Tag Archives: death

Michaelmas

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This 17rh century Ethiopian manuscript illumination shows the Archangel Michael helping Hezekiah, king of Judah, defeat Sennacherib of Assyria.

This 17rh century Ethiopian manuscript illumination shows the Archangel Michael helping Hezekiah, king of Judah, defeat Sennacherib of Assyria.

Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel (also called the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a day in the Western Christian calendar which occurs on 29 September. Because it falls near the equinox, it is associated in the northern hemisphere with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days. In medieval England, Michaelmas marked the ending and beginning of the husbandman’s year.

The Archangel Michael is the greatest of all the Archangels and is honoured for defeating Lucifer in the war in heaven. He is one of the principal angelic warriors, seen as a protector against the dark of night, and the administrator of cosmic intelligence. Michaelmas has also delineated time and seasons for secular purposes as well; in the United Kingdom and Ireland, “Michaelmas term” is still the first quarter of the academic year.

On manors, it was the day when a reeve was elected from the peasants. Traditional meal for the day includes goose (a “stubble-goose”, i.e. one prepared around harvest time) and a special cake called a St Michael’s bannock.

According to an old legend, blackberries should not be picked after this date. This is because, so folklore goes, Satan was banished from Heaven on this day, fell into a blackberry bush and cursed the brambles as he fell into them. In Yorkshire, it is said that the devil had spat on them. According to Morrell (1977), this old legend is well known in all parts of the United Kingdom, even as far north as the Orkney Islands. In Cornwall, a similar legend prevails, however, the saying goes that the devil urinated on them.

Cherries

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A love spell from Japan involves tying a strand of hair to a cherry tree in blossom.

A love spell from Japan involves tying a strand of hair to a cherry tree in blossom.

Cherries are associated with Venus, water, love, divination, and death. One method to discover how many years of life remain for you is to stand beneath a cherry tree and shake it and count the number of cherries which fall around you, indicating the number of years that remain until your death. Perhaps because of this practice, cherry juice can be used as a substitute for blood in magical recipes.

Drawing of Mary and cherry tree

In the former Czechoslovakia it was customary to cut cherry branches on the Feast of St Barbara on 4 December and bring these into the warmth of the house to have blossom at Christmas. However, the tree of course flowers naturally at or around Easter, especially if Easter is late, and in England, in the Chilterns, some of the abundant blossoms were used to decorate churches at Easter.

A cherry orchard will be certain of having a rich crop if the first ripe cherry is eaten by a woman who has just given birth to her first child. However, another Bohemian tale which brings together the Virgin, cherries, birth and death goes: When a mother loses a child, she eats neither strawberries nor cherries until the day of St. John the Baptist (June 24, the traditional date of Midsummer). It is said that at that time the Virgin goes about heaven giving this fruit to the little children. If a mother has not been self-denying, and has eaten of this fruit, when the Virgin comes to the child of such a one, she says: “Poor child, there isn’t much left for you, your mother ate your share.” So mothers of deceased children abstain from fruit until the Midsummer following the child’s death.

Wild cherry folklore has unusual associations with the cuckoo, whereby the bird has to eat three good meals of cherries before it may stop singing. Another use of cherries in predicting death is a children’s oracular rhyme from Buckinghamshire:

‘Cuckoo, cherry tree,
Good bird tell me,
How many years before I die’,

with the answer being the next number of cuckoo calls the singer heard.

Cancer, the Crab

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This depiction of the constellation Cancer (the Crab) is taken from the Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson - 1822.

This depiction of the constellation Cancer (the Crab) is taken from the Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson – 1822.

Although modern astrologers identify the sign of Cancer as a crab, it has been represented as various types of creatures, usually those living in the water, and always those with an exoskeleton.

The identification of Cancer as a crab is rooted in the Twelve Labors of Hercules tale. Hercules battled the multi-headed Lernaean Hydra and Hera had sent a large crab to distract Hercules and put him at a disadvantage during the battle. But Hercules quickly dispatched the creature by kicking it with such force that it was propelled into the sky. Other accounts say the crab grabbed onto Hercules’ toe with its claws, but Hercules simply crushed the crab underfoot. Hera, grateful for the creature’s heroic effort, gave it a place in the sky. (Some scholars have suggested that the crab was a late addition to the myth of Hercules in order to make the Twelve Labors correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac.)

In the Egyptian records of about 2000 BC, the Cancer sign was described as Scarabaeus (Scarab), the sacred emblem of immortality. In Babylonia the constellation was known by a name which can refer to both a crab and a snapping turtle. There also appears to be a strong connection between the Babylonian constellation and ideas of death and a passage to the underworld, which may be the origin of these ideas in much later Greek myths associated with Hercules and the Hydra. In the 12th century, an illustrated astronomical manuscript shows it as a water beetle. Albumasar writes of this sign in the work published in 1489 as a large crayfish. Jakob Bartsch and Stanislaus Lubienitzki, in the 17th century, described it as a lobster.

Those born during the Cancer period (June 22–July 22) are said to be emotional and intuitive but shrewd.

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