How to create a ritual:
Look at the sky.
Touch your skin.
Breathe deep in your belly.
Feel your heart beat.
Stand on the earth.
Let life carry you.
How to create a ritual: Look at the sky. Touch your skin. Breathe deep in your belly. Feel your heart beat. Stand on the earth. Let life carry you.
September 2024:
It is now that slender bush clover makes flower crowns along the roadside and coreopsis lifts its yellow faces to the sky. There is change in the air, whispering on cooling winds and shrieking by above the field on the feathers of broad-winged hawks. The last cicadas continue to drone and the apples hang rosy on the trees. The deck bears a sprinkling of yellow walnut leaves, and I picked up a brown and green patterned oak leaf to press into the pages of my prayers. It is now that I pause to steep, to listen to myself before pressing onward into the final part of the year. There is both an invitation and a summons here, to evaluate and renew, to consider the pace of life and whether to ease off or push onward. It is now that I remember that restoration is the antidote to depletion and I gather myself up, tenderly calling the fragments home, recollecting myself and taking time to look at where I am and what I have and what I’ve chosen. There are crows calling at the end of the driveway. I keep my eyes open for any passing monarchs. There is a slight hint of spiced pumpkin on the wind. The Virginia creeper has darkened to rusty red.
The editor of this anthology, Anne Wilson Schaef, goes on to say:
“When we do stop, many times we look around and realize that we are the only ones rushing around. We realize that the roses, the trees, even the clouds seems suspended in space, and it is as if the universe has paused for a breather. Life has time to experience itself.
Often, when we stop and let ourselves take in the beauty that is around us, we realize there is much more than we originally imagined. Our eyes begin to see beauty in the cracks in the sidewalk, the crookedness of tree limbs, the cragginess of faces, even the color of cars.
We don’t have to travel to see beauty. It is everywhere.
How much more alive we are when we can feel those times that the earth has ‘stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.’”
Do you have time for beauty? When was the last time you stopped in astonishment? What is astonishing you lately? Where are you discovering beauty?
Today the hawk is back, tail feathers lit gold and black by a bright and welcome sun. It stays only a moment before tilting out of the tree and continuing on its way, but this moment is enough to spark a sense of joy and wonder in my chest, the awake kind of glee that fuels and feeds me, that inspires and holds me. This feels like the Year of the Hawk to me, of clear focus and intentional commitment. I watch it glide away between the trees and take a deep breath of release and freedom. I re-center myself into my body and reconnect to the sacred What Is. I am open to clarity. I am open to trust. I am present with this day’s unfolding.
The wheel of the year continues turning and once again we find ourselves at the transition point from winter’s deep sleep to the first awakenings of spring. It is marked by an ancient Celtic festival called Imbolc, also known as Imbolg or Brigid’s day. It is believed to have been celebrated long before the Celts arrived in Ireland and Scotland, probably as far back as Neolithic times.
In the past months, Luiza has been generous enough to introduce me to some local folk festivals that celebrate key moments in the wheel of the solar and agricultural year. With their deep Earth-based roots, these festivals have endured under an overlay of Catholic observance and are integrated into the calendar of saints’ feast days in the liturgical year. Underlying established religious observance, there is an unbroken stream of syncretized folk religion and folk practices that connect the people to the heartbeat of the numinous Earth on which they live.
Unfortunately, since I moved to the Oeste region of Portugal in July 2020, the Covid pandemic has seen many of the local festas temporarily canceled, but as 98% of the local population is now triple-vaccinated, we’re seeing a slow resurgence of these gatherings.
Usseira, the farming and fruit-growing village where I live, has an annual festival of Santa Luzia, held between December 7 to 13 in most normal years. During the height of Covid, the festivities were canceled, but in December 2021 the festa was celebrated, although it was a much smaller, more low-key affair than before the pandemic.
Celebrating Santa Luzia in 2019, before the pandemic.
We gathered at night in front of our small chapel dedicated to Santa Luzia, our village’s patron saint. An enormous bonfire was lit and people gathered around to share grilled meat and sardines, prepared on site. Much local wine was passed around. Nobody officially charged money for anything. You just donated what seemed fair.
Gathering in the light and warmth of the enormous bonfire with my Portuguese neighbors and trying my best to communicate with my limited Portuguese was a challenge, but the universal language we all spoke was happiness and goodwill. The bonfire blazing on the dark winter night seemed symbolic of a sense of community life returning after the constrictions of lockdown and social isolation.
The root of Luzia’s name is luz, which means light. Across Europe, from Scandinavia to Sicily, Saint Lucia is honored as a bringer of light to the midwinter darkness. Luiza Frazão explained that before the Gregorian calendar reform altered the old Julian calendar, Luzia’s feast fell directly upon the Winter Solstice. John Donne’s 1627 poem “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucia’s Day, being the shortest day” bears witness to this fact—the Gregorian calendar wasn’t adopted in Britain until the 18th century!
Celebrating Santa Lucia in Sweden
Meanwhile, back in Portugal, Luiza and I met again around one month later, on January 17 for the Festa of Santo Antão, traditionally celebrated in an old hermit’s chapel on a hill outside the medieval town of Óbidos. This festa is traditionally a very large gathering, attracting thousands of people from far and wide in what the newspaper Caldas Gazeta describes as a pilgrimage for Christians and Pagans.
The Festa of Santo Antão in January 2020, before lockdown and all the rest
This festa, which is celebrated in the daylight, comes around the time of Imbolc in the old Julian calendar, Luiza explained. It celebrates the steadily increasing daylight and the promise of spring and new growth. It is also a feast focused on healing and blessing the animals that are so important in rural communities.
Santo Antão was a hermit who lived in the Egyptian desert. He is the patron saint and protector of animals. In the old days, farmers would bring their livestock to be blessed at this festa. But nowadays people are offered special blessed ribbons to take home to their animals. Traditionally a Mass is held in the chapel and there’s a market on the hilltop. However, in January 2022, the festa was officially canceled due to a spike in Covid infections. But that didn’t stop people hiking up the hill in small groups.
Our small group shared a picnic of the traditional grilled sausage along with halloumi, since I’m vegetarian. We lit candles outside the locked chapel and then raced down to Óbidos to get our blessed ribbons from the Church of Saint Peter before they closed at 5pm. As we left the hilltop, other people were hiking up with their picnic baskets and wine bottles. In previous years, the celebrations continued until early the following morning.
When we reached the church in Óbidos, five minutes before closing, I took two ribbons for my horses in exchange for a small donation. Back at home, I tied the pink ribbons in the horses’ manes, but the beasts had other ideas and rolled in the mud. So I rescued the ribbons and tied them to the field shelter instead.
Protected!!!
As the Spring Equinox approaches, I look forward to discovering more local festas.
Mary Sharratt is committed to telling women’s stories. Please check out her acclaimed novel Illuminations, drawn from the dramatic life of Hildegard von Bingen, and her new novelRevelations, about the mystical pilgrim Margery Kempe and her friendship with Julian of Norwich. Visit her website.
My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the stone circles were cosmic calendars. They went to great lengths and detail to get it right. It was obviously very important to them to have the stones of a particular kind, in the right positions according to position of the Sun at different times of the year, and then to celebrate ceremony within it.
I have for decades had a much smaller circle of stones assembled, representing the ‘Wheel of the Year’, as the annual cycle of Earth around Sun is commonly named in Pagan traditions. I have regarded this small circle of stones as a medicine wheel. It is a portable collection, that I can spread out in my living space, or let sit in a small circle on an altar, with a candle/candles in the middle. Each stone (or objects, as some are) represents a particular Seasonal Moment, and is placed in the corresponding direction. I have found this assembled circle to have been an important presence. It makes the year, my everyday sacred journey of Earth around Sun, tangible and visible as a circle, and has been a method of changing my mind, as I am placed in real space and time. My stone wheel has been a method of bringing me home to my indigenous sense of being.Continue reading “Her Magic in the Stone Circle by Glenys Livingstone”
My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the 
