PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
These days, we in the Pagan community have many choices in terms of traditions and paths to explore and practice. Most of the folx I know include more than one tradition in their regular spiritual practice.
How does that work, and what happens when you have traditions whose calendars don't fit with each other?
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The seasonal cycle of the year is created by Earth’s annual orbit around the sun. Solstices are the extreme points as Earth’s axis tilts toward or away from the sun—when days and nights are longest or shortest. On equinoxes, days and nights are equal in all parts of the world. Four cross-quarter days roughly mark the midpoints in between solstices and equinoxes. We commemorate these natural turning points in the Earth’s cycle. Seasonal celebrations of most cultures cluster around these same natural turning points.
Feel the sun within you shining with abundance, as we blink in the light of that glowing promise, resurrection from death. The triumph of light peaks, slides slowly to dissolve. This is the tipping point for everything: democracy, misogyny, racism, climate, freedom. All are on a cliff edge. We've reached the neon-bright entrance to The Great Turning.
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Right now it’s the summer holidays, and in many places, the young people are home from school, and families are off doing the holiday thing. Or trying not to kill each other. It’s worth noting however that the origin of the summer holidays has nothing to do with having a good time, and everything to do with needing the young people to help get the harvests in. The norms of our school systems pre-date the combine harvester and other such devices.
You don’t have to be much of an etymologist to spot that ‘holiday’ comes from ‘holy day’ and for many of our Christian ancestors, the holy days were the only days off, if you were lucky. Servants tended to have to work on Sundays and over Christmas etc, but religious celebration has provided our ancestors with much needed opportunities to down tools and socialise. The pilgrimage is the ancestor of the tourist industry, and holy journeys and holidays have a great deal to do with holidays.
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Miriam Dyak (Seattle, WA) All my life is poetry. Close to 60 years of writing poems, journals, books and not about to stop. I am a Social Artist, Voice Dialogue facilitator and teacher, dream weaver, gardener of souls.
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SHE who Laughs, Lasts
The past, the present and the future walked into a womyn’s gathering.
They were in tense.
The AULD ONES say:
One day, you realize that you are older than almost every other living being. Your familiars: cats, dogs and other close critters; the wyld messengers: birds, serpents and others who visit you; most plants; and even other humans day by day are increasingly your younger sisters, children, grandchildren.
That’s what’s so great about trees! They are the only species where so many individuals are older than you! In the dark inspiration that marks Winter Solstice, find a tree. Place your palms upon her, slow down, and seek counsel. Take in this elder’s survival story; let the patterns in your mind mirror the patterns she shows in bark and branch—yule feel tree wisdom swaying your own canopy. Honor your tree with a token, or—well, go ahead, you old tree hugger you, embrace her. Then, take a wide stance. Raise your arms. Look up—invoke the return of the Sun!
Good Night (simple words that are always true) to the year of Wild Card XV—X for the girrrl gene, V for the sacred vulva—celebrate your jolly old self.
Ride the Night Mare.
See with owl eyes.
Dream with sleeping bear.
Carolyn Myers © Mother Tongue Ink 2014
I was recently interviewed for a Huffington Post article on Samhain, asking how I celebrated this holy time. Here's what I told the reporter, Laurie Lovecraft, for her article, Samhain: West Coast Style, sharing what a group of people in the West Coast community do during this often misunderstood sacred time. Perhaps you'll put in the comments below how you practice Samhain.....
At Samhain I check in with myself and see how I feel -- if I 'm feeling celebratory or want to participate within the community I'll attend a public Samhain ritual. But if I'm seeking guidance or feeling like going within, I'll steer toward a more private ritual, alone or with my closest friends. My mother passed away a year ago and my sister very recently. No doubt they will be in my thoughts.
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As you know, I have been travelling. I was in Britain for three weeks, returned home for five days and then set off for New York for almost a week.
All of this at harvest time. Sadness. The grapes were neglected and went to feed the possums and raccoons. There was a huge elderberry harvest but I did very little of it. Because we have two apple trees that bear fruit at different times, the apple harvest has been prolonged. We filled our little freezer with apples destined for the cider fermenter and there are more in the refrigerator in the vegetable drawers.
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