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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Winter solstice this year falls upon the 21st of December. The still point of the year, it has been marked and honoured around the world for thousands of years. In Britain and Ireland, we have several monuments dating to the neolithic period which are aligned to the winter solstice, either its sunrise or sunset.  Newgrange, or Sí an Bhrú as it is more correctly called, in Co. Meath, Ireland is a neolithic passage grave, and was built an astonishing 5000 years ago around 3200 BCE. It is aligned to the winter solstice sunrise, and each year a beam of light enters the passage and illuminates the chamber within. The symbolism of this simple act is astonishing, speaking to us today in much the same way as it must have so long ago. To bring light to the darkness, to bring life to death at the darkest time of the year- to find renewal once again.

Try this exercise to pull in the magic of this time. Outside just before the dawn is ideal but otherwise  you can do this indoors. Prepare a candle, unlit before you, and take some time to sit in stillness and darkness. Breathe deep and slow, let your body relax and sink into the earth. Be held by the rock and soil of the land that rests beneath you where ever you are- be it outside or in your home. Feel held by the land. Take some more breaths and send your inner vision deep into your heart… what do you find there? Sit with all you find within yourself, breathing slow and letting all sorrow or stress fall into the earth. Feel into the darkness for a while, surrendering all that needs to go. When you are ready, and you feel you have given it the time you need, imagine in this darkness, far ahead, that the sun is rising. Slowly it pours sunlight across the land before you, its rays touch your heart, bringing life and light back, bringing healing. Fill your heart with light and light the candle before you. Spend some breaths meditating on the light and all it brings.

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Samhain, the Gaelic name for Halloween, is on the 31st of October, also known as Nos Calan Gaeaf in Wales- literally meaning ‘the night before the beginning of winter’.  Astrologically Samhain is a cross quarter festival- falling in between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice and for this reason dates to celebrate can vary- from the 31st to the 7th of November- which is its astrological date this year. This is a special time, where spirits abound to wreak havoc or visit their loved ones, for solace or revenge, where the spirits of nature remind us of their wild and untamed ways and for a while the ordinary way of things in the mortal world is upended. 

Now is a perfect time to honour our ancestors and do some ancestral healing- this frees us up from the patterns of the past, ways of being handed down from parents to children often going back generations that are often unconscious and overlooked, to say what we didn’t say or to resolve and forgive any misdeeds.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

This year the summer solstice, longest day and height of the solar year, falls on Sunday the 21st of June. This is a time of fiery solar energy. Traditionally a time of faery revels, magic and great power, this is the perfect time to trust in your heart’s desire and seize your destiny. Throughout Britain and Ireland, it has been traditional to light a beacon fire at this time, and to seek spirit contact as well as a time for magic divination and blessing.

There is a host of plant lore connected to this time of the year in the Celtic traditions, but the main plants of the season are the elderflower, Vervain and St John’s wort. Gather Elderflower beneath the moon for healing tisanes or to make cordial, but vervain ‘the enchanters herb’, useful for all sorts of magic and scrying, blessing your sacred space and the highly protective St John’s wort are best gathered at dawn.  

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We have all had times where the challenges that life brings to us feel overwhelming. For the most part, hopefully, these are brief times of illness or misfortune, but it is a fact that each of us will have to come to terms less often with times of real challenge and even with death. As we journey through our lives, we seldom find these things occur at convenient moments, when we feel strong and equipped to endure. At such times we realise that all our lives are constantly navigated through realms of unpredictability and the chaos of a multitude of lives and circumstances co-existing and intersecting with our own. How much power we have over our fate is often woefully small. Yet there is to be found, even at such times, a wellspring of resources within us and around us, if not to cure, then certainly to provide a balm for our distress.  

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I’ve always been a night owl, loving the moon and stars, and the secret ways the world changes when everyone is sleeping…walking the lanes around Glastonbury Tor in nights so dark you couldn’t  see your feet upon the path, trusting those other senses; listening, feeling, smelling the air, that innate sense of presence you can get when you are in balance with your animal wild self and all the land around you to guide your way. I love the night for magic, weaving with the spirits, the night seems to allow a space for you to stretch into, bringing change where the rational mind of the day would not allow. But these days I’m feeling a subtle shift, and a new thread has come to my magical tapestry. Increasingly now I sense the best time for magic is not the night, but the dawn…or rather pre-dawn, as the first light finds its way across the trees and fields, bringing change to the world yet again, I find that magic can find a place to manifest…and catching the wave as the first golden light stretches like rosey honey across my beloved land my magic can carry on the first birdsong, on the unfurling of flowers, on raising of dawn mist and the stirring of the new day, to unfurl across the waking world and into manifestation as easily as the world turning… moon magic on one hand and sun magic on the other…and the time to wield it, is that wonderful tipping space betwixt and between…      

 

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

As the wheel turns to spring, life begins to stir in the soil and earth magic grows more powerful with every day.

Now is the time to sow flower herb or vegetable seeds indoors for abundant new plants in the coming summer. Excellent things to try in a limited space are salads or calendula or nasturtium plants which can be directly sown into small pots and grown on the windowsill if space is short. Allow yourself to experiment and have fun, eagerly awaiting the new shoots and seedlings springing into life.

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I sat with the Cailleach the other day, deep in the barrow mound, upon the hill, as the sun set on the shortest day. A raven spiralled over the white sky, and cut through the air with its cry…but its mournful sound seemed far off to me, sheltered in the shadows of the stones, and the black earth, the steady drip drip of water onto ancient sacred soil a drum rhythm, a rattle to the slow base of my heart beat in my ears, as I sank deeper and deeper still into the quiet.   

I held out my hands and felt her strong fingers, dry as winter twigs, gnarly knuckled and skin like paper-ash fine and fragile. She held my hands and with her the ancient ones, the sleeping ones stirring from the deep places dreaming, pulling me gently into layers below my awareness, calling me to slow down, and be enwrapped by them, to not rush today seeking magic when wisdom is here, in the quiet, in the dark. 

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