THE DEATH OF LLEW
by Mike Nichols
Not of father, nor of mother
Was my blood, was my body.
I was spellbound by Gwydion,
Prime enchanter of the Britons,
When he formed me from nine blossoms.
--'Hanes Blodeuwedd'
R. Graves, trans.
In most Pagan cultures, the sun god is seen as split between two rival personalities:
the god of light and his twin, his 'weird', his 'other self', the god of darkness. They are
Gawain and the Green Knight, Gwyn and Gwythyr, Llew and Goronwy, Lugh and Balor, Balan and
Balin, the Holly King and the Oak King, etc. Often they are depicted as fighting seasonal
battles for the favor of their goddess/lover, such as Creiddylad or Blodeuwedd, who
represents Nature.
The god of light is always born at the winter solstice, and his strength waxes with
the lengthening days, until the moment of his greatest power, the summer solstice, the
longest day. And, like a look in a mirror, his 'shadow self', the lord of darkness, is
born at the summer solstice, and his strength waxes with the lengthening nights until the
moment of his greatest power, the winter solstice, the longest night.
Indirect evidence supporting this mirror-birth pattern is strongest in the Christianized
form of the Pagan myth. Many writers, from Robert Graves to Stewart Farrar, have repeatedly
pointed out that Jesus was identified with the Holly King, while John the Baptist was the
Oak King. That is why, 'of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly tree bears the
crown.' If the birth of Jesus, the 'light of the world', is celebrated at mid-winter,
Christian folk tradition insists that John the Oak King (the 'dark of the world'?) was
born (rather than died) at mid-summer.
It is at this point that I must diverge from the opinion of Robert Graves and other writers who have followed him. Graves believes that at midsummer, the Sun King is slain by his rival, the God of Darkness; just as the God of Darkness is, in turn, slain by the God of Light at midwinter.
And yet, in Christian folk tradition (derived from the older Pagan strain), it is births, not deaths, that are associated with the solstices. For the feast of John the Baptist, this is all the more conspicuous, as it breaks the rules regarding all other saints.
John is the ONLY saint in the entire Catholic hagiography whose feast day is a
commemoration of his birth, rather than his death. A generation ago, Catholic nuns were
fond of explaining that a saint is commemorated on the anniversary of his or her death
because it was really a 'birth' into the Kingdom of Heaven. But John the Baptist, the
sole exception, is emphatically commemorated on the anniversary of his birth into THIS
world. Although this makes no sense viewed from a Christian perspective, it makes
perfect poetic sense from the viewpoint of Pagan symbolism. (John's
earlier Pagan associations are treated in my essay on Midsummer.)
So if births are associated with the solstices, when do the symbolic
deaths occur? When does Goronwy slay Llew and when does Llew, in his turn,
slay Goronwy? When does darkness conquer light or light conquer darkness?
Obviously (to me, at least), it must be at the two equinoxes. At the
autumnal equinox, the hours of light in the day are eclipsed by the hours
of darkness. At the vernal equinox, the process is reversed. Also, the
autumnal equinox, called 'Harvest Home', is already associated with
sacrifice, principally that of the spirit of grain or vegetation. In this
case, the god of light would be identical.
In Welsh mythology in particular, there is a startling vindication of
the seasonal placement of the sun god's death, the significance of which
occurred to me in a recent dream, and which I haven't seen elsewhere. Llew
is the Welsh god of light, and his name means 'lion'. (The lion is often
the symbol of a sun god.) He is betrayed by his 'virgin' wife Blodeuwedd,
into standing with one foot on the rim of a cauldron and the other on the
back of a goat. It is only in this way that Llew can be killed, and
Blodeuwedd's lover, Goronwy, Llew's dark self, is hiding nearby with a
spear at the ready. But as Llew is struck with it, he is not killed. He
is instead trans¬formed into an eagle.
Putting this in the form of a Bardic riddle, it would go something
like this: Who can tell in what season the Lion (Llew), betrayed by the
Virgin (Blodeuwedd), poised on the Balance, is transformed into an Eagle?
My readers who are astrologers are probably already gasping in recognition.
The sequence is astrological and in proper order: Leo (lion), Virgo
(virgin), Libra (balance), and Scorpio (for which the eagle is a well-known
alternative symbol). Also, the remaining icons, cauldron and goat, could
arguably symbolize Cancer and Capricorn (representing summer and winter),
the signs beginning with the two solstice points. So Llew is balanced
between cauldron and goat, between summer and winter, on the balance
(Libra) point of the autumnal equinox, with one foot on the summer solstice
and one foot on the winter solstice.
This, of course, is the answer to a related Bardic riddle.
Repeatedly, the 'Mabinogion' tells us that Llew must be standing with one
foot on the cauldron and one foot on the goat's back in order to be killed.
But nowhere does it tell us why. Why is this particular situation the ONLY
one in which Llew can be overcome? Because it represents the equinox
point. And the autumnal equinox is the only time of the entire year when
light (Llew) can be overcome by darkness (Goronwy).
It should now come as no surprise that, when it is time for Llew to
kill Goronwy in his turn, Llew insists that Goronwy stands where he once
stood while he (Llew) casts the spear. This is no mere vindictiveness on
Llew's part. For, although the 'Mabinogion' does not say so, it should by
now be obvious that this is the only time when Goronwy can be overcome.
Light can overcome darkness only at the equinox -- this time the vernal
equinox. (Curiously, even the Christian tradition retains this
association, albeit in a distorted form, by celebrating Jesus' death near
the time of the vernal equinox.)
The Welsh myth concludes with Gwydion pursuing the faithless Blodeuwedd through the night sky, and a path of white flowers springs up in the
wake of her passing, which we today know as the Milky Way. When Gwydion
catches her, he transforms her into an owl, a fitting symbol of autumn,
just as her earlier association with flowers (she was made from them)
equates her with spring. Thus, while Llew and Goronwy represent summer and
winter, Blodeuwedd herself represents both spring and fall, as patron
goddess of flowers and owls, respec¬tively.
Although it is far more speculative than the preceding material, a
final consideration would pursue this mirror-like life pattern of Llew and
Goronwy to its ultimate conclusion. Although Llew is struck with the
sunlight spear at the autumnal equinox, and so 'dies' as a human, it takes
a while before Gwydion discovers him in his eagle form. How long? We may
speculate 13 weeks, when the sun reaches the midpoint of the sign (or form)
of the eagle, Scorpio -- on Halloween. And if this is true, it may be that
Llew, the sun god, finally 'dies' to the upper world on Halloween, and now
passes through the gates of death, where he is immediately crowned king of
the underworld, the Lord of Misrule! (In medieval tradition, the person
proclaimed as 'Lord of Misrule' reigned from Halloween to Old Christmas --
or, before the calender changes, until the winter solstice.)
Meanwhile, Goronwy (with Blodeuwedd at his side) is crowned king in
the upper world, and occupies Llew's old throne, beginning on Halloween.
Thus, by winter solstice, Goronwy has reached his position of greatest
strength in OUR world, at the same moment that Llew, now sitting on
Goronwy's old throne, reaches his position of greatest strength in the
underworld. However, at the moment of the winter solstice, Llew is born
again, as a babe, (and as his own son!) into our world. And as Llew later
reaches manhood and dispatches Goronwy at the vernal equinox, Goronwy will
then ascend the underworld throne at Beltane, but will be reborn into our
world at midsummer, as a babe, later to defeat Llew all over again. And so
the cycle closes at last, resembling nothing so much as an intricately
woven, never-ending bit of Celtic knotwork.
So Midsummer (to me, at least) is a celebration of the sun god at his
zenith, a crowned king on his throne. He is at the height of his power and
still 1/4 of a year away from his ritual death at the hands of his rival.
However, at the very moment of his greatest strength, his dark twin, the
seed of his destruction, is born -- just as the days begin to shorten. The
spear and the cauldron have often been used as symbols for this holiday and
it should now be easy to see why. Sun gods are virtually always associated
with spears (even Jesus is pierced by one), and the midsummer cauldron of
Cancer is a symbol of the Goddess in her fullness. If we have learned
anything from this story from the fourth branch of the 'Mabinogion', it is
about the power of myth -- how it may still instruct and guide us, many
centuries after it has passed from oral to written tradition. And in
studying it, we have barely scratched the surface.
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