MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November (British History)
Reply to topic Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 17, 18, 19  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In England (and in Newfoundland but not elsewhere in Canada or in the USA), there is a festival held on November 5th called "Bonfire Night" or "Guy Fawkes" night. The festival involves the lighting of fires and the burning of tiny wooden or paper effigies, called "Guys" by the children who make them. The Festival supposedly commemorates the foiling of a conspiracy, an event which occured during the earliest years of the 17th century. The plot, to blow up the House of Commons, was said to have been hatched by a man named Guido Fawkes, an anti-Protestant revolutionary, in 1605. So why do we still commemorate one of the many anti-Protestant "terrorist" activities of the time, and why do we so specifically "celebrate" the name of one of the conspirators? I suspect the festival to be far far older and have nothing to do with Guido Fawkes -- not as we know him.

What does the name Guy Fawkes mean? The name "Guy" denotes wood [BehindTheName.com: Guy: "Norman French short form of Germanic names beginning with the element witu "wood" or wit "wide".] Guido is the Italian form of the name and means the same. So we have a man named "Wood" who is, today, commemorated with little wooden men.

What about Fawkes? Curiously this is how an Englishman would pronounce faux, the French for 'false', so that Guy Fawkes is "a false man of wood" or, I suppose literally, a wooden effigy. Kind of weird, eh?
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Our Halloween/Samhain bonfire festival -- New Year in the Celtic calendar -- was supplanted by the nearby Bonfire Night, as though the nameless (I presume nameless) ritual sacrifice picked up the name of Guy Fawkes through popular renown. Why the date should move is harder to explain. The earliest opportunity to burn an effigy and say "Hey, it's that Guy Fawkes bloke" was a year after the event or 9 months after his execution. Why would they waver from the traditional October 31st/November 1st? Unless it really was made a national event to demonstrate the king's right to the throne or something.
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The 5th of November is an astronomical 'cross-quarter' day. It is the point in the year when the earth is exactly midway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, and if you ask me, it should be recognized as the 1st day of winter. The plunge into darkness.

I would presume that 'All Hallows Day', because of its significance, is aligned to the 5th of November, even though it is celebrated on the 1st. It is quite interesting that the Luther Revolution is said to have begun on All Hallows Eve, 1517.
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

We have observed before that the quarter days, equinoxes and solstices being observable astronomical events, are celebrated on their true(-ish) days, on or about the 21st of the month; while the cross-quarter days are not observable and are celebrated at the 1st of the month, making them anything up to week out. But it hadn't struck me before that November 5th is near enough the actual cross-quarter day. It makes you wonder what "Remember, remember, the 5th of November" actually refers to!

and if you ask me, it should be recognized as the 1st day of winter. The plunge into darkness.

Oddly, two of the conspirators were called Winter and the person they were trying to place on the throne, James' daughter Elizabeth, was later called "The Winter Queen".
Send private message
Peter Elmy


In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Of course if you want a true conspiracy theory perhaps you should look more closely at the conspirators. They were, you will recall, trying to re-introduce "the Old Religion". Suppose that wasn't Catholicism at all but the true old religion of Britain - wicca. That would be why Guido Faux named himself as such, ie The Wicker Man. And the bloke they were trying to blow up? Why, James the First was Europe's leading expert on anti-witchcraft.
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Well, old Guy certainly underwent "the triple death" -- he was hanged, drawn and quartered.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

And what was the first thing James did when he got on the English throne? He started organising the King James Bible, with its careful doctoring to emphasize all the anti-sorcery and anti-witchcraft content.
Send private message
Cool-hand Luke


In: Pontefract, Yorkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Suppose that wasn't Catholicism at all but the true old religion of Britain - wicca.


Nice idea but, if true, they must have been completely bonkers.
Send private message
Peter Elmy


In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I agree that they would have been completely bonkers, or at any rate more bonkers than supposing that Catholicism could have been re-introduced into Britain by as late as 1605. However we are dealing with a) conspirators and b) the official accounts of a conspiracy, so we don't necessarily have to take everything at face value.

For instance, what does "Catholicism" mean at the time? Well, all the anti-British Great Powers at the time were Catholic and the Papacy was still running an entire apparat aimed at reconverting Britain. And yet the Conspirators (unlike the people conspiring with Mary, Queen of Scots just twenty years before) seemed to have no particular official backing. And very little has come out from the Archives of Europe since. So the possibility exists that the topline plot-hatchers were using Catholicism as a cover (including to dupe their own rank-and-file followers) to insert themselves into the new governing regime.

Ishmael's point about "the witchcraft industry" is quite an important one. The Orthodox Version is that witchcraft is a matter of deluded individuals being dealt with by Christian religious fanatics but that is to (slightly) break the Applied Epistemology What is is what was rule. Our own Witch Hunts -- most notably McCarthyism -- are always characterised the same way...and yet it is perfectly arguable that there really was a larger reality behind a) the Commie dupes hauled before the committee(s) and b) the NKVD pulling their strings. But whatever the truth it is certainly the case that "Communism" in the 1950's (remember that?) was a real and present danger to The Official State. So why not Wicca in the 1600's?

Let's suppose for a moment that the European states (both Catholic and Protestant of course) in the seventeenth century knew precisely what they were doing when they went in for "frenzied" witch-burning -- the Catholic /Protestant schism had after all left a gap sufficiently wide that the Old Religion might have started moving from underground to overground. Let's not forget that immediately after 1605 the whole Invisible College/ Rosicrucian Enlightenment movement got started. Our whole view of Wicca has long been subverted by both orthodoxy and the crazies.
Send private message
John Hailey


In: Birmingham
View user's profile
Reply with quote

James developed his anti-witch thing in Scotland long before he had anything to do with England, and long before he convened the Bible Committee (he wrote the Daemonologie in 1597). It should be noted that very little is known about the Roots of Wicca in Scotland (except that the Templars allegedly ended up there and the Masonic Movement started there!).

What becomes popular and what doesn't isn't necessarily a matter of happenstance. Let's assume that Wireloop is correct and that November 5th is the "official" Wicca Autumn Fire Festival. In which case it is reasonable to assume that "folk" would remember this, either wittingly or unwittingly (hence, for example, the Lewes bonfire.) In which case, the Jacobite British State Apparat was simply doing what the Church always did with Pagan festivals -- turn the Wicca version into a "safe", even a useful, version. It is not difficult to imagine the word going out to Lords Lieutenants of the County to institue public commemorations of "the foiling of the recent dastardly plot" and a recommendation as to how this should best be done. How do you think modern versions of "instant folk festivals" such as street parties to celebrate coronations, jubilees etc are done?

And by the way, I believe the Northern Irish Protestants have their own version, when they burn James II (is it?) on July 12th (is it?) But of course that's almost certainly organised by the Orange Order, a crypto-Masonic outfit.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The conspiracy was said to have been exposed because the Plotters warned Lord Monteagle, a prominent Catholic, to stay away from the Opening of Parliament, and he promptly warned the authorities. Now this makes no sense. Lord Monteagle would never have betrayed a Catholic plot, being an arch-conspirator himself (he openly supported the Earl of Essex and was involved with Catholic activities). Unless of course he knew that this particular plot was not being undertaken by bona fide Catholics.
Send private message
Peter Elmy


In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ah...the Earl of Essex...such an interesting character. He of course mounted an equally futile attempt at a coup d'etat just before Elizabeth's death as the Gunpowder people did just after. And it was equally anti-Jamesian and equally...er...not quite clear as to its religious credentials. And, let's not forget, these "Risings" were quite unlike the usual Tudor upheavals like Kett's Rebellion or the Pilgrimage of Grace which always involved "the common people". These new-style mini-revolts were always strictly "gentlemen only".

In fact there are a number of deeply ambivalent characters that are contemporaries at this time...not just Essex but Walter Ralegh, John Dee and Chancellor Bacon to name but three. It is no accident surely that "Faerie" was the prevailing high fashion.
Send private message
Wireloop


In: Detroit
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Could the November 5th 'cellar' be symbolic of underworld/darkness?
Send private message
Peter Elmy


In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I was reminded by a telly prog last night that I had left off my list of "weird contemporaries" the name of Robert Fludd. (He was on the prog because he was an alleged Master of the Priory of Sion but notwithstanding that, he really was a pretty important and a pretty mysterious gent.)
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Well, my wife has come up with the ultimate climax of our story. When I mentioned how James the First was from Scotland, a land of heretics, and that he was already famous for his writing against sorcery she responded...
"Well that's that then."
"What is?" I asked.
"In the words of his contemporary, 'Me thinks he doth protest too much.'"
"Huh?" I asked again.
"James. It's obvious he was compensating. Covering-up for himself.

It was the King, the presumed target of the plot, who was the chief Wiccan. The entire conspiracy was a ruse. Itself a pagan ritual re-enactment meant to christen the English Parliament before the true gods of the British Isles, whose worship survived only among the secret elite of the north.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 17, 18, 19  Next

Jump to:  
Page 1 of 19

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group