Six weeks later we come to the time of Lughnasadh on 1 August, which marks the beginning of harvest time. The hay has been gathered in, and the time for reaping the wheat and barley is due. In the old days, it was a time of gathering together, of contests and games and of marriages. The marriages contracted at this time could be annulled at the same time the following year – offering the couple a sensible ‘trial period’. In some areas a flaming wheel was sent rolling down the hillside at this time to symbolise the descent of the year towards winter, and in some Druid ceremonies a wheel is passed round the circle to symbolise the turning year. The Christian version of this festival is Lammas. (The word Lammas comes from hlafmasse – ‘loaf-mass’ – since bread is offered from the newly harvested grain.)
The autumnal equinox, on 21 September or thereabouts, is called Alban Elfed or Light of the Water in the Druid tradition. It represents the second of the harvest festivals – this time marking the end of harvest time, just as Lughnasadh marked its beginning. Again day and night are equally balanced as they were at the time of the spring equinox, but soon the nights will grow longer than the days and winter will be with us. In the ceremony we give thanks for the fruits of the earth and for the goodness of the Mother Goddess.
And so the circle completes itself as we come again to the time of Samhuinn at the waning of the year.
Figure 1. The Druid Circle of the Year
THE RELEVANCE AND VALUE OF THE FESTIVALS
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What does it mean to celebrate these festivals? Are we simply trying to revive customs that belong to a different era, and are well forgotten? Those who follow Druidry believe strongly that this is not the case. Just as Christmas and New Year are vital to our psychic health because they give us some measure of the passage of our lives, so the recognition and celebration of these eight festival times helps us to attune the rhythm of our personal lives to the rhythm of the cosmos, of nature. By doing this we find that we develop an increasing sense of peace and place in our world and in our lives.
Let us look at the value of the festivals from a psychological point of view. The four cross-quarter festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Samhuinn and Lughnasadh relate to key life periods and the experiences necessary for each one of them: Imbolc invokes the purity and mothering that we need in our first years on earth. We need the stillness of Imbolc, of the candles glittering on the water, of the goddess Brighid who sings to us each night as we fall asleep. When we have become young adults, we need the initiation of Beltane – of spring – when the force of our sexuality courses through our blood and when we need the guidance of the tribe and its mythos, not its denial or disapproval.
As we become adults at the Lughnasadh time of our lives and begin to build a family, the rules change – the wildness of youth gives way to the constraints that responsibility brings, and we need an understanding of this as part of the wider scheme of things – not merely a ‘knuckling down’ to duty with the seeds of rebellion in our hearts.
As we grow old, we approach the gateway to the Otherworld. If we have followed such a path as Druidry, this becomes a time of preparation for the Great Adventure, a time in which we become familiar with our friends and guides in the Otherworld who can show us that death is really a birth to another level – a wider horizon.
If we work with this scheme, we have a chance to invoke each of these phases of our life every year – as if each year were a microcosm of our complete lives. In the early spring we open to the child who lives in each one of us – we honour and acknowledge and cherish them, and we allow the healing breath of the goddess of poetry to sing gently to them.
At Beltane we open to the god and goddess of youth. However old we are, springtime can makes us feel young again, and at Beltane we jump over the fires of vitality and youth and allow that vitality to enliven and heal us. When young we might use this time as an opportunity to connect to our sensuality in a positive creative way, and when older the mating that we seek might well be one of the feminine and masculine sides of our nature. Integration of the male and female aspects of the self has long been seen as one of the prime goals of spiritual and psychotherapeutic work, and Beltane represents the time when we can open to this work fully – allowing the natural union of polarities that occurs in nature at this time the opportunity to help us in our work – a work that is essentially alchemical.
We move from conjunction to the fruits of that conjunction with the festival time of Lughnasadh – the harvest being that of either children or of creative works. This is a time of satisfaction in our accomplishments – whether that means gazing into the face of our child or feeling the warm satisfaction that comes when we achieve an objective in our field of endeavour. It is at the time of the festival of Lughnasadh that we can invoke the powers of accomplishment to nourish the need that we all have to achieve something in this world. If we feel that we have achieved something, we can use this time to open ourselves to the satisfaction this brings. So often as we rush through life we do not even pause to enjoy those things which we have around us – our family or home, for example. If we feel that we have not yet achieved anything, now is the time to open ourselves to our potential for achievement. Acting ‘as if’ is a powerful way to mould our future. If we spend time opening ourselves to the feeling of family or accomplishment, even if we do not apparently have these things, we help to invoke these realities for the future.
Finally, at the time of Samhuinn we can open ourselves to the reality of other worlds, to the reality of the existence of those of our friends who have ‘gone before us’ and who are still alive and well, though not on this earth. If each year we have in consciousness connected to this plane, when the time comes for our transfer, it will represent a more familiar, if still challenging, territory that we will actively want to explore. Children brought up in this tradition have a warm feeling towards this other realm, rather than being filled with a fear of the unknown provoked by frightening images of ‘hell’ and unconvincing images of ‘heaven’.
We have seen how these four festivals demonstrate a cycle related to the phases of our life on earth. Let us now look at the other four festivals – the solar ones – which represent, at a psychological level, four key functions or processes: inspiration, reception, expression and recollection.
The winter solstice, Alban Arthan, represents a time when we can open to the forces of inspiration and conception. All about us is darkness. Our only guide is Arthur, the Great Bear, the Pole Star. In the stillness of night is intuition born. Both the festival and the function are located in the north – realm of the night and midwinter. The winter solstice is the time when the atom-seed of light, represented both by the one light that is raised on high and by the white mistletoe berries that are distributed during the ceremony, comes down from the inspired realms and is conceived or incarnated in the womb of the night and of the Earth Mother. It is thus a potent time to open ourselves to the fertilising power of the Muse or of the Great Source.
The spring equinox, Alban Eilir, located in the east, represents the time of reception – reception of wisdom, as we face the dawn rays of the rising sun on the first morning of spring. The east has always been associated with wisdom and enlightenment, because it is from the east that the sun rises. And on the spring equinox it rises due east. At this time we can open ourselves to wisdom and the powers that can bring clarity to us.
The summer solstice, Alban Hefin, in the south, represents the time of expression – when we can open ourselves to realising our dreams and working in the arena of the outer world. The summer always seems the time when there is the most energy for getting things done; aware of this, we can co-operate with this energy. We often take holidays at this time, and while it is a good time for active holidays, the restful, tranquil break from the hurly-burly of life is probably best taken in the autumn, around the time of Alban Elfed, located in the west, when the energy moves towards one that fosters recollection – the quiet in-gathering of the experience of summe
r.
Working every six weeks or so with a psychological process or function or with a life-period is a deeply satisfying experience.
THE DYNAMICS BETWEEN FESTIVALS
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The lines of connection between the festivals on opposite sides of the circle are also worth exploring. The dynamic that runs from north to south, operating between the two solstices, is one of incarnation, manifestation, creation. The inspiration and realisation of midwinter is grounded and given birth in the realm of matter and expression at the time of the summer solstice. The dynamic that runs from east to west, operating between the two equinoxes, is one of elaboration and construction. The wisdom and clarity received in the spring is elaborated and developed by the psyche and is built into its very fabric through the process of rumination and contemplation, inner harvesting, that occurs in the autumn, at the time of the setting sun.
The dynamic that runs from Beltane in the south-east, to Samhuinn in the north-west, is one that is most easily explained with the use of the eastern term karma: by mating we create the cycle of birth and death, and we thereby invoke the operation of karma. The joy of sexuality and union is counterbalanced by our fear of death and separation, but both are part of the same dynamic which represents the dance of creation. Both festivals mark processes which represent great adventures – our sexual world is full of mystery and the unknown, of love and the exploration of the depths of feelings, just as is the world of death. Both also represent independence – for we enter our first sexual experiences with an intense feeling of our individuality and uniqueness just as we enter the gateway of death supremely alone. The adolescent who leaves home is under the sign of Beltane and is working with the spirit of independence, just as the dying too are struggling to feel comfortable with being on their own when facing the Great Adventure.
The dynamic that runs from Imbolc in the north-east to Lughnasadh in the south-west is one that is also linked to karma, although here it is a dynamic of dependence, rather than independence, for it represents the relationship between infancy (Imbolc) and the family (Lughnasadh). Both represent times when we are dependent on others, and when we need to attune to the dynamic of dependence rather than independence. Our adolescents and the elderly need help to come to terms with what it means to be a separate individual. Our children and parents need help to come to terms with the strain that having to be dependent on others can bring.
At the centre of the circle – the point at which all these pathways meet – is the place of integration. Here all the qualities and dynamics find their resting place and place of creative union at the very heart of the circle – which is also at the very heart of our beings. In many of the ceremonies this reality is enacted ritually by the Druid moving sacred objects from the periphery of the circle to the centre – thus enacting the movement of integration on the physical level and grounding a spiritual and psychological principle in action.
The centre of the circle represents god/dess and the self; the sun and our soul; the source of all being. As such it is the place where all comes to rest and to fruition.
We can now see how, over the years as one practices Druidry, the circle becomes a magical place in which the circumference represents the round of our daily, yearly and whole-life journeys – inextricably tied to the daily and yearly cycle of the earth, and the eight compass directions with their associated meanings and spiritual and psychological associations. At the centre lies the still point of being and no-thing. The entire space of the circle becomes our sphere of inner working – it becomes a sacred area in which, like a magic carpet, we can travel to other states of being. It becomes a doorway which, like the familiar archway of the Stonehenge trilithons, can give us access to previously hidden realms and altered states of consciousness.
RITES OF PASSAGE AND OTHER CEREMONIES
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Nuinn once suggested to me that ‘ritual is poetry in the world of acts’. And certainly Druids love ritual as much as they love poetry. In addition to celebrating at the eight seasonal festival times, Druids have special ceremonies for naming, wedding or hand-fasting, and for funerals. There is no ‘standard form’ for these ceremonies, and they are best crafted to suit the particular occasion. To help with this, Druidry offers techniques, ideas, words and imagery drawn from tradition and from nature, and one of the purposes of training in a Druid group is to learn how to create all sorts of ceremonies from these ingredients. The training programme of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids describes over thirty basic rituals which can be adapted and used for a whole variety of occasions – including treeplanting, initiation, birth, death and marriage.43
As an example, we can see in the following excerpt from a wedding ceremony, the way that the symbolism of the cycle of our individual lives and of the year has been developed into a journey that the couple takes around the ceremonial circle. At a certain moment in the ceremony, each of the couple – in this case Jane and Michael – are challenged:
Male Druid: Who walks the path of the moon to stand before heaven and declare her sacred vows? (Jane steps forward) Do you, Jane, come to this place of your own free will?
Jane: I do.
Female Druid: Who walks the path of the sun to stand upon this holy earth and declare his sacred vows? (Michael steps forward) Do you, Michael, come to this place of your own free will?
Michael: I do.
Both are then instructed to walk the paths of the sun and moon (clockwise and anti-clockwise) around the circle, returning to the east.
Male Druid: Michael and Jane you have walked the circles of the sun and moon. Will you now walk together the circle of time, travelling through the elements and the seasons?
Jane and Michael: We will.
Together, they walk hand in hand to each of the four cardinal directions where they are greeted by a representative of the element, suitably dressed, who blesses them with splashes of water, crystals, incense smoke and flute melodies, or other appropriate elemental blessings.
At the south they are asked: Will your love survive the harsh fires of change?
Jane and Michael: It will.
South: Then accept the blessing of the element of fire in this the place of summer. May your home be filled with warmth.
They walk together to the west.
West: Will your love survive the ebb and flow of feeling?
Jane and Michael: It will.
West: Then accept the blessing of the element of water in this the place of autumn. May your life together be filled with love.
They walk together to the north.
North: Will your love survive the times of stillness and restriction?
Jane and Michael: It will.
North: Then accept the blessing of the element of earth in this the place of winter. May your union be strong and fruitful.
They walk together to the east.
East: Will your love survive the clear light of day?
Jane and Michael: It will.
East: Then accept the blessing of the element of air in this the place of spring. May your marriage be blessed by the light of every new dawn.
Having helped to marry friends, name our children and our friends’ children, and sadly having helped to bury friends too with Druid funeral rites, I have come to see, over the years, how Druidry can provide inspiration and powerful spiritual and emotional support at these significant times in our journeys through life. Just as the seasonal festivals mark important moments in the life of the year and the earth, so these rites of passage mark the changes and the seasons of our life.
EXERCISE
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After reading this chapter, spend a few moments forgetting all that you have read. Make yourself comfortable and allow yourself to come to a sense of inner centredness and calm.
Think about the time of year you find yourself in. Whatever the date is, one or other of the eight festivals will be, at the most, three or four weeks behind or ahead of you. For example, if it is 23 Februar
y today, Imbolc would have been celebrated three weeks ago on 1 February and the spring equinox is due in four weeks’ time on 21 or 22 March (if you are in the southern hemisphere Lughnasadh will have just passed, and the autumn equinox will be due soon). Focus on one of these times, either behind or ahead of you. Recall the associations that this time evokes, based on the chapter you have just read. Allow your mind to explore these as much as it wishes.
Now remember the same time last year. What were you doing then? Where were you? What was your prevailing mood around that time? Can you see any connection with these things and the particular time of year?
See if you can trace the journey of your life and of the world over that period. What has happened during that year? What have you learned? What have you experienced?
When you feel ready, finish your period of contemplation by connecting again to a sense of peace, centredness and calm, before standing up and stretching.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SPIRITS OF THE CIRCLE:
THE MYSTERY OF OUR IDENTITY
From the trees Teut draws out many beautiful spirits with healing, cathartic and defensive powers, whose chief is Esus. Into the stones Teut writes the records and infuses the messages of the higher worlds.
Ross Nichols, The Book of Druidry
WHEN FIRST APPROACHING Druidry it is natural to think of it as something ancient – as a phenomenon of the past that we can examine as we would an exhibit in a museum. But a spiritual tradition should not be treated like a fossil – if it is to be of value it needs to grow and evolve, and adapt to the needs of the people and of a world that is constantly changing. Some critics believe that the kind of Druidry discussed in this book is not ‘authentic’ or ‘pure’ since many of the ideas or practices have been introduced since the seventeenth century. But this belief is based upon the mistaken idea that there is such a thing as an ‘original’ or ‘pure’ form of a spiritual tradition: an idea that is no longer taken seriously by historians. Purity is hardly ever a natural phenomenon either; instead, nature offers us wonderful examples of richness – of diversity and plurality and constant change. The idea of searching for purity evokes, as the historian Ronald Hutton says, ‘the smell of disinfectant and the sound of jackboots’. So rather than seeking purity or a mythic ‘original form’ of our subject, we are exploring instead something that is natural and growing, and that is relevant to our needs today, not yesterday.
Druid Mysteries Page 11