back and forth conversations and collaborations through the years
wonder | wander | women celebrate Mother's Day twice a year: first in the UK for Mothering Sunday in March, and then in the US and Philippines for the more familiar Mothers' Day. And like many people around the world, we celebrate with flowers.
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| Rose in watercolour |
After months of darkness and rain, wonder | wander | women were relieved to finally see the sun out for a whole day! We've had weeks of false alarms and hints of spring, little signs that warmer days were coming.
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| Gardenias blooming early |
wonder | wander | women's word for the year so far is "deluge". Between grey or freezing weather, natural disasters, and the man-made disasters of our collective governments, the year has barely started and it already feels like we're being swept away.
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| Kalachuchi (Frangipani) in ballpoint and watercolour |
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| An afternoon drawing in a local park |
The halfway point between summer solstice and autumn equinox is Lammastide. Christians hold church processions to bakeries, where bakers and their crew are blessed by clergy.
Lammas is the first day of the harvest season, August 2 - and Lunar Lammas on August 9. Ending with the full moon in Aquarius - traditionally called the “Sturgeon Moon.”
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| the 1st Harvest in the Wheel of the Year |
A time to celebrate the earth's bounty and give thanks. It's also a timely reminder to plan for the autumn and winter as it marks the end of the summer season and a return to less sunshine hours.
It's March 20 and the equinox is here! We call to our own awakening as Nature wakes from her winter sleep and sloughs off her mantle for yet another seasonal change.
In the Northern Hemisphere, this day signals the long-awaited end of winter. While in the Southern Hemisphere, it marks the arrival of autumn.
What exactly is an equinox? How is it connected with the seasons? How ae we all affected?
Lent 2025 begins on Wednesday March 5 and lasts until April 17. Lent comes from the old English, lencten, which means spring.
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| rains turn the garden so lush |
Lent is just another of the church's festivals built on an existing cycle of celebration. In this case it falls around spring equinox - signaling the end of winter and the birth of spring.
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| cotton candy sky [no filter] |
The 2024 dates for Lammas | Lughnasadh | Loaf Mass Day are August 1 to 12. Many cultures celebrate Midsummer - this week we also mark 8:8:8 Lion's Gate as well as the peak of the Perseids meteor showers.
We are halfway through the summer in all its glory - with its COVID spreading county fairs, backyard barbeques, political rodeos, and Olympic upsets.
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| image c/o National Today |
At Lammas we honor the past with a feast of bread to celebrate grain from ancient cultures. Because of its association with Lugh - warrior, king, master craftsman, savior - it is also a traditional time of year for craft and music festivals.
Folks gather and feast as skilled artisans showcase their workmanship and sell their creations.
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| "real" British seasons, from Reddit |
Renee Baribeau and Sandra Ingerman released a new episode on the Shamans Cave, Keeping Pace with the Seasons - how we can align our energetic phases with nature to be in natures’ flow instead of living against its flow. Perfect timing as we're winding down for 2022 and looking forward to 2023.
Humans and nature were meant to live in harmony - together and linked, not separate. If we follow our true identity as a nature being then attention to the changing phases and cycles of nature keeps us better in sync.
“Autumn Equinox is a time – a sacred moment – for grieving our many losses, as individuals, as a culture, as Earth-Gaia. At this time we may join Demeter – and any other Mother Goddess from around the globe – in Her weeping for all that has been lost.
The Mother weeps and rages, the Daughter leaves courageously, the Old One beckons with Her wisdom and promise of transformation.” ~ Glenys Livingstone, PhD, “Autumn Equinox: Thanksgiving and Grieving,” Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess
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| Ninnion Tablet replica |
For millennia, in Greece, this Seasonal Moment has been the holy celebration of Persephone’s descent to the Underworld, and in the earliest Goddess tradition, She descends of Her own volition to comfort the dead: the process is one of gaining of wisdom and restoring beauty – She is the Seed planted in the Earth, that will sprout again, grow to maturity and carry life into the future.
Thanksgiving is the third in a line of problematic holidays of the fall season — holidays that may seem harmless, but that actually have a grave effect on the well-being of Native Americans.
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| Thanksgiving myths vs Indigenous history |
The other two are Columbus Day and Halloween. From the second Monday of October to the fourth Thursday in November, Native Americans are hammered with a barrage of racially offensive, culturally appropriative, and historically inaccurate tall tales.
The list is extensive - Columbus Day parades, statues, speeches, and sales; offensive Halloween costumes; Pilgrim and Indian paraphernalia; and of course, all the parties, events, and classroom activities that our children are subjected to.
Fire trees are in full bloom in the blazing summer heat of the tropics. wonder | wander | women are nostalgic for this brilliant blooms, our scorching blue skies, violent thunderstorms, and warm curtains of rain.
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| Royal Poinciana (Delonix regia) |
Also known as flame or flamboyant tree, Royal Poinciana (Delonix regia) is a semi-evergreen or deciduous member of the bean family characterized by fernlike, lacy green leaves, scores of spoon-shaped, brilliant red flowers and brown pods that make a rattling sound when wind goes through the tree.
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| Ponciana flowers, leaves, pods |
Love is the intensive force that drives life - radiant and transformative life force. Tender and fierce. Nourishing and formidable. Unreasonable and unapologetic.
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| Painted Wheel of the Year |
All the stuff we hold dear and valuable as wonder | wander | women - elemental brujas, Bene Gesserits, wiccan advocates, babaylans. Benevolent conduits of love and light who have inherited a contentious history largely perpetuated by masculine ego and religious dogma. Boo!
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| strange cloud patterns & close up of birds |
A celebration of returning light, Imbolc is a Gaelic festival that marks the beginning of spring. Also called Candlemas (Christian), New Year (Tibetan, Chinese, Iroquois), Tu Bi-Shevat (Jewish). Goddess festival of Brigit, Brighid, Brigid (Celtic). It is our mid-winter celebration, prophecy, purification, initiation.
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| Our Lady of 10,000 Names, Suzanne Grace Mitchell, 2018 |
Stir in the silence that winter gifted you. Touch new skin, the surprise aliveness, the contours winter revealed. There is an echoing silence that precedes every new thing.
It is the restlessness of birdsong, the persistence of the sap. It is the dark that folds around all that is stirring, saying: Pace yourself, love.
We have nothing but what winter left us. We have nothing but our own stirring heartbeats and desires. Nothing but the fire in our bellies that warmed us through the deepest darks.
To clear, clean, hone. To stand in the barest simplicity of our aliveness and promise ourselves to service, to spring.
Make a simple promise.
To our wholeness, to becoming. Find the seed inside you, swollen with its own longing, that insists, with all the force of life, that it will sprout when the time is right. Simple, naked, clean, fiercely alive.
~ Maeanna Welti © Mother Tongue Ink 2020
It's fascinating to live in a country with visible seasonal changes. London seasons don't match up to New Jersey seasons, much less to the measure of the Chinese solar terms, but we have our own seasonal observances here.
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| Mural by Seb Lester |
“Autumn’s grain is spring’s seed: paradox surrounds us with ripening wisdom. If we lose hope, remember that Hope has two daughters to support our balancing acts: Anger and Courage. Instead of passive hope, embrace radical willingness.” ~ excerpt by Oak Chezar © Mother Tongue Ink 2019
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"Too easily, we lose the path of Beauty and Spirituality."
| Winter Ross at Ceremonial Visions |
What seeds did we plant in spring that are now ready for harvesting this autumn? As badge carrying rebels, advocates and dissenters wonder | wander | women are actively raising our voices and joining groups and communities that honor and respect the natural rhythms and cycles of our earth.
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| wanton urban ugliness |
