Connect with the cycles of the Earth
Peace be with your soul this fine day!!
I started my journey with the Wheel of the Year at the beginning of 2023. I knew about it way before this, but I really wanted to understand it. I wanted to establish ritual in my life and this seemed like the perfect way to do so. Are you familiar with the Wheel of the Year? If you are, then you are already on the journey of connecting yourself to the Earth. If you are not, then I am excited that you will be learning more about the Earth, her energy and her power.
We have all been taught in school that there are 365 days in a solar year. The Earth moves around the sun, making one whole trip in those 365 days. We all see the consequences of this every day of our lives, sometimes without really paying attention. We experience the seasons, more so if you live in the Northern latitudes. We have a calendar that divides time out for us so that we know what to expect from month to month. We know that the seasons proceed in a certain order: Spring always follows Winter and so on. We walk through life knowing all of this, but never really connecting to it.
Imagine being a person living on Earth before the time of formal calendars. You live an agricultural life as almost everyone did. You need to know when to plant, when to harvest, when to save the seeds, when to slaughter the livestock so that you have food for the cold times when things do not grow. You can’t just look at your calendar and say, “Hmmm, looks like Autumn is approaching, I should harvest my crop and save my seeds for next year, otherwise my family won’t have food.” What you did do was watch the Earth, pay attention to the Sun in the sky. When was it higher? When did it start to be lower in the sky? What are the animals doing? How do the plants look? How does my own energy feel? This is what we have lost with the advent of the modern calendar and technology. We have lost following the Wheel of the Year.
Even though the Wheel of the Year as we know it today is a modern creation, history tells us that the ancient Celts and Pagan cultures followed the rhythms of the Earth in planning the major events of their lives. (Source: Wheel of the Year – World History Encyclopedia.) They celebrated several festivals as a way to acknowledge the shifts in the Earth’s energy and to ask the Earth for her protection and bounty. These were times of change in the Earth and Sun where people celebrated what they had and prepared for the next turn of the Wheel. Their year was divided by these festivals.
We celebrate the start of the New Year the first day of January, but many in these times looked at the New Year as starting in the Fall, before the Winter hit. The beginning of the year was celebrated on Samhain (late autumn), usually on October 31st. This date sounds familiar, right? Our modern Halloween grows out of the celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-wen). Next is Yule, usually celebrated around December 21st, the Winter Solstice. Imbolc is celebrated at the end of January/first of February. Ostara (Spring Equinox) is celebrated around March 21st. Beltane is celebrated at the first of May. Many May Day celebrations come out of this festival. Litha (Summer Solstice) is celebrated around June 1st. Lammas is celebrated at the first of August. And Mabon (Autumnal Equinox) is celebrated around September 21st. It all starts over again with Samhain. Welcome to the Wheel!
My goal here is to walk you through each of these festivals and what they represented to people living in past cultures and what they can mean to us now. There are many communities out in the world that follow the Wheel of the Year and celebrate the festivals. I honor the wheel as a Solitary person and will give you my take on what that means. But you can find so much information out there in Internet land if you would like more or different viewpoints. I encourage you to do this!
Always remember, this is about energy. What is in you and what is around you. The goal is connecting them. Each season and festival has its own energy, its own feeling and emotion. The Earth is speaking to us each day. She is telling us to follow the energy. Take some time to stop, breathe and feel your energy. Are you feeling low? Many of us feel this in the winter when the Earth’s energy is low. We usually feel better during the summer when the Earth’s energy is high. It makes sense, and if we pay attention to it, we can flow with the Earth’s energy and not fight against it.
Again, welcome to the Wheel of the Year!! Many blessings to you all!