Blog 3 Midsummer New Year of Johns Eve 2012

The Road to Valmiera Just Outside the City



One of the favorite bug-a-boos of fascist Latvian politicians is language. Not that I have objections to fascism when and if it is not violent or militaristic. As I have argued in other blogs, I see fascism as the natural identification of a community when it is, indeed, a cohesive community, which is an evolutionary outgrowth of the individual understanding that there is safety in numbers, that is, a community.

Indeed, there is also an element of religion in healthy fascism. It uses this religious feeling in creating a communal imagination, while repressing Pop individualism, which leads to the atomization of a community. Unfortunately, both bolshevist and neo-capitalist rule encourages the fragmentation of a community to better allow the party apparatchiks to become the future dictators or oligarchs.

However, as the experience of other people proves, speaking the language of a larger community does not necessarily destroy one’s native culture, granted that the latter is cohesive enough to maintain itself as a self-conscious entity. As the following clip from Wales proves, the Welch language may have little to to with the welchness of the Welch, even though no doubt, language played an essential and even existential  role in getting the Welch communithy started, re http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYkYfi_IiM



Cut down on the Order of Some Scandinavian Bank.



Given that now only 1/6^th of the three million Welch speak Welch, it is worth considering how Wales (with2.5 million of them speaking English) manage to remain a cohesive community http://wales.gov.uk/topics/housingandcommunity/communitycohesion/?lang=en without the word ‘fascist’ ever creeping up.

The next question to arise is what makes for Welch identity? The following link makes a strong case for language. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120529111428AAlVhhz Be that as it may, I believe that a strong case may also be made for community identities that go beyond narrow or self-limiting efforts. In other words, I believe that a kind of peaceful evangelism of identity may serve in strengthening not only self-identity, but in enlarging such identify to include inter-community identity.

Beautiful Green Latvia!

The Welch, too, have their Midsummer Festival: http://www.astrologycom.com/midsummer.html  , which they celebrate in honor of St. John, the tanist (twin) of Jesus. Take note how the herb of St. Johns Eve (note the Latvian use of ‘Johns’ in its plural form), re St. John’s Wort http://www.flickr.com/photos/37818240@N03/3657234939/ , may be the same as the Latvian Balderjānis (Balder John). Unfortunately, I can find no photo of the Latvian herb on the internet. It may also be, that the Latvian folk saying of the countryside speaks how on the Eve of St. Johns “all the grasses are GOOD”. Meaning that Midsummers New Year Eve is when flowering plants reach their ripeness. I have used the saying to support the use of cannabis, because I find it difficult to imagine that St. Johns, whom the Catholic Christians, along with travelling Cathars and Jews came to call “travelling heretics”, had travelled the world and had not learned of and brought with them the seeds and blooms of this beneficial herb. Incidentally, the Johns are not likely to have smoked, but drank a mixture of Johns Grass buds set to soak in cream and then brought to a boil.

A Beautiful Sight for Banks.

Because St. John was also the tanist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanistry  (literally ‘twin’) of Jesus, it should be clear to even the most devout of Christians of Catholic heritage, that St. Johns had long preceded the last member of their fraternity. Writes Robert Graves: “the holly being the tree of the tanist, who killed the oak-king at mifsummer”. The alternating  ‘killing’ of the twins of each other, is reflected in the Irish “Romance of Gawain and the Green Knight”. Again Graves: “The Green Knight is an immortal giant whose club is a holly bush. He and Sir Gawain, who appears in the Irish version [there is also an English version] as Cuchulain… make a compact to behead one another at alternate New Years—meaning midsummer and midwinter—but, in effect, the Holly Knight spares the Oak Knight”.

As I suggested in Blog 1, more about the sparing of the Oak Knight by Jesus in a later blog.



A Shrub of Legs in Valmiera



I will close today’s (June 3) blog and evangel on the importance of St. Johns to the Latvian community by pointing out that ‘Gawain’ is but another name for John/Jahnis [given that G may be pronounced as J or Y, and W as U, re Gwion, as in German W may once have been pronounced as a Y or J, re ‘wohn’ as in ‘Wohnung’—the place where one lives, the sacred place in one’s heart.] As for the holly tree.it is not native to Latvia to my knowledge, but the oak-tree remains prolific though no longer is thought as sacred.