Winter’s Sidelong Light

Winter and the world is distilled,

Crisped, quietened, not just when it snows.

On a day as bright as this

That nameless colour, not quite amber

or a purple of a willow shoot

or yellow of melted butter

But something in between

Is draped across the branches

So walking through meditative hills and woods

is an act of alchemy turning the frozen earth

into an extra-dimensional dragon

that breathes through rivers and fields as mists.

Look closely, the calligraphic twig tips

reveal their ideograms, creak their messages

for both living and dead, when the longest night

lets slip its dogs to devour the dying year.

New Year will arise out of the mist.

Conor Whelan.

Solstice Blessings to you! The Cân Y Gwynt, my Druid Grove, has had to cancel our Alban Arthan ceremony which was planned for this morning and this is the poem that I had chosen to use in the ritual this year. We have only managed to meet once since Imbolc, a lovely sunny afternoon spent in a little copse on the Pendragon’s farm at Alban Elfed.

On Saturday OBOD held their online Mistletoe Ceremony. I sat in the glow of the Yule lights and joined them. Lovely to see some dear friends taking part, and quite a thrill when I realised they had used a lot of my writing, woven in with video clips, chants and homily to produce the most perfectly imperfect, soul warming gathering.

I’m holding a little solo ceremony in the garden at 10.02, the exact time of the solstice, where the faeries and I will be partaking of an absolutely fantastic bottle of Chalice Mead which was a present from a friend.

I’m planning to resurrect the blog, in my absence WordPress has made some changes, so it will most likely be baby steps to begin!

Blessings of the returning light to you.

fi the faery druid, xx

Equinox Blessings

Blessed Alban Elfed to one and all! Today is the Autumn Equinox when all around the globe there is equal light and dark. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we’re stood at the doorway to winter, and for us the light will be decreasing, It is a time to celebrate the year’s harvests and to prepare for the for the months ahead.

The equinox is a time of balance, but of course the actual fulcrum is just a fraction of a second – this year it was this morning at 8.15 and 30 seconds. The wheel is always turning; nothing ever remains the same, all things pass.

As I mentioned yesterday, I organised the Grove’s Alban Elfed ceremony this year. In the official OBOD ‘brown book’ rite we welcome the Goddess Ceridwen to celebrate the harvest, but I decided instead to explore more fully the theme of balance, by focusing on the symbol of the double spiral. I marked one out within the circle with porridge oats before the ritual began, which were easy to see, cheap and not harmful to the nearby sheep! There was a yellow rain warning so we held the ceremony in the doorway of a huge barn with views across to the mountains.

I have to confess that the spiral is my favourite symbol and one I use … and wear! .. a
lot. The spiral in its simplest form is a symbol of growth and expansion. It’s found
everywhere in nature, in fern fronds, snail shells, rams horns, tornadoes and whirl pools. It’s the shape of microscopic strands of DNA, and of immense galaxies. It is a reflection of our own individual spiritual journey, evolving, and revolving to infinity.

The double spiral is a symbol of balance, here the energy is both drawn in and radiates out. It has a path to the centre and another out again. You can draw them with the two entrances side by side but I used the version with the entrances at opposite sides. This not only gives the spiral a beautiful galaxy shape but also lends it a feeling of progression, as you enter on one side and emerge on the other. There is a physical sense of moving through time (past, present and future); through space, east to west in our case; and through worlds – mundane to magical and back. The inner ends of the two spiraling lines form a gateway, a fulcrum, an axis mundi, right at the centre of the spiral, which I marked with two pomegranates, symbols of the underworld. During the course of the ceremony each of us was invited to journey to the centre of the spiral, to meditate on the threshold, step across, and then journey back out again.

I usually include a poem into my ceremonies but this time I couldn’t find something that fitted the bill and so I had a go at writing my own!

It is a short path,
but a long journey
to the centre of the spiral

When you arrive
it turns out the end
is just the beginning

And what you thought
was a place of perfect balance
is too unstable to remain for long.

You rearrange your baggage
throw off your despair
place more love in your heart

But still you’re tilted forwards
to step over the threshold
and back into the current.

Is the centre somewhere you go
or is it
somewhere you come from?

Alban Elfed

A quick post this morning, as the Grove are holding their Alban Elfed ceremony today. It’s the Equinox tomorrow of course, but we usually meet on the nearest Sunday to make it easier for those folks with jobs. This time it was my turn to write it, so I’m busy running round making sure I have all the bits and pieces. It’s a bit different from the usual Alban Elfed OBOD ritual and the picture on the front of the booklet is a clue about what I have planned. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!

So far the rain has held off, but there are showers predicted so we may all be soggy Druids by the end of the day.