Just give yourself 10 minutes to sit with this and write down whatever comes to mind. This is the time to begin freshly. What do you want your 2014 to be? What can you do in terms of energy and attitude to make this happen? There is no need to know how you will logistically make this happen (for now at least). Dream HUGE. Our thinking mind is too small to know how the universe works and how our path will unfold. Then each morning first thing, come back to what you have written. Intentions work in mysterious ways.
{Space here to take a pause and begin your visioning}
Part of my vision has been to have more seasonal ceremony in my life. And my vision is already taking place! Today we are marking the New Year, by doing our farm's first New Moon Wassailing. It has been a traditional ritual in England for pear and apple trees, but has also been a ceremony for the good health of all on the land. We will go from each garden and to each pasture and offer up an elixir and a rhyme (see below) and will make noise, shake bells, roar in laughter or chatter. We will burn sage and clear the old and make way for the new. Awakening the cold stiff world to become familiar with it's future of fertility, vitality and resilience. We will end the ritual in the garden by a fire.
Here is our Flyer for those who will be partaking in this. And all of the earthly, heavenly and water spirits are warmly invited!
The Farm At
Locusts
1st Annual
Wassailing
January 1, 2014
May our
Growing Year Be Abundant & Healthy
May We Coexist
in Harmony & Gratitude
From Somerset
comes a most powerful rhyme for calling blessings down on beasts and crops:
Good luck to the hoof
and horn
Good luck to the
flock and fleece
Good luck to the
growers of corn
With blessings of
plenty and peace
Wassailing
By Rowan (Originally Published at Samhain 1996)
On the bitter cold and frost of a
January night, with the stars sparkling overhead in a clear sky, small groups
of people, muffled against the chill, process down darkened paths into orchards
or to lone apple and pear trees. Some may process in silence, others with as
much noise as they can muster. Some may carry torches or burning brands, others
drums and shotguns or pots and pans. In each case, one of their number will be
carrying a ceramic vessel filled with a steaming brew of beer or cider,
carefully trying not to spill it, the steam from the bowl mingling with the
cloudy breath of the participants ......
This is the popular image of the
traditional folk custom of wassailing fruit trees - a ceremony intended to
begin the process of waking the fruit trees from their winter slumber and the
first fertility festival of the folk calendar.
The word wassail derives from the
Old English words wæs (þu) hæl which
means variously 'be healthy' or 'be whole' - both of which meanings survive in
the modern English phrase 'hale and hearty'. Thus this is a traditional
ceremony which seeks to start off the first stirrings of life in the land and
to help it emerge from winter and to ensure that the next season's crop of
fruit, especially apples and pears, will be bountiful.
The most common date for this
custom to take place is the eve of Twelfth Night or Old Christmas Eve, ie 5th
January, just at the end of the midwinter period when the Wild Hunt rides and
chaos traditionally rules as the otherworldly horde broke through into human
realms. In some cases, however, the ceremony takes places a little later, on
17th January, depending on whether the celebrants prefer to follow the old or
new calendar. Either way, we might see this first fertility ceremony of the
year as marking a return to human "normality" after the dark and
dangerous days of midwinter. Either way, the date on which wassailing takes
place is at least a couple of weeks before Imbolc, the festival which for
modern pagans is generally as being the first fertility festival of the year.
With all the thick and thin that life holds, 2014 is going to be a bright and fruitional year
Love and Light to you!
