Earth-based cultures around the world have always observed seasonal festivals with community-based ceremonies and rituals. Solstices – points of maximum light or darkness in the yearly cycle of the Earth around the Sun; equinoxes – points of balance between light and dark; the midpoints of this cycle (Beltane, Lughnasa, Samhein and Imbolc in pagan cultures), New Moons, Full Moons, and other planetary alignments were all good reason to celebrate and remember the interconnections between Earth, human community and cosmos. Personal rites of passage – including birthdays, the onset of puberty, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, the transition into elderhood marked by meno- and andro-pause, illness, recovery and death – are also appropriate occasions for acknowledgement of the soul’s journey.
Rites and ceremonies, rituals and festivals can be as important to the life of a community as the more mundane tasks of everyday life, and the larger vision that encompasses every smaller act of contribution to it. At Yggdrasil, we will make every attempt to punctuate our work together with days of rest, relaxation and renewal – in which we evoke the spirits of the land, our ancestral lineages, the keepers of the memory of the Earth to join us in a celebration of our participation in the larger cycles of evolution and transformation.
The sweat lodge ceremony will be a regular offering, as will other ceremonies, rituals and rites of passage drawn from indigenous, pagan, mystery school and mystical traditions, as well as those native to our own co-creative process. Dreams may serve as the basis for new ceremonies, and old ceremonies will evolve as inspiration moves through the community. Ceremony will be a central feature of our ongoing attempt to communicate with the more-than-human world and court the mythopoetic realm, as well as tend our sacred wounds and evoke a deeper sense of visionary calling.
