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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in spring
Is Spring Here? Or Just Around the Corner?

Merry meet! Today as you might know is Imbolc, also called Oimelc, an ancient Celtic festival celebrating the beginning of spring and the traditional date on which ewes and other farm animals gave birth. You may also be familiar with the festival’s modern equivalents such as Candlemas, Groundhog Day, and St. Brigid’s Day. Whether you mark it as the midpoint of winter or the beginning of spring it’s generally been regarded as the time when the cold begins to thaw and life renews itself.

We’ve gathered all of our relevant articles from the past month as well as a bunch of other interesting stuff from around the web. We hope you have a very pleasant spring!

— Aryós Héngwis

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Whenever You Find It

Putting up the Samhain lights yesterday, I found an egg that had lain undiscovered since our egg-hunt last spring Evenday.

Not to worry: it was a plastic egg. (For just this reason, we don't hide the real ones.) Orange plastic, in fact, with a black dragonfly embossed on it.

Interesting, that.

Rattling around inside, like the yolk of a dried-out old pysanka, was a chocolate-covered malted milk ball.

I ate it, of course. A little oxidized, maybe, but for a moment, I closed my eyes and savored the sweetness anyway.

The trees are wearing their autumn gold; the ground is carpeted in yellow. Samhain is coming.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Life has so many poetic moments.
  • Murphy Pizza
    Murphy Pizza says #
    This is lovely.

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Rejoicing in the Advent of Spring

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Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Spring Rituals

Spring rituals mean for me that it's time to get outside and in the fields.  I've not lived on my family farm for nearly forty years but every spring when the snow melts away but we still have the ice in the breeze, I want to be on the land.

This year, I was driving to work and saw the farmers out with their huge tractors discing (not as invasive as a plow) the soil.  The gray which I relate to winter was replaced with the rich dark coffee color which means it's time to start planting.  There's a smell in the air which I have never been able to describe but it is spring.  

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Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Celebrating the Lambs

In standard, wheel of the year, northern hemisphere Paganism, we talk about lambs at Imbolc. Or at least, we link the name of the festival to ewes’ milk. That may be all the sheepy goodness we get. Of course, how sheep relate to your landscape is a very local issue. In some places, they don’t feature much, while in others there may be a very long history of grazing. There are huge differences between vast, industrial flocks massively impacting on the local, environment, and small sustainable flocks. We can treat sheep and the environment well, or badly. Not all farming is created equal.

However you feel about farming animals for meat and/or wool, I think it’s important to acknowledge the role they have played, for thousands of years, in the lives of our ancestors. In the UK, grazing has shaped some landscapes. It’s important to know how ancestral use of land impacts on the landscape you now inhabit.

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Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Sifting for Gold

It’s a soft, rainy spring day. I’m grateful for the rain—we need it—and for the lush green it has brought to the hills and meadows, the vineyards carpeted with bright mustard flowers.

These are such challenging times. The circumstances of my personal life are stressful and frightening; the broader culture is caught in the nightmare of Donald Trump’s willful smashing of all that is decent and righteous. Friends are struggling to make ends meet; my area is still grappling with the incomprehensible shock of last October’s wildfires.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    You're very welcome! There are lots of us non-theist Pagans. If you haven't checked out the website yet, we're at atheopaganism.wo
  • Lisa
    Lisa says #
    Thank you for your blog, and also the article in the latest W & P! I really appreciated your point of view and could relate.
Spring Equinox, Minoan harvest, and upside-down calendars

I live in the northern hemisphere, in the southeastern US, and here it's Spring Equinox today. But in the southern hemisphere it's Autumn Equinox. And even more confusingly, in the Mediterranean, even though we still call it the Spring Equinox, it's harvest time, so in Ariadne's Tribe we acknowledge the grain harvest festival on this day.

Allow me to explain...

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