Possibly because the summer solstice was celebrated as the day of victory of sun and light over darkness and death, the church placed the feast day of St. John the Baptist onto June 24, directly opposite the feast day of the birth of Christ on December 24. As Jesus is baptized by St. John and announced as the Savior, it points to Jesus' role as the one who will triumph over death.
St. John's, Johannestag on June 24, is the name day of all of those who are named Hans, Johann, John, Jack, etc.
Wide-spread were customs and rituals, the magic of the shortest night, of nature and the woods. It was the night of fire festivals and of love magic, of love oracles and divination. It had to do with lovers and predictions, when pairs of lovers would jump through the luck-bringing flames, maidens would find out about their future husband, and spirits and demons were banished.
Healing attributes were ascribed to flowers and herbs, to waters and brooks. Water customs were attributed to the day and the cleaning and decorating of wells and fountains persists to this day. A specific fern that blooms, herbs that are picked at that time are said to have healing power; a dip at Johannisnacht has special powers, as have foods like baked elder flower blossoms.
Customs which have to do with health and fertility for fields, domestic animals as well as humans, persisted over the ages and church and nobility joined into these customs. They were also celebrated in cities and towns with parades, pageants, plays and festivals in the market place, the town green and in the forests.
Some of these celebrations in their various forms can be found to this day in parts of Europe and even in the United States. At the Midsummer Festival in Indianapolis, held June 26, 1993 at the monument circle till midnight, contemporary music and fine foods could be found. There were four music stages and over 30 restaurants were serving food. Tucked away somewhere was a picnic in the park for homeless veterans.
Every year on June 23, the eve before the Feast of John the Baptist, in the mountains of the Werdenfelser Land (Bavaria) mountain fires are burning. This old custom developed after the Christianization from the Germanic summer solstice celebrations. In former times the "fire makers" were mostly shepherds, who burnt dry wood and kindling. Today old and young are on their way, shortly before dusk, to peaks, ridges and cliffs, to light fires with a mixture of wood shavings and oil in old food cans. On hills and open spaces near villages, children and youth will collect weeks before, large wood and kindling mounds, which will then be lit with the adults. In the cliffs of Waxenstein, Zugspitze and other places huge crosses will be put up and lit, to commemorate a fellow mountain climber who fell to death. Many will meet in a mountain hut or a mountain farm (Alm) for a bite to eat, music and Gemütlichkeit. (Der Oberbaierische Fest-Täg-und Alte-Bräuch-Kalender 1993, p. 67) To say that these were merely pagan traditions would be to simplify the matter, as would be to say that they were just entertainment. Shakespeare in Midsummer Night's Dream brings these traditions and their hidden meanings to life. In the "Dream" the collective myth and the personal dream are so closely interwoven that a literal interpretation of the play may leave us puzzled.
What happens to the two pairs of lovers when they leave Athens to spend the night in a forest on the outskirts of the city. If it is to be comedy in the sense of being "comical," if all that Shakespeare wants to show is that humans are fools, as he has Puck exclaim, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" there would be no need for the symbolic elaboration that goes into the making of the play.
The adventure in the woods, in the view of eminent psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, is an inseparable part of the encounter between the animus element in those that dwell in the forest, make darkness their home for one night. The encounter of the lovers, a shared dream, takes place within their own unconscious. It is only when they leave the woods at sunrise, that they are reawakened to a new consciousness. In the words of Demetrius, during the night some "power" helped him recover from "sickness" to "health."
What then is the play all about? Hermia's father is trying to separate her from her beloved Lysander. We meet Lysander on his way to the house of a childless widow-aunt, where Hermia and Lysander are to be married. It is Midsummer night and to reach her house they have to pass a forest. Hermia, who is following Lysander, is followed by Demetrius, who dotes on her. He in turn is followed by Helena who loves him deeply. In the forest Puck plays tricks on the four bewildered lovers. All the ensuing mischief that Puck does, when he transforms Bottom into an ass, is a result of Oberon's command who enlisted Puck's help in his power struggle with Titania.
Titania's pursuit of Bottom (changed into an ass), can be understood best in terms of the wood symbolism that constitutes the metaphorical background to the confusion. Jung explains:
... the forest dark and impenetrable to the eye, like deep water and the sea, is the container of the unknown and the mysterious. It is an appropriate synonym for the unconscious. Trees, like fishes in water, represent the living contents of the unconscious. ... The mighty old oak represents a central figure among the contents of the unconscious, possessing personality in the most marked degree. It is the prototype of the Self, a symbol of the source and the goal of the individuation process. The oak stands for the still unconscious core of the personality, the plant symbolism indicating a state of deep unconsciousness. From this it may be concluded that the hero of the fairytale is profoundly unconscious of himself. He is one of the 'sleepers,' the 'blind' or 'blind-folded'... (Jung in Alex Aronson, Psyche and Symbol in Shakespeare, p. 206).
All the psychic energy, that animated the lovers outside the forest, is either paralyzed or turned into confusion. Puck is merely an instrument of the unconscious self, "an archetype closely resembling the 'Trickster- figure' which Jung discovered in American Indian mythology." According to myth he is "God, man, and animal at once."
Midsummernight, the longest night of the year spells its magic. With warmth and light and reborn nature, in stark contrast to winter with reign of darkness and long cold nights, it calls for special celebrations. Darkness has lost its power, light is triumphant.
Ruth Reichmann
Max Kade German-American Center
Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ. Indianapolis
From Hilaire Belloc's The Path to Rome
With every step a greater mystery surrounded me...The kingdoms that have no walls, and are built up of shadows, began to oppress me as the night hardened. Had I had companions, still we would only have spoken in a whisper, and in that dungeon of trees even my own self would not raise its voice within me.
It was full night when I had reached a vague clearing in the woods, right up on the height of that flat hill. This clearing was called "The Fountain of Magdalen." I was so far relieved by the broader sky of the open field that I could wait and rest a little, and there, at last, separate from men, I thought of a thousand things. The air was full of midsummer, and its mixture of exaltation and fear cut me off from ordinary living. I now understood why our religion has made sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night of St. John, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. A general communion of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic possesses those of us who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights.
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