Monthly Archives: September 2012

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Third Phase

Mabon and the Fall Equinox

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Fall                                                                                           Harvest Moon (I changed this name when I discovered the Harvest Moon was the closest full moon to the Fall Equinox)

 

Autumn
by T. E. Hulme

A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

 

My thoughts

This Equinox I’m offering some resources from around the web that speak to this, the second harvest holiday.  This is the liturgical fall, as I said yesterday, as opposed to the meteorological fall which occurs September 1st.

The crone aspect of this holiday strikes me especially this year.  Why?  Because it honors the triple goddess [maid-mother-crone] in her final form of three. The final form, that is, until the new year begins. She begins the year as the maid, shifts with the beginning of the growing season into the mother and then, with the coming of fall enters the crone.

I don’t go further with the triple goddess idea (from Robert Graves) than its emphasis on the seasons recapitulating  the main phases of human life.  In this way the fall turn of the goddess into the crone, the wise woman/healer, marks the seasonal reminder of the Third Phase.

My own version of the three is:  Student, Family (householder in the Hindu tradition), Third Phase (retirement in the Hindu tradition, but in a different sense than our own, about which there is no cultural consensus.  Hence, for me, the third phase).  The crone encourages an inflection in the third phase that I like i.e., a sense of fulfillment, of gathered wisdom, of grace gained from an expected and welcomed transition.

This is also the season of age passing onto death.  Death marks the end of the third phase and since it does, preparation for dying is an essential aspect of the third phase.  An essential, perhaps the only essential, realization here is that death is and that it comes for us all.  Though essential, this is a truth difficult to grasp in its deeply personal sense and once grasped, to accept.  It requires wisdom, patience and gentle resignation, all characteristic of the crone as I have come to understand her.

She could just as well be he.  A wise old man, the one on the block that others come to.

This is the season of harvest.  Enjoy the fruits of your labors.

Mabon

Aging Goddess

The triple Goddess – worshipped by the Ancient Britons, is now in her aspect of the aging Goddess and passes from Mother to Crone, until she is reborn as a youthful virgin as the wheel of nature turns.
At the Autumn equinox the goddess offers wisdom, healing and rest.

Apples
To honour the dead, it was also traditional at Mabon to place apples on burial cairns, as symbolism of rebirth and thanks. This also symbolizes the wish for the living to one day be reunited with their loved ones.
Mabon is also known as the Feast of Avalon, deriving from the meaning of Avalon being, ‘the land of the apples’.

Mabon Traditions

The Wicker man
There was a Celtic ritual of dressing the last sheaf of corn to be harvested in fine clothes, or weaving it into a wicker-like man or woman. It was believed the sun or the corn spirit was trapped in the corn and needed to be set free. This effigy was usually burned in celebration of the harvest and the ashes would be spread on the fields.

‘The reaping is over and the harvest is in,
Summer is finished, another cycle begins’

In some areas of the country the last sheaf was kept inside until the following spring, when it would be ploughed back into the land. In Scotland, the last sheaf of harvest is called ‘the Maiden’, and must be cut by the youngest female in attendance.

To close:  a prayer, written by Kathleen Jenks of the wonderful website Myth*ing Links:

Kathleen was a professor at Pacifica and is now a private consultant.

As autumn returns to earth’s northern hemisphere,
and day and night are briefly,
but perfectly,
balanced at the equinox,
may we remember anew how fragile life is —-
human life, surely,
but also the lives of all other creatures,
trees and plants,
waters and winds.May we make wise choices in how and what we harvest,
may earth’s weather turn kinder,
may there be enough food for all creatures,
may the diminishing light in our daytime skies
be met by an increasing compassion and tolerance
in our hearts.
 

Warmly,

Kathleen

 

Garden, Great Wheel, Politics

Apples and the Equinox

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Lugnasa (Fall Eve)                                                 Autumn Moon

“O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not,
but sit
Beneath my shady roof, there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;
And all the daughters of the year shall dance,
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers. ”
–   William Blake, To Autumn 

Tomorrow at 9:49 we move into liturgical fall (as opposed to meteorological fall).  I’m partial to the liturgical fall, especially with its astronomical significance.  The sun comes up on the equatorial plane–as projected 93 million miles plus into space of course.  Otherwise, crispy critters.  Full entry tomorrow.

The campaign moves on, annoying me less than many because we cut the cord, or the coaxial, with Comcast and no longer have cable television.  Though we do have a basic component of broadcast channels, we never watch them (they bring down the cost of the broad band service) and thus miss the television political ads.

That does not mean we miss out on television shows altogether though since subscriptions to Netflix streaming and Hulu mean many of them are available to us, just not CBS programs.  BFD.  My current new favorite is Grimm, a weekly tale of a Portland detective’s life as a homicide investigator and a Grimm who has the family vocation of seeing and vanquishing fairy tale creatures and/or learning to live with them.

Kate and I went around the outside this afternoon identifying tasks that need to be done.  What needs pruning, weeding, transplanting.  What we want in next year’s vegetable garden and where to plant it.  Where the iris and the lilies and the tulips I buy will go.  What needs to come out altogether.  The yews out front, for example.  Long past their prime and now tall enough to hide the house.

I harvested the apples off the leaning tree of Zestar.  Boy, are they good.  A light, sweet flavor that seems almost unapple like.  This is the tree that needs shoring up.  Not a hundred percent sure how to do that.  Stakes and wires are one option, but with our sandy soil I’m not confident the stakes will hold at a high enough tension.  May have to support it from the front and hold it in place with stakes.

 

 

Cooking, Garden, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Head and Hands

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Lugnasa                                                                      Autumn Moon

Worked my head into a fuzzy place today.  Just couldn’t go further, so I worked out.  That always helps.

Tomorrow is a Latin morning with my tutor at 11:00 AM.  Before I meet with him, I have to review my Ovid, the last of the Philemon and Baucis, 14 verses.  I reviewed the Aeneid this afternoon, 9 verses there.  This crop, in both authors, was difficult.

This weekend is a garden weekend.  The orchard, shoring up a leaning apple tree.  It’s a Zestar and we had two apples from it today.  Boy, are they good.  I plan to harvest the tree before we begin the shoring up.  These are mostly bagged and, for some reason, the squirrels have left them alone.  Maybe they’re honeycrisp connoiseurs?

We’re going to prepare for winter pruning, decide the remaining tasks before the cold and get on the priority ones.

There’s one more soup to make, a winter vegetable that will use our onions, leeks, carrots and tomatoes at least.  Our frozen soups. pot pies and vegetables have begun to use up the available space in our freezer so one task is to clean out the old and the no longer desirable to make room.  That will happen over the weekend, too.

Writing

Tote That Paragraph

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Lugnasa                                                                             Autumn Moon

The morning changing point of view, cleaning up word choices, still considering major edits. Through several scenes.  At times this work energizes me, at other times it makes me yawn, want to lie down and take a nap.  Not sure I’ve completely arrived in the land of revision, though I’m making my way through the book, learning as I go.

There is quite a bit to add, the ending needs expansion and then parsing out among the rest.

Just finished reviewing my Aeneid translation.  Scratching my head, not able to clarify some jumbled syntax.  Sometimes I feel I’ve made great progress, then it reaches up and slaps me.  Facility still seems a long way off right now.

Writing

At Play In The Field of The Word

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Lugnasa                                                               Autumn Words

Rare Words

acosmist – One who believes that nothing exists
paralian – A person who lives near the sea
aureate – Pertaining to the fancy or flowery words used by poets
dwale – To wander about deliriously
sabaism – The worship of stars
dysphoria – An unwell feeling
aubade – A love song which is sung at dawn
eumoirous – Happiness due to being honest and wholesome
mimp – To speak in a prissy manner, usually with pursed lips

As an aureate might say, there was an ascomist, a paralian, who, dysphoric, dwaled and mimped until she could sing an aubade to express her sabaistic ecstasy.  Then she was, as he often said, eumoirous.

Politics
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Lugnasa                                                                   Autumn Moon

Just ran across this quote.  What I’m talkin’ about.

“The planet does not need more ‘successful people’. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. It needs people to live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the struggle to make the world habitable and humane and these qualities have little to do with success as our culture is the set.”

Politics

If You Got It, It May Have You

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Lugnasa                                                                 Autumn Moon

Romney.  You know, I don’t find much fault with a man following his prejudices as long at they’re clear eyed and honestly stated.  I understand that where you stand often determines how you see and it comes as no surprise at all to me that a man of Romney’s wealth and I don’t see the world the same way.  What would surprise me would be a Romney Damascus Road experience leading to a heartfelt declaration for democratic socialism.

I get it that extraordinary wealth insulates those who have it from the daily concerns of those who don’t.  And, I even get that our political system allows, almost demands, that someone representing those of great wealth will take the political positions that Romney has.

What he can’t expect from me, however, is my agreement or my vote or my sympathy.  And he does not have it.  I understand his bias and his social position; I understand the correlation between the two.  To me they represent the very danger to our body politic that he claims the 47% exhibit.  That is, the arrogant assumption of entitlement.

Romney and those in Michael Leder’s living room or ball room or whatever it was assume their money equals their righteousness.  This is not a new idea.  Aristocracies and monarchies the world over have had similar views.  It was just such views that lead to the American revolution, the French revolution and, yes, even the Bolshevik revolution.

The reason these perspectives lead to revolutions and will over and over again–watch out China–is the money = rightness argument has no clothes.  There is no ethical imperative to having $10 million dollars or $100 million or $1 billion.  Truth cannot be had for a fat check.  Love cannot be bought.

The important things in life–and we all know this–have no price tags.  A millionaire or a billionaire can be as ethical as the next guy.  Of course, they can.  It’s just that having the money doesn’t mean they will be.  The opposite, of course, is true, too.  That is, poverty is no guarantee of righteousness either.   But, if you had to rate the probability of ethical behavior, which one would you choose?  The poor woman or the rich woman?

 

Writing

Writing

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Lugnasa                                                               New (Autumn) Moon

Meeting with Jonathon Odell focused me on the reason I turned to writing in the first place, helped me see, again, the power available to the writer.  My cousin Kathy Steffey’s husband, Steve, is a metal sculptor and he advised long ago that I put up a sign in my study:  I am an artist; I will not quit.  Good advice.

After I learned Jonathon got the lead to his agent from spending time at the Loft, I wondered why I’ve never spent any time there.  I wandered through their website this morning, looking at programs and resources aimed exactly at me.  The feeling was strange, a bit mystified (at myself), a bit ashamed.  Hopeful.

This whole process of writing has been so hit and miss, fits and starts.  I’ve not handled it well and my resolution for the new Celtic year, starting on the Celtic New Year, Samain, October 31st, is to get cracking on the learning, networking side of things.

US History, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

The Healing

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Lugnasa                                                        New (Autumn) Moon

Woollies tonight.  Warren, Scott, Stefan, Mark and Frank.  We met in Wayzata on the grounds of the old Cenacle Retreat Center, now a treatment center for addiction.  Sheepshead buddy Dick Rice works there.  They have a retreat house that we’ve used from time to time as a meeting place and Warren chose it.

We met with Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing.  Kate read it and told me to read it, but I didn’t get around to it until a couple of weeks ago.  If you’re reading this blog and have any interest at all in the Civil War, post-Civil War south, from the slave and freed persons’ perspective, read this book.  It’s a moving story, told from the perspective of a freed woman and her life both on the plantation and after the war.

It’s a powerful evocation of womanhood and the mystical strength given to women through the act of creation.  It’s an equally powerful evocation of what could never be taken from the slave and what, in this story, certain slaves claim.

Jonathan’s writing process and his story as a writer made me cheer.  It can be done.  Requires stamina and courage.  He’s a strong and amazing person.