Celebrating the Seasonal Holy-Days

Home , Lammas

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Celebrating the

Seasonal Holy-Days

Waverly Fitzgerald

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Published by Priestess of Swords Press

Contact: [email protected] Priestess of Swords Press 1463 E Republican #187 Seattle WA 98112

Celebrating Candlemas

February 2 is one of the great cross-quarter days which make up the wheel of the year. It falls midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and in many traditions is considered the beginning of spring.

Awakening the Ground

In Western Europe, this was the time for preparing the fields for the first planting. Even in Seattle, you can begin turning over and enriching the soil in anticipation of the first sowing in March. Pamela Berger has written a book, The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint about the rituals celebrated at this time of year, when the ground is first awakened and the seed placed in the belly of the earth. This is a significant moment in a community which depends on the earth for sustenance. The fields were purified and offerings were made to the goddess. This medieval Anglo-Saxon plowing charm, recorded by Berger, was said by the farmer while cutting the first furrow: Whole be thou Earth Mother of men. In the lap of God, Be thou as-growing. Be filled with fodder For fare-need of men.

The farmer then took a loaf of bread, kneaded it with milk and holy water and laid it under the first furrow, saying: Acre full fed, Bring forth fodder for men! Blossoming brightly, Blessed become; And the God who wrought the ground, Grant us the gifts of growing, That the corn, all the corn, May come unto our need.

The promises of the return of the light and the renewal of life which were made at the winter solstice are now becoming manifest. It’s the dawn of the year. It’s the time when a woman who is pregnant begins showing. It’s time to creep out of the hibernation of winter, cautiously, like the Groundhog who

4 supposedly emerges on this day to check his shadow. It’s the time of germination. This is a traditional time for new beginnings. Covens of witches usually initiate new members at this time.

St Brigid, the Grain Goddess

In Ireland, this holy day is called Imbolc and begins at sunset on February 1 continuing through sunset February 2nd. There are several different derivations offered for the name Imbolc: from Ol-melc (ewe’s milk) because the ewes are lactating at this time, from Im-bolg (around the belly) in honor of the swelling belly of the earth goddess, and from folcaim (I wash) because of the rites of purification which took place at this time. All of these explanations capture the themes of this festival. February 1st is the feast day of St. Brigid, who began her life as a pagan goddess and ended up a Christian saint. She was a fire and fertility goddess. In her temple at Kildare, vestal virgins tended an eternal fire. On her feast day, her statue was washed in the sea (purification) and then carried in a cart through the fields surrounded by candles. The legends about the goddess, Brigid, gradually became associated with (the somewhat spurious) Saint Brigid who founded the first convent in Ireland (where else?) at Kildare. To celebrate St Brigid’s day, people put out a loaf of bread on the windowsill for the Saint and an ear of com for her white cow, offerings for the grain goddess like the loaf buried in the first furrow. A small quantity of special seeds are mixed with those to be sown. Wheat stalks are woven into X-shaped crosses to serve as charms to protect homes from fire and lightning. In the Highlands, women dress the com doll or last sheaf (from Lammas or the autumn equinox) in a bridal gown and put her in a basket, which is called the Bride’s bed. A wand, candle or other phallic object is laid across her and the Bride is invited to come for her bed is ready.

Purification

The Catholic Church, as it was wont to do, found an opportunity to superimpose a Christian holiday on this pagan festival. Jewish women went through a purification ceremony 40 days after the birth of a male child (80 days after the birth of a female child). So in the sixth century (according to J.C. Cooper in The Aquarian Dictionary of Festivals), February 2 (which falls 39 days after Christmas) was declared the feast of the Purification of Mary. The theme of purification remained a link between the two holy days. Like many miraculous babies, Jesus is recognized as a future hero from the time of his infancy. One of these recognitions occurs in Luke 2:21 when he is being presented in the temple (at the time of Mary’s purification) and a holy man, Simeon, recognizes him as the Christ, calling him “a light for revelation.” This is the ostensible reason given for the custom of bringing candles to church to be blessed by the priest on February 2nd. They are then taken home where they serve as talismans and protections from all sorts of disasters. This custom is the origin for the name Candle-mass. In Hungary, according to Dorothy Spicer in The Book of Festivals, February 2nd is called Blessing of the Candle of the Happy Woman (Gyertyazsenteio Boidog Asszony). In Poland, it is called Mother of God Who Saves Us From Thunder (Swieto Matki Boskiej Gromnicznej).

5 Actually, this festival has always been associated with fire. In ancient Armenia (writes Spicer), this was the date of the pagan spring festival in honor of Mihr, the God of fire. Originally, fires were built in his honor in open places and a lantern was lit which burned in the temple throughout the year. When Armenia became Christian, the fires were built in church courtyards instead. People danced about the flames, jumped over then and carried home embers to kindle their own fires from the sacred flames. Since Lent can sometimes begin as early as February 4th, some Candlemas customs became associated with Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and the beginning of Lent, which is a time of purification.

St. Blaise

The day after Candlemas, February 3rd, is the feast day of St. Blaise. I remember this holiday from my Catholic childhood because of the peculiar ceremony which took place on this day. We went to church and knelt at the communion rail while the priest placed two blessed candles, held in the shape of an X, against our throats. This was supposed to protect us from sore throats. St. Blaise, Bishop of Armenia, is the patron saint of throat diseases since he once saved a child from choking. But why the candles? And why the X? The candle is an emblem of the light. And the X shape is similar to the shape of the Brigid crosses that are used as charms and the X formed by the candle and the last sheaf in the Bride’s bed. In medieval times, St. Blaise was unofficially celebrated as the patron saint of plowmen. On his feast day, women brought a pail of wheat seed to the church to be blessed. Half of the seed was left as an offering to the church; the other half was taken home so the blessed seed could be mixed with the rest of the seed before sowing. This custom is reminiscent of the Armenian custom of carrying home the embers from the sacred flames to light hearth fires. The blessed seed will kindle the earth.

Celebrating

Candles and Christmas Greens The main element of your decorating scheme for Candlemas is fairly obvious: candles. You can gather all the candles in your home in one room and light them from one central candle. Or place a candle in each window (but watch them carefully). Candlemas is one of the traditional times for taking down Christmas decorations (Twelfth Night, on January 6th, is the other.) If you are very careful (because they are tinder dry), you can burn them. Or, better yet, return them to the earth mother by using them for compost or mulch. Certain foods are traditional for Candlemas, including crepes, pancakes and cakes, all grain-based foods. Pancakes and crepes are considered symbols of the sun because of their round shape and golden color. If you have a fireplace, clean out your hearth and then light a new fire. Sit around the fire and reflect on your hopes for the coming year. What do you hope to accomplish? What are you passionate about? What seeds do you wish to plant? Discuss these ideas with others or write them down in a journal but make them concrete in some way so that on Lammas (August 2nd, the festival of the first harvest), you can look back to see what progress you’ve made.

6 Brigid is the goddess of creative inspiration as well as reproductive fertility. This is a good time for sharing creative work, or, if you don’t think of yourself as especially creative, an idea that worked or a plan that materialized. Thank the Goddess for her inspiration, perhaps by dedicating a future work to her.

Making Pledges and Commitments Since Candlemas is a time of new beginnings, this is a good day to ritually celebrate all things new. Plan a ceremony to name a new baby, officially welcome a new person into a family or plight your troth to your beloved. Make a commitment to a goal (like a New Year’s Resolution); this would be an especially powerful thing to do in a group. In San Francisco, the Reclaiming Collective sponsors a big public ritual called Brigid, which focuses on political commitment. After acknowledging despair over the events of the past year, the participants reflect on the source of their own power and then make a pledge in front of the community about the work they intend to do during the coming year. During this ritual, the flames in a cauldron represent Brigid’s Sacred Flame, the fire of inspiration and passion, while a punch bowl filled with waters gathered from all over the world represents Brigid’s Holy Well, the source of healing and purification. If you plan your own ceremony, use these two powerful symbols: fire and water. For instance, wash your hands and bathe your face in salt water, which is especially good for purification. Light a candle as you make your pledge. Incorporate the third symbol of this holiday—seeds—by planting a seed or bulb in a pot to symbolize your commitment, or by blessing a bowl or packet of seeds that you will plant later.

Purification and Renewal Have you ever given anything up for Lent? If not, you might consider it. You don’t have to be Catholic to gain spiritual benefits from the voluntary surrender of something you cherish. You can give up something frivolous or something serious, but it should be something you will notice. Folk wisdom says it takes six weeks (or approximately the 40 days of Lent) to establish a new habit, so you may end up with a lifestyle change. The kids in our neighborhood have eagerly embraced the idea of giving up something for Lent. We know one little girl who gave up TV for Lent and another who gave up catsup, her favorite food. In the last two years, I’ve given up alcohol and coffee for Lent. Forty days is enough time to notice the difference in the way you feel without a favorite substance or distraction. Since Candlemas is often considered the beginning of spring, you can perform another ritual act of purification: spring cleaning. This would be a good time to do a thorough house cleaning, sweeping the floors with salt water, banishing the gloom of winter and creating a sparkling, shiny new setting for spring.

Celebrating Easter

The spring equinox is one of the four great solar festivals of the year. Day and night are equal, poised and balanced, but about to tip over on the side of light. The spring equinox is sacred to dawn, youth, the morning star and the east. The Saxon goddess, Eostre (from whose name we get the direction East and Easter) is a dawn goddess, like Aurora and Eos. Just as the dawn is the time of new light, so the vernal equinox is the time of new life.

The New Year

In many traditions, this is the start of the new year. The Roman year began on the ides of March (15th). The astrological year begins on the equinox when the sun moves into the first sign of the zodiac, Aries, the ram. The Greek God Ares is equivalent to the Roman Mars for whom the month of March is named. Between the 12th century and 1752, March 25th was the day on which the year changed in England and Ireland. March 25, 1212 was the day after March 24, 1211. I like to celebrate the festival of Nawruz, Persian New Year, which falls on the spring equinox. We fix a special dinner of seven food dishes that begin with ‘S.’ Since we don’t know enough Arabic, we use English words and eat salad, salami, soup, squash, etc. The table is decorated with a mirror, a bowl of water with one freshly-picked green leaf floating in it, a candelabra containing a candle for every child in the house, a copy of the Koran (or other sacred text), rose water, sweets, fruits, a fish, yogurt and colored eggs.

The Coming of the Spring

Although we saw the first promise of spring at Candlemas in the swelling buds, there were still nights of frost and darkness ahead. Now spring is manifest. Demeter is reunited with her daughter, Kore (the essence of spring), who has been in the Underworld for six months, and the earth once again teems with life. The month of March contains holidays dedicated to all the great mother goddesses: Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite, Cybele and the Virgin Mary. The goddess shows herself in the blossoms, the leaves on the trees, the sprouting of the crops, the mating of birds, the birth of young animals. In the agricultural cycle, it is time for planting. We are assured that life will continue. Gilbert Murray in Five Stages of Greek Religion writes about the passion behind the Greek celebration of Easter: Anyone who has been in Greece at Easter time, especially among the more remote peasants, must have been struck by the emotion of suspense and excitement, with which they wait for the announcement “Christos aneste,” “Christ is risen!” and the response “Alethos aneste,” “He has really risen!” [An old peasant woman] explained her anxiety: “If

9 Christ does not rise tomorrow we shall have no harvest this year.” We are evidently in the presence of an emotion and a fear which, beneath its Christian colouring and, so to speak, transfiguration, is in its essence . . . a relic from a very remote pre-Christian past.

Resurrection from the Dead

Murray then goes on to recount the myths of the Year Gods—Attis, Adonis, Osiris, and Dionysus— who like Christ die and are reborn each year. These gods are always the son of a God and a mortal woman. The son is a savior who saves his people in some way, sometimes through sacrifice. He is the vegetation, dying each year (at harvest) to be reborn in spring. In ancient Rome, the ten-day rite in honor of Attis, son of the great goddess Cybele, began on March 15th. A pine tree, which represented Attis, was chopped down, wrapped in a linen shroud, decorated with violets and placed in a sepulcher in the temple. On the Day of Blood or Black Friday, the priests of the cult gashed themselves with knives as they danced ecstatically, sympathizing with Cybele in her grief and helping to restore Attis to life. Two days later, a priest opened the sepulcher at dawn, revealing that it was empty and announcing that the god was saved. This day was known as Hilaria or the Day of Joy, a time of feasting and merriment. Sound familiar? Easter is the Christian version of the same myth. Even the name Easter is stolen. It comes from the Saxon dawn-goddess Eostre, whose festival was celebrated on the spring equinox. The date of Easter is still determined by the old moon cycle. It is always the first Sunday on or after the first full moon after the spring equinox. On Good Friday, Christ is crucified, a willing sacrifice. Altars are stripped, candles extinguished to represent the darkness of the grave. But on Easter, light springs from the darkness, Christ rises from the tomb. If you’ve never attended an Easter vigil, I highly recommend it. (I usually go to a Russian or Greek Orthodox church so I don’t know what the ceremony is like in other Christian churches.) Shortly before midnight all the lights are extinguished and the thronged church is dark and silent. Everyone is holding an unlit candle. The priest lights the Paschal candle, which has been ritually blessed and inscribed. He then lights the candles of those nearby, who light the candles of their neighbors, until the church is ablaze with light and filled with song. According to my Catholic missal, one of the prayers used during this part of the ceremony (which is called the Service of the Light), goes like this: We pray you, therefore, O Lord, that this candle, consecrated in honor of your name, may continue endlessly to scatter the darkness of this night. May it be received as a sweet fragrance and mingle with the lights of heaven. May the morning star find its flame burning, that Star which knows no setting, which came back from limbo . . .

Christ is like the morning Star because he descended into Death (the Underworld) and emerged again, like Attis, like Kore, like Inanna and Ishtar.

10 Eggs and Seeds

Eggs are one of the symbols of this festival since they represent new life and potential. Folklore tells us (combining two themes of the season) that eggs balance on their ends most easily at the equinox. Z Budapest in Grandmother of Time says that eggs were dyed red (the color of life) on the Festival of Astarte (March 17). The beautifully decorated eggs from the Ukraine (Pysanky) are covered with magical symbols for protection, fertility, wisdom, strength and other qualities. They are given as gifts and used as charms. Seeds are like eggs. While eggs contain the promise of new animal life, seeds hold the potential of a new plant. In ancient Italy in the spring, women planted gardens of Adonis. They filled urns with grain seeds, kept them in the dark and watered them every two days. This custom persists in Sicily. Women plant seeds of grains, lentils, fennel, lettuce or flowers in baskets or pots. When they sprout, the stalks are tied with red ribbons and the gardens are placed on graves on Good Friday. They symbolize the triumph of life over death.

Celebrating

Blend ideas from the many traditions described above to create your own ceremony to honor the spring. Decorate with budding twigs, flowers, willow catkins, sprouting bulbs. Red and green are the colors of this festival. Red represents blood, the blood of sacrifice and of life. Green symbolizes the growth of the plants. Honor various spring deities with their flowers: Narcissus and Hyacinthus with those blooms, the red anemone for Adonis, violets for Attis, roses and lilies for the goddesses. This is a great time for feasting and the decoration of the table is as important as the food. I like the ceremonial Nawruz dinner, but anything which evokes spring is fine. Helen Farias in her seasonal newsletter, Octava, points out that certain foods are associated with springtime festivals: cheese, butter, eggs, pancakes, wheaten cakes, hot cross buns. Since this is a time when young animals are being born, milk is now available for making cheese and butter. In Poland, according to Dorothy Spicer in The Book of Festivals, a little lamb made of butter or sugar is placed in the center of the Easter table, which is laden with food and decorated with eggs, red paper cut-outs and festoons of green. Eggs, symbolize new life, of course, and wheaten cakes, grain. In Italy, colored eggs; are baked in braided loaves of bread on Easter, combining the two symbols. Hot cross buns, a traditional Easter food, may be very ancient. A wheaten cake marked with a cross was found in Herculaneum, preserved since 79 AD, and may have been used in spring rites.

Decorating Eggs This is one of my favorite ways to celebrate spring. I’ve decorated eggs with nail polish, with food coloring and vinegar, and with commercial egg dyes. This year, I want to try some natural dyes. Pauline Campanelli in Wheel of the Year recommends boiling a single onion skin with a few eggs to get a soft orange, a handful of onion skins to get rust, one-half teaspoon of turmeric for a sunny yellow, and beet juice and vinegar for pink. If you boil eggs with vinegar and several of the outer leaves of cabbage and

11 allow it to cool overnight, the eggs will be a bright robin’s-egg blue, but they must be handled carefully since the dye comes off easily. Once, having finally purchased the appropriate tool, a kitska (I got mine at the University Bookstore in the art supply department but you can probably get one at any art supply store), I made pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs). You place a little bit of beeswax in the funnel of the kitska, then melt it over a candle flame and draw on the eggshell. It helps to have a lathe to hold the egg if you want even lines. Begin with a white egg and put wax on all the areas you want to stay white, then dye the egg yellow and cover all the areas with wax which you want to remain yellow, and so forth through orange, red and a dark color (brown, black or purple). When the egg is done, place it in a low-temperature oven for a few minutes to melt the wax, which is then rubbed off to reveal the intricate designs and glowing colors of your egg. I loved the delicacy of the designs, the smell of the wax and the candle, and the trance-like quality of the whole process. If you want to use eggs as talismans, Campanelli says they should be raw and whole (not blown out). Decorate them with symbols of the qualities you wish for yourself and your family and friends in the coming year. For example, draw sprouting leaves on an egg and bury it in your garden to help stimulate your plants.

Blessing and Planting Seeds On the last spring equinox, my family celebrated with a simple but very effective ritual, based on the ceremony suggested by Nancy Brady Cunningham in Feeding the Spirit. Each person chose a seed or bulb that was meaningful to them. We blessed the seeds with a prayer from Campanelli: Now is the dark half of the year passing Now do the days grow light, and the Earth grows warm I summon the spirit of these seeds Which have slept in darkness Awaken, stir, and swell Soon you will be planted in the earth To grow and bring forth new fruit Blessed be!

We sat quietly and visualized our plants in full bloom. Then we invoked each of the four elements necessary for the plants’ growth. We placed the seed in a pot of soil and patted down the earth, poured water on it, breathed on it three times to represent the air, and held the pot over a candle (or up to the sun if outside) to represent the element fire (the warmth of the sun). Add another layer of meaning to this ceremony by choosing seeds which represent the things you want to grow during the new year—wisdom, understanding, patience, etc. Visualize those qualities coming into full bloom in your life as you plant your seeds.

Celebrating May Day

Like Candlemas, Lammas and Halloween, May Day is one of the comer days which fall between the solar festivals of the year (the equinoxes and solstices). The ancient Celts called this holiday Beltane and began celebrating at sunset on April 30th. It marked the beginning of summer, time to move with the flocks up to the summer pastures. In Germany, April 30 is Walpurgisnacht, the night when witches fly on their brooms to mountaintop gatherings where they dance all night around bonfires. It is named after St. Walpurga, who came from England in the 8th century to become the abbess of a German monastery. It seems a little hard to believe that this holy woman would have her name associated with such licentious rites until you consider that early monasteries evolved from pagan colleges of priests and priestesses. On this night, St. Walpurga and her followers went up into the mountains to perform sacred rituals.

The May Queen

Like Halloween, this is a night when witches, fairies and ghosts wander freely. The veil between the worlds is thin. The Queen of the Fairies rides out on a snow-white horse, looking for mortals to lure away to Fairyland for seven years. Folklore says that if you sit beneath a tree on this night, you will see her or hear the sound of her horse’s bells as she rides by. If you hide your face, she will pass you by, but if you look at her, she may choose you. Ellen Kushner wrote a wonderful book about a poet, Thomas the Rhymer, who chooses to go with the Fairy Queen. Halloween is a festival of death, a time for letting go and mourning. May Day, on the opposite end of the Wheel of the Year is about life, about falling in love and frolicking in the woods. Death is an ending but also a beginning. Falling in love is a beginning which is also a death. The Goddess who manifests herself at May Day calls you out of yourself and you may never return, at least not to the world you knew. Choosing a May Queen and King used to be part of celebrating May Day. A young girl dressed in white represented the Goddess in her maiden aspect. The merry month of May and the word maiden both come from the same source, a word which simply means young. I grew up in the Catholic Church and my parish celebrated May Day, which was my favorite ceremony, probably because it is almost completely pagan. All the little girls dressed in white with floral wreaths on their heads and baskets of flowers in their hands. We processed into the parking lot (all good May Day festivals take place outdoors}, scattering flowers as we went until we reached the statue of Mary, which was taken outside for this occasion. The girl chosen for the honor placed a wreath on Mary’s head while we all sang: O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the angels and Queen of the May.

14 Bringing in the May

In old England, the young people went out into the woods on May Eve and stayed all night, returning in the morning, laden with flowers and green branches. The Puritan writer Philip Stubbes has an interesting way of explaining the nature of the sacred rites which took place in the woods: I have heard it credibly reported by men of great gravity, credit and reputation; that of forty, threescore or a hundred maids going to the woods over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.

Many May Day customs involve flowers and green branches. Flowers are woven into wreaths to exchange as gifts between lovers or to hang outdoors as decoration. Or flowers are placed in baskets and left on doorsteps for the recipients to find when they arise in the morning. Hawthorn is particularly auspicious since it begins blooming when the weather is warm enough for planting. Anyone who went out into the woods and found a branch of flowering hawthorn (also called may) would bring it triumphantly into the village (thereby bringing in the May) and announcing the start of planting season. Sometimes flowers were given as messages: plum for the glum, elder for the surly, thorns for the prickly, pear for the popular.

May Poles and May Dances

Spicer says in The Book of Festivals that in Eastern Europe, a young man goes into the woods on May Eve, chops down a young fir tree, decorates it with ribbons and colored eggshells, and plants it outside the bedroom window of his sweetheart. This is an early precursor of the Maypole. Stubbs again reports (with some disgust) on the revelry which surrounds the Maypole: They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this Maypole (this stinking idol rather) which is covered all over with flowers and greens, bound round about with ribbons from top to bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colors, with two or three hundred men and women and children following it with great devotion. And this being reared up with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they strew flowers on the ground, bind green boughs about it, and set up summer halls, bowers and arbors, hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself.

The Maypole is a symbol with many meanings. Often considered a phallic symbol, it also resembles the garlanded trees associated with moon goddesses. In the Phrygian rites of Attis, celebrated around the spring equinox, a fir tree was chopped down, wrapped in a shroud and placed in a tomb. Resurrected three days later, it was decorated and danced around. In some places, May Day ceremonies took place beneath a sacred tree which was not uprooted. These trees represented the world-tree, the axis between heaven and earth.

15 The Maypole dance is a round dance of alternating male and female dancers, weaving in and out in a maze movement, plaiting ribbons as they go. Maypole dances fulfilled social and sacred functions. They helped people flirt and mingle socially. They also raised energy in a patterned and focused way.

Celebrating

Creating Your Own Bower Bring the May into your life by bringing home green branches, flowers and branches of flowering trees. Transform your house into a bower. Make a wreath to hang on the door or to crown your version of the Goddess. This is a time for giving gifts. Gather flowers with special messages for friends and relatives. Make up your own explanation of the meaning of each flower and give it along with the bouquet. For friends at a distance, send pressed flowers or May Day cards or packets of flower seeds. Barbara Walker in Women’s Rituals suggests other appropriate gifts including perfume, incense, candied flower petals, herbs, sachets and artificial flowers. May Eve is one of those nights, like the winter solstice, when you should stay up all night. But if you can’t, at least go for a walk in the night, listening for the bells that herald the approach of the Fairy Queen. Or run around, under cover of the darkness, leaving May baskets on doorsteps. On May 1st, wear your most colorful clothes or dress all in green (the color of the fairies). Consider wearing a flower in your hair. If festivals were associated with decades, May Day would definitely be the Sixties because of its association with sensuality and free sex, sweet smells and Nature, flowers and bells. I couldn’t find any information about special foods associated with May Day but there is a special beverage. Pauline Campanelli in The Wheel of the Year, gives a recipe for making May wine using sweet woodruff which blooms on May Day and is sacred to the Goddess. Put a few blossoming sprigs of woodruff in a glass punch bowl, add a bottle or two of white wine (or sparkling grape juice), a cup of two of strawberry wine (or juice), sugar to taste and a handful of fresh strawberries. Drink a toast to the glory of May. You might want to use this in a love ritual.

Celebrating Your Sexuality Even if you are celibate, you can celebrate your sexuality on this night. Treat yourself like a Goddess or a God. Take a long luxurious bath in scented water. Anoint yourself with oils. Crown yourself with flowers. Indulge yourself. Sip your May wine. Honor your sexual choices. In your journal, recall the times when sex was magical, when you felt alluring or you fell in love. Write about smoldering glances, the times your body caught fire, the sweetness of a first kiss or caress. If you have a partner, celebrate sex as a sacred activity. Make the time you spend together and the space you inhabit special. Light candles (but be sure to blow them out afterwards) or strew the bed with rose petals. Notice how your lover represents the God or Goddess to you. This is the time to celebrate attraction and pleasure.

Celebrating Midsummer

The summer solstice is the time when the sun is in its glory. This is the longest day of the year and the shortest night. Summer solstice customs are also associated with fixed dates: June 24th is Midsummer’s Day; June 23rd is Midsummer’s Eve. As the name midsummer indicates, this is considered the height of summer. Yet there is an undertone of darkness in the light. While we celebrate the power of the sun, we also note its decline. From now on, the hours of sunlight will decrease.

The Fire and the Sun

The great solar festival of the year is celebrated from North Africa to Scandinavia with fire. This is a traditional time for a bonfire which is lit as the sun sets. People dance around the fire clockwise and carry lit torches. In some places, they set fire to wheels of hay which are rolled downhill. Flowers and May Day wreaths are tossed into the fire. They bum and die just as the heat of the summer sun consumes the spring and brings us closer to the decline of autumn and the death of vegetation in winter. As we begin the decline, it’s important to remember that the wheel of the year is a circle. The spring will come again. The sun will triumph over the darkness again. Thus, the circle is an important symbol. Wreathes are hung on doors. People gaze at the fire through wreathes and wear necklaces of golden flowers. Before the calendar was changed in the 18th century, Midsummer fell on July 4th. When you celebrate the Fourth of July, think of all those brilliant fireworks and blazing Catherine wheels as devotions in honor of the sun.

St. John and Honeymoons

Midsummer’s Eve is also called St. John’s Eve. The official version says that St. John was assigned this feast because he was born six months before Christ (who gets the other great solar festival, the winter solstice). Actually it may have more to do with the story of St. John losing his head to Salome. In ancient times, a ritual sacrifice was made to the goddess at midsummer. Other midsummer symbols also accumulate around St. John. He’s the patron of shepherds and beekeepers. This is a time to acknowledge those wild things which man culls but cannot tame, like the sheep and bees. The full moon which occurs in June is sometimes called the Mead Moon. The hives are full of honey. In ancient times, the honey was fermented and made into mead. According to Pauline Campanelli in The Wheel of the Year, this is the derivation of honeymoon. This is a traditional time for honoring water, perhaps because it plays a vital role in maintaining life while the sun is blazing overhead. Several of the goddesses worshipped at midsummer—Matuta, Anahita

18 and Kupala—are associated with moisture and dampness. St. John baptizes with water while Christ baptizes with fire and the Holy Spirit. In Mexico, St. John presides over all waters. People dress wells and fountains with flowers, candles and paper festoons on his feast day. They go out and bathe at midnight in the nearest river. In the city, they celebrate at the bathhouse or pool with diving and swimming contests.

Herbs and Lovers

Midsummer’s Eve is also known as Herb Evening. This is the most potent night (and midnight the most potent time) for gathering magical herbs, particularly St. John’s wort, vervain, mugwort, mistletoe, ivy and fem seed. In some legends, a special plant, which is guarded by demons, flowers only on this one night a year. Successfully picking it gives one magical powers, like being able to understand the language of the trees. This is also a time for lovers. An old Swedish proverb says “Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.” According to Spicer in The Book of Festivals, Irish girls drop melted lead into water and interpret the shapes it makes. In Spain, girls do the same with eggs. In Poland, they combine three of the symbols of the holiday for divination. Girls make a wreath of wild flowers, put a candle in the middle, set it adrift on the river and tell the future by observing its fate.

Celebrating

This is a great festival to celebrate outdoors. Go camping. Go out into the woods or up into the mountains or down to the beach. Find some place where you can build a bonfire and light it when the sun sets. Bring along plenty of flowers (especially roses or yellow flowers like marigolds). Fashion them into wreaths, wear them as you dance around the fire and throw them into the fire at the end of the night. Bring along sparklers too (but use them carefully). Indoors, use whatever symbols represent warmth and light to you (e.g., golden discs, sunflowers, shiny metal trays, chili pepper lights). Gather magical and healing herbs at night on June 23. Hang St. John’s wort over your doors and windows for protection; toss some on the fire as well. Harvest your garden herbs now so they will be extra potent. To acknowledge the gift of water in your everyday life, decorate the faucets in your house. Z Budapest in The Grandmother of Time suggests walking to the nearest body of water, making a wish and then throwing in a rose you have kissed to carry your wish home. She provides the following wishing poem: Yes, you are here in the soft buzzing grass. Yes, you are listening among the flowering gardens. Yes, you are shining from the most royal blue sky. Yes, you are granting me what I wish tonight: Grant me a healthy life rich with high purpose A true partner to share my joys and my tears, Wisdom to hear your voice giving me guidance, Wealth to give to others as you have given it to me.

19 Honoring Your Strength The sun is associated with will, vitality, accomplishment, victory and fame. As you throw your flowers into the fire, acknowledge your accomplishments. Write about these at length in your journal, perhaps while sipping a cup of herb tea sweetened with honey. Or gather your friends in a circle and go around several times with each person boasting about their strengths. Assign a different topic for each round, for instance, aspirations, courage, achievement, competence. Toast each other (with mead, if you can find it). This is your night to shine.

Celebrating Lammas

The year is 1100. The date is August 1. The monks in the abbey at Gloucester are celebrating the holy- day of St. Peter in Chains. One of the monks wakes from a strange dream in which God promises to strike down the wicked King who has abused the Holy Church. His superior, Abbot Serio, on hearing of the dream sends a warning to the King, William the Red, who has oppressed all of England with taxes and disgusted many with his licentiousness and blasphemy. Red, as he is called, receives the message the following day while preparing to indulge in one of his favorite sports, hunting, in the New Forest. Although there are no longer any people dwelling in the New Forest—they were all cleared out by Red’s father, William the Conqueror—there are rumors that it’s a hotbed of pagan activity. And August 2 is an important pagan holy-day. The Saxons call it Lammas, the loaf-mass. William the Red laughs at the warning from the monks and goes out hunting. A short time later, he is dead, struck in the chest by a stray arrow, and his brother, Henry, who was in the hunting party, is riding hot-foot for Winchester and the crown. Now some people say that William the Red was a Lammas sacrifice, that having made a wasteland of his kingdom, he was killed by the people (or the Gods) as a sacrifice to bring new life to the land. And some people say his brother Henry had him assassinated. And some people say that both versions are true. This story comes to my mind when I think of Lammas because I’ve spent the last ten years researching a medieval novel set in the time of William the Red and Henry. But this tale of sacrifice and hunting, a dying King and a wasted land, embodies many of the dominant themes of Lammas, one of the four quarter- days and perhaps the least well-known. The Celts celebrate this festival from sunset August 1 until sunset August 2 and call it Lugnasad after the God Lugh. It is the wake of Lugh, the Sun-King, whose light begins to dwindle after the summer solstice. The Saxon holiday of Lammas celebrates the harvesting of the grain. The first sheaf of wheat is ceremonially reaped, threshed, milled and baked into a loaf. The grain dies so that the people might live. Eating this bread, the bread of the Gods, gives us life. If all this sounds vaguely Christian, it is. In the sacrament of Communion, bread is blessed, becomes the body of God and is eaten to nourish the faithful. This Christian Mystery echoes the pagan Mystery of the Grain God. Grain has always been associated with Gods who are killed and dismembered and then resurrected from the Underworld by the Goddess—Gods like Tammuz, Osiris and Adonis. The story of Demeter and Persephone is a story about the cycle of death and rebirth associated with grain. Demeter, the fertility Goddess, will not allow anything to grow until she finds her daughter who has been carried off to the Underworld. The Eleusinian Mysteries culminated in the revelation of a single ear of corn, a symbol to the initiate of the cyclical nature of life, for the corn is both seed and fruit, promise and fulfillment. You can adapt the themes of Lugnasad and Lammas to create your own ceremony for honoring the passing of the light and the reaping of the grain.

22 Honoring the Grain God or Goddess

Bake a loaf of bread on Lammas. If you’ve never made bread before, this is a good time to start. Honor the source of the flour as you work with it; remember it was once a plant growing on the mother Earth. If you have a garden, add something you’ve harvested—herbs or onions or corn—to your bread. If you don’t feel up to making wheat bread, make corn bread. Or gingerbread people. Or popcorn. What’s most important is intention. All that is necessary to enter sacred time is awareness of the meaning of your actions. Shape the dough in the figure of a man or a woman and give your grain person a name. If he’s a man, you could call him Lugh, the Sun-King, or John Barleycorn or the Pillsbury Dough Boy or Adonis or Osiris or Tammuz. Pauline Campanelli in The Wheel of the Year suggests names for female figures: She of the Corn, She of the Threshing Floor, She of the Seed, She of the Great Loaf (these come from the Cyclades where they are the names of fertility figures), Freya (the Anglo-Saxon and Norse fertility Goddess who is also called the Lady and the Giver of the Loaf), the Bride (Celtic) and Ziva or Siva (the Grain Goddess of the Ukraine, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia).

Feast Like all holidays, Lammas calls for a feast. When your dough figure is baked and ready to eat, tear him or her apart with your fingers. You might want to start the feast with the Lord’s Prayer, emphasizing the words “Give us this day our daily bread.” The next part of the ceremony is best done with others. Feed each other hunks of bread (or gingerbread people or popcorn), putting the food in the other person’s mouth with words like “May you never go hungry,” “May you always be nourished,” “Eat of the bread of life” or “May you live forever.” Offer each other drinks of water or wine with similar words. As if you were at a wake, make toasts to the passing summer, recalling the best moments of the year so far.

Com Dolly Another way to honor the grain Goddess is to make a com doll. This is a fun project to do with kids. Take dried out com husks and tie them together in the shape of a woman. She’s your visual representation of the harvest. As you work on her, think about what you harvested this year. Give your com dolly a name, perhaps one of the names of the Grain Goddess or one that symbolizes your personal harvest. Dress her in a skirt, apron and bonnet and give her a special place in your house. She is yours till the spring when you will plant her with the new com, returning to the earth that which She has given you.

Food for Thought Lammas is a festival of regrets and farewells, of harvest and preserves. Reflect on these topics alone in the privacy of your journal or share them with others around a fire. Lugnasad is one of the great Celtic fire-days, so if at all possible have your feast around a bonfire. While you’re sitting around the fire, you might want to tell stories. Look up the myths of any of the grain Gods and Goddesses mentioned above and try retelling them in your own words. Regrets: Think of the things you meant to do this summer or this year that are not coming to fruition. Let them go. You can project your regrets onto natural objects like pine

23 cones and throw them into the fire, releasing them. Or you can write them on dried com husks (as suggested by Nancy Brady Cunningham in Feeding the Spirit) or on a piece of paper and bum them. Farewells: What is passing from your life? What is over? Say goodbye to it. As with regrets, you can find visual symbols and throw them into the fire, the lake or the ocean. You can also bury them in the ground, perhaps in the form of bulbs which will manifest in a new form in the spring. Harvest: What have you harvested this year? What seeds have you planted that are sprouting? Find a visual way to represent these, perhaps creating a decoration for your house or altar which represents the harvest to you. Or you could make a com dolly or learn to weave wheat into wall hnagings, which were made by early grain farmers as a resting place for the harvest spirits. Preserves: This is also a good time for making preserves, either literally or symbolically. As you tum the summer’s fruit into jams, jellies and chutneys for winter, think about the fruits that you have gathered this year and how you can hold on to them. How can you keep them sweet in your store of memory?

Celebrating Harvest

The autumn equinox is a calendar festival which occurs when the night and the day are the same length, hence its name: equi (equal) nox (night). It is celebrated on the day the Sun moves into Libra, the sign of balance.

The Feast of Ingathering

The equinox occurs around the same time as an important agri-cultural festival: the harvest. In the olden days in rural England, the last sheaf was brought in from the fields ceremoniously. Sometimes it was dressed as a woman and called the Com Mother or Old Woman or the Mare. Sometimes a young girl stood in for the goddess and was carried home in a cart dressed in her finest and feted by all (an early predecessor of today’s beauty pageant queens who ride on floats in parades). The last sheaf was then laid in a manger or given a place of honor in the house. The celebration concluded with a great and usually raucous feast, featuring the fruits of the harvest (with an emphasis on bread and wine). Despite the merriment of harvest-time, this is also a time of trepidation and sorrow. What has been gathered and stored must be sufficient to last through the winter. The sun withdraws, taking with it the light and warmth of summer. This idea is embodied in the story of Demeter searching for her daughter Persephone who has been abducted by Hades, the King of the Underworld. Demeter wanders the earth, night and day, carrying a torch, looking for her daughter and grieving. Since she is the goddess of fertility (Mother Nature is a contemporary equivalent}, when she withdraws from the world, the earth becomes barren. Eventually Demeter finds her daughter reigning as Queen of the Dead. Despite her mother’s warnings (“Never accept food offered by handsome strangers in the Underworld”), Persephone has eaten some pomegranate seeds (a wonderful symbol of fertility and sexuality—in some versions of the myth, she’s pregnant or has given birth to a son). Because of this she must spend six months of every year in the Underworld. This myth has many levels of meaning. It introduces the Goddess in her triple aspect—the young maiden, the mother whose bountiful presence enriches the earth, and the Queen of the Dead. It explains the death and re-emergence of vegetation. It also describes the process of separation necessary for maturity and growth. When Demeter finds Persephone again, they meet as equals, woman to woman, mother to mother. So this story is about the cycle of human life and consciousness as well, of the necessity of embracing darkness and fears in order to transcend them.

26 The Eleusinian Mysteries

The story of Demeter and Persephone is the underlying story for the Eleusinian Mysteries which, according to Z Budapest in The Grandmother of Time, began on the autumn equinox. For centuries, people came from all over the world to Eleusis to participate in a series of structured rituals designed to produce a change of consciousness in the participants (much like the mystery religions of today which generally call themselves other things). Most of the initiates were women, but men (including Sophocles, Aristides and Cicero) also took part. Participants were instructed to keep secret what happened during the mysteries—very likely the experiences were hard to put in words. We know that the participants spent the first few days re-enacting Demeter’s wanderings by parading around the city carrying symbols of the Goddess (grain, baskets and torches), accompanied by an image of Demeter in a cart (all customs which persist in harvest ceremonies). The culmination of the mystery took place in a subterranean temple where the initiates waited in darkness. Probably there was a ritual drama. The early Christian fathers who disapproved of the rites claimed that the hierophant and the priestess had sex. We do know that torches suddenly flared up in the darkness creating a sea of light and fire, a cry went up that the Goddess had given birth and a single ear of corn was displayed in silence. Through this revelation, the initiates recognized their own immortality and divinity. Plutarch wrote about his initiation: When a man dies he is like those who are initiated into the Mysteries. Our whole life is a journey by tortuous ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it come terrors, shuddering fear, amazement. Then a light that moves to meet you, pure meadows that receive you, songs and dances and holy apparitions.

Celebrating Short of recreating the Eleusinian Mysteries in your life, what else can you do to celebrate the autumn equinox? As with any holy day, decorating and feasting are important aspects of the celebration. Collect colorful autumn leaves in a basket. Display the fruits of the harvest—corn, gourds, nuts, grapes, apples— preferably in a cornucopia (a horn of plenty). Or decorate with wildflowers, acorns, nuts, berries, cocoons, anything which represents the harvest to you. Plan a meal that uses seasonal and symbolic fruits and vegetables—for example, bread, squash, com (of course), berries, apples, cider and wine. Hold up an ear of com in silence. Cut open a pomegranate and feed each other the seeds. I borrowed the following song (which is similar to traditional Harvest Home songs) from the equinox ritual described by Starhawk in The Spiral Dance. Use this or make up your own variation as a grace. Have everyone at the feast repeat this, adding their own thanks. We have sown, we have tended We have grown, we have gathered We have reaped a good harvest Lady, we thank you for your gifts Lord, we thank you for your bounty I thank you for [fill in yourself]

27 Giving Thanks Give thanks to the Goddess for the gifts you’ve received this year. You might want to make a list of your gifts or find objects which represent them. Consider how you can make your offering to her. You can represent your thanks symbolically (tying a ribbon on a tree branch or pouring some wine on the ground) or directly (by making a stronger commitment to recycling or scattering seed for the birds). If you buy (or make) a basket to use while shopping, you’ll be purchasing a symbol of Demeter and helping save the lives of her trees at the same time.

Balance Use this time of balance to look closely at the balance in your life. How do you balance your personal needs with your commitments to the outside world? How do you receive and how do you give? You might want to reflect on this in your journal or make it concrete by putting objects on a scale or drawing a picture. For everything which represents one side of the scale to you (for instance, a book representing quiet time alone), place something on the other side which represents its opposite (a letter or phone for reaching out to friends).

Creating For those of us who spend time in or around schools (as teachers, students or the parents of school- age children), this is not a time of ending but of beginning. We are just starting to get back into the rhythm of the school year. We may feel sad that the playfulness and freedom of summer are disappearing as we fall back into our fall routines and structures, but we may also have more focus and direction. This is a good time to begin new projects. As the nights lengthen, you have more time to be alone, to concentrate, to nurture a seed which may not blossom until the spring. Give yourself permission to try something absolutely new. Take a class which teaches you how to do something you have always wanted to do. Call your local community college and ask for a copy of their Fall class catalog. In Starhawk’s autumn equinox ritual, there is a time for weaving seed pods, shells, feathers and small pine cones into strands of yarn while thinking of what you want to create in your life. This or some variation on it would be a wonderful group activity or family project. You could also just set aside a certain amount of time (an evening, a Saturday) during which you can create whatever you want.

Celebrating Halloween

I love Halloween. It’s one of my favorite holidays. As the parent of a child who is still trick-or-treating age, I get to wander down dark streets in the crisp air with the leaves crunching under my feet, passing strange apparitions, always with a hint of fear, the sense that something is lurking in the darkness. I like putting on a costume, displaying some aspect of myself (usually glamorous) that I normally hide. But this year I plan to pay more attention to the main theme of this dark festival: death. Halloween is one of the great quarter-days or pagan festivals which fall midway between the solstices and equinoxes. The Saxons called it Winter’s Eve. The Celts called it Samhain after their Lord of Death; it was also their new year. Since all Celtic feasts were celebrated from sunset to sunset, it began at sunset on October 31st and continued until sunset November 1. As with other great pagan holidays, the Catholic Church found a way to claim it. The Feast of All Saints, which came into existence in the 7th century, was commemorated on November 1 under the name All Hallows Day, from which we get the name Halloween (the eve of Hallows). The following day, November 2, is All Souls Day, a day when the priest wears black, the church is draped with mourning and the faithful pray for the souls of their departed, with the hope of shortening their time in Purgatory.

The Month of Blood

There are some obvious reasons why this place on the wheel of the year is associated with death. The sun is approaching its nadir, the leaves are falling from the trees, the death and decay in the natural world remind us of our own mortality. Martinmas, November 11th, was the traditional time for slaughtering the cattle, sheep and pigs which could not be maintained during the winter. The Welsh called November the Month of Slaughter while the Saxons called it the Month of Blood. In the Odyssey, Odysseus summons the shades of the dead by sacrificing animals. Their blood drains into a pit and the restless shades come eagerly crowding up from the underworld. Odysseus holds them at bay with his sword until the particular spirit he wants comes forward, laps up the blood and then prophesies what will happen in the future. This scene combines the themes of fear, slaughter, death, the Underworld, ghosts and divination which are common to Halloween.

Day of the Dead

In Mexico, All Souls Day is called “Dia de Muertos” (Day of the Dead) and is a time for commemorating the dead by decorating their tombs (with marigolds, a flower sacred to the Aztecs) and inviting them to a feast in their honor. Families go to the cemetery for a picnic and eat skeleton cookies and sugar skull cakes.

30 Trick-or-treating derives from an ancient British custom of going from house to house begging for soul-cakes (usually made of barley and salt). Some say the soul-cakes were given to the priest to buy Masses for the souls of relatives in Purgatory. Others believe they were offerings to the dead. Candles flickering in the windows (or pumpkins) were meant to serve as beacon for the dead, just as on the similar holiday in Japan, lanterns are hung by the garden gates.

Celebrating

Decorating for this holy-day is easy since there are so many items available for Halloween which will set the proper tone of mortality: autumn leaves, skeletons, miniature coffins, skulls, tombstones, pumpkins carved with terrifying faces, black candles. The Folk Art Gallery in Seattle carries a selection of calaveras, macabre little skeleton figures doing wonderfully prosaic things like getting married and reading a newspaper. We buy one each year to add to our Dia de Muertos altar. Pumpkins, apples and nuts are harvested at this time of the year and are associated with various Halloween customs. After the apple harvest, it’s time to make wassail, a drink of hard apple cider (or soft apple juice) heated with spices and with whole apples floating on top. When the apples are heated enough they burst and make a froth on top of the wassail. While you enjoy the fruits of the harvest, you can honor their source by wassailing the trees. Go out to the trees which have shared their bounty with you and thank them, drink a toast and pour a libation on their roots. For a dramatic but simple Halloween, I recommend this piece of the long and beautiful Samhain ritual described by Starhawk in The Spiral Dance. Light candles in a dark room. Take a pomegranate and hold it up saying, “Behold, the fruit of life . . .” Put it down on a plate and cut it open with a knife saying “. . . which is death.” The ruby-red juice of the pomegranate will look like blood in the candlelight. Then hold up an especially shiny red apple—one that reminds you of the apple the stepmother gave Snow White—and say “Behold the fruit of death . . .” Put it down and slice it open horizontally rather than vertically. Hold it up so others can see the five-pointed star made by the seeds and say “. . . which is life.” Cut up the rest of the apple and feed it to each other or use it for one of the forms of divination described below. There are many ways you can honor the dead, starting with the simple act of setting out food for them. While you’re at home and can properly supervise, place lighted candles in the windows to serve as beacons for the spirits.

Host a Feast of the Dead Set a place at the table for the dead and offer them servings of the food you eat. Invite departed friends and relatives, ancestors and heroes. Ask the living participants to share a memory about someone who has died who was important to them. Light a candle for each person as you speak about them. In Feeding the Spirit, Cunningham suggests a variation of a Shinto tradition: cut out or draw pictures of things the dead would like. Then bum them in the fire (or candle flame), saying something like, “George, I am sending you new clothes for your journey in the spirit world.”

31 You can also make an altar for your ancestors. Our family has a Dia de Muertos altar, which my daughter began in elementary school. Each year we set it up, decorate it with marigolds and add new objects: a milk bone for a dead dog, sunflower seeds for a dead hamster, pizza for a dead grandfather (he didn’t really like pizza, but my daughter thinks he did). Z Budapest in Grandmother of Time suggests putting pictures of your departed relatives in the middle of the altar, burning white and yellow devotional candles and incense, and talking to them. If you feel uncomfortable talking out loud, write letters. You can burn these too and imagine the smoke carry-ing your message.

Divining the Future After being fed and entertained, the ghosts might provide oracular advice as they did for Odysseus. Since the spirits are so close to us on this night, this is an excellent time for all forms of divination. You have more access to your personal underworld, your unconscious. Consult your favorite oracle—the tarot cards, the I Ching, a Ouija board, runes, tea leaves or a crystal ball. Request images of what you can become or what you will do in the new year. There are many traditional forms of divination practiced on this night, most of them used to reveal the identity of your future spouse. If this is not something you need to know, ask for another vision. Several forms of divination involve apples. For instance, you are advised to take a candle, go alone to a mirror in a darkened room and eat the apple while looking into it, combing your hair all the while. The face of your lover—or the Devil—will appear over your shoulder. A variation of this says you only have to peel the apple while looking into the mirror. Or you can cut an apple into nine equal parts (that seems the hardest part of this method to me), eat eight of them, toss the ninth over your left shoulder, tum quickly and glimpse your future mate. I prefer the simpler method of peeling an apple so that the skin comes off in one continuous strip, throwing this over your left shoulder and looking to see the initial it forms. Since Gypsy girls and Celtic queens chose their consorts by tossing them an apple, you could take the ball into your own hands, so to speak, by tossing your chosen one an apple. Couples who want information about their relationship are advised to place a pair of nuts or apple pips in the fire and watch them. Unfortunately, the advice on how to interpret them varies. Some say if the nuts pop at the same time, the couple will marry. Others say this means they will spring apart. As with all oracles, your interpretation is the most important part. If you arc choosing from among several possibilities, name the nuts and then watch to see which one bursts first. In Montgomeryshire in Wales, the mash of nine sorts is served on Halloween. This mash contains potatoes, carrots, turnips, peas, parsnips, leeks, pepper, salt, enough milk to give it the right consistency and a wedding ring. Everyone eats a portion of the mash and the person who finds the wedding ring will be married first. I especially like the story from Welsh Folk Customs by Trefor Owen about the girl who undertook a particularly difficult form of divination. She walked around the leek patch in the garden nine times, plucked a leek with her teeth and slept with it under her pillow. This was so effective that her lover appeared—in the flesh. There is something to be said for helping the spirits provide the answer which is in your best interest.

Celebrating Yule

The seasonal celebrations of the wheel of the year are based on the religious concept of circular time, which is distinct from the historical and scientific notion that time is a line along which we are moving toward the future. In circular time, every beginning is an ending and every ending a beginning. The winter solstice is unique among days of the year—the time of the longest night and the shortest day. The dark triumphs, but only briefly. For the solstice is also a turning point. From now on (until the summer solstice, at any rate), the nights grow shorter and the days grow longer, the dark wanes and the Sun waxes in power. From the dark womb of the night, the light is born. Many of the customs associated with the winter solstice (and therefore with other midwinter festivals such as St. Lucy’s Day, Saturnalia, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years and Twelfth Night) derive from stories of a mighty battle between the dark and the light, which is won, naturally, by the light. Other traditions record this as the time a savior (the Sun-Child) is born to a virgin mother.

The Battle Between Old and New, Dark and Light

The Romans celebrated from December 17th to December 24th with a festival called the Saturnalia during which all work was put aside in favor of feasting and gambling. The social order was reversed, with masters waiting on their slaves. The Saturnalia is named after Saturn, who is often depicted with a sickle like the figures of Death or Old Father Time. Astrologically speaking, Saturn is “saturnine:” gloomy, old, dutiful and heavy. He was the God who ate his own children rather than let them surpass him. For new life to flourish, for the sun to rise again, it is necessary to vanquish this gloomy old fellow. Therefore, the feasting and merriment of the midwinter season are religiously mandated in order to combat the forces of gloom. The day following the Saturnalia, December 25th, was the Juvenalia, according to Z Budapest in The Grandmother of Time, a holiday in honor of children, who were entertained, feasted and given good luck talismans. This makes sense. After vanquishing the old King, it’s time to celebrate the new in the form of children, the New Year’s Baby, the Son of Man. Naturally this is the time of year at which the birth of Christ is celebrated since he is also the New King, the Light of the World who brings new life.

The Return of the Light

Light is the prominent feature of most midwinter festivals. In Sweden, on St. Lucy’s Day, December 13th, young girls don white dresses and a wreath of candles and awaken their families with cakes and song. Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights. During the midwinter holiday season, we decorate our houses

34 and Christmas trees and the Space Needle with multi-colored lights. We burn candles and a Yule log. All of these customs encourage the light to return. Celebrating Now you know you should enjoy yourself as much as possible on the winter solstice because this will bring back light (and lightness) into the world. Different traditions mention feasting, gambling, playing pranks, giving gifts, visiting, drinking, dressing up, forn-icating, putting on plays and staying up all night. During the dark of winter, you want to invoke all the forces of pleasure and love which make life worth living. Do whatever works best for you. Decorating for this festival is easy since you can use all your Christ-mas decorations. Holly is an emblem of the King of the Old Year (Saturn). Mistletoe and oak arc emblems of the new King. Evergreens and wreaths represent rebirth and the circle of life. Fill your home with candles and Christmas lights. Place them on mirrors, hang up lots of sparkly ornaments and prisms and tinsel so you can create as much light as possible.

Sitting in the Dark

Earlier traditions focused on the battle between the dark and the light, but we know both are valuable. Honor the dark before calling in the light. This is the season when animals hibernate and nature sleeps and we can turn inward too. Perhaps some of the depression people feel during the holidays comes from not providing a space for feeling the sadness associated with this season. Set aside time (hard to do amidst the frenzy of the holidays) for sitting in the dark and the quiet. This is a natural time for letting go and saying farewell. Release your resentments and regrets into the darkness, knowing they will be transformed. Write about them in your journal or write them on slips of paper which you can burn in your Yule fire. Use your holiday cards to make amends to people you’ve hurt or neglected.

Welcoming the Light When you light your candles and your fire, do so with the intention of bringing light into the world. What are the ways in which you help make the world lighter? How do you bring light into the lives of those around you? Make a conscious effort to increase the amount of light you create. Nancy Brady Cunningham in Feeding the Spirit describes a simple yet elegant winter solstice ritual which is appropriate for a large group or a couple, for children and adults, and for people of all religious persuasions. It goes something like this: Decorate a room with winter greenery. Place a large bowl of water and a candle in the center of the room. Have some gold glitter, gold stickers and scented oil nearby. Give each of the participants a candle (with some kind of holder if you’re worried about drips). Everyone sits in a circle with a lit candle in front of them and talks about their losses, putting out their candle after they’ve finished speaking.

When all are done, the central candle is extinguished and everyone sits in the darkness reflecting on what they have lost. After a long silence, the leader relights the central candle, which represents the sun, and sprinkles gold glitter on the water. Everyone lights their

35 candles from the central candle and places them by the water so they can watch the glitter sparkling there. Sing a sun song like “Here Comes the Sun” or “You Are My Sunshine.” Pass around a glass of wine or juice and toast the sun. The sun-child is the child of promise. Everyone can talk about a promise they see in the future. The leader puts the scented oil in the water and anoints each person with sunshine by dipping her hand into the sparkling, scented water and sprinkling it over each person’s hair. Pass around the gold stickers and let everyone adorn their faces. Pass around a mirror, too, so you can see each other shining like the sun.

References & Resources

Berger, Pamela, The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint, 1985, Beacon Press Budapest, Zsuzsanna E., The Grandmother of Time, 1989, Harper & Row Campanelli, Pauline, The Wheel of the Year, 1989, Llewellyn Publications Cooper, J.C., The Aquarian Dictionary of Festivals, 1990, Aquarian Press Cunningham, Nancy Brady, Feeding the Spirit, 1988, Resource Publications Kightly, Charles, Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, 1987, Thames & Hudson Kushner, Ellen, Thomas the Rhymer, 1990, Willliam Morrow Maynard, Jim, Pocket Astrologer, for dates of solstices, equinoxes & full moons Quicksilver Productions, P O Box 340, Ashland OR 97520 Murray, Gilbert, Five Stages of Greek Religion, 1955, Doubleday Owen, Trefor, Welsh Folk Customs, Gomer Press, Llandysuyl Press, Dyfed Spicer, Dorothy, The Book of Festivals, 1937, The Women’s Press Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, 1979, Harper & Row Walker, Barbara, Women’s Rituals, 1990, Harper & Row Walker, Barbara, Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1983, Harper & Row

For more information on holidays and how to celebrate them, plus books and classes on slow time and seasonal time, visit my web site: Living in Season

Acknowledgments

These essays were originally published in the New Times from July 1990 through June 1991. They have been slightly revised for this publication. Thanks to Krysta Gibson of the New Times for providing me with a venue for my writing, Michael Veselagio for requesting a copy of all the articles, which gave me the idea for this book, and all those who expressed their appreciation in many ways. Thanks to Annie Pearson, who prepared the layout and artwork for the first print edition, composing collages using clip art. Annie also facilitated this reprint by scanning in and formatting the text. Special thanks to my heroines and mentors, Helen Farias and Haragano, for being such rich and inexhaustible sources of information and inspiration on these festivals.