Happy Beltane.
This is my favorite time of year when nature comes alive.
Celebrate with Mama Earth.
🌎💚
Celtic Beltane / May Day
Imbolc Has Arrived
Here in the northern hemisphere, we are halfway to spring.
“…beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.”
John O’Donohue
🌱
#Imbolc
#wheeloftheyear
#cyclesandseasons
🌱
Art: The Maiden Awakens
by Annie Louvaine
New Moon, New Year
Earthy new moon in Capricorn. And a new year is on the horizon.
Make room for deep inner reflection. Consider what has been in the past, then let it go with love and gratitude.
It’s time to lay the foundation for a new chapter in your story. What do you want to create going forward?
🌙
#moon
#wisdom
Art by Colleen Wallace Nungari
The Roots of Easter
As we hold Easter egg hunts and gift those we love with bunny shaped candies this weekend, we are actually tapping into European rites of spring from pre-Christian times. The ancient Germanic Goddess Eostre (aka Ostara) embodied spring, the season of rebirth, renewal and new growth. Eostre’s symbology included fertile rabbits as well as the egg.
The sacred moon Goddess Ix Chel holds a similar place of honor in the Mayan culture. Like Eostre, Ix Chel is also associated with rabbits. She is shown below with her beloved consort rabbit.
Ix Chel has been worshipped throughout Mexico and many parts of Central and South America for thousands of years. It is said that Ix Chel is responsible for nourishing the crops by overturning her sacred womb jar so that the waters will flow through the world, nourishing new life.
“Goddess Ix Chel, known as the Maya[n] Goddess of the Moon, Water, Weaving and Childbirth… all having to do with cycles, tides, creating and bringing new life.
Her Rabbit consort/ child/sister/brother/mother/father/friend is the personification of new life and cleaving to bringing the young along, the gentle spirit, the shy, and yet the enduringly fertile/creative.
She is called the pale one…and is co-existant and interchangable with the moon and the moon’s cycles… she is a miracle maker, a healer, a teacher, a keeper of stories… and as she is also the moon also going dark for three days… Ix Chel suffering torment but comes ever back to full radiant reflective light again.
There are so many Ix Chels in the world, and so many Auroras and so many Jesu’s and so many Attis’ and so many of the great One who was taken down and then came back to life in triumph.
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
It is amazing to me that people all over this Earth created similar stories and myths of rebirth and renewal to honor spring. We are truly one Tribe.
🐰
Lunar & Solar Gates Align
“This is Lunar Samhain (the New Moon in Scorpio is the Lunar gate for Samhain) AND it is the precise Solar gate of Samhain (the exact midpoint between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice is when the Sun cross 15 Scorpio).
“We have a rare event of Solar and Lunar gates aligning- a Hierosgamos, a sacred marriage in the depths, in the dark and in the abyss. This is a VERY POWERFUL SAMHAIN PORTAL. The massive endings, releasing, letting go and completion of old karmic patterns that you commit to, initiate and follow through on in the coming months until Winter Solstice is nothing short of profound.
… Something massive is ending, something quite significant is about to begin- and right now we are in that fallow period where the degree to which we can let go, surrender and truly sit with loss, grief and endings (rather than fill them up with the next person/place/thing/substance so as to avoid the feelings that arise) informs the heights to which the phoenix can rise once this deep, internal period is over…
We have the promise of new life amidst the inevitability of death. we are reminded that how we end things informs the next cycle of new beginnings….”
~Divine Harmony
full text here
☾☽
Flooded
One broken day
When old hurts break free
From my deepest dark
Held silent too long.
Watery flow
A thousand tiny teardrops
Flood from every pore
Pain long hidden.
This deluge
blots out sun and moon
Leaving only darkness
In its wake.
I wander
Stumbling over the bones
Of old memory
Dreaming of peace.
And slowly
The cloudy waters subside
I surface to find
A fresh, beautiful space.
I am new
A raw space of possibility
Old sorrows washed clean
Ready to receive.
☾ ☽
Celtic New Year
As the shadows lengthen and the days grow short, my Celtic ancestors celebrated the start of their year. Depending on which source you believe, the Celtic New Year’s Festival of Samhain happened on November 1st, also known in some parts as the Day of the Dead… OR Samhain may have been celebrated at the time of the new moon in late October or early November. This year, the closest new moon falls on November 3. So, either way, now is the time to celebrate!
As winter approaches, I find it quite natural to pause long enough to acknowledge all the blessings I have received in the past year. And I also like to reflect on what I would like to create and grow in the coming year.
In honor of the approaching Celtic New Year, I offer blessings from elemental earth, air, fire, water and spirit to you.
“May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.”
~John O’Donohue, Anam Cara