Читать книгу Solstices - Crisalis . - Страница 3

21 September.

Harvest Festival, Thanksgiving, Autumnal equinox

∞ Giving thanks for the harvest ∞

∞ Beginning of the dark season ∞

∞ Gradual passage from growth and birth to dying and death ∞

∞Nature’s retreat into the earth ∞

The harvest is finished. If it has been a good year, the storerooms are filled. We will have been able to charge and fill up ourselves with sun, power and energy, in order to cope with the dark, cold season. Our thanks for the harvest are perhaps laced with melancholy for the falling leaves and the dying plants. But in the daytime butterflies are tumbling for a last few hours in the warm sunshine. If you are watching a bee buzzing along looking for flowers, you might be asking yourself how much longer this bee will live. If the year hasn’t been kind and we didn’t have the chance to store sunlight and energy, you might even be full of sorrow and afraid of the oncoming cold, dark season. It is very important to be aware of this dark part in us and expose it to the last warming rays of the sun. The days are getting shorter. When we have to get up in the mornings it is still dark, the air often has a cutting edge to it early in the day. At lunchtime the midday sun spoils us with its warmth and seems to hold off winter a bit longer. We can thankfully store its warmth and light one more time, while enjoying the autumnal colours.

In times before Christianity and especially before men settled down on farms and villages, this time of the year was probably more defined by the ritual preparation of meeting with the dark force. The preparation for the dark season, the battle against impending dying and death, which in former times not only threatened plants and animals, but challenged the people as well due to the cold, diseases and hunger. People probably felt better prepared if they were strong and filled with sunlight.

Nowadays, whether caused by Christianity or by our roots in farming culture, the feast has mostly become one of thanks for the harvest. We give thanks for the rich and abundant harvest, for full storehouses. At a time when we are no longer threatened by hunger and cold, it seems reasonable to look back at the past year and think about things we can be thankful for. What were we given in abundance? Which expectations weren’t fulfilled? Is it really necessary to have them fulfilled? Is it possible that non-fulfilment is also part of the harvest? We become aware of the fact that we can’t take being well-off for granted. In other places and other times people are awaiting the nearing winter in fear of hunger, thirst and cold. This should put our anxieties in perspective and cause us to be thankful for the abundance and riches that we have.

Suggestion of how to perform a ritual: Look for a place outside where you can feel the advancing autumn. It is up to you whether you pick a field with a last few flowers, a place in the woods where you can watch the falling leaves or the edge of the woods where you can enjoy the golden leaves and colours of autumn. Sit down and concentrate on this year’s harvest. What has been given to you? Are there things you can be thankful for? Have a look at the autumnal colours, consider the process of decay and try to find out what you feel inside when you think about this slow decay. Do you find melancholy, sorrow, fear of death and illness, and of the dark season of the year? Then try to let both elements – the thankfulness and the dark – stand on their own. Give them both space without evaluating them, without labelling them or shaking them off. Take a short walk through autumnal nature and collect symbols for your harvest and for your darker feelings. Everyone bring their collection together and sit around the warming fire and eat the food which has been provided in abundance.