Dorrie Joy (Somerset, UK) is a mother, grandmother and lover of the wild earth, an artist and traditional craftswoman creating sacred space for her woman and girls.
PaganSquare
PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
The Autumn started early here, with a sudden snap of cold, rainy, foggy weather hovering right on top of us for a few weeks. It was an abrupt shift away from the warm, sunny weather we usually get. After the weather warmed back up, flocks of painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) began their fall migrations. These small brown spotted butterflies migrate through the West just as the Summer fades into the Fall. Because of elevated temperatures, the breeding season was extended, resulting in huge swarms of butterflies, thousands and thousands more than usual, flitting through the remnants of the gardens, tiny clouds of them hosting in the crowns of trees.
Clouds of painted ladies so dense, they could be seen on weather radar.
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I love them!
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I've been seeing a lot of Painted Ladies here in southern Nevada.
We hope you enjoyed the autumn equinox! Over at Witches&Pagans the equinox caught us a little flat-footed but we’ve made sure to collect all our content relating to it all the same.
Celebrated throughout many cultures as either the midpoint or beginning of autumn (also known as fall), the autumn equinox is the point at which the balance of daylight and night shifts from the exuberance of summer to the darkness of winter. In the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth, this time has come though in the Southern Hemisphere the opposite is happening: the days are now getting brighter!
Here’s all the content we’ve gathered, including not only all our relevant posts from the last month, but also others from outside websites we thought you might appreciate. Enjoy!
--Aryós Héngwis
As I emerged from our Cauldron Month, I received the Seed card from Womanrunes. This is a rune of waiting and ripening and is the perfect rune to consider during a time of processing and exploration. What did you find in the cauldron? What tender seed are you nourishing? What is getting ready to grow for you? To push up its first tender shoots of exploration and discovery?
Maybe this seems like an odd time of year to be speaking of new growth as the wheel of the year in the Northern Hemisphere moves towards autumn, but as we deepen into the shadows of the colder months of the year, I find my attention turns to those seeds we plant and nourish in our dark spaces.
— Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark
Autumn, or fall, equinox marks the anniversary of my moving to Ireland sixteen years ago. This was my third country move and each Mabon I fall into a contemplative mood regarding my peripatetic life. The first move was at age three months. Reading an article this morning by Mary Condren in Celtic Threads I had a bit of an 'Ah ha!' moment.
Even as a child I felt outside in my homeland. In fact, as an eleven or twelve year old, I penned (with Quink and quill made from a seagull feather), a gnomic little poem called 'The Exile.' I felt suffocated in my native country, surreally out of place, not belonging. Logically, this didn't make sense. In my mother's lineage- Dutch adventurers and English Quakers - family had made their home in North America since early colonial days. Louisa May Alcott, author of Eight Cousins, is an eighth cousin according to ancestry.com.
...The Autumn started this morning, and I went looking for balance.
Is there balance in between the fires that charred California, Oregon, and Montana, and the floods that drowned Houston?
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