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On the flow of the seasons, the themes and elements that lead us to the Summer Solstice and a little peek into what's ahead for us.
The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, meaning it is the day with the most hours of sunlight in 24 hours. It falls around June 21st in the northern hemisphere, this year it is on the 21st exactly. In many witchcraft sources you will learn that the summer solstice marks the start of the summer, much like meteorically the summer starts on June 21st. But perhaps if you have been practicing seasonal witchcraft or using the seasons as a guide in your practice in any way, you also felt that this doesn't feel quite right.
I don't view the seasons as having a rigid start and end date, where one day it is spring and the next it is summer. Rather, I feel the seasons have a period where they are at their height and a period where they flow into the other season. The weeks before the summer solstice have been a period of spring slowly flowing into summer. The summer solstice, to me, marks the start of high summer: a period of a few weeks where summer is the ruling season. In witchery we like to refer to the year as a wheel and viewing the seasons like this - as flowing into one another - actually makes the cycle of a year into a circle for me, rather than a square that from one day to another flips over onto another one of its sides.
The seasons each have an element associated with it and I find these elemental associations very helpful in teasing out the themes of the seasons. Spring's element is air and summer's element is fire. So in the weeks leading up to the solstice spring's air and summer's fire have been in a dance together, with air starting out taking centre stage and fire slowly gaining in strength.
If you have been reading into the seasons and their themes (or, similarly, the phases of the moon cycle) you have probably learnt that the spring is the season for ideation, because of its elemental association. Air is the element of the mind and it is where we form ideas, reflect on what we want to accomplish (or manifest, depending on what corner of the internet you find yourself), set intentions, receive inspiration and perhaps even divine guidance if that is your jam.
Summer then would be the season of action, because of its fiery element. It is when you are supposed to go do the thing, take the steps, do the capital W Work. I, as you can probably see coming at this point, don't quite agree with this idea. I think it is an oversimplification of the themes and energies at play here.
Spring is the season of getting your hands dirty. It is the season of pulling the weeds out of our gardens and planting new seeds. It is soil under fingernails. I don't think it makes any sense to mark spring as the season where we do nothing but set new goals and intentions and then tell people to wait until summer to actually go and do the work. First of all because plans are not static and we need to leave ourselves space to adjust course. We need to allow ourselves to start walking down a path and realise this is not quite it and turn around. Or yes, we like this path, but we need different shoes for this terrain. Secondly, I deeply believe that as weather tips towards extremes, we are invited to drop out bundle as well as we can and rest. When winter gets cold and dark we are invited to slow down and retreat. Surely when summer gets hot and moist we are not supposed to put our heads down and get on with the work, but rather dip our feet in cool water and laze about in the shade.
And that is where viewing the seasons as flowing into one another offers such a rich perspective. The early weeks of spring, when it is slowly taking over from winter we awaken and carefully lift our eyes up from right in front of us towards the horizon. At the height of spring, halfway through March (around Ostara, if these days hold significance for you), is where air rules and we ideate and dream and envision. When fire makes its entrance at the start of May (Beltane) it adds the spark of creativity and creation to your ideas. We get to ride this wave of imagination and execution meeting until June, when summer fully takes over. And of course that doesn't mean that we come to a grinding halt, but perhaps we get to find a little more rest in our doing again. Spring can be such a full season, a flurry of activity. The lengthening days feel full of potential and summer reminds us that longer days need not be filled with wall to wall doing and going and action. We get to rest and play and enjoy. We have sown the garden, the plants have long since sprouted and are growing tall and strong. Now we water, perhaps prune a little, we maintain. And when we are done we sit down and enjoy the damn garden*.
There is so much to say about the seasons and this solstice and their themes and energies (but there is a point where a blog turns into a book and that is not what we are doing here today). This is but a drop lifted out of a river. And again, I cannot stress this enough, this is my interpretation of the seasons and how I practice and experience seasonal witchcraft. There are very little absolute rights and wrongs in witchery, we need to each forge our own path. All I can do is share some of the sights I encounter along my journey and hope they line up with yours, even if only for a little while. I look forward to exploring the seasons more together.
*Of course we cannot pour our entire lives into this mould. Most of us work year round and we don't get to pick our own deadlines and when work is more or less demanding (and even those among us who have more say in what work looks like don't get to fully drop our bundles). Seasonal witchery or spirituality should never be as a vise or an impossible standard. Rather, we can use this as a framework for the areas of our live we can control. We can allow ourselves more grace when we find it hard to make decisions in winter and delay making any choices until spring. We can give ourselves permission to wait with painting the hallway until autumn, even if the cans of paint have been waiting for us for weeks at this point (this doesn't read as a very personal example, right?). Whenever we do have the space in our days we can acknowledge that it is madness to expect performance and productivity from our brains when the hot weather turns our thoughts to syrup in the afternoon heat. If we have dreams, but keep finding it hard to actually go and chase them, we can use the energy of late spring / early summer to support us. I am on a mission to make witchcraft something that enriches my life and acts as a supportive foundation, rather than it being a source of feelings of shortcoming. I hope you'll join me.
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]]>In 2020 I burned out, hard. I managed to muddle on with work for a few months, but in 2021 I had to make some hard (yet in a way very easy) decisions and temporarily close down my store and business, the Alchemista. The reasons for the burn out are many and I often think of it as a tapestry of interwoven threads, coming together to tell a story. The story is so intricate and comes with so many twists and turns, that I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell the whole of it in any meaningful way (and if I can, if I'd want to do so publicly), but I can lift up individual strands or zoom in on sections of a few woven threads. A part of the tapestry tells the story of how I burned out on my work and I wrote about that in 2021 in this blog, which still rings very true.
In short (hopefully), I had started to believe that as someone who talked and taught about witchcraft and spirituality on the internet and in courses, I had to be a person with the Answers. Listening too much to online business coaches and too little to myself led me to think that it was essential that I projected Certainty and I positioned myself as an Expert. I had to remove all questioning language from my writing, according to what I read on the internet, and I had to write pieces that showed off my Expertise. But, as I wrote in my 2021 blog: "And the years spent thinking [...] I had to be Someone With Answers has bled me dry. And simultaneously I've sewed and cemented shut every opening in me to keep the questions in. Because questions I have plenty. I overflow with questions."
Fast forward about a year and I am starting, very tentatively, to ease back into work. But trying to step back into the Alchemista feels like putting on a coat that just doesn't fit right anymore. It's a little too small, it pinches in places while not being snug enough in others and it just feels uncomfortable. It's not that it was all wrong, I was returning to this work after all. Something about it was still calling to me, drawing me back in. But having realised all of the above, I knew that there was also plenty that needed to change. Yes to the work, but no to how I had been going about it.
So I felt it was time for a change. And if I was going to give this work another go, while also turning it on its head and going about it completely different this time, I felt that a new name was appropriate. And in a way that my own writing never does, the phrase 'I pray at the alter of maybe' from the aforementioned blog had stuck with me. It floated around in my head for months after I'd written it and never did it loose its meaning or did it become less true. After shuffling words around a little and doubting a lot, I decided that it had to be Maybe Altar. Beyond the fact that I simply like the name and the shape of it written out is appealing to me, I need it to be my compass. Moving forward with this work I never want to forget that I have no desire to be the one with the Answers and I in fact to not believe that that is the best thing I can offer.
I'll be the one asking the questions and I'll be present while you ask the questions. I will walk along the twisted path with you while we wonder and wander. We'll try things on together and offer ourselves and each other grace when we change our minds. We will make space for play and exploration and discovery, rather than boxing ourselves in with rules. We will find ways where witchcraft can be the thing that drew us to it in the first place: something that tethers us and gives meaning to our very human experiences. We'll move away from it being a source of anxiety where we doubt if we are doing it right or if we have enough knowledge and lists crammed into our heads. We let it be the balm it was always meant to be. We find that we do not need to be different or better to be a witch or spiritual person. We already are.
I often compare witchcraft to a path (and I'll never stop, because the metaphors are too good), but in many ways it is like a house to me. A solid safe space, that I get to shape in a way that works for me. It has a large kitchen table and soft curtains billowing in a gentle breeze. It has a big pot of tea on the table and books on the shelves and scented flowers in its garden. And my particular house has an open door and no gate I intend on keeping. The door and the kitchen table seats are open to you. I went through many iterations of a logo in the shape of a house, but none of them felt quite right. Until I drew the one with the doorway and the little bit of shadow, indicating a door flung open wide.
I am not sure what the path ahead has in store for me and us and for this business and that makes me anxious, but increasingly also makes me curious and cautiously excited. Because I believe we are onto something here, maybe. We start with an open door.
]]>Last week I wrote a post in a small online community that's part of a business programme I follow about my frustration at losing followers on Instagram every single time I bring up anything political. It happens when I talk about racism in witchcraft, when I talk about feminism and I lost more followers in the two hours following my post about me being queer and my preferred pronouns being she and they than I've ever lost before. And though this Instagram post was also received with so much love (thank you for anyone who left kind words, sorry I couldn't do more than click the little heart on your comment) seeing those numbers drop still felt like a punch to the gut. I know it shouldn't feel personal and it shouldn't feel like rejection, but sometimes we feel tender and raw and it still does.
So, not quite knowing what to do with myself, I took to Slack and I wrote the before mentioned post in the community. I did it to vent my frustration and, basically, looking for a little confirmation that I would be alright. Or, that's what I thought I was doing. Because where usually breathing through the initial gut punch feeling and a little venting will make me feel better and where by the next day I'll already have forgotten I ever cared about how many followers I have on Instagram, this stayed with me. The next day, the day after that, and the day after that. And a week later I was still walking around feeling like crap over all this. Or rather, I was angry. Definitely not at the people that left, because I'm all for unfollowing and unfriending if that's what you need. So I reckoned that surely I was just burning with the righteous indignation over living in a society that upholds heteronormative structures. You know, as one does. Except it felt different this time.