Wonderful.
The fit is not so good when we move to the West coast of
North America, especially California. The rainless summer and scorching fall is
followed by the cold but hardly frozen rain of winter, and everything starts
turning green again. By Beltane
there are often hints of summer's golden brown in the meadows.
Or the far north or higher elevations, where May Day is hardly a day of flowers. When I taught in far upstate New York, north of the Adirondacks, it could snow into late May. Less than a day's drive further north, in Canada's "Near North" somewhere up above Ottawa, maple trees disappeared for good, and winter became the overwhelmingly dominant season. Where I was in New York, it was only the dominant season, with snow falling as early as Samhain.
But in the West and North the Solstices and Equinoxes are still anchors of more than abstract importance. We experience the lengthening and shortening of day and night in a syjmbol fitting easily into the shorter rhythms of the waxing and waning moon. These rhythms are universal. Or are they?
Many of us have joked about Australian and Kiwi Wiccans and other NeoPagans celebrating the Sabbats upside down. There the seasons are reversed, with our Samhain falling in their Spring. But the temperate Southern hemisphere has it fairly easy. You just invert the wheel and things still fit.
What about the greater part of Australia that is tropical or subtropical? Not so many Wiccans there (yet?), but hopefully its future has a strong NeoPagan component. (I do not mean just Wiccans, as I hope is clear.) And Hawaii? Or the seasons as experienced by the Gardnerian community in Nigeria?
In the tropics and near tropics the days are mostly the same length. Solstices and Equinoxes are not particularly noticeable. The growing season is year long, unless there are cycles of rain and drought. These different seasonal rhythms, are not in clear synch with those of the temperate zones. The dance of seasons is polyrhythmic.
Wicca's ritual symbolism is a wonderful fit with temperate places with four strong seasons, and nowhere else. Until then our celebrations will be rooted in abstract symbols rather than concrete energies. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have no problems being abstract - but Spirit does not manifest abstractly in my experience. It is extremely concrete.
To connect with the spirit of where we live, I think we need to try and connect with its concrete manifestations. Here on the southern end of the North Pacific coast, and farther on up, the salmon is the totem animal of the region. Native tribes long had their "First Salmon" ceremonies, when these wonderful fish returned from the ocean, to mate, spawn, and die, enriching the land with their deaths.
Here in Sonoma County we also have wonderful vineyards, with abundant grapes and wine, and the best apple juice anywhere from our Gravenstein apples. Grapes and apples are plants with venerable Pagan symbolisms in the West. Hopefully the day will come when our Sabbats incorporate these plant and animals of place and similar elements. And when the elements do not fit easily into our Sabbats, hopefully we will have additional celebrations and honorings.
Indigenous Pagans were sensitive to the rhythms of their place as well as to the universal rhythms of life and death. I think we will not have truly made our path a grounded path until we have done the same. We cannot have too many days where we are reminded of the Sacredness of our home.
Or the far north or higher elevations, where May Day is hardly a day of flowers. When I taught in far upstate New York, north of the Adirondacks, it could snow into late May. Less than a day's drive further north, in Canada's "Near North" somewhere up above Ottawa, maple trees disappeared for good, and winter became the overwhelmingly dominant season. Where I was in New York, it was only the dominant season, with snow falling as early as Samhain.
But in the West and North the Solstices and Equinoxes are still anchors of more than abstract importance. We experience the lengthening and shortening of day and night in a syjmbol fitting easily into the shorter rhythms of the waxing and waning moon. These rhythms are universal. Or are they?
Many of us have joked about Australian and Kiwi Wiccans and other NeoPagans celebrating the Sabbats upside down. There the seasons are reversed, with our Samhain falling in their Spring. But the temperate Southern hemisphere has it fairly easy. You just invert the wheel and things still fit.
What about the greater part of Australia that is tropical or subtropical? Not so many Wiccans there (yet?), but hopefully its future has a strong NeoPagan component. (I do not mean just Wiccans, as I hope is clear.) And Hawaii? Or the seasons as experienced by the Gardnerian community in Nigeria?
In the tropics and near tropics the days are mostly the same length. Solstices and Equinoxes are not particularly noticeable. The growing season is year long, unless there are cycles of rain and drought. These different seasonal rhythms, are not in clear synch with those of the temperate zones. The dance of seasons is polyrhythmic.
Wicca's ritual symbolism is a wonderful fit with temperate places with four strong seasons, and nowhere else. Until then our celebrations will be rooted in abstract symbols rather than concrete energies. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have no problems being abstract - but Spirit does not manifest abstractly in my experience. It is extremely concrete.
To connect with the spirit of where we live, I think we need to try and connect with its concrete manifestations. Here on the southern end of the North Pacific coast, and farther on up, the salmon is the totem animal of the region. Native tribes long had their "First Salmon" ceremonies, when these wonderful fish returned from the ocean, to mate, spawn, and die, enriching the land with their deaths.
Here in Sonoma County we also have wonderful vineyards, with abundant grapes and wine, and the best apple juice anywhere from our Gravenstein apples. Grapes and apples are plants with venerable Pagan symbolisms in the West. Hopefully the day will come when our Sabbats incorporate these plant and animals of place and similar elements. And when the elements do not fit easily into our Sabbats, hopefully we will have additional celebrations and honorings.
Indigenous Pagans were sensitive to the rhythms of their place as well as to the universal rhythms of life and death. I think we will not have truly made our path a grounded path until we have done the same. We cannot have too many days where we are reminded of the Sacredness of our home.
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By all means, don't just long for rituals that mesh with the local natural cycles -- compose and practice them. Every ritual was once someone's idea.
This has been an major issue for my own practice since I started working in Pagan circles 15 years ago. Although the NeoPagan Wheel of the Year works fairly well in the Midwest US, the stories and images of the "cross-quarter" holidays never spoke to me. I began engaging the Hebrew calendar in a Pagan way, but since it's based in the cycles of Israel, that had it's own challenges.
Ultimately, I think if we can learn for the fact that no spiritual tradition can be plug and play. Especially, if you want to honor the earth, we must engage the character of the land we live and its cycles around is.
My experience vis a vis using local plants, animals, and landscape features in rituals has been that it's far more difficult in operation than we Neo-Pagans might assume. There's a lot of habit-entrenched, by-the-book, maybe even ego-centered, resistance, even among proficient practitioners.
In Northern California, I call on (for instance)a tree/element circle--N,Coast Redwood; E, Valley Oaks, S, Yucca Tree, and W, Giant Kelp. These are commonplace, well-known California trees. But they are more cumbersome to work with in lots of groups because (I think) practitioners have to go out and investigate them on the ground, discover their attributes and inter-linkages across the land, and declare their ritual use as appropriate on their own authority. Too DIY for many folks!
All in all, in poking around and playing with local plants, animals, and such, I strongly advocate working with NATIVE (not introduced, not intrusive) species. Salmon, yes. Wine grape varietals, no. I have learned that for magical activities, NATIVE species work differently than introduced or intrusive species. It is not enough for a species to have Pagan meanings. It has to have long-lived and deep-rooted links with the living land underfoot!
I think it is very important that Sabbat rituals and myths be tailored to specific places and their ecosystems. But I also think it is important to remember that what we are tracking at the Sabbats is the yearly cycle of the Earth around the Sun, which is valid no matter where you are in reference to the Equator.
From an astrologer's point of view, the solstices and equinoxes fall at 0 degrees of Cardinal signs, always major power points in the Zodiac.
The traditional dates of the cross quarters are usually a few days off, but fall right around the midpoint between solstice and equinox, or equinox and solstice. So they are all at approximately 15 degrees of Fixed signs, again traditionally major Zodiacal power points. Personally, I tend to use the astrological dates for my cross-quarter celebrations instead of the traditional ones.
Working with these stations of the Sun is a good starting point, then the rest of the ritual and mythology can be built around local ecological realities.
I agree with you, your saying is so good and usful for me. Thanks.
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