Seasonal Stories for Summer

(Nimue)

In theory the summer is supposed to be a high energy time when, aligned with the rising power of the sun, you get on and make things happen. It doesn’t work with everyone. I’m writing this piece to give whoever needs it permission to not feel energised by midsummer.

You may find that the shorter nights impact on your sleep, leaving you tired. If you’re sensitive to the light and are waking earlier you might find that the way in which you are bodily aligned with the sun is undermining your energy levels.

Plenty of people struggle with hot weather, and with high humidity. Again, if that’s your natural body response to the conditions, you aren’t getting anything wrong. Some people burn easily and are prone to heat stroke and sunstroke. That’s also nature in action.

Being highly active in hot weather is actually dangerous. People can have heart attacks in such conditions. Be gentle with yourself.

Nature is a complex web of interweaving lives, landscapes, and climates. It cannot be meaningfully reduced to a simple story – and this is a big problem with modern Pagan wheel of the year stories.

Honour however your body responds to the seasons. It’s all valid. Getting to know nature as it manifests inside your body is a good way of engaging with nature as it exists outside of your body.

May Day Romance

(Nimue)

There are a number of traditions associates with the first of May. Driving your cattle between two fires to protect them. Demanding workers’ rights. Gathering hawthorn flowers as an excuse to try and get in each other’s underwear. Dancing round a big pole that may or may not be a phallic emblem. May Queens. Jumping over fires.

Modern Paganism often associates this festival with love, passion and fertility. There’s a lot more going on and plenty to tap into if the amorous side doesn’t appeal to you. I’ve had very different experiences of this festival over the years and sometimes found it really difficult because of the sexy side.

We didn’t entirely plan it that way, but this is about the time that Keith and I started living together last year. For me it’s a happy association with the festival. It’s been a truly remarkable year, and even with the massive challenges we’ve faced, it has without a doubt been the happiest year of my life so far.

I’ve learned a lot about myself and about what I need to thrive. Over the year, we’ve learned a great deal about each other, and how to support and care for each other. We’ve built a life that is rich and joyful, and laid down a foundation for growing and flourishing together in the years to come.  This last year has taken me far beyond what I thought was possible.

I’m learning about love that is joyful, rather than laced through with pain. That’s made me less fearful, and so much happier. There’s such beauty in being able to embrace delight every day, and to be heart open, and feeling full rather than hollow. Love as something shared, and felt, rather than the experience of pouring from myself until I feel empty.

I’ve been writing about these experiences through the year. I’ve felt so much more investment in life, and so much soulful delight around everything that happens to me. There’s a new poetry collection on the way that explores this, and the experience of falling in love not only with a person, but with life itself.

Orchid season

(Nimue)

This is an early purple orchid, and they show up on the commons around Stroud at this time of year. These are the first wild orchids to bloom locally. Next will come the pyramidal orchids, then lady orchids, marsh orchids and spotted orchids. This last trio I’m not confident on identifying. One year I went out with a wildflower book and still couldn’t figure it out. Rumour has it that they hybridise.

Later in the year, the bee orchids will appear – these are my absolute favourites.

I’m in a process at the moment of thinking a lot about the seasonal names I use, and wanting to move away from Irish terms that relate neither to my heritage nor my landscape.

The photo is mine. For the first time in many years I own a device that I can take photos with. However, it’s a tablet and not fantastic as a camera. So much better than no camera, though!

Druidry and seeds

(Nimue)

If you’ve encountered standard-issue wheel of the year instructions for would-be Druids, you know now is the time to plant your seeds. Not just physical seeds, but the ideas you are going to nurture this year and harvest in the autumn,

In the photo are some seedlings I have sprouting in a window box. In a few week’s time I’ll plant more, and I’ll keep planting through the summer because that way I can keep cropping.

Seed planting happens for a much longer season than spring. Flowers that bloom in the summer do their seed planting then. Autumn and winter crops exist, you may be planting beetroot and parsnip a good deal later. The wych elms have already seeded. Nature is diverse.

If you are in an area where this point in the year is full of sprouting, leafing life, then you may well feel inspired by that energy and want to work with it. If it doesn’t move you, there’s not much to gain from pushing. Trying to align your life with the stories modern Druids tell about the wheel of the year may not work for you.

Your landscape might have different seasons to the UK. Your life might have its own tides and currents that need respecting. You might not be the sort of creature that plants seeds in the spring. You might be the sort of creature that builds a nest about now, or that hasn’t really woken up yet, or is basically a speck of new life in jelly. You can be aligned with the natural world without having to be engaged with any one specific story.

Seed planting makes sense if you are engaging with ancestors who were agricultural. We have far more ancestors who were not engaged in agriculture, and who wandered around more, and lived in ways that related to their specific environments. Engaging substantially with the land can suggest things that do not relate to sowing seed.

Plant seeds now if that makes sense to you. Plant seeds later if you prefer. Be those literal seeds or ideas. Find the rhythms that make sense to you and honour nature as it actually shows up in your life.

Strange spring

(Nimue)

I’ve seen snow at this time of year, and I’ve been sunburned. The coming of spring is an odd process, which can include a lot of wintery moments. Even so, this year is being peculiar.

It’s cold enough that I’m still wearing thermals. Yet somehow, the bluebells are out up on the hilltops. Bluebells are usually a May flower – late April wouldn’t be ridiculous. Garlic and wood anemones – which also flower around the same time as bluebells, are also flowering right now. Whatever set the bluebells off early isn’t unique to them. I have no idea what’s going on, but clearly this is climate chaos in action.

Meanwhile the celandines are still out – it’s late for them.

Bird nesting seems to be happening in much the usual way, in so far as I can tell. However, what happens with flowers has implications for insects, and what happens for insects impacts on birds. As different parts of ecosystems get out of synchs with each other, there are bound to be consequences.

Druidry and the equinox

(Nimue)

We don’t know whether ancient Druids celebrated the equinoxes. If they did, we don’t know what they did. We do know that prehistoric peoples were interested in the night sky, the solstices and equinoxes from the alignments of stone circles and other monuments.

It makes a lot of sense to honour the equinox – it’s a part of the turning of the year. These solar points are important parts of the seasons, and recognising them in some way is good for keeping in touch with the natural world.

I’ve never found them easy to celebrate, because there’s not a lot of folk tradition to draw on. In my part of the world, this is a busy time for people living close to the soil. But then, our more agricultural ancestors wouldn’t have needed a wheel of the year to help them connect with nature, they were living in the world far more than we do. Many of us are well insulated from weather, seasonal variations and what’s living around us. Most of us are not as involved with actual life as our ancestors were.

Festivals offer opportunities to reflect on our own lives, and to connect with the seasons, the land and our ancestors. If you only have a little time to devote to Druidry, it makes sense to focus on the day to day shifts – the seasons, the weather, and what the living world around you is doing. A few minutes every day to observe and reflect on this is worth a great deal, and will ground whatever else you do.

Trees and the wheel of the year

(Nimue)

Each kind of tree responds to the spring in its own way. Hawthorn, blackthorn and elder tend to be the first to leaf, and even though it’s only February, I’ve seen a few doing just that already. Oak tends to be the last to leaf in my part of the world.

While each tree species is different, every individual tree will respond to spring in its own time. Exact conditions where the tree is will have an impact – how much light and shade there is depends a lot on the shape of the land. A tree in a sheltered, sunny spot will start leafing sooner than one of the same species in a more exposed or sun deprived position.

All too often, I’ve encountered Druids talking about trees in relation to the wheel of the year as though it’s a single narrative. What trees do is diverse. Some trees are flowering already – the beautiful white flowers of the blackthorn are out now. Hawthorns don’t flower until May, oak flowers in June. Hazels have catkins as flowers, alder have totally different catkins. 

It is easy to reduce the cycle of the seasons down to some simple ideas, especially if you focus on the popular eight festivals. However, relating to vague ideas about nature doesn’t bring us into a close relationship with the natural world. To have that, we’ve got to engage with what’s around us. The wheel turns every day, and it is much more meaningful to connect with those everyday shifts.

I think it’s a lot more meaningful to get to know what’s around you than to work with ideas of the wheel of the year. That can be done in really simple ways – listening out for bird song every day. Finding out how the tree or other significant plant nearest to you goes through the seasons. Being alert to the daily shifts in light levels. 

You are not an idea or an abstract concept. You are a living being, experiencing the turning of the seasons in very precise, individual ways. Your journey through the year will be unique to you, and informed by every other experience of the year going on around you. You might be ready to blossom at the first opportunity, or you might need to wait a lot later. You might feel blessed and energised right now, or you might need a lot more sun. Just like the trees, we are all different in terms of how we respond, and no response is wrong.

Imbolc, blackthorn and elf caps

(Nimue)

As the wheel turns from Imbolc to the equinox, blackthorn and elf caps are important seasonal markers for me. Generally elfcaps have a long season through the winter, but in my local area these cheery little fungi show up in February. This is also the time of year for blossom on the blackthorn. Blackthorn flowers before any other tree and at this point in the year, there are no leaves, so the flowers really stand out. These are plants that give me feelings of new life and abundance after the depletions of winter.

One of the things on my mind as I write this, is the names we use for the seasonal festivals. I’m using the names I was given when I first started studying Druidry.  I’m increasingly uneasy about it because these are Irish names that are being used in wider Paganism. I’m not following any Irish traditions and I’m questioning whether this is the right language to be using. It’s not a fair representation of what I’m celebrating. 

I’ve never adopted the fancy names for the equinoxes and solstices. Those are 20th century anyway, and use of Mabon for an equinox is highly problematic. I’m in a landscape that has been part of Wales in the past, and there is more Welsh influence in what I do than there is Irish, but I feel uneasy about adopting Welsh language instead. 

Imbolc falls at the same time as Candlemas – which is a lovely and much more English word. But it’s also a specific festival and not one I honour. St Blaise’s Day falls at the same time, and while he’s not part of my religion, his presence in the local calender is significant to me. I find Saints fascinating and appealing and some of them suggest something pre-Christian, although he’s not one of those so far as I know.

Some years ago I read Julie Brett’s book on Australian Druidry. She hit all of these issues with the wheel of the year (and more) because none of the seasonal stuff makes any sense in an Australian context. Solstices and equinoxes are ubiquitous, but the rest of the wheel of the year is northern European. She wrote about her explorations of the seasons on her own terms. I think this is something I need to do, and will explore as the year progresses.

Right now it’s elf cap season. That’s definitely the local feature looming largest for me. I’m not sure what comes next, what defines the turning of the wheel of the year. I’ll be watching out and reporting back as I go. In my own practice I’m going to be rethinking the names I use and asking what’s most relevant and appropriate for me.

Unpredictable shifts towards spring

(Nimue)

Last week there were some warmer days when it felt like early spring. This week we’re dropping below freezing at night and the days are bitterly cold. This is normal enough for the journey from winter to spring in my corner of the UK. It isn’t a smooth journey. Late frosts and snows are always an option.

The photo shows fattening leaf buds on a little tree near my home. Daffodils are putting up leaves and I’ve seen a lot of other ground cover plants emerging from the earth in sheltered spots. Spring comes in fits and starts, and a sudden shift in the weather can dramatically set everything back. Climate chaos of course makes it all more unpredictable than it was in the past.

I always find this first sighting of new leaves a hopeful moment. No matter how much winter lies ahead, spring is certainly on the way, and I find comfort in that knowledge. I don’t do well with really cold conditions, spring always comes as a relief to me.

Watery winter landscapes

(Nimue)

Landscapes can change dramatically through the year – something I talked about a bit last week. Here’s another example. In summer, these are regular fields and may have a few birds on them. Winter rain transforms this landscape into wetland, attracting huge numbers of waterbirds. There were some 3000 golden plovers out there, I was reliably informed.

It isn’t as easy to spend time in landscapes when the conditions are more challenging. What kit you can afford, how much extra laundry you can handle and how your body deals with cold, damp or slippery conditions will inform what you can do in the dark half of the year. 

However, there’s a lot to be said for knowing how landscapes change through the seasons, and what happens there. Some places are dramatically transformed. 

Wetlands are wonderful, liminal places that shift and change a lot. If you only saw this field in summer, you would not know that about it. The liminality itself becomes invisible. The field is most alive in winter when waterlogged and teaming with birdlife. Some places locally are prone to more invasive flooding. The relationship between land and water in the UK has a long history. We’ve drained a lot of wetland to use it for farming and building, but we need those wetlands to handle heavy rain. They also lock in carbon at least as much – and potentially more – than trees do.

Landscapes that seem very ordinary and seem devoid of life at some times of year can become very different places in the right conditions. It takes time to know a landscape and learn its ways. I think we can have much more meaningful relationships with places if we encounter them at different times and see how different conditions change them.

(Photo by Keith Errington)