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 Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:28 pm
To back up a step, there are eight festivals in the typical neopagan calendar which fall roughly six weeks apart through the year. Some of them are famous and popular, some have a link to the astronomic calendar, others have a long history back to an ancient culture.
I don't really do much with some of the occasions....Litha and Mabon, Imbolc.....well, I probably don't get excited and usually don't do much that resembles a tradition. I don't do the maypole nor a Yule log but other people are perfectly welcome to incorporate the well-known into their practice.
I do, however, put great store into agricultural celebration. I feel that working with the means of my own sustenance is important to my spiritual well-being: blessing the seeds, tilling and composting, planting, tending and weeding, harvest. There are times of rest and times to produce wondrous food to enjoy. I get great satisfaction from the yearly cycle of life.
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Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 6:43 pm
Thinking on harvest, yesterday was one of those pivotal points in my personal growing season: the exhausted pea plants came down and I began picking green beans!
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Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 6:46 am
One of the reasons I feel connected to the harvest festivals is that I grow some of my own food. I cannot imagine not doing this, despite the work involved (and the heartbreak of bugs, random inclement weather and the neighbor's wonderful tree growing ever taller....). Everyone, in my opinion, needs to be close to the source of their sustenance, even if it is just a few herb plants or a patio tomato in a pot. Urban pagans get very attached to their parks I have heard.
Anyway, I am watching a pumpkin turn from green to orange ever so slowly out in my plot and I keep an eye on this other squash....waiting for the stem to dry out, signaling that it is time to bring it in. Both of the vines which these are attached to came up from seed that came in with the compost! Mystery goodies....Is this worship? Who knows, but it is certainly part of my spiritual practice.
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Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 6:26 pm
We may be decorating with squash and dry cornstalks, putting up vegetables and gathering in the roots but there is more going on at this time of year: we are getting ready for winter, storing against the cold times, and letting go of the summer. Depending on your tradition we are coming into times when the door of death is a mere curtain and much passes through; it is a time to release and to question.
I am preparing by setting aside some longtime items, clearing much to compost, packing up. I have an eye to Spring but I'm not pursuing the season with any single-mindedness; it will come in its time. Soon, it will be time to think of my questions, slip into trance and shuffle the cards.
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Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 6:40 pm
I just had an odd thought, as I started laying about me with the broom in the guild. There are the spiritual aspects to holidays for pagans and then there are the secular aspects, just as there are for members of other types of faiths. I was just thinking how the secular harvest fest in the US, Thanksgiving, is after all the pagan harvest festivals, celebrating what? Where I live, by the time we get to late November there may have been snow already and there aren't any crops out there left to harvest.
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Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 5:04 pm
We hear a lot about 'secularized' Christian holidays.....How about adding spiritual elements to non-religious occasions? Thanksgiving was a little different this year, with a candle on the table for the Goddess and offerings to one of her spirits....
And a wonderful feast was had by all!~
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