It
was lovely to see a froth of blackthorn blossom at the edge of our
church field on Sunday. A member of the rose family, she is one of
the first trees to blossom in the hedgerows after the dark of winter
and so she is a powerful symbol of the determination to return to
life from the frozen places. I love that her blossom appears before
her leaves, which reminds me of the blackbird singing before the
dawn. They both know that what they long for is coming, so why not
just start singing now? “Why wait?”, they say, “open your
petals, sing your song, the light is coming!”
Blackthorn,
whose magic is deeply woven into the folklore of winter, is sometimes
known as 'The Mother’, or ‘Dark Crone’, of the Woods and grows
prolifically in the British Isles. She is often planted in boundary
hedgerows as a protection due to her sharp thorns. Her folklore is
equally thorny, and it was that that I sat down to write about this
afternoon but, as so often happens, in the writing of it I somehow
connected to a deeper ‘river beneath the river’ of what the
Blackthorn Being* might want to say. As well as their stunning
blossom, blackthorn also has striking deep blue/black fruits called
sloes at the beginning of winter. It was when I read that the
expression ‘sloe-eyed’, which refers to someone with beautiful,
dark eyes, was first written of in Augusta Jane Wilson’s 1867
novel, ‘Vashti’, that the lightning struck.
Vashti
is one of the little known women of the Bible, who appears only in
the first chapter of the Book of Esther. I’m not sure that Augusta
Evans’ novel has anything to do with the Biblical Vashti, but I was
reminded just by seeing her name how compelling she is. In
Esther we are told that Vashti is the Queen
of Persia and the first wife of Persian King Ahasuerus.
In
the third year of his reign, Ahasuerus held a celebration
for visiting nobles, together with his officials and servants, to
‘show the riches of his royal glory and the splendour & pomp of
his greatness’. This lasted for one hundred & eighty days, at
the end of which he held a further seven day feast in the garden of his Royal palace, to which everyone was invited. There, drinks were
served in golden vessels and ‘the royal wine was lavished’.
However, the king made sure to declare that no one was under any
compulsion to drink as, ‘the king had given orders to all the staff
of his palace to do as each man desired’. At
the same time Vashti, his queen, was giving her own feast for the
women in the palace. But she was not to be offered the same respect as the men.
On
the final
day of the feast, the king, who was ‘merry with wine’, told his
servants to summon Vashti, ‘in order to show the peoples and the
princes her beauty, for she was lovely to look at’. But Vashti said
no. Her
defiance infuriated the king, who then consulted his officials on
what should be done. Afraid that Vashti’s 'great no' would encourage other women to also say no to their husbands, and
considering her refusal to comply a wrong against not only the king
but all the men of the king’s provinces, an
order was issued that Vashti was never again to come before the king,
that she should be ‘replaced by someone better than she’, and
that ‘all women must give honour to their husbands, high and low
alike’. When
the king’s anger had cooled he 'remembered Vashti and what had been
decreed against her' but his reaction was not to mend what had been
broken but to send out his officers to ‘gather all the beautiful
young virgins in his kingdom’ and bring them back to his harem. This is when Esther appears and the story continues.
But
Vashti is gone, disappeared. And
most people, even those who read the Bible regularly, are unfamiliar with her
name.
I
have been in a Bible study group studying the Book of Esther and
Vashti was almost glossed over entirely, with perhaps a disapproving
mutter. It seems that the church prefers Mary’s “Yes!”, which
is so often painted as passive submission rather
than the radical act that it was,
to Vashti’s “No!” Where
Vashti is remembered she is an ambivalent figure. Occasionally she is
written of as a feminist icon; Harriet
Beecher Stowe called
Vashti's disobedience the "first stand for women’s
rights’.
And,
author of ‘The Women’s Bible’,
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, wrote
that Vashti "added new glory to [her] day and generation...by
her disobedience; for 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.'"
The
African
American poet Frances E.W. Harper, who
considered the queen’s refusal to come from self-respect,
wrote of
her 1895 poem ‘Vashti’ that she was, "a woman who could bend
to grief, but would not bow to shame." In
contrast, the ancient Judaic interpretation of her story in the
Midrash considers her to be wicked and vain, rejecting the possibility that her refusal was made for her own dignity and instead speculating
that she must have been afflicted by a disfiguring illness, such
as leprosy. Another interpretation suggests that the angel Gabriel
had
visited her and given her a tail!
But
what of her connection to the Blackthorn, other
than the suggestion that she may have been ‘sloe-eyed’?
In many ways, Vashti reminds me of our own ‘hawthorn Christa’,
the Welsh Blodeuwedd, who is described as the most beautiful woman on
earth, having been created by enchantment out of flowers as a wife
for Lleu Llaw Gyffes,
without of course ever asking her what she wants. When she falls in
love with another man,
Gronw Pebr, whilst Llew is away she
plots with
him
to kill her husband in
order to
free herself from this enforced spell and is punished by being turned
into an owl who is ‘shunned by other birds’. Again,
there are many interpretations of her story. To be ‘turned into an
owl’ might not be seen as a punishment at all, but instead
as
Blodeuwedd’s decision to reclaim her claws after years of
submission. This
is Blodeuwedd’s ‘great no’. As
Alan Garner writes of her in ‘The Owl Service’, “She wants to
be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if
she goes hunting.”
Nevertheless,
again I was once in a group, comprising
only women,
which was discussing the Blodeuwedd story and it was suggested to me
that her meaning in myth was as, “a warning to women not to give in
to our fickle and unfaithful natures!” I
wrote more about Blodeuwedd, and her connection to hedgerows in my
article, ‘Boundaries and Blodeuwedd’. Then,
I had only thought of her in
relation to hawthorn, which is one of the flowers purportedly used in
her creation, but perhaps there was a petal or two of hawthorn’s
hedgerow
sister,
blackthorn, included too. They are both after all so wonderfully willful and wild.
Blackthorn
is often associated with witches and with spells used to 'bind or
blast’. In South Devon witches were said to carry blackthorn
walking sticks for use in mischief making and, in Irish folklore,
Blackthorn is the home of the Lunantisidhe, or moon fairies, who are
unfriendly towards humans; and with good reason when one considers the
devastation we have brought to hedgerows. In medieval times the Devil
was said to prick his devotees' fingers with a blackthorn &
heretics & witches were burned on blackthorn pyres. She is also
one of the trees said to have been included in the crown of thorns at
Christ's crucifixion. What a heavy burden to bear.
In
older Celtic lore blackthorn is said to symbolise a warrior's death
in service to a higher cause & to provide aid to heroes who, if
they threw a blackthorn twig, would find an impenetrable hedge
between themselves & their enemies. In Scotland too she is
associated with warfare, & with the 'Old Hag of Winter', the
Cailleach, who calls in winter by striking the ground with her
blackthorn staff; a long & difficult winter being named a
'Blackthorn Winter' in her honour.
But,
of course, Blackthorn is also a healer. She is not only a protector
but a purifier. Medicinally, like hawthorn, sometimes known as
whitethorn, she is wonderful for the circulation, for stimulating the
metabolism, & for 'cleaning the blood'. Her dark sloes, ripen &
sweeten after the first frost, which puts a rather different slant on
the Cailleach's cold prayer; just as we are warned after the first
frosts not to eat the remaining blackberries because the Devil has
spoiled them, the sloes sweeten & help us to settle into the
dark. As we emerge into the very early spring, her flowers help to
purify the blood, soothe the stomach, and lessen the apathy that we
can sink into in the winter. Drinking water infused with blackthorn
bark is said to relieve fatigue and increase vitality and the fresh
juice of her sloes when gargled can relieve a sore throat. The pulp
of her berries, when combined with other ingredients, has also been
used to make face masks to maintain skin elasticity and so ‘enhance
beauty’. I’m sure that both Vashti and Blodeuwedd might have been
said to have skin that was ‘blackthorn blessed’. And, of course,
her sloes make the most delicious sloe gin.
And
so, here is Blackthorn, a most wonderful healer, a provider of
protection and much needed boundaries, and a bringer of joyful
intoxication, yet there is such ambivalence towards her. Despite
being acknowledged to have her uses, she is associated with the Devil
and with witches’ curses, and linked inextricably with, the often
terrifying Old Woman, the Cailleach, and so with winter, that most
ambivalent of seasons. Perhaps with her stunning froth of flowers,
which belie the ‘savage thorns’ beneath the prettiness, she just
isn’t ‘friendly’ enough?
Which
brings me back to Vashti, Blodeuwedd, and another Biblical
woman who refused to say a submissive “Yes”, Adam’s first wife,
Lilith. Lilith was said to have been ‘created from the same clay as
Adam’ and at the same time, or
even sometimes before him. This is in
contrast to Eve, who was created from Adam’s rib later.
In Jewish mythology, Lilith is often described
as a sexually voracious demon who is banished to the desert but
returns in the night to steal babies. Shades of Vashti’s ‘tail’
here perhaps? And what of Lilith’s crime? That was to refuse to be
subservient to Adam, or in some versions of her story, to refuse to
have sex in the missionary position! Here
then is her ‘great no’. We
might then find meaning in the knowledge that her name translates
from the Hebrew as ‘night hag’, or ‘screech owl’. Indeed,
Lilith is sometimes depicted
with the feet of an owl. Sometimes
she is also described as ‘the serpent in the tree’, but
that is another story and
another thread to follow.
Isaiah 34 tells us that, “Her
castles shall be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles
and briers. She shall become an abode for jackals and a haunt for
ostriches. Wildcats shall meet with desert beasts, satyrs shall call
to one another; There shall the Lilith repose...” Again,
she is often described as beautiful, but, like Vashti, like
Blodeuwedd, like the Blackthorn she just isn’t nice enough. She has
claws.
All
of these stories provide inspiration for women not living the lives
that they themselves have chosen, and to all living without liberty.
Vashti, Blodweuwedd,
and Lilith, all had
status, at least in relation to
their men, and all
were valued for their
beauty. And
they
all said “No” to living a life without power over their own
bodies and destinies.
But it isn’t really about being able to say no. Rather, it is
about being
counter-cultural, taking
back our power to choose, just as Mary took her power by saying her
‘great Yes’. The Blackthorn Being, both
blessed and burdened by the meaning
that she has been given,
can teach us about the strong boundaries that we need in order to
make these clear
decisions over our own lives and,
if we are met with resistance, how
to use our claws.
In response, we
too might be regarded with, at best, ambivalence; thought of as
unbeautiful; too willful, too wild, too fat, too thin, too waspish, too sharp, too unruly, just not friendly enough, but the world is changing, slowly, and
Vashti, Blodeuwedd, and Lilith, queens of the Blackthorn Being with
their ‘great nos’ are flowing through our veins to make sure that
it does. They know that
what we
long for is coming, so why not just start singing now?
“Why wait?”,
they say, “open your petals, sing your song, the light is coming!”
References:
* I borrowed the phrase 'Blackthorn Being', slightly adapted and with much respect, from Sharon Blackie's wonderful article, 'The Blackthorn Beeing' at https://www.sharonblackie.net/theartofenchantment/the-blackthorn-beeing/
Blackthorn,
and other plant lore
~
Vashti
~
Blodeuwedd
~
Lilith
~
