cedar_grove | We Make Our Own Dis-Ease (Reply)

Greetings to you, moon, our guiding jewel!
I kneel to you, I offer love.
I kneel to you, I raise my hand to you,
I life my eyes to youm
O moon of the seasons!

Greetings you you, my darling one! Greetings to you,
O graeful one!
Steering tides as you journey, you light up the night,
O moon of the seasons!
Queen of guidance, queen of luck, queen of love,
O moon of the seasons!

--Traditional Scottish invocation to the moon

Before the calendar measured time, we marked the year by observing the planets in their stately parade across the night sky. We noted the tides and the moon's phases and the length of days. We attuned ourselves to the seasons. We did not grow angry when there was snow in winter or rain in summer. We recognised that nature is more powerful than we are, and honoured her strength.

Maybe this is part of what is 'wrong' in modern society. We have lost touch with the natural rhythms of the world and of ourselves... become dislocated from our part in nature and our relationship with the heavens and the earth.

How many of us read our horoscopes in the daily newspapers, or have our astrology chart drawn up and then go around saying 'Oooh, better watch out, Mercury is in retrograde this week," as if it means the beginning and the end of the world... compare that with how many of us actually raise our faces to the sky and observe the movement of the moon and stars and [i]feel[/i] how their presence make us feel.

I used to have this issue a lot more when I was running a pagan group, especially around festival times... which have, through the march of the years, become fixed on the calendar instead of just being in their place in the year. With that, and with the pressures of society and other commitments weighing on groups and individuals, Imbolc has become a festival that is observed on the nearest weekend to the 2nd February... and there in lies my beef...

The phrase, never on a rising tide was drummed into me during my training. We don't know what the incoming tide will bring, so inviting it in might cause issues that we aren't equipped to face... so... if the closest weekend to Imbolc happens to fall before 2nd Feb, then shouldn't we say that we will observe Imbolc on the first weekend after that date? But then, the date is artificially imposed anyway - would not our ancestors have been observing the length of days - watching for the first signs of spring and watching for the nearest full moon? Think of the moveable Christian feast Easter, for example. Easter falls on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the spring equinox! How pagan is that?! So if the Christians can do it, shouldn't we pagans time our festivals by that kind of count... in which case, should not Imbolc fall on the second or third full moon after the Winter Solstice? (I say the third for those years in which the full moon falls within days of the Solstice).

It's a thought I have - maybe I should try it one year and see what difference it would make.

And while we are on the subject of dates and calendars, can I just say how much it annoys me that everyone says that the first day of spring is on the day of the spring equinox - that the first day of summer is on the summer solstice (um... it isn't called 'midsummer' for nothing), and that autumn, or 'fall' begins on the autumnal equinox? Come on people... equinoxes and solstes are the mid points, the points of balance... the fulcrums... How dis-eased are we making ourselves deliberately misaligning ourselves so with nature?