great time.
The landlord’s daughter Willow (Brit Ekland) comes out and all the people at the Green Man Inn sing a song to her. "Here's to the landlords daughter… you'll never love another." Sgt. Howie seems to think she might be promiscuous. Sgt. Howie gets a room at the inn.
Communion
Sgt. Howie goes to his room and ends the day by saying his prayers. In his room, Sgt. Howie has a flashback in his mind to a past Christian communion when he ate the wafer and drank the wine. In the church flashback he could be heard saying;
“…and the Lord Jesus on the same night on which he was betrayed, took bread, and said; take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you. This do you in remembrance of me. And of the same manner he also took the cup. When he had eaten he said; “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do you as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this wine do you show the Lord’s death until he comes again.”
Willow
Willow enters the room next to Sgt. Howie. Soon the landlord’s daughter is in bed nude, banging on the wall while singing a song:
"Heigh ho! Who is there?
No one but me, my dear.
Please come say, How do?
The things I'll give to you."
"By stroke as gentle as a feather
I'll catch a rainbow from the sky
And tie the ends together.
Heigh Ho! I am here
Am I not young and fair?
Please come say, How do?
The things I'll show to you."
"Would you have a wond'rous sight
The midday sun at midnight?"
"Fair maid, white and red,
Comb you smooth and stroke your head
How a maid can milk a bull!
And every stroke a bucketful."
(The nude girl, Willow, on the bed is another Pisces/Aquarius motif. She is a siren. The bed is the constellation Pegasus and the girl is the constellation Andromeda. Andromeda is a decanate of Pisces and Pegasus is a decanate of Aquarius. In the menu of the DVD this chapter is called “Sirens Song.”)
May Pole
The next day Sgt. Howie walks to the local school to check for Rowan and sees a maypole nearby with young boys suggestively dancing around it while singing and putting a wreath around the top of the pole.
The Sgt. looks into the school and there is a whole class of girls pounding on their desks in rhythm with the boys singing outside.
Sgt. Howie asks the schoolmaster the significance of the Maypole. She replies “It is the penis in religions such as ours, it symbolizes the generative force in nature.”
Sgt. Howie threatens to report the schoolmaster and then continues his investigation to the grave yard.
Navel String
The Sgt. finds the grave of Rowan Morrison. There is a tree planted on the grave. It looks like there is something hanging on the tree. Howie asks the cemetery keeper "What is that on the tree? It looks like some flesh.” The cemetery keeper replies “It’s the wee poor lass's "navel string." (The March Hare religion is a snake religion. Snakes are known for earthy materialism and thought. In opposition, birds are identified with air or spirit, and heart. Snakes shed their skins and hang out at tree bottoms. Birds fly in the air and hang out at tree tops. The natal string hanging on the tree is the girl’s umbilical cord, kept from birth. It was probably thought to be the human version of a snake skin.)
There is next a scene where Mrs. Morrison tells Myrtle to place a frog into her (the little girl’s) throat. They then remove the frog. The frog croaks and then Mrs. Morrison says “See there, the frog has your sore throat! Can you hear him croaking?”
The Golden Bough
(This is an example of contagious magic. There is an interesting book about such things as contagious magic and umbilical cords called
The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer. It describes many of these old folk cures and customs.)
Lord Summerisle
Sgt. Howie decides to visit lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) to get permission to have the grave exhumed. On the way he passes a place that looks like Stonehenge, where there are 12 nude girls singing and dancing and jumping over a fire. Sgt. Howie gets permission to exhume the grave. Lord Summerisle tells Howie about the island’s history and religion.
Howie exhumes the coffin and finds a hare inside. He returns to Lord Summerisle and asks what is going on. Sgt. Howie suspects foul play. The lord says he (Sgt. Howie) should perform the investigation. Sgt. Howie tells the lord he “plans to return to the mainland to report his suspicions to the chief constable of the West Highland Constabulary and demand that a full inquiry be made into the affairs of the heathen island.”
(This movie is clearly associating the hare with the betrayer. In Egyptian mythology the constellation Orion is associated with Osiris and the constellation Canis Major is associated with Isis. It can be hard to find which constellation to use for Set. I have been using the hare (Lepus) as the betrayer for a long time, I believe I got it from an old book on Egyptology by Budge. This movie renews that association. These three associations are fundamentals in mapping old stories and rituals onto the sky. )
Lord Summerisle says “Perhaps it is just as well that you won’t be here tomorrow to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebration.”
The next day, Sgt. Howie goes to his plane and it will not start. He will be staying for the May Day celebrations.
Man dressed as Sinister Woman
The Horse-Man and Punch the Fool
The Sgt. goes to the island’s library and reads about local mythology. He reads about their May Day celebrations being led by three, a man-horse combination, a man dressed as a sinister woman carrying a sickle and some shafts of wheat and then a man dressed as a fool. Sgt. Howie reads about the third character being “a man-fool called “Punch” who is the most complex of all figures. Punch is a privileged simpleton and king for a day.
Star of David with Swords
Sgt. Howie reads on, “sometimes there are six swordsmen that make a “Star of David” with their swords and behead a child. Other times there may be a sacrifice at sea or in a bonfire.”
The Sgt. returns to his room. People are getting ready for the May Day celebration and ritual. He becomes conscious of someone close by. He turns to find a hand with each finger lit on fire, burning on his night stand. He smashes it away and walks outside. (In the DVD chapter index this is called the “Hand of Glory.” I believe it is an asterism somewhere on or near Orion. This is the same motif found in
Star Wars when Luke gets his hand chopped off by Darth Vader.) Most of the townspeople have gone but Sgt. Howie sees the horse-man figure in the distance. Sgt. Howie discovers another local man dressing to play the fool. Sgt. Howie ties him up, takes the man’s costume and puts it on. He follows the horse-man to the procession near the town square and joins the heathen celebration as the fool.
Sinister Woman, Horse-Man, and Sgt. Howie as Fool
Swordsmen form Six Pointed Star
The procession is going from the town to the beach. All are wearing costumes. They stop at the place that looks like Stonehenge. The six men put their swords in a Star of David pattern. Each one in the procession must place their head inside the star while the crowd chants “Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!” The six men could cut off anyone’s head. The fool is close to last but the Sgt. puts his head in the star and nothing happens. He continues his deception. The last to put their head in the star is another hare. The six swordsmen chop the hare’s head off and it appears a person in the procession has been injured or killed. The crowd removes the hare mask and it is a friend of Myrtle’s playing a joke on everyone.
Myrtle’s friend Holly as Hare
Lord Summerisle says “Now, my friends to the beach!” The procession goes to the sea and sacrifices a keg of ale to the sea.
After this, Lord Summerisle says “Now for those who enjoy the fruits of the earth!” The procession moves a short distance up and around a hill. Sgt. Howie sees the missing girl, Rowan Morrison, alive and well, but tied up near a cave entrance.
Rowan Morrison
Sgt. Howie runs up to the girl saying “Its all right, I’m the police.” He unties the girl and the two flee. Rowan leads him into the cave.
(The cave is the rabbit hole of Auriga. In the movie, we now have Sgt. Howie as the fool who has been tricked into the cave (Auriga) by the hare (Lepus) on May Day. We have a good re-enactment of that most famous Easter or “Ishtar” betrayal when it occurred three ages past.)
The girl leads Sgt. Howie out the other end of the cave, where Lord Summerisle, Willow and others are waiting. The girl, Rowan, asks the others how she did and runs to them. They say she did a fine job!
Lord Summerisle then says to Sgt. Howie, “Welcome fool, you have come of your own free will to the appointed place. The game’s over.” Sgt. Howie begins to realize he has been tricked and that he may be the sacrifice.
Sgt. Howie shouts I’m a Christian! If I die I'll come again, but not as your damn apples! I believe in life eternal as promised by my Lord Jesus Christ!
Wicker Man
Others arrive. They bind and take Sgt. Howie over the hill to where he can see the Wicker Man in the distance. Sgt. Howie sees the Wicker Man and screams “Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ! Oh my God!”
Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ! Oh my God!
The Wicker Man is already filled with animals. The group also puts Sgt. Howie into the Wicker Man and sets it on fire. As the Wicker Man burns, we can hear Sgt. Howie screaming; it sounds like his last words are Savior! Savior! Savior!
Savior! Savior!
As the Wicker Man burns it falls apart. One can then see the sunset.
As Spirit dies, matter is created. The sun is Spirit dying. As Spirit goes out of existence, matter comes into existence. When the sun cools, it becomes a planet. Our planet was once a sun. Eventually planets have life on them and Spirit resurrects. The best description of this cosmology I have found is in the book Deceptions and Myths of the Bible by Loyd M. Graham. Graham is rather anti-Christian but if you can get past the criticism, his book has a lot of this very old cosmology.
