It’s Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Crosses are painted with ash on foreheads.
The constellation of the cross.
Lent is often said to be “about six weeks”, which would be 42 days, but its last day is the Saturday before Easter, April 3 this year, so the inclusive length is 46 days. The grim timespan of a ninth of a year seems to go deep. Lent is the pre-mourning of the crucifixion. In Catholic tradition, the dead are mourned for forty days, the last of which is their judgment day. Jesus was forty days in the wilderness, pestered with temptations by Satan. There is a solemn forty-day period in the Muslim world, I was going to just allude to it, but I see it needs a bit of a story.
Prophet Muhammad was succeeded by three unrelated caliphs (khalîfah, “successor”) and only then by his son-in-law Ali. Ali was murdered by a religious fanatic, and his elder son Hasan (“beautiful”) briefly succeeded, abdicating peacefully after a few months in favor of the powerful governor of Syria, who became the first of the Umayyad dynasty, recognized by Sunni Muslims. At the battle of Karbala in Iraq, in 680 CE, the army of the second Umayyad caliph, Yazîd, killed Ali’s younger son, Husein (“little Hasan”). Muslims of the Shî’ah (“faction”) believe that Ali and his sons were the prophet’s true successors, and Husein counts as the first of their Imams. The date of his martyrdom is commemorated as Ashura. It begins forty days of mourning – a Muslim Lent – that climax at the day of Arba’in, “forty.” Or Chehellom, “fortieth,” in Persian, Iran being the quintessential Shii country.
Husein’s descendant the eighth imam. Reza, also became a martyr, shahîd, at a spot toward the northeast corner of Iran that became the country’s second largest city, Mashhad, “place of martyrdom,” and pilgrims make for it on Arba’in. I once briefly fell into the company of a pilgrim walking more than a thousand miles from Karbala to Mashhad, and then I happened dangerously to hitchhike into Mashhad on the date of Arba’in. Procession along the avenue around the circular forbidden harâm; self-flagellants…
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Thanks Guy for the reminder and explanation of the Muslim version of Lent.
Seeing the Southern Cross is kind of a holy grail for northern hemisphere-bound skygazers. It’s a bucket list sort of item. The few glimpses I’ve had of it from the continental U.S. have been during the late winter / early spring, the same general time of year in which lent falls (for example, seeing the northernmost star of Crux from southern Texas one May many years ago). I was lucky enough to see Crux and the two stars of Centaurus (alpha and beta) well above the horizon from Panama in 1990, but only in the very light polluted sky near Panama City. I want to get to South America to see the southern sky well, although I am not brave enough to do what Guy wrote about doing in 1986, namely hike the Inca trail to arrive at Machu Picchu: another of his harrowing treks!
When you see Crux every night it no longer seems terribly special.
More impressive, I think, is the sight of four first magnitude stars within ten degrees of each other: Alpha and Beta Crucis, and Alpha and Beta Centauri.
I recall reading somewhere that those four stars are simply referred to as “the four”. Are you able to see the southern Milky Way from a dark site?
I haven’t heard the term “the four” in that context, but it’s a good name.
I live in a light-polluted city, but I frequently visit rural locations. The southern Milky Way is stunning.
No ashes on the forehead yesterday for us. Instead they were sprinkled on our heads. Anyone who was wearing a white shirt, as I was, had lovely ‘black dandruff’ settling on his shoulders all day. Another example of an absurd COVID over-reaction.
Also, you mention that Catholics mourn the dead for 40 days. Can you give a reference for this please? As a Catholic, I’ve not heard of this practice. In the Latin rite it’s traditional for a “month’s mind” requiem to be offered on the 30th day after death. And of course, in another sense mourning doesn’t end at all. Annual requiem masses on the anniversary of a person’s death can continue for many years.
I don’t remember where I first heard this, but now I find in a Wikipedia article about “mourning” this statement, which is slightly ungrammatical, does not give a citation, and may apply only to the Philippines, mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph:
40 days is a Catholic practice of commemorating the dead after 40 days from their death date. A Mass and a small feast are held to commemorate the dead during the 40-day period, with the 40th day as their judgment day. The immediate family wear black. The first anniversary of the death is celebrated by a feast, which signals the end of the mourning period.
Lent is 40 days not counting Sundays. Some people believe that if you give something up for Lent it’s okay to indulge on Sunday. Years ago I decided to give up Lent for Lent. I celebrate Spring.
That joke is very old and very tired.
I hadn’t heard the joke before and I thought it cute.
But I’m notorious for being impressed by sayings that others know to be old hat.
A school counselor encouraged everyone with an announcement: “Tomorrow is the first day of the ret of your life!” I thought, that’s quite a clever piece of philosophy.
My landlord’s automatic telephone message was: “Your call is very important to us.” I thought, that’s good, I’ll use it myself.
Roberto — It’s not a joke to me, and I’ve never heard anybody else make that joke. One gloriously sunny and fresh day before Ash Wednesday I was reflecting on what I would give up for Lent that year. My body and spirit rebelled against the notion of mourning and renunciation during a season of rebirth and it just popped into my head that I would give up Lent for Lent.
I don’t know if I should apologize for being unoriginal or feel flattered that I independently came up with a familiar witticism that has persisted long enough to become old and tired.
I hope I’m not offending you or anybody else who fasts during Lent. I want to support people practicing whichever traditions bring meaning, comfort, inspiration, etc. into their lives. I also want each and every one of us to be free to choose which practices we observe.
Are you in the southern hemisphere? I imagine Lent would feel very different as summer turns to fall, rather than my experience during early spring.
Countless generations of Catholic children have announced to their parents and/or teachers that they’re “giving up Lent for Lent”. I remember saying it to my father when I was about 10, feeling very pleased with my cleverness. I recall his response perfectly. He said, “Nice try. But it doesn’t work like that. It didn’t work when I said it my father, just as it didn’t work when he said it to his father”. I imagine it dates back hundreds of years.
I am in the southern hemisphere, in Australia. Lent has always coincided with the change into autumn, so it’s just the natural way.
I’m slow. The thought of giving up Lent didn’t come to me until I was an adult.
Festina lente.
“Festina lente” — always good advice.
This got me wondering if “Lent” and “lente” are from the same root. They’re not. From the wikipedia article on Lent — “The English word Lent is a shortened form of the Old English word lencten, meaning ‘spring season’ […] .” The Latin word for Lent is Quadragesima, having nothing to do with slowness and everything to do with 40 days.
Lent, older form lenten, is ultimately from the same root as long (because in spring the says are lengthening).
Lent, past tense of lend, is from the Germanic root of the noun loan.
Latin lente, “slowly”: I don’t know what earlier (Indo-European) form that came from.
And there are yet other similar forms – an obsolte word lends for the loins…
Thanks Guy. Lencten, lengthen … when I say them out loud I can hear their kinship.
I should have added lens, lenticular, etc., from Latin lens, “lentil”.
And perhaps leant, equivalent to leaned, pronounced like Lent.
Surely this is to be continued……
Better not.