This is My Season
Fall is so close… isn’t it so much more sensual than Spring? Autumn is a seductress and an Earth Mama all at once.
I can smell this season on the trees, feel it in the morning air, see it in the subtle way the sun has tilted back as if to begin his post-Solstice withdrawal. The Ceremonialist in me is stirred up by my birth month, and the sense that, “this is my time.”
I’m routinely asked how to create sacred ceremony, so I put together this little guide of dates and favorite ways to celebrate to help you navigate the Autumn and holiday season with grounded, spirited meaning.
Upcoming dates to celebrate with a plan for ceremony:
Harvest Now
September 21 Autumnal Equinox/Mabon
November 1 Samhain
November 28 Thanksgiving
December 21 Winter Solstice/Yule
December 25 Christmas
January 1 New Year’s Day
Celebrating in both a sacred, ceremonial way makes this medicine mama very happy.
image by Anne Carmack
My Must-Have, Essential Elements for a Meaningful Ceremony
1. Smudge
Plant medicine burned, waved out, and smoked over a fireproof bowl or in a fireplace sweeps out unwanted energies, while inviting in the new and benevolent.
My current favorites are mugwort, lavender, palo santo, and rosemary, with White Sage being my go-to for serious herbal purification.
Sprays can also be used to turn any moment into a sacred cleanse-I have a long-running obsession with Napa Valley.
2. Plantable paper
Writing my seasonal intentions on tree-free pieces of paper I can plant in the earth, or a natural paper I can put into the fire, means that I get to see my visions grow into wildflowers and vegetables.
3. Offerings
Tobacco is a traditional offering to the spirits, but loose lavender buds or a little crystal planted in the earth works just as well to express gratitude for the Earth and her blessings.
4. Fire
Transforming energies and the alchemical process of flames is simply MAGIC. Candles, firepits, fireplaces, yule logs can all be prepared with care and ritual to bring warmth and depth to your celebration. Place prayer ties, releasing bundles, and paper messages into a fire to shed the old and ring in the new!
My fave: Bonfires. Light ’em up.
5. Divination
Pull cards from a favorite deck or flip to a random page in the book you consider to be your bible. Discover the application of the message or passage for here and now.
6. Music
Drums, rattles, tankdrums, crystal bowls, or any music which tunes you into a higher frequency will raise the vibration of your ceremony and deepen your sensual memories of the experience. Hearts open with the right music.
I’m currently spinning a lot of The Human Experience, Rising Appalachia, and Nahko and Medicine for the People.
7. Prayer, Meditation, Blessing, Invocation
Share your sacred intentions with clarity and reverence out loud, or silently to yourself.
Honor the gods, goddesses, Earth, Moon & Stars + the special forces coming together on this momentous occasion.
Love this book of blessings. And this one.
8. Friends
You know who your real friends are when they respond with an enthusiastic YES to your invitation to attend a sacred ceremony with you.
Dress for the occasion!
Create small tokens of appreciation for them.
9. Feast
No ceremony is complete without a feast, especially when it follows a cleansing ritual fast in honor of the transition at hand. It’s all about seasonal foods and gratitudes.
Autumn and winter ceremonial faves ’round here are vegetable soups, curries, venison stew, roots, berries, salmons, pine nuts, and… carrot cake.
Sing over your food to raise it’s vibration and show it the love it’s about to impart to your grateful body.
10. Fun
Ceremony can be a serious business, as well as seriously fun. Be sure to include movement, dance, frolic, games and festivity. Nothing binds the medicine like the kicking up of heels and the letting down of hair.
Or fur.
Awroooooooooo!
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