Green Way

“Saturnalia is the feast at which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December.
The Saturnalia was a large and important public festival in Rome. It involved the conventional sacrifices, a couch (lectisternium) set out in front of the temple of Saturn and the untying of the ropes that bound the statue of Saturn during the rest of the year. Besides the public rites there were a series of holidays and customs celebrated privately. The celebrations included a school holiday, the making and giving of small presents (saturnalia et sigillaricia) and a special market (sigillaria). It was a time to eat, drink, and be merry.”

- Saturnalia - Wikipedia

December: Poems, Lore, Myths

Feasting and festivities during this time of the year have survived right into 2007 in America. Actually, around here in Red Bluff, the “Holiday Season” seems to last from Thanksgiving (late November) until New Year’s Day.

Over lunch, at work, a couple of Judeo-Christians were complaining in an angry tone of voice about “secular” trends. They strongly favored “Putting Christ Back in Christmas.” They thought that America is on the wrong path of placating the atheists and secularists, and forcing the Judeo-Christian God out of our American public lives. They favored us having Nativity displays in schools and public buildings, singing Christmas songs, having prayers in schools, and practicing customs that reflect that we are ” A Christian Nation.” I’m sure that over lunch in Iran, other quiet free thinking folks have to listen to similar rants by conservative Islamics about putting Allah back into Iranian public life.

I favor the “religion” that enjoys “religious practices” like being peaceful, good eating, nice drinks, merry making, giving gifts, smiling, sweet love, kindness, pleasant work, singing, laughing, joyfulness, toasting to our ancestors, respecting the Earth, and tolerance.

If these overly assertive Judeo-Christians and Moslems can just calm down and agree to give a nickle’s worth of respect to the “religion” that millions of other peaceful folks favor, then we all could enjoy a fine Yule Tide Merry Meet.

Three Cheers for Saturnalia et Sigillaricia!

The Best of Holiday Cheer to You All, Friends Everywhere.

“Any significant long-term change requires long-term practice, whether that change has to do with playing the violin or learning to be a more open, loving person. We all know people who say that they have been permanently changed by experiences of a moment or a day or a weekend. But when you check it out you’ll generally discover that those who ended up permanently changed had spent considerable time preparing for their life-changing experience or had continued diligently practicing the new behavior afterward.”
- Michael Murphy and George Leonard

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement,
and success have no meaning.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.”
- Norman Vincent Peale

“I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.”
- Confucius

“A will finds a way.”
- Orison Swett Marden

“If you focus on results, you will never change.
If you focus on change, you will get results.”
- Jack Dixon

“Gongfu is an ancient Chinese term describing work/devotion/effort that has been successfully applied over a substantial period of time, resulting in a degree of mastery in a specific field. Although the term is synonymous in the West with martial arts (though it is most over rendered Kung Fu), it is equally applicable to alligraphy, painting, music, or other areas of endeavor.”
- Andy James

“An element of abstention, of restraint, must enter into all finer joys.”
- Vida D. Scudder

Will Power: Quotes, Sayings, Aphorisms

“A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
Wishes are like seeds - few ever develop into something.
Willpower is the art of replacing one habit for another.”
- Michael Garofalo, Pulling Onions

My wife, Karen, and I were in Portland, Oregon, for six days over the Thanksgiving Holiday. We enjoyed visiting with our children and their families, and sightseeing and shopping in Portland. We have so much to be thankful for these days.

The Cascade and Siskiyou Mountain ranges in California have little or no snow. Shasta Lake was the lowest I have ever seen it. Lakehead is completely without any lake water. The Klamath River seems to have a good deal of water, but the Sacramento River is very low. The situation is alarming in California. Oregon mountains have snow and their streams and rivers are very high.

Bitter cold
autumn wind -
shivering lips.

Now that we are back home, we will resume our autumn planting chores. I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving celebrations.

Last night, Karen and I enjoyed a concert at Laxson Auditorium on the CSU Chico campus. The concert was the Planet Drum Project featuring Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo. An outstanding group of creative percussionists brought international drumming styles into our community. Inspiring! Invigorating!

“Leaves fall,
the days grow cold.
The Goddess pulls her mantle of Earth around Her
as You, O Great Sun God, sail toward the West
to the land of eternal enchantment,
wrapped in the coolness of night.
Fruits ripen,
seeds drip,
the hours of day and night are balanced.”
- Mabon Sabbat and Lore

The Autumnal Equinox (Mabon, Harvest Home) Celebration: Bibliography, Links, Resources, Lore, Quotes, Poems

In Red Bluff, California, enjoying a Mediterranean climate, all our crops are irrigated. The reservoirs, the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the dams, the ponds, the aqueducts, the wells, the pipes, and the irrigation ditches all directly help in some way to keep all the plants, crops, animals, and mankind alive. In our home sacred circle, Mabon is associated with due West, facing the great Pacific Ocean, symbolized by the blue pole/stile and the blue cauldron and well pot. Water is precious to us, to All. Without the wells we could not survive.

We now know that the end of the long period of summer sunshine and heat, with little or no rain, is coming to an end. The cooler days ahead will bring rain again soon. The old dry half of the year is nearly done, and the wet half will begin soon. We have two seasons: the cool wet season of November through April, and the hot dry season from May through October. The end of the Dry Year is celebrated on the Autumnal Equinox, Mabon (late September); and, the beginning of the Wet Year is Samhain (Halloween), on October 31st. Samhain is both the end and beginning, at the edge of the many worlds, past and present, a borderline time, a doorway into the Other Realms. In our home sacred circle, the opening to the inner grove is between the West pole (Mabon, Alban Elfed) and the North-West pole (Sahmain, Halloween).

“The fallen hazel-nuts,
Stripped late of their green sheaths,
The grapes, red-purple,
Their berries
Dripping with wine,
Pomegranates already broken,
And shrunken fig,
And quinces untouched,
I bring thee as offering.”
- Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961, Priapus: Keeper-of-Orchards

The country roads now have harvest equipment moving slowing along the roadsides. The workers move equipment from orchard to orchard to help harvest Marianna prune plums and almonds.

Home orchards also have grapes to harvest. Figs, in my yard, what few are left unpicked, are quite shriveled and fig leaves are starting to drop. All the peaches have been harvested. Pomegranates and Fuyi persimmions are still ripening and not ready to pick. Walnuts and pecans are not ready to harvest.

This bountiful time of the year, the Second Harvest Time, keeps everyone quite busy. We do, however, find time to celebrate Mabon.

“Priapus, lively and naughty, aroused and outlandish, is the Duende de el Jardin.”
- Pulling Onions # 255, by Mike Garofalo

“Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow–follow, oh-oh.”
- Try to Remember, Lyrics by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt

Time to remember the life of Luciano Pavoratti (1935 - 2007). His lovely voice made all our lives more beautiful at times. Bravo, Luciano!!

“And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion.
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain—
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.”
- Dana Gioia, California Hills in August

August - Quotes, Poems, Links, Resources, Chores in the Garden

The temperatures were again over 100 degrees today. Everything is slumping!

August 1st is a day for celebrating the mid-summer harvest. Games and crafts are to be played. A toast to the Celtic god Lugh is to be offered up … may his manifold skills become ours. The fruits of the earth and the Bounty of Mother Earth should be honored.

Preparing for Lughanadsh, Lammas, The Summmer Harvest Festival

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Remember me to one who lives there,
For she once she was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;
Without any seam or fine needle work,
And then she’ll be a true love of mine.

Choose when you can an acre of land
As every plant grows merry in time
Between the salt water and the sea strand,
And then you shall be a true love of mine.

Plough it up with an old ram’s horn,
As every plant grows merry in time
Sow it all over with one grain of corn
And then you shall be a true love of mine.”
- Pagan Library of Poetry and Song

“The grain to harvest’s cutting falls
to make the bread for banquet halls.
We’ll save some seeds where life’s waiting,
and plant a new field come next Spring.
We shared the work we needed to do,
and now we’ll share the eating too!
Thank you, fruit, and thank you bread,
for making sure that we are fed.”
- Asleen O’Gaea, Celebrating the Seasons of Life: Beltane to Mabon

Lately, I have been reading the following books:

Celebrating the Seasons of Life: Beltane to Mabon. Lore, Rituals, Activities, and Symbols. By Ashleen O’Gaea. Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, New Page Books, 2005. Bibliography, index, 219 pages. ISBN: 1564147320. A good in-depth study of four spring and summer Celebrations in the Wiccan-NeoPagan year. Rich in details and ideas.

Ceremonial Circles: Practice, Ritual, and Renewal for Personal and Community Healing. By Sedonia Cahill and Joshua Halpern. Harper San Francisco, 1992. 199 pages. ISBN: 0062501542. Interesting study of the psychology of circle groups and dances.

The Magickal Year: A Pagan Perspective on the Natural World. By Diana Ferguson. New York, Quality Paperback Book Club, 1996. References, index, 224 pages.

Native American Flute books and instructional manuals

“The Wheel rolls more, and Autumn returns.
Cooler the rain; the Sun lower burns.
The coloring leaves presage the Year:
All things move into harvest’s sphere.
I vow to savor fruits first picked;
nor into grief shall I be tricked.
I vow to offer what once I spurned,
and face the Turning reassured.
- Asleen O’Gaea, Celebrating the Seasons of Life: Beltane to Mabon