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Aradia, or The Gospel of the Witches |
Chapter VIII: To Have a Good Wine and Very Good Wine by the Aid of Diana
He who would have a good vintage and fine wine, should take a horn
full of wine and with this go into the vineyards or farms wherever vines
grow, and then drinking from the horn say -
I drink, and yet it is not wine I drink, I drink the blood of Diana,
Since from wine it has changed into her blood, And spread itself through
all my growing vines, Whence it will give me good return in wines, Though
even if good vintage should be mine, I'll be free from care, for should
it chance That the grape ripens in the waning moon, Then all the wine would
come to sorrow, but If drinking from this horn I drink the blood - The
blood of great Diana - by her aid - If I do kiss my hand to the new moon,
Praying the Queen that she will guard my grapes, Even from the instant
when the bud is born Until it is a ripe and perfect grape, And onward to
the vintage, and to the last Until the wine is made - may it be good! And
may it so succeed that I from it May draw good profit when at last 'tis
sold, So may good fortune come unto my vines, And into all my land where'er
it be!
But should my vines seem in an evil way, I'll take my horn, and bravely
will I blow In the wine-vault at midnight, and I'll make Such a tremendous
and a terrible sound That thou, Diana fair, however far Away thou may'st
be, still shalt hear the call, And casting open door or window wide, Shalt
headlong come upon the rushing wind, And find and save me - that is, save
my vines, Which will be saving me from dire distress; For should I lose
them I'd be lost myself, But with thy aid, Diana, I'll be saved.
This is a very interesting invocation and tradition, and probably
of great antiquity from very striking intrinsic evidence. For it is firstly
devoted to a subject which has received little attention - the connection
of Diana as the moon with Bacchus, although in the great Dizionario Storico
Mitologico, by Pozzoli and others, it is expressly asserted that in Greece
her worship was associated with that of Bacchus, Esculapius and Apollo.
The connecting link is the horn. In a medal of Alexander Severus, Diana
of Ephesus bears the horn of plenty. This is the horn or horn of the new
moon, sacred to Diana. According to Callimachus, Apollo himself built an
altar consisting entirely of horns to Diana. The connection of the horn
with wine is obvious. It was usual among the old Slavonians for the priest
of Svantevit, the Sun god, to see if the horn which the idol held in his
hand was full of wine, in order to prophesy a good harvest for the coming
year. If it was filled, all was right; if not, he filled the horn, drank
from it, and replaced the horn in the hand, and predicted that all would
eventually go well. It cannot fail to strike the reader that this ceremony
is strangely like that of the Italian invocation, the only difference being
that in one the Sun, and in the other the Moon is invoked to secure a good
harvest. In the Legends of Florence there is one of the Via del Corno,
in which the hero, falling into a vast tun or tina of wine, is saved from
drowning by sounding a horn with tremendous power. At the sound, which
penetrates to an incredible distance, even to unknown lands, all came rushing
as if enchanted to save him. In this conjuration, Diana, in the depths
of heaven, is represented as rushing at the sound of the horn, and leaping
through doors or windows to save the vintage of the one who blows. There
is a certain singular affinity in these stories. In the story of the Via
del Corno, the hero is saved by the Red Goblin or Robin Goodfellow, who
gives him a horn, and it is the same sprite who appears in the conjuration
of the Round Stone, which is sacred to Diana. This is because the spirit
is nocturnal, and attendant on Diana-Titania. Kissing the hand to the new
moon is a ceremony of unknown antiquity, and Job, even in his time, regarded
it as heathenish and forbidden - which always means antiquated and out
of fashion - as when he declared (xxxi, 26, 27), "If I beheld the
moon walking in brightness...and my heart hath been secretly enticed or
my mouth hath kissed my hand...this also were an iniquity to be punished
by the Judge, for I should have denied the God that is above." From
which it may or ought to be inferred that Job did not understand that God
made the moon and appeared in all His works, or else he really believed
the moon was an independent deity. In any case, it is curious to see the
old forbidden rite still living, and as heretical as ever. The tradition,
as given to me, very evidently omits a part of the ceremony, which may
be supplied from classic authority. When the peasant performs the rite,
he must not act as once a certain African, who was a servant of a friend
of mine, did. The man's duty was to pour out every morning a libation of
rum to a fetish - and he poured it down his own throat. The peasant should
also sprinkle the vines, just as the Devonshire farmers who observed all
Christmas ceremonies, sprinkled, also from a horn, their apple trees.
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