The Green Dragon awakens

The Star card of the Sacred Circle tarot features a branch of the Rowan tree; timely, because Jan 21-Feb 17 is the Rowan (Luis) month in the Celtic Tree calendar.  The picture and it's description quoted here is from  Novareinna:

The Rowan stands in the center of Stonehenge...

ancient gathering place of the Druids.

The location is guarded by the Green Dragon, 

a powerful representation of life 

during the time of year when night still ruled the day. 

Symbolically, Stonehenge formed a giant candle 

at the Celtic feast of Candlemas, 

which marked the quickening of the year. 

The Dragon's fiery breath ignites 

the vital current of energy 

pulsating through the stones 

and regenerates the flames of eternal life.

The Green Dragon awakens.  She is Earth's kundalini, the green fire that quickens the manifestation of abundant life.   

The Star card in the Shapeshifter deck has four dragons, each a different colour, part of the intricate web woven by the Spider Woman. The world wide web is a dragon path of sorts, and comes in handy when one is in the unfortunate state of being homebound. To see an actual rowan tree, you need a plane or lots of time.  It grows in the British Isles. 

The Rowan's totem animal Green Dragon is a force that guards the great secrets and treasures of the universe and the earth's vortexes.   Kildare, under the protection of Brigit (our lady of Imbolc) is considered to be one of those vortexes.  There are many others, and it will take me many lifetimes to visit them all. 

In Britain, the Dragon Paths are called ley lines, or the Old Straight Tracks. My namesake nature spirit muse, Elen of the Ways, is guardian of these paths, so naturally this is of great interest to me.  There's a lot of good (and a lot of frou frou) about ley lines on the web, but most of what I learned about them can't be found on the internet. It must be experienced.

Here is a rite from the Asphodel Tradition to celebrate the Rowan Moon.

Nemeton

Once again, Cate Kerr's writings mirror my thoughts:
Beyond the Fields We Know: Friday Ramble - Temenos/Nemeton

Ferie Sementivae

One of the customs of Imbolc is to choose seeds for the garden you will plant this year.  The Ferie Sementivae commence on the 24th day of the month of January and last for a week, the weather in Rome now at a prime time for early sowing of seeds and fertilization of Tellus, Mother Earth.  The nurturing mother protects the seeds until they're ready to sprout, and so this is a southern European version of the Celtic Imbolc, which translates as "in the belly" of the earth mother. "Ewe's milk" is another translation, from an alternate spelling of the same word, Oimelc; both are cognate Candlemas.

And Sementivae? It comes from the Latin sementivus, "seed time", semen being the Latin word for "seed" (in all senses of the word) and so Imbolc, among other things a time for choosing seeds, is defined as an early spring festival, and not a winter one, although it culminates in cold February. 

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The feria is also known as Paganalia because it was celebrated in the countryside villages (pagi) where spelt cakes and sow pork (another pig reference!) were offered to Mother Earth Tellus and Ceres, the Goddess of grain (cereal).  Ovid in his Fasti presents a prayer to these Goddesses that the seeds may grow and thrive.  He observes that Ceres was nursed by Pax (Peace) as Her foster child, and he credits and gives thanks to these Goddesses for permitting swords to be beaten into plough shares. Pax has her own Feria at the end of this month, reminding us that lasting abundance is well nurtured by Peace.

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Spring fever is starting to hit.  Cabin fever too.  People are itching to get out in the land.  I used to get a bunch of garden catalogues in the mail in late January but now it's all online. I miss the catalogues.  It's fun to cut the pictures out and arrange them when choosing new plants to add to my little Medicine Wheel flower bed.  Native plants (pardon the pun) get first preference.

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Salutations to the UN for declaring 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity!

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Cabin fever hasn't hit me too hard, since I've been getting out a bit anyway, and besides its still so misty and rainy and muddy enough to make it cozy to come back in. But distant lands (Italia, Britain) are calling and I'm yearning to return to these romantic realms.  With this in mind, I drew my tarot card of the week, or cards, since the first one, Star, was reversed.  The second one was the Emperor - again!  Laurie also drew some cards for me last Thursday, including the 6 wands (again). What the entire reading seems to say is I should let the emperor win and keep my journeys stateside this year.  Sigh.  But it's all good, I'll go when I have a better command of the language.

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In relating this week's Star card to Sementivae, the word panspermia pops up. It means "all seeded" and in ancient Greece referred to a mixture of beans, wheat and other seeds and grains served at the autumn Pyanepsia festival.  Today the meaning connotes Cosmic Ancestry, and there's even an entire website devoted to this (panspermia.org).  Wikipedia says: Panspermia (Greek: πανσπερμία from πᾶν pan "all" and σπέρμα sperma "seed") is the hypothesis that "seeds" of life exist already all over the Universe, that life on Earth may have originated through these "[star]seeds"...

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Which brings to mind Carl Sagan's quote: "The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can’t, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re "made" of star stuff."  -- from Cosmos

The Star card in Italian decks is not singular, but Le Stelle, the Stars. Panspermia. Note the "cosmic ocean" at her feet.  Fits Sagan's quote pretty well!

[listening to: "We Come From the Stars" chant by Lisa Thiel, from the 1988 cassette 

Songs of Transformation, which also includes "Candlemas Song"]

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The astrological correspondence for XVII Star(s) is Aquarius, making its message all the more important and timely, reversed or not.  Neptune (XII The Hanged Man) is joined by the Sun in Aquarius now.  The Hanged Man is not suffering so much as he is contemplative, deep in meditation, and learning to observe the world from "both sides now".  The Stars reversed spill the ocean of starry blessing down upon the earth.  And we are yet in the season of Carnivale, like the Saturnalia a topsy turvy time when slaves rule kings. So reversed is OK with me.

 

(Aquarius and Neptune)

and other esoteric symbols in the Spiral Tarot

Agnus Dea

Gamelion, the month in the Greek lunar calendar that celebrates the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, commences at the Januaray new moon (last Friday).  It was a favoured time for weddings in old Athens, and in the modern world, brides who marry in the coming spring or summer are busy planning their big fat weddings now.

Tonight is the eve of St. Agnes, a time for dreaming true, and especially for love divinations to predict who your future mate will be, even though Agnes herself chose death over marriage.  Some ways by which to determine your future spouse are here, most of them I agree are way too strange! I did try the more innocuous apple peeling method when I was a teen and got the letter "R" -  but I did this on Halloween.  Apparently it predicted true, my husband's name is Robert.

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St Agnes was a Roman girl who lived in the fourth century. Like St.Lucy, St. Distaff and others, the story of her life may be based on nothing more than her name, which comes from the Greek word agnos ("chaste") and/or the Latin agnus (lamb), and she is usually represented with a Lamb and some lilies or hyssop, all symbols of being "pure as the driven snow".  This usually connotes chastity, but can also mean "virginal" in the sense of being pure of focus, "untouched" i.e. not influenced by anything that would degrade or sully your integrity.
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This is the start of lambing season in the Celtic countries, linking St. Agnes with Brighid (aka Bride), matron goddess / saint of Candlemas, aka Imbolc, a word referring to the lactation of ewes in providing milk for the young lambs.  The feast day of St. Agnes is thus interwoven into the many traditions of Candlemas, some of which will likely be presented here soon.
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In Rome, two lambs are brought to the altar of the church of Saint Agnes to be ceremoniously blessed on her feast day. The wool is then shorn and used in the weaving of the pope's pallium cloak for the year. John Keats in his poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes" [stanza 13] refers to the holy loom used by the "secret sisterhood" to weave St Agnes’ wool.
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To the Victorian artists and poets, this is a patron saint of all virgin brides and betrothed couples. The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood were captivated by the works of Keats and also Tennyson, fascinated as they were by the theme of romantic love. Both poets wrote about St. Agnes eve, compared and contrasted in the Victorian Web, and they both use very similar images in their opening stanzas to create the romantic scene of a frozen winter's night.  John Everett Millais painted no less than three pictures illustrating the Eve of St. Agnes.  The one below is inspired by the poem by Tennyson, portraying a maiden (one of the secret sisterhood?) gazing longingly up into the winter sky:

Deep on the convent-roof the snows

Are sparkling to the moon:

My breath to heaven like vapour goes:

May my soul follow soon!...

Make Thou my spirit pure and clear

As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year

That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and dark,

To yonder shining ground;

As this pale taper's earthly spark,

To yonder argent round...
Break up the heavens...

Thro' all yon starlight keen,

Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,

In raiment white and clean...

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits...

excerpt: St. Agnes eve - Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

image: St. Agnes Eve - John Everett Millais, from victorianweb.org

So even nuns are not immune to romantic dreaming.  Valentine's Day is coming...

Apple Scrumping and Toasting

Here's to thee, old apple tree

and whence thou mayest bud

and whence thou mayest blow

And whence thou mayest bear apples enow!

Hats full! Caps full! 

Three bushel bags full! Wassail! 

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On the raw winter evening of Old Twelfth Night 
(Jan 17), in the cider orchards of Merry Olde England, large parties gather and sing to the trees.  Dipping their malin (maple wood) bowls in a big bucket brimming with spicy (and spiked) cider, the revelers pour a libation over the roots of the trees.  The youngest one there soaks pieces of toast in the cider, then places them in the forked branches of the oldest tree.  All then imbibe the cider in a toast to the trees, rousing them from their winter sleep with a Wassail carol, to charm them into bearing lots of fruit come next harvest.  
An old pagan rite? Perhaps.  Yet often as not the vicar of the parish would lead in the song.

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This custom carries on in Somerset county still, at Butchers Arms in the town of "Cram'ton" (Carhampton) and elsewhere.  After the singing and toasting, three cheers are given and gunshots fired into the air.  Then everyone retires to the bar for prolonged celebration.

In centuries past, the farmhands would go from one farm to another to wassail the trees and we can only guess how much cider these chaps sopped up while they carried out their important duty.

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When I last visited Somerset, it was May, so I never had the honour to witness a tree wassailing, but there were flowering apple trees everywhere.  Visiting a cider mill, I picked up a little book Blame it on the Cider by local writer Roger Evans.  I learned that "scrumping" was another word for "pinching" which in England means "stealing," and that scrumpy is the only true cider, 100% natural, not just any old apple beer.

The book also has a fun little song:

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     One evening last September, as I do well remember

     I was walking down the street in drunken pride

     When I fell down in the gutter 'cos my legs went all a-stutter

     Then a pig came down and lay there by my side.

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     As I lay there in the gutter thinking thoughts I should not utter

     A stranger passing by did softly say

     "You can tell a man who drinks by the company he keeps"

      And with that the pig got up and walked away!

Speaking of pigs, they are the most pictured companion animal of St. Anthony, whose feast day today is also known as the Blessing of the Animals.  In Italy, where cars as beasts of burden are blessed along with domestic animals, this day is also called La Festa del Porco (read on at school of the seasons) and marks the beginning of the Carnivale season which lasts until Ash Wednesday, culminating at Mardi Gras.  Carnivale honours, among other deities, Janus' paramour Carna, who is feasted with pork (and beans).  Pigs, frequently pictured on vintage New Years Day postcards, are a symbol of wealth and prosperity.  Brings to mind a beautiful golden glass piggy bank I had as a child

Feria Janua

January is named for Janus, avatar of the liminal, guardian of the gateway, opening the door to the new year.  So was January 1st the New Year for everyone? Romans established it but the feast of Janus is for some reason January 9th, and also the earlier Roman calendar contained only ten months, with the new year starting at the Kalends (new moon) of March. They later assigned January 1 as the New Years day, and expanded the year to twelve months. The rest of Europe followed. Yet it wasn't actually January 1 as we know it today, it was the Kalends, the New Moon of Ianuarius (Latin - "doorway month").  So by that count, the new year of 2010 starts on January 15.  More traditional New Years days:

• The old Celtic New Year  begins on Hallows eve at dusk. Some modern Witches also celebrate Halloween (Samhain) as the New Year.
  
• In ancient Egypt, new year comes around Summer Solstice, the time of the annual flooding of the Nile, when the star Sirius rises at sunrise.
  
• The old Athenian calendar began at new moon following summer solstice.
  
• Chinese New Year will come at a new moon following the winter solstice. 
  
• India has a different New Year's Day for every region! 

For most of us in the western world,  New Years Day is the 1st of January, the month of Janus (from the Latin ianua, "door") a backward and forward looking god of doorways and thresholds.

Doorways, thresholds, liminal places brings to mind a most talented writer and photographer, Catherine Kerr.  I've followed her nature blog, Beyond the Fields We Know  for years, amazed at how aptly she articulates my own visceral experiences during my jaunts in the woods. I share her fascination with what she calls "twilight" places, passageways beyond which "lies something rich and strange, a dimension which is... extraordinary, enlightening...ecstatic, exhilarating and absolutely terrifying" where dragons lurk "just beyond the portal, but there are also wonders to be seen, and wisdom, adventure..."

Where are these portals that inspire a tingling sense of anticipation, that beckon us to explore?  Open doors, gates, hearths and chimneys, mirrors, windows, shorelines, woodland arcades, tree holes, winding leafy hidden pathways...

Janus is guardian of them all. He is also a god of liminal time, the boundaries between past and present, endings and beginnings, sunrise and sunset.  He holds the keys to unlock the doors between worlds, leading to rich secrets just waiting to be discovered.

The Tarot might be considered one of those keys.  Last week's cards (Hermit and Sun) showed us a kind of Janus, two faces of the ending and beginning year.  This week, 8 of Swords:

All this snow and especially the cold is binding me from going anywhere and I do miss my favourite traipsing spots -  I'll bet they're a winter wonderland now! Also I'm holding myself back from engaging in life to the fullest, each sword representing an "excuse" such as "it's too cold...I don't want to drive in this weather...I'm sooo tired...I don't know anyone else whose going there/doing this...he doesn't want me to travel so far...I don't have anything to contribute to this gathering...it'll keep me from getting this other crap done...it might be boring/ unfulfilling/ too expensive after all..." 

Also the blindfold keeps me from seeing the opportunities in the first place.  Yet there are spaces between the swords, yes, this fence does have a gate! and, even blindfolded, I can find my way out of the mental quagmire that holds me back, if I just apply my intuition and will. 

I know there are outdoorsy types who venture out snowshoeing and hiking and even camping in the cold and snow and I much admire and salute these hardy souls. They have not let a fort of sword "no's" keep them from doing what they want to do.  I too can step through the spaces and be free.

But not today.  Temperatures of blow zero windchill can turn even a prison into a sanctuary.  So like the 8 Swords bear in the Shapeshifter deck, I think I'll rest for a little while longer. 

It's the new year, and stuck home in the snow you'd think I'd be more motivated to write in this blog. I had all kinds of findings about new years traditions and such, but with a medical emergency and three birthdays and phone calls and other distractions every time I sit down to write, I just couldn't get it together to post something until now.  I think where I want to go with this, in addition to writing about the feriae, is to do more with Tarot.


Every week for the past few months, I've been pulling a card (or two if the first card is reversed) and concentrating on various meanings of that card when compared between different decks.*  Generally this is done on Sunday night and I thought I'd start by posting last week's drawing:


The first card was the Hermit, but since it was reversed, I drew another - the Sun.

My initial reaction was wow! here we are, in a week beginning in 2009 and ending in 2010, with two cards representing

• Father Time and Baby New Year
• Saturn(alia) and the Golden Age
• Longest Night and Sun's Rebirth
• Chronos and Sol Invictus
• Hermit key #9 (2009) and Sun key #19, 1+9 (2010)

But the Hermit is reversed, and the Sun comes out.  This could mean that maybe it's time for me to be a bit less hermetic and get out more often.  That doesn't come natural to someone with an excess of lynx medicine, trying to balance my reclusive nature with my curiosity about what's going on in the world and in the lives of family and friends.  Of course we have things like Facebook, but I don't much care for it because everybody's using applications and playing games and taking tests, and sometimes I want to play too but my computer won't let me! And reading the news feeds is like hearing too many conversations at once. So confusing, and tough to decide who to respond to.

Like my daimon lynx, I'm a loner, and would rather surf the net than use it for socializing (other than finding fun venues to "pounce" on when it's not so cold and slippery).  I think the Hermit card would be well represented by a lynx. Also like the lynx I love playing outside in the snow, and my husband and I have spent a lot of time romping out in it with our dog these past few days.  So that could be what the sun represents, that even if when it means staying cooped up at home in snowy weather,  there are always good opportunities to come outside and play :-)

*Some of us in the Tarot and Oracle meetup group are doing the one card comparisons, others, like  2010 A Soul Journey (by one of the groups organizers, Sylvia) focus on a specific deck.  Her blog is here