Tag: wheel of the year

This is my favourite Wheel of the Year festival. I think it’s because I was born (and have almost always lived in) the “moderate north” of Europe. So for me, the winter solstice and perhaps even the summer solstice would be special in the far north Nordic countries where things are more extreme, in terms of dark nights and endless days. I find the summer festivals are a bit more of a Mediterranean thing of heat and sunny delirium.

Where I am in southern England, I think we notice the turnings more – the subtle moments where things tip or pivot. It’s the flow that counts, more than the high points. So now – at this fulcrum when the nights are as long as the days and we have 12 hours of sun and the same of “darkness” – it’s a moment for looking both back and forward. We can be grateful for the more hedonistic summer and prepare for the mystical mysterious winter. Everything is in balance and we know we aren’t going to get any more stifling days but we also don’t have to deal with the sapping absence of light yet, either. The weather is perfect (or maybe just past perfect). Like squirrels, we can start storing things up for the assault of winter. I hope for all of us that it’s not literally food that we have to store, but more like reserves of resilience and careful planning that will get us through the deprivation.

For me it’s the time of the mushroom, that bizarre and beautiful life form that’s not quite plant and not quite animal. Of course they fruit all year but instinctively this feels like their special time when they smash out all the hits, especially the star fungus, the bright red fly agaric, which frankly to me just looks too stunning to be true. It’s especially hedged around by myth and folklore but it’s only one of many that look like they have come straight from our imaginations. As we know, much of the real life of the fungus happens underground in the thin strands of its mycelium – again a great symbol for this time of year when the prime energies are the more subtle ones.

I don’t know about you, but I find a strange consciousness lurks around fungi. To make a huge generalization, plants are showy and exuberant, while fungi – which of course can also be as exuberant as any species – seem to have a knowing and a subterranean awareness when they are live fruit. Perhaps that’s me getting carried away because, like many people, I love this time of year. If spring is the peak time for growing potential, autumn is the same for inner work, when it all feels possible, and you can plan for special projects and creative work. We feast a little bit, celebrate and then get on with it. We enjoy the harvest and we also share it, to make sure we are on the right side of the gods and goddesses – the forces we will need in the dark months to come.

This blog was written by Adam Gordon, Cygnus Magazine Editor, Watkins Commissioning Editor and Watkins Media Office Manager.

This August 1st festival has two major names: Lammas and Lughnasadh. A quick piece of research online (yes we all go there!) reveals that they might not necessarily be Christian and pagan versions of exactly the same thing, although they are related in our awareness. For once, the Christian version of the event seems to have a stronger identity. The word Lammas is derived from “loaf mass” and the festival often involves creating beautiful bread and visiting bakeries. Bakeries mean community. In lockdown, many of us started baking our own bread and it has a feeling of sharing about it because it’s something specialised that people can do for their friends and family to feed and support them. Even back in medieval times, it might still have been sourdough, before it was replaced in later centuries by purpose-cultured yeast. That’s something pagan people have always understood: what goes around comes around.

This is one of the quieter festivals. It doesn’t shout out its name like others. It’s the beginning of the land becoming more productive, when our ancestors could really start reaping and then baking. It’s a preparation for the time of bounty and of storing up for autumn and winter, which are starting to loom in the back of our consciousness. Again – what goes around comes around. In various parts of Britain there are open spaces which are known as ‘Lammas Land’. This meant that they were private property until this day – Lammas Day – after which everyone could use them for pasturage. I remember Lammas Land in Cambridge, which is now part of the city but which still retains an edge of wildness.

These ancient customs still linger in our subconscious. There is a celebration of many of these historical festivals in a book coming out from Watkins Publishing in October. It’s called Folklore Rising, written by artist Ben Edge. He is renowned for painting old, mostly pagan, festivals and mysterious sites such as Callanish, Wayland’s Smithy and Stonehenge. His vibrant paintings are reproduced in the book, along with text about his feelings and experiences in these places and as an eyewitness to the old rituals.

Lughnasadh is both the height of the summer and the turning of the summer. We remember dreamy days and dips in the stream under the shade. No matter how old we are now, we can still go out onto the land and forget everything that weighs us down. I always recall the old song John Barleycorn. He is a ritual figure who is sacrificed to ensure a good harvest and who rises again in the following year. The barley makes bread and beer and the two processes are closely related. John Barleycorn is often represented as a corn dolly and perhaps this season – if we have the skill – we ourselves can make corn dollies and be grateful and mindful of what we have, and be aware of the death that will always follow. The wonderful thing though is that life always returns.

This blog was written by Adam Gordon, Cygnus Magazine Editor, Watkins Commissioning Editor and Watkins Media Office Manager.

Folklore Rising by Ben Edge is available to pre-order now!

The four biggest festivals according to the old way of marking the year’s cycle are the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The longest day, the shortest day, and the two days when light and dark are in balance. These are the ancient ways of marking in time; “here we are – we have got here again.” After that, people of the past could break down the gaps between these greater markers in less grand ways, by counting the days for example, and thus create a calendar.

The great stone circles and the ancient monuments on these islands, and elsewhere in the world, were to varying degrees built to help us know when these crucial moments were coming and to celebrate them by orchestrating a grand luminous spectacle when the sun would touch a certain part of the structure. They would also of course provide spaces in which people could gather and enjoy the moment communally. Stonehenge in England seems to have had many functions over the centuries but among those are marking the two solstices, while Newgrange in Ireland, for example, seems more specifically to mark the winter one.

People still gather in these places on these festivals, and they can remind us of the heritage of the people who lived here before us and their technological skills. On this summer solstice we can remember the land and the sky where they celebrated, even if in our cities we can’t see that backdrop so clearly. There is more light today than on any other day of the year, and we can bathe ourselves in it as much as we can and perhaps even give thanks to the sun for creating and sustaining life here. People in other times and cultures have seen the sun as a conscious being or a god and it never does harm to show gratitude.

The summer solstice is a time for seeing the bigger picture. The world isn’t all about our social networks and our possessions. For all the interventions of big corporations and aggressive regimes, the sun is easily the most important thing in this whole solar system and life can’t exist without it. Let’s celebrate that.

 

This blog was written by Adam Gordon, Cygnus Magazine Editor, Watkins Commissioning Editor and Watkins Media Office Manager.