These posts describe both personal seasonal rituals and community-wide Earth-based ceremonies that honor our relationship to nature and spirit throughout the wheel of the year. Perhaps you will gain ideas for creating or participating in some seasonal celebrations of your own, large or small.
Spirit-and-Nature seasonal celebrations are inspired by Celtic myth and legend. They share consciousness of the continuity of Earth and Spirit with worldwide indigenous/animist cultures. In them we aspire to bring to the community an opportunity to share our loving relationship with spirit and nature through live music, crafts, circle dances, song, story, ritual, and ceremony which honors both the ecology of this our sacred Place and the presence of Spirit at these potent times. Western culture is doing its best to split nature from people and nature from spirit. We, as elders, feel the responsibility to try to hold nature/human/spirit together in Love as an act of joyous resistance. Past events are included as an archive of posts dated on or near the day they were presented.
This year we especially wanted to honor our Monarch butterflies, whose annual arrival in Mexico around November 1, is celebrated as the souls of the beloved Ancestors returning. Because of loss of habitat, milkweed plants, their only larval food, are … Continued
We made an Autumn Equinox ritual in order to be in touch with you, our community, in time, if not in space, and to be in sync with the soul of the season. We were drawn to the ocean at the western tip of the Dingle peninsula. The harbor there is ringed with 6th-9th century monasteries, oratories, and hermitages, their doorways all facing the sunset. We noticed colored stones on the beach, so we gathered red, yellow, green, and blue to make a mandala. . . .
At the Lughnasa cross-quarter we celebrate the fruition of the partnership of the Sun and the Earth in the form of Celtic Lugh, the “Shining One” and his foster mother, Tailtiu, the “Great One of the Earth,” the first harvest of the grain, our harvest of delicious corn. Lughnasa is traditionally a time for berry picking, so we also honored the thirteen species of wild blueberries . . .
First we pilgrimaged to the Sacred Spring for visioning, chanting, and giving gratitude to all our waters…After a wonderful ritual honoring the Sacred Feminine, Grandmother Apple Tree, we honored the Sacred Masculine, raising the Maypole. Joining around this World Tree … Continued
We learned the story of Brigid as the Celtic Divine Feminine and her Sacred Landscape. We honored our native Bears, for which we are so thankful, and the Spirit of Bear, which preceded the Groundhog, as symbols of hibernation and … Continued
Ritual weaves the felt strands of connection between earth, spirit, and us humans at sacred places. Perhaps my favorite rituals on this trip to Ireland involved pilgrimaging to four ancient stone circles (c. 2,500 BC) that are aligned to the … Continued
On the wheel of the year Lughnasa is the cross-quarter point between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox. Lughnasa began at a time when pre-Celtic peoples were very aware of the cycles of the sun. They had to be because they … Continued
At Beltane we make contact with the Inspirited Earth through rituals that embody such archetypes as circle and center, world tree, the dance of masculine sun and feminine water, and the sacred marriage of the King with the Goddess who … Continued
Another theme of the evening was about the archetypal theme of hibernation and re-emergence as metaphor for the life-death-rebirth initiatory process as symbolized by Snake, Groundhog, and Bear. We saw this Black Bear at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. . … Continued
Ah, the night was perfect for our Samhain Celebration! Clear, cold, and still. It was new moon and the time had just fallen back, so it was very dark. There were a million stars, and the Milky Way, in some … Continued