Earth Element | The heART of Ritual 2/3

The heART of Ritual

musings

Welcome to the MUSINGS room in our digital nest! Here you will find an extensive selection of articles, poetry, prose, videos, recipes, and tutorials that journey the natural cycles, seasons, elements, and archetypes in the Celtic Wheel of the Year, as well as our Irish indigenous festivals, folklore, and customs.

This is lovingly provided as a free community resource, however it is copyrighted content. As such, we respectfully ask that if you share this content outside of this dedicated space, either in whole, in part, or paraphrased, that you credit the author and source. Thank you.

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Snow Song', by Frank Dempster Sherman

Over valley, over hill, Hark, the shepherd piping shrill! Driving all the white flocks forth From the far folds of the North. Blow, Wind,...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'A Winter Scene' by Henry David Thoreau

The rabbit leaps, The mouse out-creeps, The flag out-peeps ⁠Beside the brook; The ferret weeps, The marmot sleeps, The owlet keeps ⁠In...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Fairy and Child' by Eugene Field

Oh, listen, little Dear-My-Soul, ⁠To the Fairy voices calling, For the moon is high in the misty sky ⁠And the honey dew is falling; To...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: Exerpt from 'The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems' by Robert Bly

'The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.' ~ Robert Bly, The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems

Traditional Plants of the Winter Solstice

History shows that the seasonal botanicals gathered were those thriving in the landscape around us. For us here in Europe, symbolic...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Winter Cloak' by Joyce Rupp

This year I do not want the dark to leave me. I need its wrap of silent stillness, its cloak of long lasting embrace. Too much light has...

On the Path of Wholeness

I've been working alot with Hawthorn lately, the Celtic tree of Bealtaine. This old photo is of a West Cork Hawthorn, recorded just...

Wreaths, Cycles, and the Winter Solstice

Wreaths: (From the Middle English wrethe, a twisted garland or ring of leaves and flowers) have been used ceremonially for centuries to...

Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness

There is something about the skeletal splendor of winter trees - so vascular, so axonal, so pulmonary - that fills the lung of life with...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'December' by Christopher Pearse Cranch

No more the scarlet maples flash and burn Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain; The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern In the...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'The Cold Earth Slept Below' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The cold earth slept below; Above the cold sky shone; And all around, With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow The...

The Ancient Midwinter Deer Mother Goddess

Female reindeer are unique with regard to other deer species in that they grow and shed antlers. This attribute is part of the mythology...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'And death shall have no dominion', by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'Melancholic Perception', by Theodore Roethke

It was beginning winter, An in-between time, The landscape still partly brown: The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind, Above the...

The Time of the Cailleach

It is again a time of seasonal change and the Cailleach has stepped through the veil and into our world. The fields are bare and the wind...

Warding Against Evil and Irish Folk-Magic Protection

Andrew Michael Hurley's novel, The Loney, is a tale of folk-magic and superstition, as well as a dark coming of age story. One of the...

The Etymology of the saying 'Knock on Wood'

Did you know that the tradition of knocking on wood actually comes from the belief that every tree is inhabited by a spirit known as...

Seasonal Poetry & Prose: 'The Frost', by Hannah Flagg Gould

The Frost looked forth, one still, clear night, And he said, 'Now I shall be out of sight; So through the valley and over the height In...

Blúiríní Béaloidis 33 - Death

In life, there is much which seems uncertain to us. Concerning death however, there can be no doubt. It was an honour to speak with...

The Tree of Life

The original symbolism of the Tree of Life involved a mythical sense of a world axis, the “axis mundi” around which creation was created,...

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