Earth-based spirituality – Page 8 – Feminism and Religion

Samhain and the Waters of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, part 1 by Susan Foster

Moderator’s note: While Samhain is past for this year, we are still in the section of the Celtic calendar which makes this blogpost, and its part 2 which will be posted tomorrow, relevant.

Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival, in fact the most sacred celebration in the Celtic year. Samhain is the New Year of the Celtic calendar. It is one of the eight holidays of the Celtic year—the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days—all of which mark the turnings of the seasons. Samhain is a time when the harvest had been completed; all the grains and late-maturing vegetables have been gathered in; the fields have been cleared, the old cast off, the fields lying fallow over the cold and dark of winter in order to make room for the eventual springing forth of new life. The New Year, begins in darkness at Samhain, is a reminder that all life emerges from the darkness, that death precedes rebirth. It is a time when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living thinned, so that the presence of those who have gone before us is more clearly felt or even seen. It is a time to remember the ancestors as well as those newly departed—to grieve our losses, to let go so that we can move forward.

Samhain is the precursor of our Halloween. It was brought to this country by Irish immigrants during the potato famines in the 19th century. They brought their Celtic customs with them, but by that time Samhain was known as Hallows Eve, since the Irish were good Catholics. It struck a responsive chord with the American people, who called it Halloween. They adopted many of its customs, including lighting candles in gourds or pumpkins and dressing in costume. Today Halloween is celebrated as a spooky and fun time, observed with trick-or-treating and mischief-making, but originally it was a solemn holiday—a time to commune with the beloved dead, to honor the ancestors with food and drink, and to acknowledge death as part of a never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

Trees Scent and Sing for Life by Sara Wright

On November 6^th, the day after the election in the middle of writing through my own anger/grief I suddenly stopped and got up – heeding that inner voice that often interrupted my train of thought. Picking up the lights I opened the door to adorn my young cedar for the very first time ever.

I planted this twelve-inch-tall seedling in 2020 to replace my original Cedar Guardian Tree that had been decimated by deer during a year-long absence. To my astonishment in four years, this seedling had become a seven-foot-high Guardian Tree. Of course, in the interim I have carefully tended this cedar, watering her, talking with her, touching her, loving her, calling her ‘my guardian’ but this species is very slow growing so even as I began to festoon the tree with lights, I experienced a sense of awe. I was of course talking with this tree as I adorned her… I told her that I would be lighting her as a Tree for Life.

When the air around the tree suddenly exploded with the scent of cedar, I experienced a powerful sense of relatedness with this cedar, and with all nature that is impossible to describe. That she was communicating with me using her own words moved me deeply. Although I have had these experiences before each one remains a revelation, especially when I have one during times of deep distress. When I plugged in the lights, I saw the unintentional spiral that I had created when I wound the strings so carefully around and across her delicate fronds. Just perfect I thought as a breeze rustled through her branches making the lights twinkle for a moment.

From the Archives: A Ritual for Thanksgiving, by Molly Remer

This was originally posted Nov. 22, 2022

Find some pine trees
and a wide rock in the sun.
Settle down and feel gratitude
curl around your shoulders.
Listen to the wind
sense that there is sorrow too
in this place,
deep and old,
threaded through the
lines of sun
slices of shadows.
It tells of what has been lost,
what has been stolen,
of silenced stories,
and of fracturing.
Make a vow,
silent and sacred,
to do what you can,
to rebuild the web
to reweave the fabric.
Lie on your back in the pine needles,
feel your body soften into the ground
and become still.
Allow yourself to feel held,
heavy bones and soft skin
becoming part of the land.
Wonder how many of your
ancestors kept other people
from becoming ancestors themselves.
Watch the sunlight making tiny rainbows
through your eyelashes and pines.
Find a pretty rock.
Don’t take it.
Leave it where it belongs,
on the land that gave it birth.
Go home.
Keep your promise.

Hecate’s Moon by Sara Wright

I spent hours
writing
you snaked by
underground roots
entering my story
with your
forked stick
‘witches’ are a
lie that christians
made up
to legitimize
harm done
to our kind
Artists, Writers,
Healers,
Visionaries,
Trees,
(men too)
Women whose
Difference
others defined.
Nature defiled.

A Leaf Peeper’s Reflection by Sara Wright

Twice a year, once in May for a few days and during the first week of October I can’t leave home because I’ll miss the next moment of spring flowering or scarlet flames.

Last week I was captivated by how the golden morning light affects each deciduous leaf. For about five days I ran inside and out all morning to feast upon the astonishing leaf color changes as the sun rose higher. ‘Fire on the Mountain’, crimson, gold, seductive sultry salmon brilliance. In and out for hours. I drove my dogs crazy. Noting the bees on the blushing hydrangea, glad for dragonflies cruising around the house. Greeting little green frog framed against his log. Breathing in the Light. Infused by all too brief moments of swamp maple’s fierce fiery splendor.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WOMEN ARTISTS AND RITUALISTS IN THE GREAT CAVES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF INDOLENT ASSUMPTIONS

This was originally posted October 21, 2013

In an earlier blog, I suggested that women might have blown red ocher around their hands to leave their marks in prehistoric caves.

At the time I thought this was a rather bold suggestion.

Had I been asked why I thought the images were made by women, I might have said that people have understood caves to be the womb of the Great Mother, the Source of All Life, from time immemorial. I might have added that those who performed rituals in the caves cannot have been performing simple “hunting magic,” but must also have been thanking the Source of Life for making life possible for them and for the great beasts they hunted. Still I am not certain that I imagined women as the artists in the Paleolithic caves.

A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

Yesterday on the day before the equinox I returned to my favorite hemlock forest after another morning of unproductive research on the mycelial web. The scarcity of information on this critical source of all life on land is troubling. As my frustration mounted I heard a little voice say, ‘Go visit with the hemlocks’. I did.

After I crossed the bridge into the forest something amazing happened. An invisible cloud of incredibly fragrant mushroom scent slipped over me like a shroud. I just stood there for a moment inhaling sweet earth, astonished and bewildered.

A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 1 by Sara Wright

Walk lightly
pay keen attention…
practice gratitude
but not at the expense
of truth
take sparingly
share

an Underground Web
writes the Story
my roots
belong to Earth

‘Listen to
feathered voices,
seek mushroom clouds
keep breathing deep
into the forest floor
feel that luminous Light
rooted beneath my feet’

(my fall equinox prayer)

During these days of mindless violence and fearful political upheaval, I feel driven to enter the woods on a daily basis. Lately, I haven’t even left my property. As I cross the bridge over the brook, I brush by the first lacy hemlocks and lovingly touch a branch of witch hazel whose lemony fingered flowers reach for mine. I am on the trail of mushrooms, but not as a forager.

I am drawn to these fungal fruiting bodies because I am trying to learn more about the complex relationships between certain fungi that emerge as mushrooms and their relationship to the trees around them. Some fungi that are in a symbiotic (or mycorrhizal) relationship with one tree or many, do fruit above ground but there are only about 20,000 mushrooms in all. The rest (which is most of the fungal world) fruit underground.

Flowers — Gifts of Goddess by Judith Shaw

I was captivated by a bunch of wispy, weedy zinnia flowers on my dining-room table, with its bright blossoms sprinkled on the curling stems. The zinnias pulled me from my current obsession with sea goddesses into a different zone, into the Kingdom of Plants (Kingdom Plantae). The Plant Kingdom is an important part of Goddess manifest, having come into being long before the appearance of our human family. It’s no wonder that flowers and other members of the Plant Kingdom play an important part in the mythology of our ancestors worldwide.

*Zinnia Joy*, gouache on paper by Judith Shaw

Why Ritual in Turbulent Times? by Terry Folks

It is Autumnal Equinox. Five women gather equidistant apart beneath a giant avocado tree in the garden at Evi’s place near the village of Zaros. This little hamlet is under the watchful loving eye of Psiloritis (Mount Idi) on the Island of Crete in Greece. We leave the solitude of our individual cottages where we have been quarantined to co-create an Autumnal Equinox ritual I have initiated for this occasion. Since we are still testing positive for COVID, we maintain our distance. I have a nasty strain as I’m exhausted, foggy, my nose bleeds, and I’m coughing so much my head hurts. Still … this ritual is important as our morale seriously needs a boost. We are dubbed the five “Corona Sisters” or the “COVID Girls” whose Goddess Pilgrimage on Crete was cut short when we contracted the virus somewhere between our homes in Australia, Canada and the United States, and our arrival in Heraklion a few short days ago. We have renamed ourselves the “Avocado Sisterhood” to acknowledge the blessing of our togetherness, and we represent a quarter of the women participating in Carol Christ’s Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in 2023.