January 2o2o Cancer Full Moon

INTUITION * EMOTIONS

FM Grid Cancer

J blkanuary 2o2o kicks off with an intriguing New Year of pivotal historic and spiritual change as we transition into the Age of Aquarius.  As discussed in a previous post, moving into the Age of Aquariusis an exciting time, but can also be a nerve-racking transition as we are plagued with a country and world divided unlike ever before.  As with any transition, the struggle to let go is very real and apparent;  issues of civil, political, religious and social unrest are quite turbulent and much in the forefront of our awareness.

Current projections for the 2o2o show a year that is mellow into June, but indicate worldwide concerns with material scarcity as oppressive social systems begin to unravel.  The astrological and planetary alignments require us to let go of dead habits, ideas and old world views that no longer serve so that we can make space for both new and remembered indigenous knowledge of community and spiritual practice.  Astrologists predict a major shift in the rebuilding of society through humanitarian efforts.

As pagans and witches, our spiritual practice and magical rites are informed by the seasons, the natural world around us, synchronicities, meditations, rituals, and divinatory practices, all of which are cluing us into the importance of the full moons in the coming year.  The Full Moon in Cancer, taking place on January 10th, provides us with an opportunity to engage in magic specific to family and home.   My recent meditations regarding magic for the coming full moon repeatedly show me scales, indicating a need for a balance brought forth and maintained during this transition, specific to the mind and how we frame challenges in our future as well as fiduciary responsibilities.  As Cancer oversees the home and emotions, Cancer, in her ruling sign, the Moon, focuses on the intuition necessary to navigate us through trying times.   For us, this upcoming Full Moon will deal with internal housecleaning, fine-tuning our internal compass, and communicating with our bodies about what is in harmony or out of sync.  I will ask of my internal home, ” What are my emotional strengths and weaknesses? What feels good and right in my body? What sends a red flag? What secrets am I hiding about my true feelings? What are those emotions that lead to imbalance and veer me off the path of authenticity?” In magic one of the most important tasks before you is asking the correct question.

As we all know, change happens at home and this begs the very real question of “who am I in this world of change?”  “who do I want to be?”.  Ultimately it comes down to how can we balance our responsibilities in the everchanging world while being authentic and connected to our most essential selves, especially when surround by spiritually asleep people who see/experience the world much differently than we? More importantly, it is a time that requires us to adapt in the face of frequent changes that increase as we transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.

As Einstein said, “The Measure of intelligence is the ability to change’.

As you cast your circles and create sacred space, remember…….we are all in this together.  Be gentle with yourselves and others.

Merry Part and Blessed Be!

The Season of Albun Eluid & the Fall Equinox

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ea’n Fo’mhair known as the autumn equinox, Albun Eluid, Harvest Home and more recently as Mabon, falls somewhere between September 21st-23rd.  The equinox finds us again with the longitude of the Sun is 0° and 180° and directly above the equator creating a day equal in both light and dark.  Once the sun crests the days from here until spring shall grow shorter.

While the first harvest focused on the gathering of grains and grasses, this second harvest is busy with the gathering of ripening fruits, nuts and vegetables.   Between Lughnasadh and through the season of Mabon grapes, plums, apples and blackberries are dried in our dehydrator or made into pies, sauces, cordials, shrubs, cider and ritual/table wines.  Melons are finally getting ripe, peas have reached the end, green beans are eaten fresh and canned, cucumbers and small zucchini into pickles, tomatoes are dried or canned into a variety of dishes, beets, onions, garlic, early squash, carrots, artichokes-the list goes on.  The race is on to gather walnuts and hazelnuts before the crows, chipmunks and squirrels.  Rose hips that were starting to turn at Lughnasadh are now fully ripe with gorgeous vibrant red colors and ready to be harvested and added fresh to honey or dried for later spell working. Final herbs are harvested and gathered in bunches to hang dry for later cooking, medicine or spellcrafts.

The energy is a bit frenzied as we all watch for the perfect moment our foods reach their peak and then hurry to process making sure there is no waste.

Our Mea’n Fo’mhair altars reflect the hard-won abundance we have sown and harvested.  Gorgeous red, orange and yellow leaves lay the foundation for colorful indian corn, bright red and green apples, nuts, purple wine grapes, textured gourds and luscious orange pumpkins.  Red and orange candles flank our Lord and Lady while grape vines ring the harvest sickle and bouquets of sunflowers, seedpods, bittersweet, beautyberry, zinnia, dahlia, chrysanthemum, pot marigold and nicotiana adorn our sacred space.

Our pantries are filled with hanging  herbs while jars of pickles, dried fruit, honeyed rosehips, dilly green beans, carrots, jeweled fruit jams, Dads famous pepper jelly, Grandma HeBert’s mustard pickles, elderberry cordial, raspberry shrub, blackberry and apple wines, as well as lemon verbena, conserve all vie for space on the crowded shelves.  Our dehydrator is working overtime to preserve the last berries and herbs too delicate to hang.

The turning tides also find us with open hearts of thanksgiving for the abundance we are harvesting and processing.  We call on the god and goddess of Mabon that we may share with them our abundance through libations poured and vegetables harvested, while also calling forth the blessings of plenty during winter scarceness.   The frenzied days turn to twilight skies and lengthening shadows signal an important shift as we ride the double helix of what we have manifested and what is to come.  We will feed our bodies with fruitful and nutritious sustenance while our souls are nourished with the vibrant colors of yellow, orange, purple and red turning foliage.

Mabon offering

Mabon offerings @ Rosethorn Manor

The waning sun bows its head and we traverse the liminal thread of the double spiral of fate-seeking that still deep place we have long yearned for and travel towards in the coming season of Samhain.   With the volumes of work to get the harvest in during the time of the shortening days, it can be a challenge to maintain our internal/external balance.   Mabon is as beautiful, rich and decadent as the colors we are surrounded by and we find ourselves being filled with wonder and gratitude for the gifts of the lady and lord that will sustain us in the dark days ahead.

How do you nourish yourself or maintain your balance in the Mabon Season?

Lughnasadh

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ughnasadh also known as Lammas, Lúnasa, Lùnastal, Luanistyn take place on  August 1st or thereabout and find us celebrating the first of three harvest rites.   While the timing is not necessarily technically middle of summer-in the PNW it is the middle of our hot and sunny season of the year and it is now that food stuffs are becoming ready for harvest and processing.

At this time in the PNW roses are still blooming and fragrant, yet the abundant hips are starting to turn a bright red signaling that there are changes coming.  Wheat and oats have ripened and are ready to be cut.  Grass hay and alfalfa have been baled and put up in our barns and fill the air with their fresh mown scent.  Vines have climbed high reaching towards the sun’s rays with hop flowers being readied for tea or beer and grapes sweetening in their ever-tightening skins to be eaten fresh or made into wine and jellies.   The puddles have long since dried and the water levels are getting lower in ponds and rivers which find little tree frogs, salamanders, bees, jackets and wasps crowding around watering holes and fish barrels.

As pagans, we have specific rites on special days as a way of bringing everyone together to raise energy that we may realign our frequency and sense of purpose to the season’s activities both internally and externally.  However, the sabbat days we celebrate together are not the beginning and ending for us, but kick off an entire season of nurturing, maintenance, gratitude and harvest.

In the season of Lugh or Lammas, we honor deity and adorn our altars with sunflowers, red hollyhocks, elfwort, heather, roses, poppies, indian corn, blueberries, blackberries, squash blossoms, nasturtiums, topaz, carnelian, yellow gold and red candles.  Ripened cereals of oats and wheat along with the first foodstuffs of corn, green beans, artichokes, crab apples, eggplant, early squash, a few grapes, mulberries, plums, pears and apples are added and generate gratitude in our hearts for the cyclic relationship we enjoy with our Earth Mother.    Grasses and grains are fashioned into a Grain Goddess with plenty of seeds to save for next year’s sowing. Flours of wheat and corn are made into fresh loaves of bread and an anatomically correct John Barleycorn is added to our altar.

At this time we call to the Goddess of Abundance of the God of the Green.  We give offerings of gratitude, enlivening our hearts and rejoicing in the abundance all around us.  We acknowledge the strong life-giving sun while recognizing the change in shortened days require a shift of duties and focus.  A noble and brave man is chosen to sacrifice himself for a time as John Barleycorn so that our cycles of give and take may continue.  We use this time to clear out our physical and spiritual storehouses of that which no longer feeds or nourish us, so that we may make room for the strongest and most nutritious energy sources to sustain us during the fallow time of the year.  At this time we have walked between the worlds and have gathered the required energies to move forward with the harvesting tasks at hand.  We drink and pay homage to the old gods and call upon their continued favor for our crops that we have the energy to continue our journey.

Each area around the world has smells that speak of the seasons and for us in the summer season, it is bilberry/blueberries, blackberries and apples.  It would not be summer in the PNW without the sweet pungent smells of those fruits baking in the sun. Blackberries, blueberries and apples are so nutritious and are eaten fresh, made into pies, syrup and wine.   Can’t get enough of the blackberries!  The lavendar has dried and been stripped of their stalks to be added to spell-workings and Full Moon Shortbread.  The beauty and abundance is all around and fills my heart with gratitude.  Though I will admit that all of the hard hot days of work see me longing for the cool crisp autumn nights and I relish the casual relaxed evenings with my family, the bbq’s, cool down swim time and midnight desserts.  We ponder the work/life balance, knowing the necessary hard work in the next weeks leading up to Mabon and continuing into Samhain will end with a cozy firelit evening to rest and contemplate further the journey of our souls.

How do you celebrate the summer harvest and what smells signal summer for you?

Bright Lughnasadh Blessings to you and yours!

Litha

celticTomorrow we embark on a midsummer journey.  The Litha solstice brings us to the longest day and the shortest night of the year where the Earth is at the midpoint on her journey around the sun.  The word “solstice” is from the Latin word solstitium, which translates to “sun stands still”  Depending on the year Litha will fall between June 20-22 or the 25th which was the Old Litha.  Litha is also known as Alban Heruin and Midsummer’s Night.   Historical writings have shown summer solstice celebrations all over the world and continue today as we honor the Old Ways.

In the Pacific Northwest, we are surrounded by the lushness of summer beauty

Summer Solstice Litha Wreath

Solar Wreath fire @ Rosethorn Manor

due to the warmth.  Usually we are still experiencing some precipitation, however, this year has been unseasonably hot for us.  The gardens are bursting with roses, lavendar, honeysuckle, mock-orange, rhodies and lungwort.  The apple trees have little baby apples that we have spent many an hour culling so that larger apples may grow, but not be such a burden on the trees.  We are keeping an eye on the just budding St. Johns Wort that will be used in our protection bundles at Lughnassadh.  The promise of abundance is everywhere and continues to grow until harvested at Mabon.

At this time we approach the sacred grove in perfect love and perfect trust, setting aside our difference and stresses of the mundane world to celebrate the Goddess in her lushness.  We honor deity and adorn our altars with yellow flowers (sunflowers if I can get them to bloom in time), yellow candles, bouquets of rose, peony, lavendar, mugwort, thyme, rue, fern, cock feathers and iris.  Fruits of the garden such as early strawberries and oak & holly leaves.  Stones of lapis, tigers eye, jade and moss agate round out the frequencies we are aligning ourselves for the season of Litha.   We praise the Horned God in his passionate love for the Goddess and the abundance and life their joining brings. In ritual we call forth the Sacred Spark of light and life to ignite change within ourselves, drawing on the strong and long light to bring forth balance and sustain us in our journey.  We give offerings of honey cakes which are a favorite this time of year, remembering to leave plenty for the bees.

We close our rite by lighting a fire to Brigid and focusing on the necessary balance and changes needed in our life-sacrificing that which no longer sustains or benefits our journey so that we make room in our storehouse for the inspiration that will enable future abundance in our lives and our work.

How do you celebrate this sabbat in your own life?

Blessed be the season of Summer!

Adventures of the Two of Wands

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y card for today…. Two of Wands. This card leaves me hopeful. Oftentimes read as a card on the precipice of stagnation due to feeling hemmed in from the steadfast structure and empire we have created for ourselves and those around us. I often see this at times when people are restless and unsure of what to do next because they’ve held so tightly to beliefs about what they should be doing or how they should be doing it both for themselves and perceived by others. Generally, this card has a character with a crystal ball or the Earth the Heart Center which means I am hopeful that today will bring about information where my heart and mind can come to some alignment or agreement about the next steps I need to take on my path.
How do you all read the Two of Wands?