With the high energy of the sun upon us, ALG enjoyed ceremony and a cookout on June 21st at Wilderness Nemeton. With an opportunity to appreciate the blessings of the sun and connecting with nature, along with a wonderful evening shower, the ceremony was a wonderful experience for all of us. This is a great time to re-affirm one’s commitments or to use the solar power to make resolutions for the rest of the annual cycle.

The evening was celebrated by a hamburger cookout, conversation and catching up on the last couple of months since we had last met.

Awen’s Light Grove hopes that you took a moment to recognize the season and celebrate in some small way!

I received my copy of ‘Living with Honour, a Pagan Ethics‘ by Emma Restall Orr. She is a 20+ year druid of OBOD and has written an incredible book on the values and ethics of Paganism. As this is a tricky subject, all may not identify with every statement, but she deepens the conversation and draws on enough common ground to really enrich the foundation of Pagan spiritual practice as well as setting down some leadership on what it means to be a Pagan in the 21st century. I really find her way of talking to the philosophical issues while taking moments in her narrative to enlighten the spiritual aspects incredibly novel. It reads like a manifesto at times while contrasting foundations with society and even within Pagan practice itself. All the while connecting the reader to the emotional aspects of spirituality. Of all my reading, this is a unique book that every Pagan should read time and time again.

20 March 12:49am Northern Hemisphere

Winter sometimes seems so long, that we could be for-given for wondering whether Spring will ever return. But the Goddess of Spring is merely sleeping through the darkness of Winter, and while she stirs at Imbolc, she is truly awake by the time of the Spring Equinox.

The forces of light are equally balanced with the forces of darkness at this time, but light is on the increase – and will reach its apogee at the Summer Solstice three months later.

The four festivals of the two solstices and the two equinoxes are solar – being markings of the times of longest and shortest days with the solstices, and of times of equality between day and night with the equinoxes. The four ‘fire festivals’ that occur between the solar festivals are lunar, and so we see in the Druidic calendar a balanced flow between lunar and solar celebrations.

The symbolic plant of the Equinox in Druidry is the trefoil or shamrock, which is also customarily worn on St. Patrick’s Day, 17th March – almost at the time of the Spring Equinox. The usual explanation for the use of the shamrock is that St Patrick once used its three-leaved shape to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity, but in fact shamrock is probably the national emblem of Ireland because of its earlier Druidic associations, and it is seen by some authorities as a survival of the trignetra, a Christianised wheel or sun symbol.

The three-fold green leaves of Spring in the Druid ceremony and in the Irish buttonhole on St. Patrick’s day bring us back, then, not only to the Sun God and the doctrine of the Trinity (which some say evolved from Druidry), but to the teaching of the Awen, and to the concept of the Triple Goddess – for Artemis, the Triple Moon Goddess of the Greeks, fed her hinds on trefoil.

In Druidry, Spring is considered so important, that three festivals are dedicated to this season: Imbolc, marking the first stirrings of Spring, Alban Eilir marking its more obvious beginning, and Beltane marking the time of its fullness, before it develops into the very different quality of Summer. The following quotation by Nuinn elaborates on this theme:

“Spring with the Druid Movement is at least a triple celebration. One could indeed take it back even to winter solstice, with the rebirth of the light. However beginning with Imbolc or Brighid as the first of a trio, we have the first plough, the washing of the face of the earth and eight lights because it is distinctly a Mother Goddess occasion. So we have the use of earth, water, and light.

“Alban Eilir, at the point of balance between Imbolc and Beltane, is at the point of balance too between day and night, and it is a perfect time to open to the quality of balance in our own lives.”

Copyright OBOD – Edit by sundruid

The day after Imbolc (2/10/08) I went out to Bass Lake Park and checked on the grove we planted in December. I was greeted by the new growth of our little saplings!

All five Bald Cypress trees had added quite a bit of growth and were looking really healthy. They had each added about 6 inches of new growth.