Winter Solstice and the Psychology of Death

Hunter and Gatherer to Agriculturist – A quantum jump in human evolution

Agriculture was developed atleast 10,000 years ago. As civilizations slowly moved out of the usual mode of hunting and gathering, to agriculture, there was a cultural threshold mankind was crossing – from a primitive race, which was struggling to survive, to a culturally advanced race which was thriving to create memetic innovations. In 1960, Robert Braidwood, a University of Chicago archaeologist, depicted agriculture’s advent as, “culmination of an ever increasing cultural differentiation and specialization of human communities.” The deep seated basic instinct in man – the urge to impress, started getting shape as society evolved to higher levels of complexity. The evolution of agriculture went hand in hand with the increasing differentiation of the community. Man started to live not for bread alone – but also for status, art, entertainment, communication, social interaction. All these enabled mankind to play bigger games, uniting into bigger communities of diverse men, creating a never before fraternity in the society.

This new formed fraternity and an continuous increase in its scale has been appropriately articulated by Charles Darwin as follows –

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

This gradual evolution of the human civilization to bigger and bigger groups played a very important role in the development of culture, traditions, symbolisms, and religious practices. The advent of agriculture was the radical innovation which was giving this unique character to the human civilizations, giving it a character which is more close to the culturally evolved modern man.

Winter Solstice

Festivals in ancient societies occurred in accordance with agricultural practices. Winter time was a period of leisure, crops having already been harvested, and some livestock slaughtered so there were fewer mouths to feed. After the harvest, alcohol was made from dried grains left to ferment. This combination of leisure, fresh meat, harvested crops and alcohol, made winter time the perfect occasion for exuberant parties

The longest night of the year is honored by many traditions as a sacred and rich time. In the past, it's been a night to gather around the fire, or set out candles to call back the Sun. The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the winter solstice usually occurs on December 21 to 23 each year in the Northern Hemisphere, and June 20 to 23 in the Southern Hemisphere.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.

Symbolism

Death of Darkness

In Latin, solstice means sun set still and Winter Solstice is the great stillness before the Sun's strength builds, and days grow longer. It can be a time to rest and reflect. It's the fruitful dark out of which new life can eventually emerge. In ancient times and for some today, the darkness itself is the spiritual cradle into which the Sun is reborn. Everything lies dormant in the silent night, a sacred time of rest before the awakening, and the slow build toward longer days.

The longest night is a fruitful time for setting intentions, to be birthed with the newborn Sun. What you conceive now can grow with the Sun, and gain momentum in Spring. You might start a tradition of setting Winter Solstice intentions, and in one year, see how many have come into being. Put them in a special tin or box that has meaning for you. The dark before the dawn, just like new Moons, can be a powerful moment of magic, drawing in what you'd like to see happen in the new year.

Hence this time of the year is associated with the death of the evil and darkness, and ushering of the light of enlightenment and goodness. To celebrate this aspect various civilizations have different festivities during this time. Requiems for the dead were held and Manzai and Shishimai were performed throughout the night, awaiting the sunrise.

Re-birth

The cosmic event of the end of the longest night, and the emergence of the Sun, ushering an gradual increase of the day henceforward, has been adopted symbolically by almost all the ancient civilizations as heralding of a new life, after death. This aspect has been celebrated in many forms in different cultures.

Various forms of faith

Judaism

This time of year is associated with light -- string lights, sparklers and of course, candles. Hanukkah in the Jewish tradition is the Festival of Lights, with 8 days of ritual illumination of the menorah. There's the advent wreath of the Christian faith and the all-night bonfire for the burning of the Yule log, a tradition with roots in Northern European pre-Christian times. The lights are reminders of the inner light, and hope for the return of sunny days.

Christians

In the 4^th century Rome and 11^th century England, Christmas or Christ's Mass is one of the most popular Christian celebrations as well as one of the most globally recognized mid-winter celebrations in the Northern hemisphere. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, called the "Son of God," the second entity of the Holy Trinity, as well as "Savior of the World." The birth is observed on December 25, which was the Roman winter solstice upon establishment of the Julian Calendar.

Zorastrian

Since the days are getting longer and the nights shorter, this day marks the victory of Sun over the darkness. The occasion was celebrated in the ancient Persian Deygan Festival dedicated to Ahura Mazda, and Mithra on the first day of the month Dey.

Hindu

In Punjab, the winter solstice is celebrated as Lohri. Lohri is of Punjabi folk religion origin. It finds no mention in the Hindu Puranas but has over time been twinned with the Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti which is celebrated a day after Lohri and is known as Maghi. For this reason, Lohri is not actually celebrated on the winter solstice but at the end of the month, Paush

Viking age

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule-time") is a winter festival that was initially celebrated by the historical Germanic people as a pagan religious festival, though it was later absorbed into, and equated with, the Christian festival of Christmas. The festival was originally celebrated from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar. The festival was placed on December 25 when the Christian calendar (Julian calendar) was adopted. Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt.

Ancient Greece

Winter solstice celebrations often include two activities related to the failing sun: producing light and enjoying the cover the darkness provides. Thus, it is common for winter solstice celebrations to include candle lighting, bonfire creation, and drunken debauchery.

While it may be mostly Pagans and Wiccans who celebrate the Yule holiday, nearly all cultures and faiths have some sort of winter solstice celebration or festival. Because of the theme of endless birth, life, death, and rebirth, the time of the solstice is often associated with deity and other legendary figures. No matter which path you follow, chances are good that one of your gods or goddesses has a winter solstice connection.

The Psychology of death

The fear of death

Humans, alone among animals, are capable of fearing death. It is a frightening territory of complete psychic extinction – the absence of memory, personality, knowledge, skills – which follows death. This constant fear of death has been beautifully expressed in the following lines of Milan Kundera –

“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life - and herein lies its secret - takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch”

Overcoming the fear of death

Treating this subject of overcoming fear of death from a psychological angle, Prof. Nicholas Humphrey nicely puts the following theory in his book – Soul Dust. He says that man had evolutionary taken up the following three strategies to overcome this fear of death –

1.       Discount the future – and live for the present

2.       Disindividuate – and identify yourself with culture entities that will survive you.

3.       Deny the finality of bodily death – and believe the individual self to be immortal.

Betrand Russel as he entered old age, wrote:

The best way to overcome [the fear of death]...is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within its bank, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the water flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue.

This gradual shift from an individual consciousness to a universal consciousness has been articulated in various ancient philosophies starting from African Ubuntu philosophy to the Hindu Upanishads. The same them is reverberated in the words of Pythagoras, and later by Plato and neo-Platonists. Plotinus very succinctly expresses the same as follows –

“I am striving to elevate what is divine in me to what is divine in the Universe.”

Plotinus is seen to contemplate on similar idea in his book Enneads –

“What then is our course, what the manner of our flight asks Plotinus and answers: This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see; you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is it be waked within you, a vision, the birthright of all, which few turn to use.”

It is pretty interesting to see how the fear of death and the complete extinction of the self has been beautifully transmuted by the philosophies of most of the ancients to an increased ardor to live. This meme has enabled civilizations to enter into positive and productive enterprises to further the evolution of mankind to higher frontiers.

Upanishads put the concept of eternal life in an interesting way. It says the fact that the individual consciousness has for its essential reality the Universal Self implies the possibility that every human being can rend the veil of separateness and gain recognition of his true nature and oneness with all beings.

David Galin, a psychiatrist with a special interest in Buddhism, has explained:

“The Buddhist tradition holds that Ordinary Man’s inborn erroneous view of self as an enduring entity is the cause of his suffering because he tries to hold on to that which is in constant flux and has no existence outside of shifting contexts. Therefore a new corrective experience of self is needed. Buddhism takes great interest in how people experience their self, rather than just their abstract concept of it, because Buddhist practices are designed to lead to new (correct) experience. It takes arduous training to modify or overcome the natural state of experiencing the self as persisting and unchanging.”

Mind over Matter

In an effort to reconcile the mortality of physical state of man, most of the ancient civilizations have given much of focus on the non-form. Since conceptualizing an invisible aspect of that non-form becomes strenuous through shallow logical reasoning, there is an effort to go beyond the unidirectional logic and rational, and stick on something beyond – an active faith, through contemplation.

In ancient Greek thought, theory meant not hypothesis but contemplation, the act not of a speculator but of a spectator. It is not the result of investigation as that of the process of investigating, the beholding itself. Theory provides the necessary basis of effective realization. The Greek usage brings out that no realization can be attempted without an adequate theoretical preparation.

Meditation is considered not an argument. It is just holding oneself steadily in front of the truth. Here the process of abstraction, isolating the self from the objective is employed. Concentration is the condition of prayer. The Upanishads asks us to return to a field or a forest where the world and its noise are out of sight and far away, where the sun and the sky, the earth and the water all speak the same language, reminding the seeker that he is here to develop like the things that grow all around him. The truth can be taught only up to a point. It has to be assimilated by personal effort, by self-discipline. It is said that the highest stage is attained when the five senses, mind and intellect are at rest.

This aspect of resting the five sense, is put by Confucius as follows –

“Cultivate unity. You do your hearing, not with your ears, but with your mind. Not with your mind, but with your very soul. But let the hearing stop with ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And that negative state is fasting of the heart.”

Kabir puts it more succinctly –

“When I was there, He not. When He was, I not.”

Conclusion

We are heirs of a richer heritage than most of us are aware of. If we cut ourselves away from rich treasury of wisdom about man’s aspirations on this earth which is available to us from our own past, or if we are satisfied with our own inadequate tradition and fail to seek for ourselves the gifts of other traditions, we will gravely misconceive the spirit of religion.

This winter solstice with all its symbolism from various ancient schools of wisdom yet again ponders on the aspect of death and re-birth, of perishing away and rejuvenating again. This brings into a perspective of an eternal cycle of birth, nourishment, destruction and then re-birth.

The winter season naturally makes us go inward to stillness and contemplation, reserving our vital energy, cutting ourselves from the distraction (cold) of the outside world (Maya). This spirit of the season has been celebrated through thousands of rituals since ages.
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