The Longest Night of The Year

Samhain                                                            Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice In my sacred world the holiday season has begun to climb toward its crescendo, or, rather, descend.  Would that be a descendo?  As I gradually shifted my view of sacred time from the Christian liturgical calendar to the ancient Celtic calendar, at first I celebrated Samhain, Summer’s End, […]

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The Value of Increasing Darkness

Samhain                                         Waxing Thanksgiving Moon The daylight is gone, twilight has fallen and night is on its way.  Now that we have entered the season of Samhain, the leaves have vanished from the trees and the clouds, like tonight, often hang gray in the sky.  Samhain means the end of summer and in the old Celtic […]

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Samhain: 2010

Samhain                                                    Waning Harvest Moon In the ancient Celtic faith Samhain (October 31) and Beltane (May 1) were the only holidays.  W. Y. Evans-Wentz gave a folklorist’s account of that faith in his first book, . Evans-Wentz wrote this amazing work, little known in spite of his later and famous first translation of the Tibetan  Book […]

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Following the Old Religion

Lughnasa                                            Full Back To School Moon Summer has three endings:  Labor Day which marks the end of summer vacation for many school children; and, for many adults like myself, kicks us into serious mode as all those years of conditioning continue to affect our attitude;  Mabon, or the Fall Equinox, which comes tomorrow, that point […]

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Samhain Comes

Fall                                                    Waxing Dark Moon The last night of fall, tomorrow morning will be Samhain.  In my personal sacred calendar Samhain marks not only the end of summer, but the first day of Holiseason which runs until Epiphany, January 6th.  There are so many holidays, family times, solitary days and days of spiritual pilgrimage in Holiseason […]

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The Beginning of Summer’s End

77  bar rises 29.83 3mpn NNW dew-point 61  sunrise 5:58  sunset 8:39  Lughnasa New (Corn) Moon As I note in the Lughnasa entry now posted on the Great Wheel page, we have come to the beginning of summer’s end.  The Celtic word for summer’s end is Samhain, also the name for the last of the […]

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Tending to Plants and Animals, So They Will Tend to Us.

79  bar rises 29.79  0mph WNW dew-point 64   Sunny and warm Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon Finished The Thief of Baghdad last night.  This movie, a 1940’s special effects pioneer, has its roots, loosely, in the Arabian Nights.  Just occurred to me that the same title might be used for a documentary on the Bush years […]

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