On the nature of time: Seasons of the Year

I've written on this before, in my personal journal. I've discussed it with others. Now, I write it here for others to see, and to think about.

[Please note that I write this in North America, in the region known as New England in the United States of America. My writing about the names of the seasons and the dates that mark them are from that perspective.]

Seasons. We are bound by our perception of seasons, which many of us see as unchanging and ever changing, coming full circle during the course of a year back to where we started.

Summer begins on this date, and Fall on that date. We celebrate the coming of Winter on this date, and Spring comes at the same time each year.

But old terms get in the way of our clear understanding of the cycle of the seasons. Someone mentions Midsummer or Midwinter, and our image of the seasons cannot sustain it. How is it that we say that Summer begins on the day of the Summer Solstice, and then also hear/read/say that the Summer Solstice is also called Midsummer? How can Winter begin on Midwinter's day?

Consider the Welsh language. The word Gorffennaf, "July", is derived from gorffen + haf, meaning "the end of summer".

Think of Summer, the season that we are now in (regardless of how you might divide up the year). If you use the definition of Summer that is used most often in North America, then the day of the Summer Solstice is the first day of Summer. This is the "astronomical" definition of Summer.

Does it make more sense to mark Summer as beginning on the day with the longest period of sunlight, or would it make more sense to mark Summer as the days that, together, have the longest period of sunlight? If the Summer Solstice marks the beginning of Summer, then there are almost as many total hours of sunlight in Spring as there are in Summer.

If you think of Summer as the warmest period of the year, rather than the period with the most light, then June, July, and August make the most sense in North America on average (this year appears to be an interesting exception so far in our region). This definition appears to be divorced from the astronomical orientation of the Earth to the Sun (it's not, but there is an offset caused by the lag in the warming of the land mass following the solar cycle), but is important from an agricultural point of view to know when the warmest period will be. This is the "meteorological" definition of Summer.

I prefer to use the definition of the seasons that include Summer Solstice as Mid-Summer, and the Winter Solstice as Mid-Winter. Autumn, the season of the harvest, contains the Autumnal Equinox at its heart rather than at its beginning, as does Spring, the season of rebirth, the Vernal Equinox. The seasons change on the so-called "cross quarter" days, February 2nd, May 1st, August 2nd, and November 1st. Those days are harder to find and define by the sun's position than the solstices and equinoxes, of course.

Sometimes, too, I think of the seasons as being eightfold rather than fourfold, divided by the equinoxes, the solstices, and the cross-quarter days. Each of those periods has its own character, by how plants grow, thrive, and mature, how the temperatures fluctuate, growing colder or warmer, how the rains or snows come, gentle or with great force.

I pay attention to the meteorological seasons, because it's important to know which period will likely be warmest, and which coldest, and which somewhere in between.

We celebrate the turning of the seasons, each in our own way, even if we don't agree on when each season begins or ends. The year turns, the days begin to grow shorter again, heading towards the day when the day and night are the same length and beyond.

May the season be good for you and yours.

Carw Gwynt

Alban Heruin/Signs and portents

Shadowfoot and I decided to celebrate Midsummers tonight, rather than last night or this morning. We should have celebrated it last night, to be most appropriate, but sometimes you make a change to allow for other occurrences. Similarly, it would have been nice if we could have been out of doors in a physical grove, but the most appropriate place we could have used is a fair distance away (45 minutes by driving), and the deer flies would have been much too happy to see us if we had gone there.

Someone wrote in their own notes about Midsummers that they had been gifted with the presence of a Great Blue Heron flying overhead. We were gifted with the presence of my cat, Peredur Mawr, who wanted to participate. First, he lay down to the North of our working space as we were working in the East. Then, he moved to lie down in the East while we were working in the South. Then he moved to the South and just sat there as we worked in the West and North. All would have been well, but he decided that he needed to investigate the white altar cloth, and hooked his claw in the fabric. I moved quickly to help free him, but he panicked and attempted to run away. Since he weighs 18+ pounds, he almost succeeded in taking everything off the altar in the course of his retreat. Thankfully, his claw came free before that happened.

For most the rest of the time of our working, he had the front half of his body wedged under a piece of furniture in the North of our workspace...

It has been some time since I have celebrated the turning of the seasons in this fashion. When we took up the practice again at Alban Eiler, there were steps and practices that seemed new and unfamiliar, but at the same time there were things that were familiar, like being welcomed home. In earlier years, we celebrated in one of the Wiccan traditions, and there are certainly similarities with the traditions and practices of the druid revival of AODA.

The opening of the four corners/compass points, the central altar, the four elements. These are common points. But on the altar were 2 candles, for male and female, while we use 3 candles now for the three types of Awen, the three rays of light, the three stones of the earth, the three rowan staves.

Then, there were more people with us. Now, we are currently two working together.

There are things to remember, things to learn, and things to create. We progress (but not in the sense of "modern progress").

Where I'm coming from

My druid studies as such have so far been very limited, consisting mainly of reading large portions of the AODA and OBOD websites, plus reading in the Druidry Handbook, Earth Magic (which I've had for a long time), a manual on dowsing, some texts on the geology of our area, and other items related to the three paths and the Earth Spiral of AODA, all in preparation for the First Degree in the AODA.

However, I have been involved in other recent pagan traditions, including being one of the founders of a Wiccan circle some years ago. I became less active in any sort of Wiccan community after most of the members of the circle moved north to southern New Hampshire (I'm in western Massachusetts), although I continued my own private practices after that point, and have on occasion provided information and advice to those who were seeking to follow a Wiccan tradition.

At that time, when a friend pressed me on my spiritual practices and intentions, I responded that I basically was acting as a "circle of one". He suggested at that time that perhaps he should introduce me to some friends of his who were druids (probably part of the Druid Revival, but I didn't now enough to ask the question at that time), but for whatever reason, I did not make any contact with the community and missed that opportunity (this was before the Internet phenomenon made contacting such groups much simpler).

I am a Reiki Practitioner (Reiki level II), of a lineage that has somewhat of a shamanistic tradition but is still descended from Usui, and practice Qigong and Taiji Quan (standardized, Yang, and Chen).

I was raised on a large farm in western Massachusetts, the youngest of five children. Because of this, I spent a good portion of my early life in close contact with nature in both its domesticated (at various times, 3,500 chickens given free rein over two floors of a large barn, youngstock cattle, pigs, geese, dogs, cats, etc., gardening for a family of seven plus enough to sell a little at a roadside stand, 40 acres of hay field, etc.) and more wild aspects (about 200 acres of woodland and pasture, filled with a large variety of trees, plants, and small animals, as well as the occasional larger animal, such as deer and black bear). Although working on a farm involved use of tractors and other large machinery, I always felt an affinity with working with simpler hand tools, which brought me personally closer to what I was working on. I have been living in less rural areas over the past couple of decades, but have still tried to maintain some sort of contact with the natural world, and go back to the family farm regularly.

I have recently begun to work back towards my more rural upbringing, endeavoring with my wife to decrease activities that separate us from Nature, taking more time to walk or bicycle from place to place, grow more of our own vegetables (we cannot grow livestock where we currently live), reduce need for fuel to heat our house. We have also been working on developing a place in my home town that we can eventually move to, which will give us more of an opportunity to spend more time and effort to redevelop and maintain a relationship with the natural world and become more self-sufficient in our daily lives.

My spiritual connection to the natural world has always been there, sometimes strong, sometimes overshadowed by other concerns. I have hope that in studying with the AODA and the Druid Revival, I can make that connection even stronger, and look forward to stepping forward on the path that has always been before me, but has tended to meander.

In any case, I continue to read the AODA website, the AODA_Public and AODA_Crafts email lists, as well as varoius books, seeking more information and providing occasional contributions to the discussions here.

I'm also renewing my studies of the Welsh languages, but not just because there's some tie-in between ancient druidry and the celtic language family. I happen to enjoy it. ;-)

Another verge

This is my second blog. My primary blog is under LiveJournal (as http://fitzw.livejournal.com). This blog will be a special purpose blog, for notes and comments specifically related to druidry.

Not that my LJ won't have things on it that will relate, but they won't be specific to druidry. And I may repeat myself here. ;-)