The Wheel Turns

The turning of the year is especially self announcing around the solstices as the shape of the day changes. The passing of a calendar year also makes us more alert to the progress of time, and the existence of so many winter festivals adds to all of that.

Festivals are often the focus for awareness of the wheel of the year. It’s often when we pause to celebrate a key point that the journey through the year becomes most apparent to us. I’ve seen this a lot in ritual spaces, where checking in with community and spiritual practice for festivals also brings people into relationship with the seasons. Back when I was regularly leading rituals, it was evident that for a lot of people, these key check in points formed the majority of their relationship with the seasons.

The wheel turns every day. We’re in a constant state of movement and as we pass through any season, the next one is also being made. A lamb born at Imbolc will be growing in the womb at this time of year.

Taken as a day by day process, the changes are hard to see – it’s the moments of drama that make it most apparent where we are in a season. First frosts. First flowers. And while the solar process of the year is entirely predictable, how any given season plays out is far less so. I’ve seen heavy snow in April when it should have been spring and I’ve been outside in just a t-shirt some years in December. Sometimes our festivals align well with what’s happening in the natural world, but not always.

When I started out on this path I spent quite a few years celebrating the seasons through the eight festivals. That was in no small part because at that time I had a community to celebrate with. I spent some years exploring alternatives to the regular wheel of the year story. There are many things in nature that do not fit neatly into the kinds of stories Pagans like to tell about the wheel of the year. I found spending time on that helped me deal with the ways in which I’m not reliably able to fit myself into those regular wheel of the year stories either.

In recent years I’ve become more interested in approaching the seasons on a more day to day basis, focused on what’s going on around my home. This is in part because I’ve not been able to walk so far, which has focused my attention on what’s closest to me. Exploring the day to day changes makes more sense when you’re looking at the same area of land most days.

Our relationships with the wheel of the year are, to a significant degree, shaped by our relationships with the landscape. How often we go out, where we go, how far we go and how often we go to any specific place will shape how we experience the year.

First signs of autumn

There was a time when I would have taken blackberries as a first sign of autumn, but more normally now they appear around my home in August. I think of apples as very much an autumnal thing and yet here we are at the end of August, and I’ve seen windfall apples. The stress caused by drought has turned some trees early – although not to many where I live.

There is however a crispness in the air first thing in the morning. It’s the uneasy taste of a new school term that reminds my body of stresses from the past. Which is a pity because of itself, that morning crispness is delightful and welcome.

I’m watching grass returning to life now that the days are less hot and we’ve had some rain. So while in theory the end of summer is supposed to be about harvest and things dying off, that’s not what’s happening on my doorstep. Climate chaos is impacting on the wheel of the year. I think it’s really important not to insist on those old stories about what happens when, but to be alert to what’s happening now. And anyway, the wheel of the year was always far more complicated than the stories Pagans like to tell about it.

No matter where you are in the wheel of the year, something is always starting and something is always dying.

Wild orchids

My experience of the wheel of the year is not about celebrating festivals. What I most like to engage with are the seasonal events in my local landscape – the timing of which varies somewhat from year to year. Over time, I’ve built up an understanding of how the seasons occur in the local landscape, and there are certain things that are particularly important to me.

One of those things is getting to see the wild orchids. The hill nearest my home usually has a lot of orchids on it at this time of year. I can’t claim any confidence around telling the pinky purple ones apart. I love the bee orchids especially, and I’ve seen half a dozen this year, which is amazing.

The photo doesn’t really do justice to the profusion out there at the moment.

Winter Light

The place I live is made up of hills and valleys. The town of Stroud nestles (mostly) between the hills, with villages occupying other valleys. This place was carved out of the limestone by water working its way down to meet the Severn.

In winter, the sun doesn’t clear the hills much in some places. I have a friend whose home gets no direct sunlight at this time of year. For those on the hilltops there is still plenty of light, but also a lot of wind. Down in the valleys, where I live, it is a lot more sheltered, but also gloomier. 

I don’t experience the solstice as having any great impact. For me, the dark part of the year starts in early December and continues well into January. My sense of the light and the season has everything to do with how I experience light – and the absence of it – in my own home and that in turn has everything to do with where I live in relation to the hills.

I think it’s important to be specific and personal in our relationships with the natural world. Thinking about ‘nature’ as some sort of vague abstract won’t give you much. It’s easy to pay lip service to a vague idea, but a real relationship calls for specifics. 

How does the wheel of the year turn for you? What are your personal experiences of the seasons? What happens where you live?

Hinamatsuri and the wheel of the year

Learning a language means learning about the culture the language comes from. The two are profoundly linked. My memories of school are of studying languages (French and Spanish) with nothing much about culture or history. Perhaps the assumption with European languages is that the cultures are enough alike not to need to explain much.

This certainly isn’t the case with Japanese, which I’ve been studying slowly for some months now. There may be no ancestral language linking Japanese and English, and if there was such a thing, it would be a long way back in pre-history. There are radical differences in the kinds of concepts the languages exist to express and literal translation is often perplexing at best.

As part of my learning process, I thought it would be interesting to add recognition of Japanese festivals into my wheel of the year. Today – March the third, is Hinamatsuri- which is Dolls’ Day or Girls’ Day, although its origins are in a peach festival. Traditionally, dolls are displayed on a red carpet. Not having the space or resources for actual dolls, we made 2 out of paper – both are musician dolls. Mine is the blue one, and Tom did the orange one. Paper is an acceptable alternative.

If would be more normal if there were only two dolls to have an Emperor and Empress, but as grubby peasants we felt more affinity with the musicians and opted to start there. Perhaps, in years to come we can build up a full set of paper dolls. For now, they’re in an entirely unsuitable setting on our small altar space because that’s what we’ve got.

Singing the wheel of the year

Singing the wheel of the year has been an important part of my path. I’ve done it in folk spaces, rituals and with groups I’ve been singing with. It’s a simple process of bringing along songs that are in some way seasonally relevant. I’ve got something for every month, and for some months, more than one song. It’s an important part of how I celebrate, but it’s something I’ve not done much of during the last six months or so.

I’ve decided to go back to singing the wheel of the year as something I can do for supporters on Patreon.  There will be a monthly post with a recorded song, and some notes on my history with it, where I got it and whatever else seems relevant. This will be available to anyone who supports me, regardless of level. There are other level-specific things, involving fiction, a Druid book in progress and things in the post, for anyone who is really keen.

Patreon helps me afford the time to write a blog post every day. It means I can afford to spend time on projects like Wherefore  – which I am also giving away. It means there’s a space where I can plan a project like singing the wheel of the year.

At the moment, my energy levels are really poor. I’m often only good for a few hours each day before exhaustion wipes me out. Being both economically active and creative is difficult to balance in this context and I’ve had to think hard about what I can do based on what I can currently sustain.  It helps to do something I can feel good about, that lifts me as I work on it, rather than stuff that just grinds me down.

So from next week, I’ll be singing once a month. Which means making the time to practice and polish up songs – I’ve hardly sung at all in the last six months, so my voice isn’t what it could be. I’ll have that sorted out by the time I’m recording. The prompt t do this came from asking Patreon supporters what they’d like more of, and one person saying they were mostly interested in the Druidry and another asking for more songs – I have put a few up there in the past. These two things combine rather well, and it is good to have the inspiration.

I’m very glad of Patreon as a space. If you’d like to join me over there, it’s https://www.patreon.com/NimueB

Green Hazel

Earlier in the autumn I wrote about seeing hazel trees with green leaves and catkins on. I don’t think it’s something I’d seen before. Usually the hazel leaves have gone by the time the catkins are obvious. It is December. In my childhood, December meant bare branches on anything deciduous. Many of the trees round here have now shed their leaves, but from my window I can see the distinctive copper of a beach still wearing autumn colours.

There are two hazels near here, one of which has yellow leaves and one of which is still largely in leaf, and mostly green. I’ve not been very far in the daylight lately, so I’m not up to date on other trees in my area, but these two have not really got to autumn yet, and it is December.

The idea of the wheel of the year is crucial to many Pagans. That wheel was never accurate for everyone, and the 8 festivals favoured by twentieth century Paganism didn’t always make sense in different contexts around the world. What happens to the wheel of the year as climate chaos impacts on our landscapes? What new seasons will emerge, if any? What will we celebrate? What will seem significant as part of our journeys through the year?

Body, Seasons, Druidry

When we talk about the wheel of the year and the seasons in Druidry, most often what we’re talking about is external to us. Things in nature that we might observe, or contemplate from a safe distance.

In practice our primary way of experiencing the seasons is through our own bodies. It occurs to me that I’ve not seen anyone explore it on these terms (if you know otherwise, please do leave a comment).

Often a body experience of a season is about having to mitigate the effects of it. How does that work in terms of communing with nature? If we’re doing seasonal stuff for spiritual reasons, should we not embrace the season? Is our adapting natural, and therefore something to work with, or is it a denial of what’s going on? I could make a case either way, but I think the main consideration has to be… what works for you?

It is summer. We’ve had some really hot days. I adapt by wearing less, staying indoors in the middle of the day, and not moving too much if I can help it. Getting out there for some sun worship would likely make me ill. In winter I have to do other things to mitigate against the cold and to deal with the risks of falling. My response to the seasons is always to try and keep my body in a state where it’s not being overloaded.

The seasons should impact on our bodies in terms of what is available to eat. Whether we favour raw or cooked food can be a seasonal consideration. Our work may be seasonal, and what we do to take care of our homes may well also have a strong seasonal angle. How we travel, how we feel about going out, even who we spend time with can be informed by the season. These are all things we will experience primarily inside ourselves as part of a personal relationship with the time of year.

Summer means bare feet. But it also means grumpy lymph glands, sore skin and the scope for puffy ankles. It means hayfever – as the plants try to have sex with my face. Heat will make me ill if there’s a lot of it. Summer means watching my blood pressure and electrolytes and making sure I stay hydrated without washing too much useful stuff out of my body. Sometimes it means the comfort of warm sun on my skin and the pleasure of sitting on the grass.

These are all everyday, fairly mundane things, easily overlooked. But at the same time, this day to day stuff is how I live the season and how I feel it in my body. It is my most immediate experience. It lacks for drama most of the time, it doesn’t have the big narrative energy of the things we like to say about the wheel of the year. It’s not especially mystical. But, as a process of rooting my Druidry in my lived experience it strikes me as an important one and I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to see it on these terms.

Signs of autumn

Back when I used to teach Druidry to people, I spent a lot of time thinking about the wheel of the year, and what seasonal events it connected with. I came to the conclusion that the trees being bare of leaves might be an important one for Samhain.

We’re a few days from Samhain now, and many of the trees around me are still green. Some have started to turn yellow and some leaves have started to fall. This could be one of those years where leaves are still present into Yule. It has happened before.

I spent some of last week further north (I live in the south west of the UK). There, autumn was further ahead, but in the place I was staying, there leaves had, I was told, just gone brown and started falling.

This morning, I woke to my first proper frost of the season. Normally this is a sad moment in the wheel of the year for me. I do not enjoy the cold, I am not good on slippery surfaces. But today, I am glad to see the first frost because it’s so late. It’s a relief to have it there.

In the last year or so, the number of rough sleepers around the town has increased considerably. First frosts are very bad news for them. Any scope for enjoying these conditions is rooted in privilege and it is so very important to keep sight of that. Don’t tell people off for being killjoys if they aren’t keen on autumn and winter. Poverty makes being cold a much bigger problem. Yes, autumn is lovely if you can put on your fluffiest socks and read a book by your log fire, looking up to enjoy the scenery outside the window. If you can’t afford the heat to keep the damp at bay, it is a miserable time of year.

For anyone who suffers SAD, this is a tough time of year. It can add to other forms of depression too – you can be practically affected by the cold and dark in ways that increase depression and anxiety. Having to travel to and from work in the dark is an obvious example. The cold can exacerbate pain. For older women with more fragile bones, a broken hip is a life limiting disaster, and the frost and ice pose a real threat. There are many other such examples. No one should add to the misery for people who cannot enjoy what autumn brings.

Druidry, language, the good and the bad

How we label things has a great deal of power. What do we name as desirable, attractive, appealing? What do we tell ourselves is rubbish, useless, second rate? That winter holiday in the sun is generally framed as ‘good’ along with long dry spells in summer. What would happen if we stopped calling long sunny spells ‘beautiful’ and started calling them ‘droughts’?

In the context of climate change, how we talk about the weather is ever more important. Firstly because we are causing weather extremes, and secondly because how we respond to those, can add to the problem. Jetting off in search of winter sun is a case in point here. I grant you, it’s no fun being cold, but if you can afford to fly, you can probably afford fluffy socks and sufficient heating.

Air conditioning with its hydrofluorocarbons and electricity use is a response to hot weather that adds to the climate change fuelling the hot weather. No one enjoys being hot but the question of when to start using energy to cool down, and how much energy to use is an important one.

Extreme heat and cold both kill people, and other living beings too. If we’re increasing the problem when we try to improve our own comfort, we really aren’t winning here.

To be a Druid means, in part to be in service to the land and the wild world. How exactly you phrase that and express it will vary, but this is nature based religion and we have a duty of care to the natural world. It’s also at this point a matter of enlightened self interest – if it was your personal home that could easily end up either on fire, or frozen, you would act to avoid that.

One of the ways in which Druidry, and Paganism as a whole is well placed to help people rethink climate change responses, is through the language of cycles. Accepting the wheel of the year, the seasons and the natural changes in weather makes us better able to live with them. If you are honouring the seasons, it gives you a better basis for working with how things are. Rather than seeing good and bad weather, we can just see weather and look for appropriate responses. We can reframe good weather as weather we can live with, and bad weather as extreme weather that can kill us. If we talk about the dramatic weather climate change is causing, that alone helps. So many people are still in denial about both our role in this and our power to change it.

It’s worth exploring how you talk about climate, and where you describe things as good or bad, problematic or desirable. It’s well worth looking at how our feelings about the weather then translate into our choices about technology we use, and carbon we release into the atmosphere.