Season of the Pleiades

In the equatorial constellation of Taurus, beyond the bright red star Aldebaran, can be seen what at first sight might be taken to be no more than a faint mist.

This patch is a cluster of stars so youthful in astronomical terms that some are still surrounded by the nebula of their creation: the Pleiades. They are so far from Earth that only the minutest fraction of their number are actually visible to the naked eye: Atlas (father) and Pleione (mother) and their seven daughters, Alcyone, Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Merope, Asterope and Celaeno, arguably the most important stars of the ancient world.

Chaldean astronomers certainly thought so. They called the cluster Chimah, meaning a revolving pivot moving other bodies with it. This idea was given credence by 19th century, astronomers who believed Alcyone, the brightest of the stars, to be the centre of gravity of the Solar system around which Sun and planets moved through space.

Discredited as it was later of course, this was no worse for all that than the idea of the ancient Greeks that the sky was a concave mirror reflecting idealised impressions of humanity. In Hesiod's day c800 BC, Greek farmers reaped their corn when the Pleiades rose at Sunrise in May, and ploughed their fields when they set at Sunrise in November.

Seven Sisters they called them, from the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione who died of grief and were placed as stars in the heavens, unaccountably echoing the Seven Gods of the Sumerians, Seven Hathors of the Egyptians, Company of Maidens of the Florida Indians and Karatgioruk (Young Women) of the Australian Aborigines. Vergilae from ver, the spring, came later. The modern name is derived from pleein, to sail, in recognition of the calm seas heralded by the Pleiades' appearance.

It is little wonder then, considering their importance, that the Hecatompedon in Athens had been oriented to the Pleiades when, built around 1500 BC, or the Merrivale Avenue near Walkhampton in Devon similarly some 500 years later. This latter is so nearly parallel with the Cursus at Stonehenge that the idea has been mooted that each enjoyed a similar significance relating to the heliacal rising of the Pleiades at the beginning of the Beltane Fire Festival.

Appropriate really if it should be go; fire and Sun being inseparable in the Celtic mind and a heliacal rising referring to a star, or in this case a cluster of stars, making a first appearance in the dawn sky immediately prior to the Sunrise itself. The importance of this found an echo in some religious rites of ancient Mesoamerica.

Other rites also depend on the Pleiades. The Sherente of Brazil still reckon their years to begin when the Pleiades appear as the Sun makes its June exit from the constellation of Taurus. The Navajo associate the stars with Black God, creator of fire and light, a recognisable form of the group appearing on the face of any depiction of the deity.

The Maya called the cluster Tzab, the rattle (of the rattlesnake). In the Aztec Florentine Codex of Central Mexico the group, identified as Tianquiztli, the Market Place, ensured the survival of civilisation for a further 52-year cycle by transiting the zenith at midnight during the ceremony of The Binding of the Years.

Yet it was with an entirely different culture, a millenium earlier, that perhaps the greatest ever recognition of the Pleiades is to be found. Teotihuacan, largest and most influential of all the cities of ancient Mesoamerica, is the earliest example of what has become known as the `17° family of orientations' in reference to the angle at which their principal axes run East of due North.

Built around the beginning of the Christian era on a grid which, since the course of a nearby river was altered to suit the pattern, cannot be claimed to simply conform to local topography, the city possesses a major axis, defined by the Street of the Dead, skewed 15° to the East of North. This is the same direction in which at least three other main thoroughfares are known to have run and at right angles to a baseline lying within 1° of the line of setting of the Pleiades.

Although a singular enough reason for the angle of layout of any city, this was not the prime mover in this instance as investigation revealed. On the day of the first of the seasonal demarcations brought into being

by the two annual passages of the Sun across the zenith, the Pleiades underwent heliacal rising. They announced by their appearance the beginning of that most important of all days when the Sun at high noon cast no shadows.

Linked to the cult of the Diving Sun God, an inverted figure common to the friezes decorating so much which was sacred in Mesoamerica, this was an event of incredible significance. The descent of the god, drawing the noon shadows down with him, was invariably followed by rains caused by the heat of the vertical Solar rays. His death therefore promised life to his believers as deaths of gods throughout the world have done since time immemorial.

Ceremonial centres in the vicinity of Teotihuacan built over a period of 1500 years reflect the sacred orientation. So too do the more distant cities of Tenayuca, Tepozteco and Tula, as well as buildings at Chichon Itza over 900 miles away. The latter especially are an act of very great faith, considering the alien nature of the environment.

Whether anyone involved in the work had taken into account the movement of the Earth's pole of rotation among the stars before transforming belief into action is debatable.

However, by the time these copy-cat cities were springing up the Pleiades no longer set along the Teotihuacan East-West axis. Nor by the end of the 9th century did they continue to announce the zenith passage of the Sun.

The great civilisation of Mexico was declining, and though the priest rulers of the day still planned their centres of worship with an eye to the orientation of the holy city, it is doubtful that they retained the knowledge of the original purpose by which their predecessors had been inspired.

To paraphrase a passage from one of the tragedies by the Greek writer Euripedes, 'The Pleiades were passing.' Their light would never shine so bright again.

Butterflies, bees, and bad weather

   A sunny day in Shropshire, and the first butterfly I've seen this year - a brimstone - has just fluttered past. It says much about the poor spring we've been enduring this year that it's taken until the middle of April before the first butterfly has put in an appearance.
   Mind you, it was probably as well that it didn't appear any earlier, because there wouldn't have been  many flowers for it to settle on.
That was most likely why there were honey bees working the flowers of the Lungwort, (Pulmonaria officinalis) on the same day. They generally only work them when there is a shortage of pollen available from the more usual sources. The pollen tube at the bottom of which pollen is to be found in the flowers of Lungwort is difficult for honey bees to get down.
The college where I worked before coming to live in Shropshire had a bee garden laid out with plants such as Abelia grandiflora, Caryopteris clandonensis, and various Hebes, which the honey bees were supposed to find irresistible. But, though the local bumble bees seemed to make full use of the amenities on offer, I seldom ever saw a honey bee working them.
In the garden, now that the weather seems to be warming up at last, look out for a plant sometimes known as the Bee Plant, because honey bees are so partial to it. Limnanthes douglasii, the Poached Egg Plant, is a hardy annual with pale green ferny foliage, and yellow flowers with a distinct white edge that are borne from June to the beginning of October.

Time to be pruning your clematis

A sunny day in Shropshire, and the snowdrops are still giving of their best, despite disappearing under falls of real snow several times since they came into flower. The fault of a sunny 2nd February, perhaps. Sunshine at Candlemas, or Groundhog Day as they call it in other parts of the world, is supposed to signify a prolonged winter to follow, and that certainly seems to be the case this year.
Despite the cold weather, however, circumstances obliged me to prune my Clematis 'Etoile Violette' a little earlier than usual.
It belongs to the viticella group, a European species introduced to England during the sixteenth century and, along with the jackmanni type of clematis, and any late-flowering, large-flowering cultivars, which flower on new stems every year, is best served by cutting all the old top growth back to a point just above the previous season's stems, around 75cm above the ground, in late February or March.
Clematis fall within three groups as far as pruning is concerned. The mountain clematis such as the alpinas from the mountains of Europe, the macropetalas from the mountains of China, and the montanas from the Himalayas, produce their flowers directly from their old stems and, if pruned at all, it is only to remove dead and weak stems immediately after flowering. Large flowering early clematis such as 'Nelly Moser' (pictured below) or 'Dr Ruppel', or mid-season large flowerers such as 'Maureen', produce their flowers on the old, or previous season's stems, and should be pruned by removing any dead and weak stems, and shortening the rest back to about 15-25cm from mid-February to late March.
In the garden, look out for the pretty pink lantern-like flowers of Clematis macropetala 'Markham's Pink'. They appear in April, and are followed by attractive seed heads.

                                                                                            

Britains most haunted houses, villages and trees

   According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most haunted village in England is Pluckley in  Kent, where visitors may encounter a highwayman, a green man, a miller and a dog amongst the ghosts which frequent it.
   Tulloch Castle Hotel, Dingwall in Ross and Cromarty, has a ghost which rattles door handles, and a green lady, who is the ghost of someone who died falling down a spiral staircase.
   Ruthin Castle, Ruthin, Denbighshire,  has a grey lady who is the ghost of a woman who killed her lover with an axe.
    Raynham Hall in Norfolk had a brown lady, believed to be the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townsend, wife of Turnip Townsend, but she has never appeared again since the famous photograph of her, which appears below, was taken in the 1930s.

     Gwydir Castle in the Conwy Valley has a north wing which is haunted  by the ghost of a servant girl murdered after becoming pregnant. It also has a phantom dog and crying children.
     The Talbot Hotel, Oundle, has a staircase which was once part of Fotheringay Castle, and which Mary Queen of Scots still haunts as she re-enacts her walk down those stairs to her execution.
      The most haunted house in England, according to some ghost hunters, is Roos Hall, a mansion on the outskirts of Beccles in Suffolk, which has a hanging tree in its grounds - an oak tree which once served as a gibbet on which many local criminals ended their days.
     Hanging men are a common means by which trees are haunted. The shade of a man hung for stealing a branch from the laird's favourite tree at Careston Castle, Angus,  is often seen dangling from trees in  the neighbourhood.
     A man whose master killed two soldiers at the village mill at Fordill in Fife, and then fled to escape the consequences, was hung in his place, and now is sometimes to be seen hanging from trees in the neighbourhood, with his eyes bulging from their sockets.
   The ghost of a man who tried several times to hang himself on trees at Stoke Hall, Grindleford, Derbyshire, and then hung himself successfully from a beam in a barn, when the branches kept breaking under his weight, can be seen running around the trees searching for a suitable one again.
    One of the most haunted buildings in Wales, The Skirrid Inn at Llanfihange, has a beam on the staircase which once served as a gibbet, and on which over 180 people, some of whom still haunt the place, have been hanged over the years.
   The most haunted house on the National Trusts' list of their properties in Britain  is said to be Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which includes Ann Boleyn, her brother George, and Sir John Fastolfe among its impressive list of the ghosts who put in an appearance there.
    Not on the same day as Anne is haunting the Tower of London, of course, along with Henry IV, Thomas Beckett and the Countess of Salisbury, whose ghost is pursued and hacked to death by the ghost of the axe man who gave chase when she fled from the scaffold.
    Anne and her family didn't have their deaths foretold by trees in the grounds of the houses they owned, but some people do. A lime tree in the grounds of Cuckfield Park, at Cuckfield in Sussex, drops a branch whenever a member of the family in the nearby house dies, and a farm at Stalybridge in Lancashire is home to a tree with leaves which shake violently just prior to the death of any member of the family who lives there, regardless of wind or weather conditions.
   It probably isn't a yew tree, because they don't have the type of leaves to shake like that, but they do often have the reputation of being haunted in some way simply because of their appearance of antiquity.
    The yew grove at Cholderton in Wiltshire was sacred to the druids, and is still haunted by a sad and oppressive atmosphere because of the rites they once carried out there.
     The second yew tree on the right after entering the church yard at Nevern in Dyfed is known as the bleeding yew, because blood is said to drip from a stump where a branch was severed.
      Brockdish Hall, near Harleston in Norfolk, is haunted by a ghost with a connection to another of the druid's sacred plants. Known as the mistletoe bride, she is the ghost of a girl who, whilst playing hide and seek with her husband on their wedding night, hid herself in a chest which could only be opened from the outside. The riddle of her strange disappearance wasn't solved until fifty years later, when the chest was opened, and a skeleton wearing a bridal grown was found clasping a sprig of mistletoe.
    Harleston was where I used to spend my holidays as a child, and where there was an old house with a boarded up window in the upper story, behind which was a bedroom which the owners wouldn't use because it was so badly haunted. I was fascinated by that house and its boarded up window, and would stand looking at it for hours whenever I was staying in the village, hoping that the ghost would put in an appearance, but it never did.
    Nor did the ghost of one of the Bishops of London, who was supposed to come up behind unwary gardeners working at Fulham Palace and tap them on the shoulder if they weren't working hard enough. Of course, that might have because when I was there I was never idle enough to draw his attention.
     I have written three ghost stories now, and if you are interested in ghosts they ought to appeal to you.

Why Weeps the Willow - The north Norfolk coast in the autumn of 1917. A teenage girl tries to find her way through the pitfalls of her first love affair, a ruthless woman determines to hold on to her family's estates at any cost, a restless ghost searches for the means of experiencing physical love again, a soldier is invalided home from the battlefields of France suffering from amnesia. Add incest, espionage and murder, then try to answer the question posed on a suicide's grave. Why Weeps the Willow?

Let Sleeping Evils Lie – a midnight vigil in a churchyard by students trying to contact a ghost said to haunt it, and some impromptu dabbling with an Ouija board in a youth club a few days later, awaken a sleeping evil it would have been better to leave undisturbed.  

Murder out of Memory - A compelling tale of love and murder, told by the ghosts of the two people involved. Or were they ghosts?  Even after battling to put right the grave miscarriage of justice he’d discovered had followed the murder, Peter was still not completely sure about that.

Mayan plants in common use

   A bright day in Shropshire, and I've been putting off writing this until the time when the Mayans predicted the world was going to come to an end had passed, in case I was wasting my time. For a moment, when a strange ball of fire suddenly appeared in the sky after days of blanket cloud and rain, I thought they'd got it right. Then I realised that the strange object was only the sun making a very rare appearance above us.

    The Mayans were an ancient civilization, who lived in what are now Honduras, Guatemala and Yucatan in the south of Mexico, between 500 BC and 1241 AD and apart from what has now proved to be an inaccurate prediction, were probably best known for some of the plants they grew, and which were introduced to European use  by the Spanish after their conquest of the Americas during the early sixteenth century.

     The most important of these plants was probably Theobroma cacao, from which both chocolate and cocoa are produced. Zea mays gives us sweet corn and corn oil. The latter being added to a great many of the products we purchase from America. Not always to our advantage if the documentary about corn oil I watched on tv a month or so ago painted an accurate picture. Capsicum fructescens gives us Chillis, Paprika and Cayenne and Green Peppers. Nicotiana tabacum was first made into tobacco and smoked by the Mayans. It was introduced to Europe by Jean Nicot (hence its name) in 1558, and the habit of smoking it introduced to the UK by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585.

     In the garden, well in the house really, at this time of year look out for Euphorbia pulcherrima, the Poinsettia, which originated in Mexico. Its  artificially induced scarlet bracts brighten many a home from Christmas time until the New Year.

If you want to know more why not read Gardens of the Gods, by Brian Taylor, available from Amazon as a hardback book, or the e-book version of it, Sacred Plants of the World from Neanderthal Times until the Present Day, available from Amazon Kindle. 

Cinderella, last of the Vestal Virgins

    Winter Solstice, one of the great fire festivals of the year. People used to light their Yule log at the start of it and have it burning throughout the season. Oak if they could get it, because that was considered most sacred of all.

    Nowadays we are less likely to have a Yule log alight in our homes, but we may go to see a pantomime sometime over the Christmas season. Cinderella perhaps.

   Gustave Dore's illustration from the 1867 edition of Charles Perrault's 'Cinderella'

There can be few people who have never heard of Cinderella. The story of the young girl who overcomes adversity with the help of her fairy godmother is a popular folk tale throughout Europe, where at least 500 versions of it have been  recorded. Less well known, are her connections with vestal virgins, hearth spirits and the cradle of civilisation.

    The roots of the story as we know it can be traced relatively easily to Roman primitive religion, though it is undoubtedly much older than that. Reli­gion in ancient Rome was a family affair in the charge of the head of each family group. Concerned mainly with the personal and material welfare of those involved, it had little room for more than the most rudimentary of moral overtones.

    Worship centred on the home as the gathering point for the family and within the home took as its focus the hearth. Tending the hearth was the responsibility of the younger, unmarried daughters of the family.

    The practice mirrored that adopted by the royal family of Rome in the early days before the Empire. Though the rule was by king, succession was through the female line, as consort to the reigning monarch. This lent an importance to the royal daughters similar to that of the princesses of ancient Egypt.

    The hearth was the centre of Roman life and within it burned a perpetual flame, which was tended for longer or shorter periods, depending on the need. Whilst the royal sons were being sent out into the world to find suitable wives and foreign lands in which to settle, their sisters remained at home until such a time as one of  their number, having been chosen as consort to their successor, gave birth to daughters of their own.

    Proof that the cult was of an antiquity far  beyond that of the growing Rome rests in their choice of sacred animal and of sacred fuel for their fire. The latter - in common with that burnt on sacred fires in many lands which never fell under the influence of the Imperial Empire - was oak. The former was the Mediterranean ass. Basis enough for suspecting that this particular form of worship arose in ancient times in Middle East - the cradle of civilization.

    Wherever she originated, however, and  under whatever guise, there is no escaping the fact that Vesta  was greatly venerated in ancient Rome, where she was believed to belong to the inner circle of twelve gods. Patroness of fire and hearth, she was served by spirits who took responsibility for various parts of the home: the Penates, for instance, who  attended the penus (a cupboard near the hearth where provisions were stored) or the Lares, who were phantoms watching over the house as a whole.

    A legend which is seen as acknowledgement of the divine fire tells of a Lares who assumed the substance of a phallus amidst the the hearth, had intercourse with a slave of King Tarquin's Queen Tanaquil, who was  guarding the hearth, and thus became the father of King Servius Tullius, who arose from the flames like a phoenix.

    Servius Tullius was sixth of the eight kings of Rome, all of whom retained the  perpetual fire as the focus of the community, and their daughters as the most important of the hearth wardens. With the abolition of the kingship this was was no longer possible, however, and the College of Vestals came into being to fill the void.

   At first there were only two, then four, then finally six maidens who served in the temple, which was close to the the king's house in the forum, their own house being next door. They were chosen only from the best families and served under the direction of the chief priest, one of whose jobs was to whip them should the sacred fire  go out. Girls as young as seven years old were taken for training and obliged to serve for at least thirty years before they could retire and marry if they so wished, though few did.

    Vestal Virgins played a prominent part Roman life, particularly the religious aspects of it, and their house was a repository for wills and other important documents. Ordinary people regarded the maidens with the awe and respect such arbiters with the gods attract. They were even allowed the best seats at the theatre at cut price rates. Should the chastity of a Vestal Virgin be violated, however, it was a different matter. The unfortunate victim would be buried alive in the belief that her innocence would be proven should Vesta intervene.

                                Chief Vestal Virgin from a statue in Rome

    How the cult of Vesta came to be associated with that of Diana the hun­tress is not altogether clear. Certainly fire played an important part in the rituals of the latter and was celebrated with holy rites at every hearth on her feast day, 13 August. Her sacred grove at Nemi was guarded by virgins and a sacred fire burned in the round temple similar to that of Vesta in the forum at Rome.

    Nevertheless, Diana was a fertility goddess with a folk-lore reputation far removed from that of the chaste Vesta. Possibly as goddess of the sacred oak which provided the logs she became confused with the goddess of the fire which consumed them. Votive offerings of terra-cotta lamps which were a feature of shrines dedicated to Diana may well have been the forerunners of candles offered in the Catholic churches of the modern world.

    Worship of Vesta and her alter-ego continued throughout the years of empire until the decline of Rome brought an end to the trappings of Imperial rule. By the time the world emerged from the Dark Ages which followed, a new god had swept away the power of Mars, Jupiter, Diana and the rest. Only one of the inner circle survived in a form so altered by folk memory that the new order failed to recognise her and allowed the story to be told unchallenged. So it is that every Christmas, in countless panto­mimes throughout the world, Cinderella, the last of the Vestal Virgins, watches over the eternal fire.



All this information, and much more besides, can be found in the book, Gardens of The Gods, by Brian Taylor, recently given five stars by a satisfied reader. Available from Amazon as a hardback. Or Sacred Plants of the World from Neolithic Times Until the Present Day, its e-book version, available from Amazon Kindle.

A good year for autumn colour

   A foggy day in Shropshire, and I found myself humming the old George and Ira Gershwin classic about London Town as I went about my business, the colours of the trees and shrubs in the garden filling me with anything but alarm as they emerged from the gloom when the sun broke through.

   It's been a good year for autumn colour. Probably because of the mild, wet weather we've had. If it hadn't been for that one night when the temperature fell below freezing, followed by a day of strong winds, it would have been even better, but the vine lost most of its leaves to that, and other things were touched by it enough for them not to be at their best anymore.

    Not that the weather is the main reason we  have autumn colours to enjoy, only how long it lasts some years. The main cause of autumn colour happening is the increasing length of the night.

    Colours in plants are the result of the pigments present. Chlorophyll, which is present throughout the growing season, gives us the basic green. Carotenoids, also there all year, produce yellows, oranges and browns. Anthocyanins, which increase their presence in autumn, give the colour to such things as red apples, cherries, strawberries and plums.

    As night length increases in the autumn chlorophyll production first slows down, then stops, and the chlorophyll is destroyed, leaving the other two pigments free to display their own colours.

   When in early autumn, in response to shortening days and the declining intensity of the sunlight, the veins in the leaves gradually close off, a layer of cells forms at the base of each leaf. These clogged veins trap sugars in the leaves and promote production of more anthocyanins. Once this process is complete and the connecting tissues sealed off, the leaf is ready to fall.

     In the garden, look out for a plant which doesn't change colour in autumn, because it is an evergreen. Fatsia japonica, the Japanese aralia, has large, palmate, glossy dark green leaves all year round, but bears dense clusters of globular milky white flowers in November, which are followed by round black fruits. It is frost hardy, but needs shelter from strong winds in cold areas. The leaves of the variety 'Variegata' have marginal variegations.