Annie Dieu-Le-Veut

It comes upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold.

These are the first words of a 19^th century Christmas carol upon which I’ve based the words for a song for Yule, created with the musician Andreas Pirner. If you’d just like to hear the song, you’re welcome and it’s here.

But if you’d like a deeper dive into what it’s all about, it’s true meaning goes back …much further back… back to the original story of the Nativity that was told thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years ago.

So let’s begin at the beginning, so that the middle and the end of this tale about the oldest Christmas story can make sense to modern ears.

By beginning, I mean we will need to go back as far as the end of the last major Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, and to a mountainous land we now call Siberia. This was the homeland of our oldest ancestors, the nomadic deer herdsmen of the Russian Steppes.

These herders would roam throughout the year, following in the trods of their reindeer, in a great circle which was under the even greater circle of the twelve starry constellations of the zodiac above them, up on that roof of the world. Then at night, they would sit beside their fires and tell stories that they would illustrate by drawing their fictional characters in the stars.

The stories they told each other were to help them make sense of their lives and the world around them, which is exactly what we use stories for today …except we call it science.  However, modern astrophysics leaves no place for man to find his destiny in its mechanistic, ruthless projections of the macrocosmic gargantuan and inexorable processes of Space, and so he can end up feeling like a speck of dust with no purpose or meaning.

The ancients’ science was more multidimensional, holographic and fractal in its nature. It drew a picture which was no less meticulous in its calculations. But it was also one where man could happily find his microcosmic place and and a meaningful foothold in the vastness and beauty of its infinity — one where no wren could fall un-noted and no blade of grass would not be blessed.

Today, we call that way of portraying reality “esoteric science” or “metaphysics”.

These ancients understood that the workings of the whole universe could be seen in the smallest creations of Nature, even in the tiniest sea shell on the beach.

Our ancestors’ myths were not just set it in this one world, which is the only world we know about today. Their shamans would astrally travel into the three worlds of the World Tree, and bring back guidance and healing from those spirits they met there.

Their stories were based on the adventures of a hero with twelve knights and a magical sword, not unlike King Arthur.

There were magical cauldrons in enchanted forests …

There was even a Lady of the Lake …

The hero would have face his dragon challenges to win those magical swords and enchanted cauldrons. He would tread the starry rim of the zodiac, moving from one constellation and one trial to another, each one honing his character until he is ready to be reborn as a real man.

The hero begins life as the Radiant Child. The Radiant Child is conceived between Virgo and Ophiuchus at Beltane,  and then born in lowly circumstances, like a pig sty, a cave… or a manger in a stable. The stable is in the constellation of Cancer, deep within a star cluster known as Praesepe.

Praesepe is Latin for ‘manger’, ‘cot’ or ‘crib’. Two of the stars of Praesepe are seen as asses eating hay; Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis—aka the Northern and Southern Asses.

The oldest Christmas Nativity story in the world begins, at Beltane, in May, when the Sun is in Taurus and the Moon is in Scorpio, with the Honeymoon of Gods – Virgo and Ophiuchus – to conceive the Radiant Child.

The embryo of the Child is then put into the star nursery, in Praesepe in Cancer, until he is born, when the Moon is in Cancer and the Sun is in Capricorn. This is the birth of the Child that we celebrate on Christmas Day in Avalon…although this story drawn by our ancestors in the stars can be seen all over the Northern Hemisphere.

Our song, Yule, starts with the Sun returning and aligning, at 4.00 am, with its counterpart in the Underworld. A few hours later, Cygnus the Swan swoops out of the Milky Way, while the mother of the Child, Virgo, rises with Crater the Cup, which is the Holy Grail.

Then just before dawn, Virgo’s husband, Ophiuchus, the Father of the Radiant Child, rises over the eastern horizon with the Sun.

However, this verse is the crux of the Christmas mystery:

To understand this verse, we need to comprehend the alchemical meaning of the Vesica Piscis. This is one of the most oldest and most sacred symbols found in every culture on Earth and at its most basic, it is about how the creation alchemically regenerates itself. 

One circle represents the Father, and the other represents the Mother, and they overlap or make love to create, between them, the Child whose genetic characteristics are shared from both parents.

Here is what happens in the skies all across the Northern Hemisphere at midday on Christmas Day.

This graphic above shows how, at midday, the Milky Way intersects the zodiac of twelve constellations to form the Vesica Piscis.

So to recap briefly, the Radiant Child had been conceived by Virgo and Ophiuchus at Beltane, when the Sun was in Taurus and the Moon was in Scorpio. He was nurtured and protected in a box of stars within Cancer called Praesepe, which is Latin for ‘manger’, ‘cot’ or ‘crib’ before being born on Christmas Day, when the Sun is in Capricorn and the Moon is in Cancer.

In the next verse, we go on the next part of the celebrations on Christmas Night.

The rest of the song goes on to describe that merrymaking, culminating with the Queen of Heaven opening the stargates for us to hear the Christmas song of old.

So I hope you enjoy it!

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