We remembered Tailitiu, mother of Lugh the Celtic sun god, for whom he threw a great feast at Lughnasadh to celebrate the abundance of her earth. We remembered all the many Lammas Fairs that still take place all over the UK and include strange and wonderful customs. We remembered the sun sign of Leo and the opposition of Jupiter and Saturn with Venus in retrograde which invite us not just to celebrate but also to assess our harvest this year and be honest about our relationships.

We remembered the Medusa: Gorgon and ancient north African and Anatolian Sun Goddess, encompassing all the deep mysteries of feminine sexuality, radiance and destructive power. We remembered the harvest of our lives and the gesture of those dying who glean the last seeds of life from the field.

After a rich sharing around the wisdom pot, and a reviving cup of tea, Lisa took us on a journey with the two Greek Goddesses: Hera and Artemis – asking us to consider where these two archetypes figured in our inner worlds and which other archetypes sat at the committee table of our inner worlds offering different possibilities.

Hera, guardian of the institution of marriage, was severe in dealing out justice to those who crossed her boundaries and Artemis, moon archer, was tricked into shooting the one man she had begun to love. Lisa’s wonderfully varied and spirited telling, linked these tales to older myths and inspired a rich sharing around the circle. There was examination of the word Wife and the role it represents; we spoke of our mothers, our relationships, sacred marriage, rape, choice, feeding others, jealousy, love, betrayal, being single and the paths of our lives.

We were over half an hour late for lunch, so much did we have to speak of on this topic, (although the farmers wanting us to move cars so that the combine harvester could get through, also took a moment of our harvest-time Gathering!).

After a splendid feast at lunch, we sat in the Red Tent and bound sage and rosemary smudge sticks to dry and hang for the year, ready to cleanse and prepare ourselves and our spaces for sacred celebration. In the kitchen, a harvest loaf was rolled and sculpted: heavy with many ears of corn and tiny mice scurrying up stalks bound into a sheaf. Baked and golden, it came out of the oven after our meditation, ready for our loaf-mass.

The sun meditation offered a chance to soak up and lock-in some of the golden summer light energy to burn in our inner spaces through the long Autumn and Winter months, until the return of the light in the Spring.  A firebird appeared in one meditation and inspired our chant at the end of the day.

We passed sloe gin and our golden harvest loaf around the circle in a collaborative communion which, though silent apart from Abigail’s beautiful harp playing, allowed us to smile and to give and receive blessing in our own authentic way.

We closed with a final wisdom pot of sharing circle – including poems, blessings, intentions and goodbyes and a song composed specially by Laura who had woven her drum and flute through the day’s celebrations so magically.

The Slow Cook course wended their way for an evening of collaborative wisdom; the tent was tidied and packed up, with her black cover on. This was the last time we will gather under her red skirts this year, and possibly next, and probably ever in Sue’s garden, so there was some sadness mixed in with the fullness as we said our farewells.

We opened with some quiet time and shared seasonal wisdom as usual, including imagining wild fourth century french pagans rolling flaming wheels down their summer meadows and into the river! Final records for this custom apparently come from Buckfastleigh and Widecombe in Devon no less. With the summer solstice being a few days where the sun actually seems to pause on its fiery journey around the sacred wheel of the year, we were both acknowledging the intensity of this season and emphasising that theme of pausing, for much needed rest and for reflection, at this turning point of the year.

Just as Christmas follows three days after the winter solstice, so the Feast of St.John follows the summer solstice and our opening wisdom included remembering these festivities, including the original bonfires (bone or boon-fires) and some of the plants associated with this time of the year, including St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum) which latterly has been medically recognised as a powerful anti-depressant – bringing the light of midsummer to inner darkness.

The morning then continued with Sue’s rousing telling of the tale of the indomitable Tatterhood, a dark twin born riding a goat and waving a wooden spoon. She feels to me (Sam) to be a great champion of celebrating one’s own true nature in a way that is relational without being compromised. She is brave, authentic and loving – willing to meet the wild things from the deep forest, willing to save her sister, willing to sail her own boat and go on an adventure, willing to stand her ground and let love come towards her and then willing to embrace it. Her tale stirred each of us in different ways and it was good to hear Sue’s feminist re-working of the tale, that doesn’t have her turning into a fairytale princess in the end but rather recognising the power and beauty that had always been present in a goat riding, spoon waving woman wearing a tattered hood.

Lunch seemed to be an even more resplendent feast than usual, with all manner of summer fruits and garden veggies to enjoy. In place of our usual after lunch craft, we each created scrolls for letting go of the last half of the year and setting intentions for the half to come and, after some embodied meditation, we took these on our own meditative midsummer walks, until we were drawn back to the fireside by the drum. With sacred chants around our own midsummer bonfire, we placed our scrolls and prayers into the flames, before jumping over the hearth to whoops and cheers!

With many thanks as ever to all the wild and wonderful Wood Sisters and especially to our musicians, Laura and Abigail, and remaining members of the cauldron crew, Jo and Beth (who also took these lovely photos.)

Our story was the deep and epic tale of Psyche and Eros, which is more ancient than the Greek and Roman versions we have recorded, and contains within it the germ of many of our familiar wonder-tales: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Pandora can all be glimpsed in a myth that is also a women’s quest and initiation story and wends its path from girlhood to motherhood via cliff-top marriages to Death, foretold by Pythia, the Delphic oracle; the Lovers’ secret palace; the steep slopes of Olympus and a trial in the Underworld.

It is a story that has intrigued mythologists and psychologists alike and looks at the cycles of elation and despair that we experience on our way to a maturity that is being crowned a goddess, soul and body united, immortal.

And being crowned as a goddess or May Queen was the central image of our craft activities in which we made hedgerow May crowns and then in pairs and threes offered massages and foot baths to the enthroned May Queen so that we might each have our own experience of being honoured in this way.

Meditation took us to the realms of loving ourselves and in a simple ceremony, we read poems and lit candles on the altar of Love – poems celebrating the many many different forms that love can take.

We welcomed several new faces among the familiar ones around the circle and feasted as ever on the bring and share offerings which included a fabulous May cake.

There was much laughter and wonderful sacred harp music from Abigail, which beguiled and bewitched us into realms beyond the ordinary. The Wisdom Pot was filled with politics, personal stories, rage, reason, humour, healing,  silence, serenity, sadness, eccentricity and all manner of eclectic offerings, making for a rich collaborative mix which resonated around the whole circle.

It was a subtle and powerful Beltane this year – many women had strong feelings to share and potent poems to read around the circle. The weather offered us a sanctuary in which to take time to sink down into the mysteries, layer upon layer of love in its many forms swirling around us.

The next day with the Wood Sisters, I was reflecting on how seasonal change is always the result of relationships on a cosmic scale, as earth and sun move through their yearly dance, and yet it is so easy to forget that all the changes we focus on and celebrate in the world of plants and creatures are reflecting this vaster pattern of relationship, which the eclipse powerfully reminded us of this year. I guess this is true in daily life at many levels. How easy it is to be preoccupied with the details and forget the bigger picture. One of the many good things about gathering with others for seasonal celebration is the mindful marking of deeper rhythms and the interdependent nature of life, including the chance to listen to many others’ different experiences, perspectives and stories.

For our mythic story this time, we were touching into the Hebrew tradition through exploring the creation story from Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Spring is a yearly celebration of the creation of life and a time when the natural world can feel very like a paradise garden. Our story telling began with a Kabbalistic meditation to remind us that creation is unfolding in every moment, manifestation emerging from the mystery of the unmanifest (called in Hebrew Ayin /No-thing), and that the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge and Tree of Life exist within the depths of our being as states of consciousness.

Moving from meditation to story, we met not only the familiar figures of Adam and Eve but also the less known ones of Lilith and Samael. We imagined the serpent of wisdom inviting a fall from unconscious union into a tasting of the knowledge of opposites and separation, the pure soul taking on its coat of skin as a journey of awakening into a fuller knowing of being part of the source of all.

From these meditative and mystical depths we returned to a delicious and grounding lunch, followed by our spring crafts. Once again I was struck by the pleasure of simple hand work carried out with care and awareness. This is a unification in itself, bringing together head, heart and hands. Jo gently guided us in creating simple spring flowers from tissue paper, with each woman creating something uniquely beautiful.

During tea, the Easter bunnies or Eostre’s hares were out in the garden hiding eggs in the spring sunshine. It’s a treat for women who are often offering egg hunts and giving gifts to others, to have some fun and sweetness for themselves! Then our day concluded as usual with meditation and ceremony as we planted hopes and intentions for the year, along with seeds into little paper pots and lit candles of blessings for ourselves, loved ones and the world all around our central mandala.

In the Beginning: Spring Equinox 2015

In the beginning was….   Nothing: Ayin

Dark, silent, without form.

In which began a vibration

That caused a sound to arise.

In the beginning was Nyx, night

And Chaos.

As the sound grew louder

Chaos became criss crossed with patterns.

In the radiance of Ayin Soph,

All became possible.

*******************************************

Back in those days, those very first days,

Father Enki set sail for the underworld.

There was resistance.

The waters of the Euphrates rushed at his boat

With windstones and hailstones and

Uprooted a Huluppu tree.

That tree was a good beginning for Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.

She took it from the raging waters and planted it in the ground

For her shining bed and gleaming throne.

But as the trunk grew thick and the branches luxuriant

A serpent who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots,

The Anzu bird set his young in the branches of the tree

And the dark maid Lilith made her home in the trunk.

Inanna began to weep and called her brother Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh took his bronze axe and struck the tree trunk.

He split the Huluppu tree in two.

What had been wild became civilized.

The wild things fled back to the beginning.

*******************************************

In the beginning there was the Word

And the Word was God and the Word was with God.

The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters

Like a mighty wind, and called for Light.

His Light is like this: there is a niche and in it a lamp,

The lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star

Fuelled from a blessed olive tree from neither East nor West

Whose light, Al-Nur, glows even when no fire touches it.

The light from the source was reflected in the Shekhinah,

Generating all forms of life.

This radiance, like a great sea, was the first creation.

In our beginning Lilith, the dark one, the first woman, was created equal with Adam.

She was promised equality but experienced its opposite.

So she left Eden and whirled in a dust storm to the edge of the world

Where she could reach out and touch Kaos

And hear the sound of creation still vibrating in the air.

*******************************************

In the beginning the world was without form, and void.

And our Great Mother Euronyme rose naked from the abyss and, looking about her, found that she was alone.

She danced in the darkness, and by her dancing the air was set in motion.

A wind blew upon her face from the North and she took it in her hands to rub it, rolling and shaping it into a speckled serpent.

This same serpent lusted after our Mother and she allowed him to cast his coils around her body in the embrace of sex.

But as yet he had no name.

Some time later our Mother took the form of a dove and brooded upon the face of the water and was delivered of a great egg

Which the serpent coiled about to hatch

So that it split open

And all things were created.

The egg floated on the ocean.

Then a sword began to move towards the egg,

And the sword cut the egg in two.

Revealing Eros.

The parent’s love for the child, the man’s love for a woman, the woman’s love for a man, the bee’s love for the hive, the worshipper’s love for God:

The sword brought them all into being.

*******************************************

In the beginning the world, our world, was without form and void.

A tree was rescued from the first flood

A great bird flew over the face of the waters

The first woman emerged dancing

And the snake coiled around her and they made love.

Lilith held darkness and light as equals

The snake hatched the egg

The sword of discrimination and separation rose out of the waters

And made the first cut.

Eros emerged and with him appetite, desire, joy and anger rushed into the world.

And the wild things retreated

To the way things were before it all began

And the woman embraced them

As if knowing herself for the very first time.

Isabel Carlisle 8.4.15

Notes

Section two comes from the Sumerian myth of Inanna as re-told by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer

Section three is based on the creation myths of the Abrahamic faiths: Genesis and St John in the Bible; Surah 24, Al-Nur from the Qur’an; and the Kabbalah

Section four comprises two versions of the Pelasgian (Greek, pre-Olympian) myth of creation. The first from “Goddess: Mother of Living Nature” by Adele Getty and the second from Robert Bly’s “Iron John”