ABCD; ASSUMPTION, BIOTECHNOLOGY, CONSERVATION, DORMITION
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others”. (Matt 23:23)
The first major feast of our liturgical year is the Nativity of the Mother of God September 8 (OS 21 IX) and the last feast of the church year is the Dormition of the Mother Theotokos August 15 (OS 28 VIII). There are no relics of Mother Mary confirming the Church has always kept in its Tradition; that Saint Mary’s body was ascended to heaven. We do not know the time or place of Mary’s death, there are two traditions Jerusalem; the second Ephesus.
Dormition means “passage through death,” or “the falling asleep”. Unlike death in the animal world our bodies will be rise, reunited with our soul and glorified in the end times. Assumption signifies “ascension into heaven.” The feast of the Dormition is a second Pascha, a passage from death to life, because we believe that Mary, like her Son passed through death and was buried. Later her soul was reunited with her glorified (not resuscitated) body ascending into heaven, as so will we at the end of times.
The icon for the 15th of August (OS 28 XV) shows a Jewish funeral complete with the (yahrzeit) vigil candle burning before the bier Forming a human halo are the Apostles, except for Saint Thomas who is coming “from the ends if the universe”; India making him late; again. Mourning Mother Mary’s death Saint Peter in his signature ocher clock and azure tunic, as chief priest incenses the bed pallet. Saint James the Less (shorter) “brother of our Lord” (foster son through Saint Joseph from his first wife) as the first bishop (5 stripe patriarch) of Jerusalem is wearing the distinctive omophorion of a bishop. The only apostle daring to lean over the coffin is the “beloved disciple” Saint John, whom the Lord entrusted His mother to from the cross. He is touching the All Holy Mother as a gesture of tender comfort. We see her Son accepting her swaddled soul through the portal of heaven. Following this short sojourn of her body the entombment will follow immediately as the Jews burry as a rule before the sundown on the day of death.
On the third day after the Blessed Mother’s death her tomb is opened for the late Saint Thomas. The icon of this feast of August 17 (OS 30 VIII) is of her assumption (ascension) depicted by her grave void of her body but filled with flowering plants. The Dormition icons expresses the hope of every Christian who waits for the hour of our death as the passage into new life, because of the victory of the resurrected Christ. Everyone’s death is a new and personal Pascha. We too will experience bodily resurrection and ascension in the end times.
In preparation for the feast, a two-week fast is prescribed. Historically, the origin of the feast is connected with the public veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary since the fourth century. The solemn proclamation of Saint Mary as the All Holy “Theotokos” (deity/God-birth-giver, “Bohoroditsa”) at the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.) established her veneration for public awareness. At the beginning of the 6th century a basilica was built over the tomb of St. Mary in Gethsemane. The feast of Saint Mary celebrated on August 15 took on new meaning and became the solemn celebration of her death and assumption. This solemn celebration of a feast that was originally celebrated on different days in different locations was extended to the entire East during the 6th century. In the middle of the 7th century, the August 15th Feast of the Dormition was introduced to Rome where it gradually spread through the Western Church. In the 8th century, the Western Church changed the name of the fest to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary but not the date, probably because we know it happened by the 17th, but we know not exactly when. Predating Aquinian predestination the reason for this change is unclear. The Dormition was officially introduced across the Byzantine Church in the 12th century as one of the 12 major feasts of the Eastern Church and is celebrated with great solemnity. In 1950 the Roman Catholic Church made this belief in the bodily ascension of the Mother of God a matter of salvation, which the East including the Greco Catholic Church does not make mandatory, even though the prayers of both Churches parallel in understanding.
In the East and West floral bouquets are brought to the bier customary at funerals but after these Dormition services they are blessed and taken back home. Bundles of hyssop are often used to sprinkle the holy water being mentioned in Psalm 51 to “…purify me with hyssop” while in Exodus it is used to smear the paschal lamb’s blood and in both Matthew and Mark, though often translated as a reed it holds the sponge offering sour wine or vinegar to Christ on the cross.
The history of the end of St. Mary’s life was genuinely new to most of the Church when it was made public in the fifth century. The facts of the matter were kept private among the clergy of the Jerusalem Church, and only became public during the Council of Chalcedon. This was a case where there was a Tradition – a passing-along of knowledge – that was intentionally kept private. I personally suspect the remarkable near-silence of Scripture about the Mother of God was deliberate on the part of the Apostles; St John (her guardian) and the rest of the Evangelists kept her privacy.
The more picturesque details of the “transitus Mariae” literature had yet to be developed, but in the late 5th century some basic information was revealed by the Jerusalem clergy. I’m attaching a quote from the “Euthymiac History” quoted by St John of Damascus, for details. In his second homily on the Dormition of the Theotokos, that is to say Mother of God he refers to events recounted in the 40th chapter of the Life of St Euthymios:
It was said above that Saint Pulcheria erected many churches for Christ in Constantinople. One of these is the church in Blachernae, built at the beginning of the reign of the divinely-appointed Emperor Marcian . When the two of them built a worthy house there for the all-glorious and all-holy
Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, and adorned it with every sort of decoration, they hoped to find her holy body, which had been the dwelling-place of God. And summoning Juvenal, the Archbishop of Jerusalem, and those bishops from Palestine who were staying in the capital because of the synod then being held in Chalcedon , they said to them: We have heard that the first and most outstanding church of the all-holy Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, is in Jerusalem, in the place called Gethsemane, where her life-giving body was put in a coffin. We now wish to bring this relic here, to protect this royal city.”
Juvenal answered on behalf of them all: “There is nothing in the holy, inspired Scripture about the death of Mary, the holy Mother of God; but we know from ancient and wholly reliable tradition that at the time she so gloriously fell asleep, all the holy Apostles who were traveling the world for the salvation of the peoples were lifted up in a single instant of time and were gathered at Jerusalem. And as they stood by her, they saw a vision of angels, and heard the divine chanting of the higher powers. So it was that she gave her soul in an ineffable way into God’s hands, surrounded by the glory of God and all heaven.
“Her body, which had been God’s dwelling place, was brought for burial amidst the singing of the angels and the Apostles, and laid to rest in a coffin in Gethsemane; and the angelic dancing and singing continued without pause in that place for three days. But after three days the song of the angels ceased; the Apostles were there, and since one of them – Thomas – had not been present and came at he end of three days, and wished to reverence that body which had housed God, they opened the coffin. And they could not find her body, which had been the object of such praise; all that they found were her burial wrappings. And being overcome by the ineffable (floral) fragrance that came out of the wrappings, they closed the coffin again.
“Amazed by this miraculous discovery, they could only draw a single conclusion: The one who had deigned to become flesh in her own person and to take his humanity from her, the one who willed to be born in human flesh as God the Word, the Lord of glory, and who had preserved her virginity intact even after childbirth, now chose, after her departure from this world, to honour her pure and immaculate body with the gift of incorruptibility, and with a change of state even before the common, universal resurrection.”
When the imperial couple heard this, they asked Archbishop Juvenal to send them the holy coffin, properly sealed, with the funeral garments in it of the glorious, all-holy Saint Mary, Mother of God. And when he had sent it, they placed it in the church of the holy Theotokos that had been built at Blachernae [a suburb of Constantinople.]
Remember seeing dried bouquets just outside grandmother’s and her friends kitchen doors? Blessed spices like parsley sage, rosemary and thyme are commonly used in cooking. They are mentioned in the 1650 ballad with refrain ”Scarborough Fair/Canticle” made popular by Simon & Garfunkle during the Vietnam protest era. This medieval XIIIc English trading event brought merchants from as far as the Baltic and Byzantine Empire starting on the Assumption to Michaelmas. On Saint Mary’s Day parsley was blessed to neutralize bitterness, sage to maintain strength and rosemary to promote romantic faithfulness in love while thyme for fortifying courage all reaped with a cycle of lemon. Medicinal herbs like cannabis was added in baking to help overcome nausea. Chamomile for flues, colds and as a sedative while mint to stimulate digestion, or sooth gastric fever and cornflower to treat diarrhea are still brewed with teas. Vitamin C enriched fennel seed lacing worm milk in a nonmetallic cup twice daily will help regulate your blood pressure, but not recommended for the pregnant. Wormwood (Chornobyl) boiled in honey makes for a good laxative while the iris makes a good tonic for a cough. With a mortar and pestle grind periwinkle obtaining an oil to rub on eczema. Nettle soaked in alcohol makes a good liniment especially for the scalp and hair to curb dandruff. Succulents as the Autumn Joy flowering sedum, hens & chicks or the more exotic aloe and yucca act as ointments in bandaging. Of course mandrake (elusive “ruta”) found on St; John’s Eve (midsummer’s night) is always included if you can find it.
“The mandrakes (aphrodisiacs) send out their fragrance,
and at our (storeroom) door is every delicacy,
both new (fresh) and old (ripe),
that I have stored up for (to share with) you, my lover.”
Song of Songs 7:13
Flowering plants, herbs and grasses are used in several ways, according to ancient custom as medicinal herbs after its blessing at the Divine Service on the Feast of the Dormition. According to traditional belief, after St. Mary’s assumption, her tomb was filled with a “heavenly fragrance” and flowers. Complying with the law of conservation of mass/matter, also known as principle of mass/matter conservation is that the mass of a closed system will remain constant over time, regardless of the processes acting inside the system. A similar statement is that mass cannot be created/destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, and changed into different types of particles. This implies that for any chemical process in a closed system, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products. This is also the main idea of the first law of thermodynamics stated by Epicurus (341-270 BC). Describing the nature of the universe, he wrote: “the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain,” and that nothing is created from nothing, and nothing that disappears ceases to exist. Science and religion complement. Though not rocket science, neither is it agrarian, yet.
The herbs, used as natural medicine, are blessed in commemoration of the numerous healing and extraordinary graces bestowed on the pilgrims at Saint Mary’s tomb. Certain flowers, plants and trees from the scriptures were adopted by the Church Fathers, and incorporated in the litanies, as specific Incarnation symbols, such as the Blossoming Stem of Jesse from Isaiah’s prophecy of the Virgin Birth of the Messiah; and the Rose Plant, a Lily Among Thorns, Exalted Cedar, and Fruitful Olive Tree, from the Sapiential books. Other flowers were also adopted as symbols, such as Yucca, “Tower of Ivory”, from the Litany of Loreto. Periwinkle the “Virgin Flower”, color emblem of the Blessed Virgin. Strawberry the “Fruitful undefiled Virgin”, flower, fruit and seeds at the same time with the seeds forming on the fruit’s skin rather than invasively.
Flower theology is not something unique to the Christian popular perspective. In Greek mythology the messenger between Olympus and Earth was Iris who traveled on rainbows. They planted Irises on the graves of their dead to aid in their journey. The plant’s spear shaped leaves kept necrophil spirits at bay into Asia Minor. Indigenous to the Slavic lands Irises are said to germinate where lightning struck planting its fruit. In Poland “piorun” and Rus’ “pyrun” these names for the mountain plant iris germanica are called in folklore “peruniks” (Perun’s plant) for their thunder god, which also became “bohisha” (god’s plant). Like the lightning flashing warrior thunder-god Perun metamorphisized into Saint Elijah or Saint Michael his plant became a symbol for the Virgin Mother Mary, especially in the heraldry of Britain and France as the Fleur de Lis. From a bulb host a plant sprang forth into a flower symbolizing the holy Trinity. Even in Protestant Europe there is the harvesting ritual for the iris to moisten the ground with mead (honey ale), drawing three circles around the stock with the point of the knife before lifting out the bulb like an offering.
This flower symbolism serves as a mirror of the popular faith which was nurtured it in the country-sides of Christendom. The Roman Church cultivated “Mary’s Gardens” as a flower theology throughout the year. St. Bede’s wrote of these flowers in his VI century discernment on the Assumption. Bundles of flowers, dating back to the IX century, were blessed at the altar on the feast of the Assumption, which this ritual is preserved in the Roman Rite. The West’s popularity developed their belief in the assumption of Saint Mary as a prerequisite for salvation in 1950, against Eastern norms (Eastern mindset: “why is it a necessary”?).
“But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others”. (Luke 11:42)
Abruptly, in 1964, when the Catholic-Protestant dialogues followed the Second Vatican Council, we were confronted with an entirely different view. There is no mention of the Dormition or Assumption in the New Testament, only in apocryphal sources as one of the earliest feast, always celebrated in Jerusalem on this date. If it were not for ecumenical correctness today’s Radical Orthodox intimidation may have claimed “Latinization” of yet another popular Greco Catholic and Orthodox practice of the laity, the blessing of flowering herbs.
(After the day’s irreversible events)
“…Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.”
Shakespeare: Othello III.iii 375
The decorative flowers are often stripped from the herbal bouquet and put into a dry vase in front of the house icons. In morality fashion they are allowed to wither like our skin deep beauty eroding the waning of our vanity with age, until the end of the Dormition octave. They can be kept as a dried arrangement or the buds in a dish or box as potpourri. When one is preoccupied with a situation calling for intense petitioning of the Lord with prayer, like when a loved one is dieing these petals can be set upon embers with our juniper berries or the nouveau riche’s incense as burnt offerings. “Let my prayer rise before You as incense, with the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice”. Psalm 141.2.
There are colloquial variations like the Shamrock indigenous to Celtic lowlands that represent the Holy Trinity, while the Scythians have their iris. These Slavs observed from the iris’ bulb came a plant with white hair and a central yellow streak (lightning) against blue petals, they called it god’s plant; “Perun”. In 980 Kyivan (Ukrainian for Kiev) monarch Volodymyr (St. Vladimir) erected a totem statue with silver hair and a gold mustache named Perun. More recently Finnish folk Metal band Turisas makes references to Perun in their song “A Portage to the Unknown”, It goes:
“… Foot by foot we edge
Once a ship (living), now a sled (dead)
Six regular edges and six vertices
(hexagon divided by 6 spokes)
Six equilateral triangles
(all lines equal)
Six square faces in another direction (multistable optical illusion)
Plato’s earth transparent (Necker cube)…
…Branded at birth with the sign of Perun
East of the sun (right bank) and West of the moon (left bank)
The road now continues, North wind be my guide (water’s flow south)
Wherever I’m going, the Gods (Trinity) are on my side…”(S’Nami Boh/God is with us…)
This talismanic sign is the internal angles of a regular hexagon (where all of the sides are the same) are all 120° and the hexagon has 720 degrees T. It has 6 rotational symmetries and 6 reflection symmetries, making up the dihedral group D6. The longest diagonals of a regular hexagon, connecting diametrically opposite vertices, are twice its sides in length. Like squares and equilateral triangles, regular hexagons fit together without any gaps to tile the plane (three hexagons meeting at every vertex), and so are useful for constructing tessellations. The cells of a beehive honeycomb are hexagonal for this reason and because the shape makes efficient use of space and building materials. The Voronoi diagram of a regular triangular lattice is the honeycomb tessellation of hexagons. A varance is the metatron cube when converted into transparent spheres yield the “flower of life” design.
In other words a six sided honeycomb internally divided from the center by six equal spokes to the hexagon’s corners. Six equal triangles. More specifically a line drawing (geometric wire frame) square cube in 3-D perspective (hexagon) divided with six equal (isometric) triangles (equilateral). In Byzantine perspective this box is shows with all sides (fields) at once, in an optical illusion where half are exterior and the remainder interior view. Visibly in a twinkle of the eye the perspective can flip flop on you in an ambiguous (Necker Cube multistable) perception.
The Christian migrants from Byzantium’s iconoclast heresy crossing into the Slavic basin’s seven sea shores; west of the Adriatic stretching from the White Sea (north) to the Black Sea (south) through the Carpathian corridors across the steppes they saw this sign of Perun. In their mind’s eye they recognized the Roman “Chi Rho” (XP) monogram for Christ in a honeycomb motif. The epiphany of the Holy Trinity manifested from the Incarnation emphasized the Mother Theotokos pointing to her Son amalgamated with our Father and their Holy Spirit. The iris was a floral symbol of a trinity coming from a bulb host. When St. Volodymyr’s granddaughter became the Queen of French the iris followed her. At home in Kyiv it developed into the “tresube” (trident) today’s emblem for Ukraine, while in Paris it became the royal’s Fleur de Lis named after their indigenous lily instead of our iris. Similar early ventures of the Fleur de Lis motif were found on both Roman coinage and a Scythian chieftain helmet retrieved from a grave mound on the steppe. Its popularity waxed with the rising of Marian devotion.
The Western Church prefers lilies, especially white ones to symbolize the thermodynamics absence of the All Holy’s body. Blue irises would be more representative of the Slavic church. Passing out a rose to those who neglected to bring their own bouquet would be a quaint gesture, especially in a Bulgarian community. For the others small bundles of a coupe herbal sprigs and a flower tied with a ribbon may be more conducive. To the ribbon adding a legend on a holy card of the Dormition or even the Assumption would be… evangelical.
According to Traditional after the Blessed Mother’s
body was assumed her tomb was filled with a
heavenly fragrance and flowering plants. The blessing
of natural medicinal plants, herbs and spices is popular.
This commemorates the numerous healings and
extraordinary graces bestowed at Saint Mary’s tomb.
This year bundled for your
conveyance a sprig of (write in…)
to cook with & sprig of (write in…)
you may wish to brew with
your tea. The flower you
may add to your potpourri to keep it on hand to
burn with you incense in times of worry with prayer.
“When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom,
Let it be…” (Lennon, McCartney)
