Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Restless

I’ve been strangely restless the past week or so, and full of contradiction: I’m tired, but I can’t sleep; I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to be with people; I want to do something, but I can’t settle down and concentrate on any one project.

“It’s spring,” people tell me, but I’m not satisfied with that.

“Maybe you feel unfulfilled because you no longer have a defined nine-to-five job,” my husband suggested. That’s not it either. I’m very happy to make my own hours, thanks.

Last night as I lay awake in bed, I think I might have hit on it. My spirituality is evolving again. True, spirituality is by definition an eternally changing process, as you grow and redefine your connection to the Divine. This time, though, I think my focus is shifting away from Celtic mythology where it’s been firmly entrenched for the past eight years. This doesn’t mean that all the work I’ve done so far is to be discounted; not in the least. I’ve grown and learned and exercised certain mental and spiritual muscles, so to speak, and I cherish every day of those eight years for the connections I’ve made and the knowledge I’ve gained, both spiritually and lore-wise. It simply means that there’s another area of focus to which I now need to direct my attention. This isn’t as sudden as it might seem, either; it’s been nibbling at me for about five months. It’s taken me that long to figure it out.

Well, I’ve figured out there’s something I need to focus on. Now, figuring out what I’m supposed to be focusing on; that’s the hard part.

Mutants and Anniversaries

We saw X2.

One word: Kewl.

Okay, no, two words: Damned kewl.

Now I get to bounce up and down waiting for Matrix Reloaded and Finding Nemo.

Bounce bounce bounce.

Oh, and four years ago this weekend, my husband proposed to me. Needless to say, we consumed the rest of the Taylor Fladgate port in celebration. I’m looking forward to many, many years of celebrating this weekend over and over again.

And for anyone who was concerned about my health, I’m back up to my regular summer weight. If I don’t look like I am, it’s due to my exuberant fashion choice to no longer disguise my body with clothes that are too big for me. Hail summer!

On Privacy And Holidays

Sigh.

Yesterday morning happened to be my couple of hours in the store. It also happened to be May 1, which many Pagan-type folk know as Beltaine.

Which means that yes, the media got hold of us at the store and asked us (a) if there were any public rituals going on last night, and (b) what the staff was doing to celebrate when they got together.

Now, most Pagan-type folk still live in a world that doesn’t understand why they’ve chosen the path they follow, and what mankind does not know it generally fears, resulting in oppression and/or ridicule. Hence most Pagan-type folk don’t really bruit it about that they’re Pagan-type folk. Makes work environments safer, and family gatherings less violent.

What does this have to do with it being Beltaine? Well, it means that the media is decidedly not welcome at a ritual, because you never know what sound byte/camera shot might reveal your voice or face to those watching or listening. People’s lives have been ruined, jobs lost, their places in the family disowned because of this. Religion is the one undefinable thing that runs so deep that it causes brother to turn against brother and nations to go to war, all in the name of their vision of deity.

So I’m afraid I annoyed the media representatives who called by telling them that there was no ritual available from which they could gather material. I wasn’t lying, either. Most rituals are going on this weekend, and they needed material right away. (Pagan-type folk are practical people. They know that people are more likely to be free on a Saturday than a Thursday night.)

The whole popular misconception that the staff of a metaphysical shop worships together is amusing too. I must perforce shatter any romantic illusions my readers might have formed and say that in reality, we work together, and that’s it. I mean, really. Do you go out with your entire staff to synagogue, to church, to temple, to mosque? No, I didn’t think so.

As for the whole not celebrating on the actual holiday issue, I’m used to it. My father was an airline pilot, and when I was a kid he often wasn’t home on Christmas Day. No problem; we’d either celebrate early, or the first day he was home after the 25th. It’s just a day, after all. The important part of it revolves around family, and being together, and sharing. Ironically enough, that’s what most Pagan holidays are about too: community, being together, and marking the seasonal changes. Yes, the media representatives were miffed that no one was celebrating Beltaine on Beltaine. I’m just glad that Beltaine gets celebrated at all. In the rain, or otherwise.

Besides, I think they would have been a little taken aback to hear how I was spending Beltaine eve. Home-made chicken fajitas, a TV double-header of Buffy and Angel, a bottle of Taylor Fladgate First Estate port, a lap full of cats, and the company of my husband. Hardly the stuff of legend.

Beltaine

So what’s Beltaine?

Also celebrated as May Day, this festival begins at sundown on April 30. Traditionally, couples stay out overnight “bringing in the May”, or gathering spring flowers and greenery with which to create garlands, crowns and bouquets. It is a time of joyous celebration of the fertility displayed by the land as it further opens to the touch of the sun: trees have put forth new leaves and are now flowering, the new grass is lush and thick; the days grow ever longer and the rains nourish the new crops in the fields.

By extension, Beltaine is also a sexually licentious time. It is the beginning of the season favoured for marriages and handfastings, as well as for re-enactment of the Great Rite, the union between the God and the Goddess. Much poetry and folklore exists describing the abandonment with which dancing, singing and playing leads to lovemaking. Children conceived on this might are called “children of the Gods”, and are said to be blessed.

The Maypole is perhaps the most recognisable accessory to Mayday celebration. A dancing game in which men and women interweave ribbons attached to a high pole (passing one another with plenty of kisses!), this action is another form of the Great Rite, the pole representing the God and the ribbons which slowly enfold it representing the Goddess. Other familiar concepts at Beltaine include a bonfire through which people jump and/or drive livestock for purification and luck, and the Jack-of-the-Green, a man disguised in leaves who represents the Vegetation God or the Lord of the Forest. His elected consort is the May Queen, who will be presented with garlands and floral crowns.

This festival is opposite Samhain on the Wheel of the Year, and like that Sabbat is a night of divination as the veils grow thin. The Ancient Celts recognised only two seasons, summer and winter; as Samhain was the beginning of Winter, the dark half of the year, so Beltaine recognises the beginning of Summer, or the light half of the year.

Yeah. It’s all about life, the way Samhain is all about death. Two sides of the same coin, after all. It’s an essential part of the never-ending cycle: life, death; light, dark; summer, winter. Neither side carries more weight; both are equally important. We honour fertility and creation, and we honour the time of fallowness and destruction as well. It’s like an Oreo: it just isn’t an Oreo unless it has chocolate biscuits and a white cream filling. (Okay, and a glass of milk, too, but that’s beside the point.)

I can’t believe I just compared basic Pagan the(a)ology to a Mr Christie cookie product. Even worse, I can’t believe it made sense to me.

Oreos are very Beltaine, though, don’t you think? You know – gently pull apart the layers, to get to the… never mind.

New Music

So, orchestra last night, and we got new music (a necessity, since we handed back all the old stuff after that smashing concert). We’re doing the Peer Gynt suite, Haydn’s Military symphony, and Beethoven’s Prometheus overture. Not bad – at least, nothing I looked at and went “eep!” at tenor clef or evil sixteenth note passages by an idealistic pianist. (Okay, the Mendelssohn might have gone well at the concert, but that doesn’t mean I’m not bitter about the months of failure before that.)

My old stand partner and I were the only two cellists there last night, which meant that (a) we occupied the first and second chairs, and (b) we got to be stand partners again, which I’ve really missed. It was slightly harrowing, because we were sight-reading things we’d never seen before, but we pulled it off really well, expect for one place in the Haydn where we had a three-bar compressed rest whose numeral looked like an eight.

All in all, a spectacular night, and we were pretty damn proud of ourselves. Two celli holding their own against twenty violins, a wind section and some violas. There were places where we were supposed to play divisi, too, which is where half the celli play one part and the other half play the second part. With only two instruments, of course, that means one of you is carrying an entire line on your own. We pulled it off, and were heard. Go us.

And I wrote 2,693 words of the Great Canadian Novel yesterday afternoon when Ceri came over to work. I am wonderful. Yay me!

Now I must scurry to work through the – snow? Argh!

Out Of It

The four-legs are tearing around like mad things this morning. Major spring/cabin fever, apparently. They’re not quite making the turns in the kitchen and they’re bashing into each other, which is rather amusing.

I’m out of it and dizzy today. So out of it, in fact, that I tried to reheat three slices of pizza in the oven for lunch, and baked them to a crisp. Convinced that I evidently shouldn’t try to assemble anything to eat that required heat or sharp objects somewhere in the process of preparation, I scanned my fridge and my pantry without success. Then I saw the bowl of apples and decided to have one. The first bite convinced me that I had wanted an apple all along and the lack of culinary focus was in fact a godsend.

Go figure.