MAY 23
On this date, the Sun enters the Sign of Gemini. Also around this time of year, one of the Pagan feast days absorbed by Christianity was the Roman Spring Festival which became known as "Rogation Days," three days of prayer preceding Ascension Day. The name changed, but the object remained the same...to ask divine blessings for crops and to reinforce awareness of civic and private boundaries.MAY 24:
When Cambodia was under royal rule, this date was known as "Sacred Furrow Day." To attract heavenly favor to the land and magnify the harvest, members of the royal family put their own shoulders to the plow and turned over a single sacred furrow.MAY 25
In its original form as a harvest celebration, the Jewish Festival of Shavuoth ("Feast of Weeks") centered around the offering of two loaves of bread made from the first ripened wheat. Later, Shavuoth became associated with the return of Moses from Mount Sinai and the proclamation of the Ten Commandments. To commemorate those events, modern Jews eat a meal consisting of special dairy foods in order to symbolize God's promose that His Chosen People would settle in a land "flowing with milk and honey."MAY 26
On this date, people once practiced "well dressing," a custom originated from a time when it was believed that water...the essential ingredient of life...was inhabited by gods or spirits. These spirits possessed a dreadful power to cause the water to flow or to withhold it. Thus, quite naturally, people made every effort to honor and seek the favor of these divinities. In order to keep the Water Gods pacified, the Romans would stage an anuual festival called the "Fontinalia," during which flowers were tossed into springs and wells were decorated with wreaths. In Ancient Britain, these gods were more demanding. Water sources were appeased not with flowers but with human self-mutilation. Later, under the influence of Christianity, wells that had once been sacred to Pagans were given the names of Saints or the Virgin Mary and became the sites of batptismal ceremonies.MAY 27
This date in 1794 marked the birth of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a shipping and railroad magnate who began his career with a loan of $100.00 from his mother. A lifelong sufferer from many ailments, Vanderbilt retained a number of psychic healers and mediums, one of whom supposedly summoned-up the ghost of financial wizard, Jim Fisk, for a particularly important railroad stocks meeting. In his later years, Vanderbilt is said to have slept with containers of water beneath his bed, in the apparent belief that the liquid would keep the ghosts away.MAY 28
On this day in 1965, a pilot flying over Australia contacted ground-control operators, claiming that a spherical object had kept pace with his aircraft for ten minutes before surging ahead. Following this, Australian officials allegedly warned the pilot and ground crew to maintain silence about the sighting. The pilot also claimed that film which was confiscated would have borne out his allegations.MAY 29
At approximately this time in Ancient Rome, farmers would honor Mars as the God of Agriculture...a more gentle side of this warring deity...with feasts which included prayers and purification rites, as well as the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep and an ox. Prior to sacrificing the animals, the townsfolk would drive the beasts around the limits of farms and villages, partially to imprint upon their children where the boundaries lay.MAY 30
On this date in 1925, Briton Percy Fawcett entered the jungle on the Brazil-Bolivia border in order to seek a fabled lost city. He, along with several would-be rescuers, vanished and were never heard from again.MAY 31
This date marks the official birthday of Siddhartha Guatama, born in 563 BC, and known by the more familiar name of Buddha ("The Enlightened One").JUNE 1
Named for Juno, Roman Goddess of Marriage, the month of June was considered by the Ancient Romans to be the most auspicious time for weddings and still remains a favored matrimonial month in the modern world.JUNE 2
On this day, the Iban people of Malaysia celebrate a yearly festival known as Gawai Dayak, which is a time to give thanks for the gathering of the local harvest. In huge common rooms of the long houses perched high atop stilts in jungle clearings, families gather at midnight as the holiday begins, offering benedictions to the Gods and invoking their blessings. After a lavish feast, complete with rice and wine, the celebration is culminated with the selection of the most attractive male and female among them, who become the embodiment of the year's harvest spirit.JUNE 3
Around this date, worshippers on the Mediterranean Island of Cyprus observe the Festival of Cataclysmos by praying for the dead and making a special trip to the sea. After sprinkling each other with sea-water (believed to the espicially blessed on this day), participants play traditional water games and engage in a dance which requires the revelers to balance as many as six glasses of water on their heads. Although celebrated as a Christian holiday, this festival may have evolved from a far more ancient ritual which was held to mark the end of a flood supposedly sent by the the Greek God, Zeus, to destroy humankind for its wickedness.JUNE 4
In times long past, pre-Christian Europeans are thought to have held a festival in early June to mark the death of Winter and the birth of Summer. With the arrival of Christianity, the official purpose of this June feast changed to one in celebration of the Pentecost...a time when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended upon the first apostles, leading them to baptize 3,000 new converts in a single day. One ancient tradition states that a child born on this day is doomed to either kill or be killed. Yet another aged belief is that it is unlucky to venture out on this day without wearing something new...due to the fact that it is the Festival of the newborn Summer.JUNE 5
Throughout the Spring and Summer months, the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico perform traditional corn dances dedicated to the Rain People and the Earth Mothers. This custom is meant to ensure a bountiful harvest and blessings on the Earth. Shaking traditional rattles, men and women dress in white clothing and adorn themselves with feathers.JUNE 6
In early June, the Yoruba people of Nigeria honor the spirits of their ancestors with a week-long festival. According to local belief, these otherwordly entities known as the Egungun control the fates of the living and must be properly honored and venerated. During the festival, some villagers offer food and gifts to the spirits, while Egungun impersonators dance through the streets. At times, so the participants believe, the living dancers find themselves possessed by the long-dead Egungun spirits.JUNE 7
On this date in Ancient Rome, the Festival of Vestalia was celebrated to honor of Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth. During this time, Vesta's shrine (normally forbidden ground to all but her attendant vestal virgins) was opened to married women for eight days. After walking barefoot to the Temple, the matrons made offerings of food to the Goddess who, so they believed, guarded their homes and household fires. On June 15, the housewives returned home again and the shrine once more became off-limits until the next Festival of Vestalia.JUNE 8
In Japan, this is a time when rice seedlings are transplanted to the paddies. Many villages hold ceremonies to ask that the Rice God bestow a blessing upon the crop. Typically, women planters in traditional kimonos recite prayers and light rice-straw fires in order to lure the Rice God from his mountain home. Then, moving rhythmically to the music of drums and pipes, the women stoop and plant in near-choreographic unison until the paddy is filled. At the end of the day, according to legend, the Rice God goes home to await the next call of his worshippers.JUNE 9
Every few Summers (and sometimes more often), the Malagasy highlanders of Madagascar open their family tombs on this date and exhume the bodies of dead relatives in a cermony known as famadihana, which literally means "turning over the dead." After wrapping the corpses in silk shrouds, joyful family members transport the remains around the graveyard or through the streets before reinterring the bodies. Since the Malagasy highlanders believe the dead continue to live, they often call upon their ancestors for help. This is the only day, however, when the dead are believed to physically return.JUNE 10
On this day in 1692, Bridget Bishop became the first of nineteen men and women to be hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.JUNE 11
During the early morning hours on this date in 1881, a wakeful pair of British princes (one of whom would become the future George V) saw a strange ship bathed in a red glow glide by their naval vessel as they sailed near the Australian coast. Others aboard also witnessed the phenomenon, which the shocked group identified as the legendary Flying Dutchman...a spectral ship doomed to sail the seas for eternity because its captain had cursed God.JUNE 12
Like their counterparts in Japan (see June 8 above), many Korean rice farmers perform an ancient ritual on this day prior to transplanting the precious rice seedlings into place. To ensure an abundant crop, these farmers wash their hair in a stream, hoping that an ill-fortune which might be clinging to them will be carried away with the current.JUNE 13
On this date in 1884, Gerald Gardner was born. He later became a British customs inspector and a self-proclaimed witch. With his 1954 book, "Witchcraft Today," Gardner greatly influenced the modern witchcraft and neopagan movements. Also on this date in 1865, Irish poet William Butler Yeats was born. Yeats once said that he could not have written some of his works if he had not made magic his "constant study." Yeats' interest in the magical arts led him to join the secretive Order of the Golden Dawn.JUNE 14
Once every June, on or about this date, tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims flock to the City of Puri on India's eastern coast to celebrate a joyous festival honoring the God Jagannath, a benevolent incarnation of Vishnu, Lord of Creation. The day before the festivities begin, attendants at Jagannath's Temple adorn three huge statutes of the God, his brother and his sister, with crowns of flowers and golden robes. They then transfer the figures to three enormous chariots or carts lined up outside. At forty-five feet high, Jagannath's splendid car is the largest, resting on sixteen wooden wheels, each approximately seven feet in diameter. The following morning, thousands of the faithful gather in the courtyard of the Temple. At a sign from Jagannath's priests, they take up thick ropes attached to the sacred carts and begin to draw them through Puri's main street to a building known as Jaggernath's garden house. Although the intended location lies only a mile or so away, the journey takes up most of the day. An immense gathering of noisy crowds throng the route and enthusiastic worshippers constantly surge toward the highly-revered, cloth-draped structures, hoping to be blessed by a turn at the ropes. When the carts and their monumental occupants at last reach the garden house, the carts are parked and the statues taken inside. There, they remain for seven days, while the pilgrims indulge in feasting and riotous dancing. On the eighth day, Jagannath and his siblings return to the Temple in the same vehicles by which they had left it seven days before. It has been reported by foreign observers in the past that some pilgrims, driving to a frenzy of religious excitement, have thrown themselves beneath the wheels of Jagganath's cart and were crushed to death. Because of such reported incidents, the English word "juggernaut" (a variant of the God's name) has come to mean any inexorable force that crushes everything in its path. It is a somewhat peculiar association for a God whose reputation is based on helping rather than slaughtering mankind.JUNE 15
On the second Thursday after Pentacost (which falls around this time of year), the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrate the Corpus Christi. This festival honors the mystical rite of communion, during which Christians consume the Body of Christ (in Latin, Corpus Christi) in the form of consecrated bread. As missionaries introduced Christianity into Peru, Bolivia and other areas of the old Incan Empire, this Church feast largely replaced traditional Incan soltice rituals. The result was a mixture of Incan and Catholic elements which still persist today, as crowds parade consecrated bread through streets carpeted with flower petals arranged in geometric patterns.JUNE 16
On this date in 1975, the New York Times obituary page carried a short article announcing that a search for the human soul had come to an inconclusive end. As explained in the story, an eccentric Arizona miner named James Kidd had disappeared one day in 1949, leaving behind approximately $174,000.00 and a will requesting that the money be used to obtain "scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death." The American Society for Psychical Research, which took up the challenge, proved unable to demonstrate the existence of any human soul...an outcome which inspired the newpaper obituary.JUNE 17
In a centuries-old purification ritual, the people of the Japanese City of Nara collect thousands of lily stalks from a nearby moutain at about this time in June and take them to a Temple, where the flowers are blessed by seven young women wearing white robes. The following morning, a Shinto priest lays a large lily bouquet at the altar of the Temple, after which the seven maidens wave lily stalks in a traditional dance designed to drive away the evils of the rainy season. At the end of the performance, attendants transport a large lily-filled float through the city streets in order to purify the air.JUNE 18
Around the time of the Summer Solstice, Chinese people celebrate a holiday known to Westerners as the "Dragon Boat Festival." According to legend, the festival commemorates the death in the year 278 BC of Qu Yuan, a Chinese statesman and poet. According to the tale, Qu Yuan deliberately threw himself into a river due to sorrow at the corruption of his home state of Chu. Villagers rushed to their boats in a vain effort to save him. Rice also played a role in the rescue efforts, since some accounts of the legend state that searchers tossed rice dumplings into the river in order to distract the dragons and evil spirits luking in the waters. However, another variation states that the rice was a tribute to the soul of the martyred poet. Ever since then...so the story goes...boat races in large, dragon-shaped vessels have been held annually to commemorate the futile search for the dead hero while spectators eat rice cakes in memory of the rice poured overboard by the would-be rescuers. According to some historians, the dragon design of the boats suggests that these races may, in fact, actually predate the suicide of Qu Yuan by several centuries and may have originated as an ancient Summer Solstice ritual intended to propitiate the River Dragons...by Chinese tradition, benevolent guardians who bring rain. To please the Dragon Gods, it is believed that the boats may have been made to resemble these deities. Later, it is thought that this ancient rite (and the traditional rice cakes) may have been integrated with Qu Yuan's story in order to produce the festival which is observed today.JUNE 19
This day marks the beginning of a week-long celebration in Brazil, the Feast of the Holy Ghost. In rural communities, one wealthy farmer is selected as Emperor of the festivities. He plans the huge event, but relies upon the contributions of others in order to carry it out. Months before the occasion, the so-called Emperor and a group of musicians travel through the countryside, stopping at each farm and requesting (through an age-old musical entreaty) a pledge of livestock or grain for the feast. On the day of the event, the farmers gather to fulfill their promises and the celebrations begin.JUNE 20
On this date in 1982, Charles Thomson's design for the United States Seal was approved. The reverse featured a pyramid and an all-seeing eye...two mysterious symblols cherished by the Freemasons.JUNE 21
The Northern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice fall on or about this date. It is an event rife with ancient meaning which occurs when the Sun attains its highest point in the heavens and begins its inevitable decline toward the darkness of Winter. In England, modern Druids mark the solstice with sunrise rituals at Stonehenge. In Japan, a solstice festival known as Geshi emphasizes prayers for proections against the heat and disease of Summer. Also on this date, the Sun begins to take its leave from the Sign of Gemini and continues its journey by entering the Sign of Cancer.
