Category Archives: Wheel of the Year

Early Harvest


And, so, just like that, we're headed, will-we-or-nil-we, towards Litha.

The great Sumer Solstice.

The fire festival, when Sol Invictus stands highest in the Summer sky.

In my tradition, this is the Feast of the First Harvest. (Is it so, for you, as well?) And so I started my day at the local farmers' market, buying (finally!) ripe and green tomatoes, corn for roasting, cucumbers for (mixed with my own parsley and mint) tzadziki, local pickles, and lettuce for which I imagine many a poet could compose odes. I came home and had fried green tomatoes and iced tea (Southern breakfast of champions) on my screen porch and then went out to weed the herb bed. After several hours of v. aromatic weeding, I came inside to make various kinds of simple syrup for all of July's cocktails: mint, basil, lavender, and dill. I harvested enough sage to make smudging sticks for everyone in my circle and enough dill, sage, and tarragon to make flavored butters for my own use and for Son and DiL. I am going to be so sore tomorrow that I may not be able to move. Good thing it's a day of writing, reading, doing more research.

For me, the first harvest is crucial.

We're here, halfway through the calendar year. We've either achieved some of the goals that we thought about/set back at Samhein/Yule, or we haven't. It's a good time to take stock, weed out the (fucking!) sorrel, (Kali-blasted!) bindweed, and (goddess-damn-it!) maple seedlings, and to begin to cut and use the lavender, basil, mint, and dill. It's time to decide if we need a new planting of basil (time on the treadmill, hours writing prose at work, focus on our family) or if we need to plant something else (learning runes, walking outside, networking, meditation) entirely.

We'll celebrate several later harvests, but, by then, the chance to correct course becomes more and more attenuated. Every ancestral cell in my Scandanavian-RNA body adores these longer, longer, longer days and shorter nights. And yet, and yet, and yet, the old women whose genes live on in me: those old women survived those long Winters because they knew how to pay attention to the early harvests and correct course if needed.

Here are my early harvest course corrections: Even more time on the treadmill, lots more time polishing legal prose, more spontaneous fun, and even more time at my altar.

What's up for you?

Picture found here.

Early Harvest


And, so, just like that, we're headed, will-we-or-nil-we, towards Litha.

The great Sumer Solstice.

The fire festival, when Sol Invictus stands highest in the Summer sky.

In my tradition, this is the Feast of the First Harvest. (Is it so, for you, as well?) And so I started my day at the local farmers' market, buying (finally!) ripe and green tomatoes, corn for roasting, cucumbers for (mixed with my own parsley and mint) tzadziki, local pickles, and lettuce for which I imagine many a poet could compose odes. I came home and had fried green tomatoes and iced tea (Southern breakfast of champions) on my screen porch and then went out to weed the herb bed. After several hours of v. aromatic weeding, I came inside to make various kinds of simple syrup for all of July's cocktails: mint, basil, lavender, and dill. I harvested enough sage to make smudging sticks for everyone in my circle and enough dill, sage, and tarragon to make flavored butters for my own use and for Son and DiL. I am going to be so sore tomorrow that I may not be able to move. Good thing it's a day of writing, reading, doing more research.

For me, the first harvest is crucial.

We're here, halfway through the calendar year. We've either achieved some of the goals that we thought about/set back at Samhein/Yule, or we haven't. It's a good time to take stock, weed out the (fucking!) sorrel, (Kali-blasted!) bindweed, and (goddess-damn-it!) maple seedlings, and to begin to cut and use the lavender, basil, mint, and dill. It's time to decide if we need a new planting of basil (time on the treadmill, hours writing prose at work, focus on our family) or if we need to plant something else (learning runes, walking outside, networking, meditation) entirely.

We'll celebrate several later harvests, but, by then, the chance to correct course becomes more and more attenuated. Every ancestral cell in my Scandanavian-RNA body adores these longer, longer, longer days and shorter nights. And yet, and yet, and yet, the old women whose genes live on in me: those old women survived those long Winters because they knew how to pay attention to the early harvests and correct course if needed.

Here are my early harvest course corrections: Even more time on the treadmill, lots more time polishing legal prose, more spontaneous fun, and even more time at my altar.

What's up for you?

Picture found here.

Early Harvest


And, so, just like that, we're headed, will-we-or-nil-we, towards Litha.

The great Sumer Solstice.

The fire festival, when Sol Invictus stands highest in the Summer sky.

In my tradition, this is the Feast of the First Harvest. (Is it so, for you, as well?) And so I started my day at the local farmers' market, buying (finally!) ripe and green tomatoes, corn for roasting, cucumbers for (mixed with my own parsley and mint) tzadziki, local pickles, and lettuce for which I imagine many a poet could compose odes. I came home and had fried green tomatoes and iced tea (Southern breakfast of champions) on my screen porch and then went out to weed the herb bed. After several hours of v. aromatic weeding, I came inside to make various kinds of simple syrup for all of July's cocktails: mint, basil, lavender, and dill. I harvested enough sage to make smudging sticks for everyone in my circle and enough dill, sage, and tarragon to make flavored butters for my own use and for Son and DiL. I am going to be so sore tomorrow that I may not be able to move. Good thing it's a day of writing, reading, doing more research.

For me, the first harvest is crucial.

We're here, halfway through the calendar year. We've either achieved some of the goals that we thought about/set back at Samhein/Yule, or we haven't. It's a good time to take stock, weed out the (fucking!) sorrel, (Kali-blasted!) bindweed, and (goddess-damn-it!) maple seedlings, and to begin to cut and use the lavender, basil, mint, and dill. It's time to decide if we need a new planting of basil (time on the treadmill, hours writing prose at work, focus on our family) or if we need to plant something else (learning runes, walking outside, networking, meditation) entirely.

We'll celebrate several later harvests, but, by then, the chance to correct course becomes more and more attenuated. Every ancestral cell in my Scandanavian-RNA body adores these longer, longer, longer days and shorter nights. And yet, and yet, and yet, the old women whose genes live on in me: those old women survived those long Winters because they knew how to pay attention to the early harvests and correct course if needed.

Here are my early harvest course corrections: Even more time on the treadmill, lots more time polishing legal prose, more spontaneous fun, and even more time at my altar.

What's up for you?

Picture found here.

Litha’s Coming


I woke up this morning aware that we're only a few weeks out from Litha, the longest day of the year. Here in my corner of the myth-crammed MidAtlantic, the period from Yule to Imbolc seems very long, and then, from Imbolc until Beltane, although things speed up, it seems as if I still spend much of the time looking, hoping, dreaming, wishing: focused on every tiny sign of Spring, turning the appearance of a single snowdrop or a haze of green on the bleached-bone frames of the beech trees into a cause for celebration. And then, ABRACADABRA, it's here and time seems to speed by.

It's likely my Swedish ancestors dancing the spiral dance in my DNA, but I have to admit that I love, best of all, these long, long, long sunlit days. In Sweden, I read once, no one sleeps when the sun near the Arctic Circle stay up in the sky all day. People have late picnics in the woods and gather berries and get in boats to row across to Denmark to get beer. I don't really care whether or not it's "factual"; in my cosmology, it's "true" and I've picked those berries and rowed those boats often and often sitting at my altar or knitting sweaters in the dark of deep Winter. Something about Litha connects me deeply to that place where "I've" never been.

This time of year is, as well, an amazing time to just sit out in the evening and enjoy the garden. The voodoo lilies are just finishing up. The magnolias that worried me so and over which I did so much magic are in bloom, an embarrassment of lemon, vanilla, and gloss. The herbs are almost out of control. The Dutch iris have replaced the bearded iris. The astilbe is a white, lacy froth of abundance; the gardenias are still going strong, and the day lilies have giant buds that will open any day now. I should have lilies -- Casa Blanca and Adios Nonino -- in a few more days.

Soon, too soon, the days will start to get a bit shorter, but the daisies and black-eyed susans will show up, the sunflowers will exult, and the purple obedient flowers will make the bees and hummingbirds happy.

And then, and then, but, no, I'm not going to go there -- yet.

For now, I'm going to sit in my twilit garden, smell the magnolias and gardenias, listen to the birds, watch the wisteria bushes creep towards each other on the top of the garden shed, and store all of this up. It's an old magic that I do, creating the ability to get myself through those hard-as-iron February days when I've seen nothing blooming for months and I know that I still have a ways to go. I'll release them the way you release any spell from the magic bottle into which you crammed and stoppered it, set aside for when it's needed.

I shan't be gone long. You come, too.

Picture found here.

Ivo! Evoe!


We're here in this bursting period between Imbolc and Ostara, one of the most dynamic sections of the Wheel of the Year. The "Sun Band" on my Ecological Calendar has been growing wider and wider.

If you've learned to look with love and to pay attention, the trees, at least here in the miraculous MidAtlantic, are no longer the dead brown and grey of Winter. Every branch seems to be suffused with green and, when you cast your eyes over a grove of trees, there's the tiniest, almost-here-almost-not haze of pink, a pink that long-term lovers of the Potomac know is the first color to precede that yellowish-green!-alive haze that happens just a week before ACTUAL LEAVES burst forth. It will be a few weeks, yet, but you can hear the gentle beginnings of the sound. And no branch is still "just" a branch. Every single branch now sports buds, buds that have somehow developed between December, when the snow drove me inside and, well, and today, when I was able to go sit on my rock and make love to my maples and my birch and my crape myrtles and my figs and my . . . . You know.

The app on my iPhone tells me that tomorrow's Full Moon is known as the Quickening Moon. Everything in my blood says: Yes, yes, and, ah! yes! Almost paralyzes you.

And, I have snowdrops in bloom!

/Curtsies

This morning, when I left for work, they were no where to be seen.

But when I came home this afternoon, a good dozen of the 75 that Landscape Guy and I planted last November were in bloom in the Northern (I know!!!) cottage garden. I walked past. Did a double take. Walked back. Literally fell on my knees. I can't think when anything has made my heart fly so high or my spirit soar so wildly. ("Too easily pleased," my mother used to say of me. It's true, but it's a blessing, not a curse.) I think that I need to make this an annual event, a hanami when I can text all of my friends and say, "Come over this afternoon for champagne, dates w/ goat cheese, radishes with bread and butter, and snowdrop viewing!" Next year, if you're on my email list, be ready!!!

What makes you foolishly happy in the early Spring?

Indeed, My Sheep Are Lactating


I mentioned recently to some friends that, as a Pagan, I'm preparing to celebrate Imbolc. One of my friends replied, "Really? Your sheep are lactating?" My response is that "lactating sheep" is an old way of describing a complicated process that also means "return of the light," "beginning of the end of Winter," "an inspiring time when we begin to throw off the lethargy and hibernation of Winter and concern ourselves with Spring, and new growth, and our own commitments to new life."

I am an old woman with a broken-and-held-together-with-titanium-screws-and-plates ankle, and there are five inches of snow and ice on the ground. But I am going out tomorrow afternoon, yaktrax on my boots, cane in hand, deep grounding accomplished, and I am going to bring pots and potting soil in from the shed. I am going to do that because Wednesday is Imbolc and I will be damned if I will allow it to come and go without starting some seeds. I know, I know deep in my muscles, and joints, and broken bones, I know that, however bitter the weather may be just now, I know that, in a few weeks, the Sun will begin to warm the ground and to coax green shoots from inside their thick bulbs and hard-as-glass seed-shells. And, more than almost anything, I want to be a part of that process, to partake of that metamorphosis, to find myself enmeshed in what is going on in my tiny garden, in my landbase, in the Potomac watershed, inside Columbia's district. I want to be as wick as the land, to keep on dancing the dance of the seasons.

One of the delights, for me, of being a Witch is the opportunity that the 8 major Sabbats (not to mention the Dark Moons and the Full Moons) give me to orient myself within the Wheel of the Year. The events of my own life can be fortuitous or calamitous; I can be engaged and fulfilled by my work or terrified that the economy is about to come crashing down on my head. I can be proud of my accomplishments on the treadmill or concerned that I am aging too fast. (Like Whitman, I say, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes".)) I can be coasting or struggling, but, still, the Sabbats ARE. And each one calls to me, in the midst of my pleasure or my struggle, and reminds me to pay attention to the forces of the planet, to the Wheel of the Year, to what is always available to me as a With.

You come with me; we'll turn the Wheel together.

Picture found here.

Cold as Ice


It's been brutally cold here in the magic-crammed MidAtlantic.

The beautiful Potomac River is almost entirely iced over and the Canada Geese and mallard ducks are hard-pressed to find even a few spots where they can swim and dive for food. The ground is as hard and cold as iron and I'm completely disabused of the notion that I entertain for many months each year that Mother Gaia loves to make love to the soles of my bare feet, tickling them with soft grass, heating them with hot sand, bathing them in cool rain puddles. No, just now, the ground is lethally cold and feels as if it has never been in love with me. My memories of sitting outside in the middle of a pouring Summer rainshower, refreshed and in love, feel as if I must have imagined them. Will it ever be that warm again?

I step out on the deck in the slant, low, early-morning Winter sunshine, weak as old tea, careful not to slip on the ice as I feed the birds and the squirrels who are so hungry that even their inbred caution can't keep them from crowding around as I spread out peanuts and sunflower seeds.

We huddle, if we can, inside warm homes, moving quickly from home, to car, to friend's home, and back, bundled inside sweaters, scarves, mittens, and hats. I climb into bed at night wearing socks, and shawls, and flannel and snuggle under half-a-dozen blankets, covers, and comforters (what a wonderful word). By 2:30 or 3:00 am, temperatures dip as low inside as they're going to go, and my old cottage creaks, and moans, and whinges like, well, like an old woman, settling into the icy ground.

I spend some time during each day's practice re-charging all the things that I've knitted for family and friends with the energies of warmth and protection. I prepare vegetables and garlic (lots of garlic) for soup and sprinkle immunity, succor, and heat into the broth. I warm some of it in the morning before I leave for work and hand a tupperware container of it over to the homeless Vet who stands each morning, even this 18 degree morning, at the on-ramp to the Roosevelt Bridge. When I say to him, "Can you stay warm today?" he says, "I'm going to try. Thank you." It's not enough, but it is what I can do.

Every conference call of the day begins with people comparing the cold in their part of the world; Europe's gotten hit pretty hard, too; clients in New England show how macha they are by bragging that this is nothing; people in San Diego feel happy in their choice of landbase. We may live in a technological wonderland, but our animal bodies are still almost overwhelmed by this deep Winter and we connect by talking about it.

And, still, Imbolc is coming. Inspiration is coming, that inner fire that results in an outward blossoming. Poetry is coming and the intense heat of a forging fire is coming. The ground will thaw and warm. The strengthening sun will coax tiny green seedlings out of their hard shells. We need to shake off our Winter weariness and wariness and prepare to dance on newly green grass, to look for snowdrops, hellebores, crocus, and daffodils.

What will you strip off first? What part will you first expose to the light? What will you keep covered as long as possible?

Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?


Gardeners love to talk about the bones of their garden, especially at this time of year. By "bones", they mean the naked trees, stark walkways, walls, mulched spots, and other permanent features, which somehow seem to stand out very clearly once all the flowers and leaves go away (and a dusting of snow, such as the one we had this morning, can make the bones even more visible). It's a perfect time to be out (albeit, bundled up) in the garden, spending time with it, learning from it, sitting in silence with it, and figuring out why some things work and some other things maybe don't. If it's not slippery outside, I'm bundled up and outside in my garden every dawn and every evening this time of year. It's absolutely the best thing I've ever found to do before I begin the process in January of perusing the garden porn (seed catalogues) and figuring out what I "need" for next Spring.

And I think the same is true of this time of year vis-a-vis our lives. Although December is often a time of too much rushing around, getting ready for holiday parties, baking, buying gifts, running ourselves ragged, trying hard to ignore the dark, sometimes even in December the weather intervenes and keeps us at home, inside, with our own thoughts and our own lives for company. And January and February, even more so. I have a hunch that, as global climate change brings us more intense Winters and as tax cuts for billionaires make it more and more difficult for towns and counties to clear streets, we may find ourselves spending more days snowed in than has been our previous wont.

Sure, you can spend your snow days in front of the tv or buying more stuff online.

Or, you can stop. Bundle up by grounding. Cast a circle. Sit with the bones of your own life and figure out why that wall makes perfect sense but that walkway needs straightening. Listen to your life and figure out which shrubs need to get rooted out and where you need to plant a new vine.

Spread a teaparty on the table and invite your Shadows in for a one-hour tea. Set some ground rules, esp. about leaving when asked, and then ask them what they need you to know.

Pull out all of your old journals and catch up with yourself. Can you see some overarching themes, just as a gardener might realize that her garden really is about simplicity and that's why those fussy roses have never quite worked?

What indoor activity puts you into a meditative state of mind? The treadmill? Folding laundry? Kneading bread or chopping vegetables for soup? Painting, throwing pots, dancing? For me, it's knitting, I can sit and knit and find myself deep in worthwhile insights.

Do a tarot reading and then take a nap, announcing your intention to dream the reading into your life. Cast the runes, stare into the fireplace flames, scry in the bowl of melted snow.

The plants in our gardens give themselves this time to pull back and go within so that they can survive the Winter weather and come back stronger in the Spring. Between now and Ostara, it's a gift that we can give ourselves, as well.

What bones do you see in the garden of your life?

Picture found here.

On-Line Wheel of the Year?


In comments below, Marcellina asks:

[W]hile I remain a happy atheist, your (always interesting) blog has got me interested in the various Pagan markings of the seasons and other celebrations of nature. Can you (or your readers) recommend any kind of online calendar that would take me through the year and explain ceremonies as they approach? Is there anything like that on the nets? I don't want a book or treatise to read all at once, but something I can check in on. Thanks!


I'm not aware of an online calendar of the sort that Marcellina describes (although it sounds like a great idea). Readers?

There is a quarterly ezine called Living in Season, published by Waverley Fitzgerald, who used to run School of the Seasons. It's a bit like the discussion I was having the other day with Son about my house. If I close the door to the ritual room, most people wouldn't know that it's a Witch's house. But a Witch would walk in and know immediately. Living in Season has a Pagan flavor without appearing too overtly Pagan.

It's not online, but We'Moon publishes really wonderful calendars; I get one every year. You can take the information in in bits, not feeling the need to read the whole thing through.

Googling "Wheel of the Year" will turn up dozens of web sites, some better than others. But you can get the general idea of the 4 Solar holidays and the 4 Cross-Quarter days and how they relate to the seasons.

One caution I'll offer for sites on the web and many Pagan books (although Marcellina's not looking for a book): They tend to say, often quite definitively, "This holiday is associated with these Goddesses and Gods. The following colors, stones, plants, etc. are to be used to decorate the altar. Etc." And then you go to the next web site or book and it will say, just as definitively, that the holiday is associated with different Goddesses and Gods and that different colors, stones, plants, etc. are to be used. And then, if you visit a public Pagan ritual, you'll see them doing something else, instead, or mixing elements from both sources.

And that's what keeps this interesting.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions that my wonderful readers can post in comments here.

Picture found here.

The Witch of "This" Place


Suddenly, the nights are noticeably longer and there are, in fact, leaves falling on the lawn. The CSA is delivering acorn squash, and apples, and mushrooms and I'm thinking of soups. I've been able to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. In a few days, the Wheel of the Year will have turned all the way around to Mabon, the second of the three Harvest Feasts. (For the first time in years, I'll be out of town, away from my amazing circle of women, celebrating on my own, due to a court schedule beyond my control. I'm working on a plan to commune with some new nature so that I don't wind up making a sad little altar in my hotel room and feeling (too!) sorry for myself.)

Having three harvests is a pretty neat thing. It goes back, I think, to a time when monoculture was unheard of. If you grow different fruits and vegetables and raise different animals (as any sane people would do unless they lived in an incredibly hostile environment), they mature at different times. And you have different harvests, which come in an almost rolling cascade: radishes and asparagus giving way to too many tomatoes, the tomatoes giving way to too many zucchini, the zucchini giving way to the first autumn squashes and winter greens. In my herb garden, the tarragon is finished and the basil is warning me that if I don't "get around" this weekend to making it into pesto to be frozen in ice cube trays for the winter, I'll be out of luck. One thing about harvests is, when the food is ready to be picked, it's ready to be picked. We have to stop, pay attention, do what the plant requires of us when the plant requires it. That's part of what it means to be "in relationship" with the land.

It's traditional among many Wiccans to view this time of year as a time when we "harvest" other things, as well. If you set goals for yourself last Samhein, and if you've worked on those goals and been blessed with good health and good luck, you may be close to reaping the rewards of your work, whether spiritual, magical, financial, emotional, physical, or educational. And, if you're not, now's a good time to figure out what you can salvage and what happened to get in your way, all in preparation for the final harvest feast of Samhein.

I find it a good time of year, as well, to take stock. What have you got to carry you into the cold and difficult part of the year? What might you need to focus on now, that may have gotten lost in the heat of summer, the long days laboring in the threshing field?

If you consider yourself to be a member of a Nature Religion, I'd like to suggest that one of the areas you consider is your relationship with Nature. Do you have a relationship with -- not just a vaguely benign feeling for -- your landbase, your local watershed, some particular plants, or animals, or places near to where you live? If so, what can you do to improve that relationship? We Witches say that power follows attention. If not, what can you do to begin to actually live your Nature Religion? We Witches say that power follows attention.

By now, you know that I don't believe that, "Well, but I live in the city," is a good excuse. Most Pagans in America today live in cities. And the landbase of every city in America is crying out for relationship with its humans. You don't have to have a yard. As I've noted before, cities are full of deserted spaces, almost custom made for a Witch's attention and connection. (And devotee of Hers that I am, I can't help but mention that it is in just such deserted, liminal spaces that Hecate often resides.) In Last Child in the Forest: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv writes about the work of Robert Michael Pyle, who described his relationship as a child with "a century-old irrigation channel near his home. The ditch . . . was his 'sanctuary, playground, and sulking walk,' his 'imaginary wilderness, escape hatch, and birthplace as a naturalist.'"

Louv:

"These are the places of initiation, where the borders between ourselves and other creatures break down, where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of play gets under our skin," Pyle writes. These are the "secondhand lands, the hand-me-down-habitats where you have to look hard to find something to love." Richard Mabey, a British writer and naturalist calls such environments, undeveloped and unprotected, the "unofficial countryside." Such habitats are often rich with life and opportunities to learn; in a single decade, Pyle recorded some seventy kinds of butterflies along his ditch.


What "unofficial countryside" is your countryside? The crisp Fall days are perfect for walking around, looking, and listening. Tell me what you find.

Picture found here.