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.
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Blog posts tagged in Equinox
I live in the northern hemisphere, specifically in the southeastern US, and here it's Spring Equinox today. But in the southern hemisphere it's Autumn Equinox. And even more confusingly, in the Mediterranean, even though we still call it the Spring Equinox, it's harvest time, so in Modern Minoan Paganism we acknowledge the harvest festival on this day. Before you go reaching for the aspirin to quell your headache, allow me to explain...
The ancient Minoans lived on the island of Crete, just south of Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. That region has a unique climate that can be confusing for those of us who are used to spring-summer-autumn-winter. But it's important to understand the Mediterranean seasons so we can have a clue about how the Minoans experienced their world.
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The Spring Equinox or vernal equinox occurs between 20 - 22 March. The word equinox is Latin for "equal night". It is also known as Ostara, Eostre or by its Welsh name, Alban Eiler, "the light on the earth". It is a time when day and night are of equal length, and the sun rises and sets due east and west respectively. In secular society, the spring equinox marks the first days of spring, but as we've seen above, Imbolc is actually when the first signs appear, at least in Britain.
It's the morning of the Autumn Equinox.
The kitty is playing with something, up and down the hall.
Clacketta clacketta clacketta.
What is that damn cat playing with now? I wonder.
Turns out, it's a jelly bean.
It's good to know when all your training comes into play. The years of hard work you have put in. All the practice that I have done in Zen Buddhism, Druidry and other aspects of Western Paganism has greatly helped me during a very difficult week.
Breathing. It's amazing how much just focusing on the breath can calm the mind and the body. For the mind and body are one. What affects one, affects the other. Five focused breaths, in and out, feeling the air move through your nose, down your throat and into your lungs, expanding, and then back out in reverse. Concentration on this small action. The heartbeat slows, the mind has a pause to reset. And perspective floods in.
The cycles of life and death are one. It is ouroboros, the snake eating its tail, no beginning, no ending, only being. There is only energy, in different forms and degrees of manifestation.
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I appreciate what you've written. Bringing my mind back to my breath has been a powerful meditative practice! -
Lovely piece of writing and so very true. Thanks for sharing.
I start awake with the prickling knowledge that someone is in the room.
Every house has its secrets. I am about to learn one.
My eyes fly open. A luminescence hovers mid-air at the foot of the bed.
We'd been in the house nine months. My bedroom faces west, so I was accustomed to wake to darkness.
But now a shaft of red-gold, ancestral light slants in, spans the room, and illumines the windows of the west.
Minneapolis is a four-square city, its good Midwestern street-grid laid out cardinally. As the Sun rises due east at the equinoxes in his annual journey along the horizon, his light shines in through the east window, streams in a thick, tangible column down the hall, and into my bedroom on the west.
Like something out of New Grange.
When you harvest most items, there’s always something you discard whether it’s the vines or the stalks. I’ve been seeing all these ads about summer only has so many weekends and it is coming to a close.
It’s made me think of what I’m harvesting from my summer. What have I accomplished this summer? What do I need to keep in my life and keep going with? What do I need to let go of?
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