summer is I cumin in, loudly sing cuckoo.....

 The wheel turns again and summer has come!

Well, certainly NOT the summer weather. Theres still snow on some northern hills, my van windows were iced up last night and my seedlings are still under protection from early morning frost!

So yes - I celebrated the Beltane festival in kind.

Lighting a candle, sitting round a fire in a bit of a

cold wind with some fellow earth lovers to discuss a new circle I have started locally, and honouring the Earth with the new growth that is, at least, showing some sign of increasing.

But the seasons are not really set to dates. Those dates are loosely set around moon phases or astrologically affected times as well as seasonal weather. Our long ancesters didnt have the gregorian calendar to work out the seasons. They planted by the moon and sun. They watched the signs of the birds, the trees, the animals and the weather. Wind and clouds. A friend recently said on social media she had heard her first cuckoo of the year. Lucky living in a rural idyll, shes more likely to hear such things. It was often a feeling of anticipation and then a sudden awareness of the changes and movement that amalgamated in knowing the seasons had moved on.

I live on the edge of a town and many of the signs of the countryside are swallowed up by traffic, train and car noises. Im lucky enough to live on a cul de sac without the constant drone of car engines passing by, but near enough to main traffic routes to hear the far away constant hum of it. Im also fortunate to have a garden now though I have been without at other times and found ways round growing in containers, allotments and shared gardens.

Having said this however, when working with the seasons - even in the midst of an urban sprawl, one does begin to have a synchronising of personal energy with the earth energy being worked with and with encouragement you can feel the changes yourself. My work in my garden to plant my flowers and vegetables. My personal touches of honouring the earth energies and ancestors.

Clumsy attempts at crafts and art, incorporating seasonal symbols that open up memories of ancestors and a developing relationship with the Old Ones.

All these things matter and increase my acknowledgement of life in all its cycles.

  Some years ago when my youngest child was a toddler, I wrote a book with ideas to celebrate the seasons within a pagan family. My children are now grown and do their own thing. But I still enjoy the childlike crafts, ideas and projects I shared with them. The Craft is best approached in a child like awe and fascination. Nothing wrong with tying wishing ribbons (loosely so as not to damage the branch growth) on a tree. Or decorating your door with a wreath of flowers to welcome in the Summer May Queen. Poppets filled with herbs and small stones or crystals for love and protection hung in the home.

Dancing round a maypole if you can - or even making your own and getting family or friends to dance with you.

Hopefully I will have felt my usual connection with the seasonal changes and can celebrate the summer's beginning. Until then, I will encourage with my crafts, my spells and my songs.

Summer is i'coming in

loudly sing, cuckoo!

Seed it grows and meadows bloom

And wood springs forth anew

Sing Cuckoo!

Sacred Springtime - an Equinox Balance

"March Winds and April Showers

Make way for sweet May Flowers"

(Ruth Etting)

As winter makes it way into Spring, the land becomes more workeable and ready for later planting. The country dweller sees the changes of the seasons first hand. Watching trees develop catkins and buds, the woodlands showing the stems and leaves of wild garlic and nettles sprouting their leaves. Snowdrops have blossomed and early daffodils have sprung, waving their cheery flower cups in the wild winds and storms of March.

The Urban setting may not be quite so obvious with the movement of the seasons, but there are still signs that can be seen. Urban gardens also show the beauty developing, roads lined with trees have the self same catkins and buds on show. Some of the local cherry trees have the glimpse of pink petals peeping from their buds.

Tubs of daffodil bulbs in the drive are full of the green shoots and the flowers are just coming out. My Rosemary bush in its tub by the front door has some flowers already showing. My garden has grass beginning to grow and looks a little tatty, and the shrubs at the edges have started to grow in disaray. 

I havnt tidied it up - its important to leave it for a while to allow the insects to increase, and to make sure I dont disturb the wildlife that needs this early time.

What I have done is build the no dig raised beds ready for planting my planned veg garden. Lined with cardboard, covered with compost and a fleece to stop my feline friends from using it as a dirt box, they are ready and waiting for the late spring. Meantime I have seedlings on the go, under plastic covers to protect them from further frosts. And then, stored out of the elements under a gazebo, as the winds whip up and thrash the skies as we weather the spring storms.

After a few months of hibernating along with the lockdown, I feel the surge of energy urging me to connect once more with the growing of the season. Im keen to create art, to grow my garden and my spiritual practice once more.

 

I feel the change of energy as the sap rises, both in the plant kingdom, as well as myself. Imbolc was quiet this year, with a simple celebration for just myself and family - one of my children is an Imbolc child so her birthday was the focus of celebrations. But the Equinox is near and Im busy creating decorations and planning my celebrations. Later yearly plans are also on the go, and with the rising of the sap, my spring cleaning has already taken a huge amount of time this week. I think the rising of the energy is what impels me to think of what I wish to achieve this year - far more than any new year resolutions have aver done.

Firstly this weekend brings Mothering Sunday. My own mother and I had a strange relationship while she was alive. Now, I feel more at peace with our challenges and I will remember her with a lit candle and a few words of love. Its not a day Ive made much of with my own family.

Im sure I will be rememberd but a card and possibly some flowers is more than enough.

And then next weekend is the Spring Equinox. A time of balance. We will already have put the clocks forward this weekend. Spring forward as we look forward. Easter comes later this year and celebrates with the seasons of spring. The symbols of the time mostly represented by eggs and rabbits (originally by the March Hare). 

Representing fertility and new life. In early times it was forbidden to kill the Hare and the 'mad march hare' was seen as sacred - touched in the mind by the madness of the gods.

Snakes were also  associated with this time. The shedding of the skins is symbolic of Earth energy (serpent lines) and of death and rebirth.

In previous years I would prepare for the festival by taking friends and family to the sea. Scavenging the beaches for driftwood and holey stones. I might collect small pebbles to make little sets of runes or witches stones as gifts. The beach scavenging will become decorative mobiles to hang in the garden and I would collect seaweed to put in the compost bin.

I will make cakes and bread and maybe my own chocolate eggs. Blow a few chicken eggs, dry and then decorate to hang in the house or leave on the seasonal altar. You can write a wish or spell on a small slip of paper to put into the egg which can be smashed to release the spell after the festival has finished.

I may not be able to celebrate the Equinox with my Witches Circle this year as lockdown is still in the process of being dismantled, so I will just do so with my family. We can still go out and collect the natural items from the garden and country areas near our home.

Equinox Blessings to you all.

 

Lockdown doesnt mean locked-up

 This is the first post I have written for some time. Life has a habit of 'getting in the way' until you realise that its real and to include that in a blog about living life as an 'Urban witch'. In fact it can help to live through the issues currently affecting so many of us.

Im not going into any political or debating the issues around lockdowns, government etc because this blog isnt for that. Plenty of thoughts and feelings are discussed on social media. I have my own strong opinions but they are best served in the right place.

So weve been put in a position where many people havnt been able to see family, travel, explore and live what was a normal life to them. Sometimes it can feel like being in lockdown is being locked up and create heartache and more at not seeing family, friends and visitng sacred areas that would help people to get through hard times. 

To this end its important to make the place you are spending  most of your time, a place of peace. A place where you can be in the moment, rest and gather yourself together for the next phase in your life. Unfortunately I realise there are lots of situations where this isnt possible, and anyone in a harmful, abusive or fearful position will find their lockdown anything but peaceful. To those people I implore you to reach out for help - the police, support groups and others are still there to help. I have family who had to live in a refuge for a while and I know how life changing it can be when a relationship turns bad.

My future posts will reflect what is happening around us whilst still trying to find that central feeling of peace and being connected to the natural world around us, even if living in a busy town.

 

Birthing Pangs - new beginnings

New beginnings. A birth is often a joyous occasion - and with the new fresh beginning of life comes the relief and rest after what can be a painful and hard labour. Birth does not always mean a new addition to the human race or the animal kingdom. It can also mean a new life, project, experience or even a slowing down, reduction and removal of familiarity. When people enter retirement and move from working life to a different way of being it could be seen as a birth of something new rather than the ending of something - a new beginning.

My life has had many endings and beginnings - no different to anyone else. Many things and people come and go. We make new friends and lose some along the way. New jobs, new homes, new communities. I believe its important to celebrate as well as commiserate.

With the death of a friend we grieve for our loss. They, on the other hand, are experiencing something new - and it doesn't matter if you believe in life after death or some kind of spiritual moving on, the most basic of new beginnings is the end of one life as the body becomes something else - if not just food for the plants.
Personally I do believe that there is more to life - the soul or spirit of a human being is not just ended but transmutes into something more. We are made of energy - the stuff of the stars and to just 'end' is not a concept I support.

Endings are necessary to allow rebirth. The process of endings can be both exciting and painful - like labour pains. Mothers giving birth can take hours of hard work and pain before the baby is pushed out. Other beginnings can take months and sometimes even years before the new birth is ready to burst into life. And this can happen time and again.

I find each time something new is ready to begin, I will try to mull over the process as it arrives. Meditate on the experience. When did I realise it was another new beginning and an ending to what came before? Is this a small birth precipitating further developments? Is this the culmination of many changes to reach a certain point of change? How much do I grieve what is ending or is it a long anticipated change.

Once more I am moving through the birth canal. The labour has been quite intense for about 18 months now although I wasn't aware at first that this was the development of new life till fairly recently. But it is reaching its zenith and the moment to wet the baby's head is coming. To be followed by any number of further developments to this new 'child' and whatever will come from it.

............isn't it exciting!!