(The original manuscript of “Sumer Is Icumen In” a traditional English round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence.)
So mirrim wrote this lovely encomium on My Left Wing to the Winter Solstice and by extension to the many Celtic monuments (Stonehenge, et al.) that are sky/season-oriented.
Which got me to thinking. (Please be patient…I’ll get there.)
First I want to say that I believe Will Shakespeare was a Celtic Muslim of some sort. That he was at the very least influenced by Sufi thought.
Why do I think this?
Just a guess.
I’ve got O’dar.
That’s like gaydar only for Celts.
Plus I have studied with some equivalent teachers.
The Sufi poet and channeler of divine laughter Hafiz predated Shakespeare by over 200 years, and he was only one of thousands of teachers of that approach. The Crusades opened up channels from Islamic countries to the north that never truly closed.
Or, for more evidence..
HORATIO: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Shakespeare = Sheikh Zubair/Shaykh Zubayr/Shaykh al-Zubayr etc.? (You could look it up. Also here as well if you have a mind to do so. Just for starters.)
“Shakespeare would have delighted in Sufism,’ said Lings, who is 96 and an adherent of Sufism. ‘We can see he obviously knew a lot about some kind of equivalent sect or order.’
Lings argues that the guiding principles of Sufi thought are evident in Shakespeare’s writing. The plays, he believes, depict a struggle between the dawning modernist world and the traditional, mystical value system. And, like the Sufis, the playwright is firmly on the side of tradition and spiritualism.”
But I digress.
Or do I?
Read on to find out where I land.
(I’m curious about that/those landing place[s] myself. That’s why I write. Bet on it.)
The pre-Christian Celts who built those sites…men and women who had near-stone age tools with which to work and no precision instruments to measure the heavens…had the sky understanding of all outdoors people everywhere. The generations go by and eventually some smartass figures it out. When the days and nights get even, things start to change. Warm eventually gets cold, cold gets warm etc. This impacts understanding when it’s time to start thinking about planting the crops, when it’s time to begin to harvest, when it’s time to dig a big hole, get in and pretty much zip it up behind you until the freeze ends…YOU know.
Simple survival stuff.
Remember…they didn’t have “calendars” per se. Wasn’t much around in the way of paper, I believe. No way to google up the date, either. Hell, they may not have even HAD “dates”. The warm time, the time when things changed to cold, the cold time, the time when things changed to warm…like that.
Then sky knowledge got passed along until during some really good period someone else said “Uhhh…we don’t want to lose this info. There might be a potato famine or some shit. Let’s build something that will remind our future generations about what’s up, even if they elect some decider asshole who screws the whole scene up. Something that absolutely, positively won’t be lost. Something that even conquerors would have a hard time dismantling.”
Uncounted man-hours later?
Stonehenge, et al.
All of those sites are just big refrigerator stickies. Something to remind people when it’s time to go to the grocery store, when to bring the kids to soccer practice. Like that.
Only bigger.
And…fittingly…about bigger things.
So it goes.
Or else of course some aliens who didn’t have much in the way of technology but managed to stellar travel/time travel into those lands took their little hammers and chisels and made all’a them decorations and such.
I’m going for the first option, myself.
Happy Winter Solstice.
It’s just going to get better from here.
In fact, in the spirit of “As above, so below” I am going to risk a prediction here. You know how it continues to get colder after the Winter Solstice?
Well…I believe that the 2006 elections marked a sort of solstice in the political “year”…which is much longer than the solar year, bet on it…and that the wintry part of that cycle might quite possibly have started well before before Bill Clinton’s political crucifixion and peaked on 9/11. 1994 comes to mind for the previous summer-like political solstice. YOU remember. The peak of the Clinton prosperity years?
All’a them yuppies cashing in on the dot.com boom?
Like that.
America’s Summer Solstice of this particular era.
So here’s my prediction.
There’s going to be an Obama spring, summer and harvest that will last well beyond 2018.
The “summer” solstice of this cycle.
Watch.
Betcha.
Later..,.
AG
P.S. If I’m wrong?
Sue me, and best of luck in collecting.
P.P.S. I TOL’ YA I’d get there eventually.
Happy New Beginning.
Within this small winter and also within the greater winters in which it is enfolded.
The greater resurrection follows apace.
Bet on it.
I am.
Sumer is icumin in.
My favorite time of year. (Except of course for all of the others…)
My Christmas gift to you.
Peace and love.
It works.
Bet on it.