Victorian readers will find the natural seasons for the Melbourne area, compiled by an academic at Monash University, at the link below.
Gott's Seasonal Calendars for the Melbourne Area
Thanks to Julie Mills at Druids Down Under for the link.
NSW Central Coast natural seasons: Wuruma Wheel of the Year
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Summer Solstice 2009
Summer Solstice 2009 was on the 22nd of December on the Southern Wheel of the Year. It is also known as Midsummer and Litha.
The Southern Wheel applies to the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia. It is based on the European Wheel of the Year. (See Wheel links below or in the side-bar.)
I went away before Christmas and packed some incense, a yellow candle for the light half, from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, and a black candle was for the dark half, from Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice.
On the 22nd I went and looked at the Christmas Bushes in the gardens in the area. They are a very noticeable flower in the gardens of the NSW Central Coast and Sydney in December.
They are a native Australian bush or small tree. Their proper names are Ceratopetalum gummiferum and C. apetalum and their range in the wild is NSW coasts and the Blue Mountains just outside Sydney.
The tiny orange-red flowers that cover them in December are not actually the flowers but fruiting calyces. The true flowers are barely noticeable. They are tiny and white and appear in November.
For more than a century, sprays of Christmas Bush have been cut and brought inside for Christmas decoration. As they are the height of their beauty at Summer Solstice, they make an excellent Summer Solstice emblem.
After dark on the 22nd I took the candles and incense outside and put them on a small table.
I lit the incense then the yellow candle and said ‘The light half is finished. The solstice has come.’ I lit the black candle from the yellow one and extinguished the yellow candle and said ‘The solstice has come. The dark half has begun.’
That was it. It was very simple and brief and, as time goes on, I am finding simple and brief is what I prefer in my private marking of the festivals.
When I got home I put the yellow candle away to light at Winter Solstice and the black candle to burn down at the same time.
The next festival on the Southern Wheel is Lughnasadh which falls around the beginning of February.
Southern Wheel of the Year
Wuruma Wheel of the Year (NSW Central Coast natural seasons)
The Southern Wheel applies to the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia. It is based on the European Wheel of the Year. (See Wheel links below or in the side-bar.)
I went away before Christmas and packed some incense, a yellow candle for the light half, from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, and a black candle was for the dark half, from Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice.
On the 22nd I went and looked at the Christmas Bushes in the gardens in the area. They are a very noticeable flower in the gardens of the NSW Central Coast and Sydney in December.
They are a native Australian bush or small tree. Their proper names are Ceratopetalum gummiferum and C. apetalum and their range in the wild is NSW coasts and the Blue Mountains just outside Sydney.
The tiny orange-red flowers that cover them in December are not actually the flowers but fruiting calyces. The true flowers are barely noticeable. They are tiny and white and appear in November.
For more than a century, sprays of Christmas Bush have been cut and brought inside for Christmas decoration. As they are the height of their beauty at Summer Solstice, they make an excellent Summer Solstice emblem.
After dark on the 22nd I took the candles and incense outside and put them on a small table.
I lit the incense then the yellow candle and said ‘The light half is finished. The solstice has come.’ I lit the black candle from the yellow one and extinguished the yellow candle and said ‘The solstice has come. The dark half has begun.’
That was it. It was very simple and brief and, as time goes on, I am finding simple and brief is what I prefer in my private marking of the festivals.
When I got home I put the yellow candle away to light at Winter Solstice and the black candle to burn down at the same time.
The next festival on the Southern Wheel is Lughnasadh which falls around the beginning of February.
Southern Wheel of the Year
Wuruma Wheel of the Year (NSW Central Coast natural seasons)
Beltane 2009
Beltane fell in mid October on the Southern Wheel of the Year.
The Southern Wheel applies to the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia. It is based on the European Wheel of the Year. (See Wheel links below or in the side-bar.)
Due to issues following deaths in the family in 2007, I have made it to only one circle in Sydney since and there are none that I have found locally.
My private celebrations have all been very low-key. Though this is partly due to my concentrating on understanding the essential meaning of each festival rather than putting most of my efforts into its outward expression as I have in the past.
This year, to understand Beltane better, I looked at what happens when Beltane doesn’t happen.
In the modern western world we are largely isolated from the effects of famine. If our crops fail and we run out of stored food, we can fly in food and seed for next year from places in the world unaffected by famine. The price of those foods and seeds would be enormous but we would not starve. When we see reports on the news about famine in Africa and other places in the Third World, it can be hard to comprehend. It’s so far away and there are some big differences between our snug mechanised worlds and their very unsafe, under-developed worlds.
So I looked at a big famine in the western world, an historical famine but set in a place more readily understood, the Great Famine of 1315–1317.
In 1315, an unusually cold summer caused widespread crop failures through-out Northern Europe, including the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, and western Poland.
This meant that the crops did not ripen, there was little or nothing to eat or to feed the farm animals and few seeds to plant the following year. The unusually cold and wet weather continued and what crops could be planted failed for another two years and, due to the tiny amounts of seeds available for planting over the following years, food supplies did not get back to normal until 1325.
Starvation was widespread. 95% of the human population was affected. Many adults starved in order that their children and grandchildren could eat, diseases spread quickly through communities weakened by hunger, some children were abandoned to fend for themselves and there were incidences of cannibalism. Life expectancy dropped to 35.28 years.
It was as though Beltane had not happened in those years. That really drove home for me the essential meaning of Beltane: continuation of life. Of course all the big festivals on the Wheel are about the continuation of life but I focussed specifically on Beltane by looking at what happened when it went wrong.
On a lighter note, I sang a Beltane filk called Dance the Maypole. It’s a sexy and humorous song with Beltane lyrics by TJ Scott to the tune of the Beatles’ Come Together.
Great Famine of 1315–1317
Dance the Maypole filk
Southern Wheel of the Year
Wuruma Wheel of the Year (NSW Central Coast natural seasons)
The next festival on the Southern Wheel was Summer Solstice on the 22nd of December.
The Southern Wheel applies to the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia. It is based on the European Wheel of the Year. (See Wheel links below or in the side-bar.)
Due to issues following deaths in the family in 2007, I have made it to only one circle in Sydney since and there are none that I have found locally.
My private celebrations have all been very low-key. Though this is partly due to my concentrating on understanding the essential meaning of each festival rather than putting most of my efforts into its outward expression as I have in the past.
This year, to understand Beltane better, I looked at what happens when Beltane doesn’t happen.
In the modern western world we are largely isolated from the effects of famine. If our crops fail and we run out of stored food, we can fly in food and seed for next year from places in the world unaffected by famine. The price of those foods and seeds would be enormous but we would not starve. When we see reports on the news about famine in Africa and other places in the Third World, it can be hard to comprehend. It’s so far away and there are some big differences between our snug mechanised worlds and their very unsafe, under-developed worlds.
So I looked at a big famine in the western world, an historical famine but set in a place more readily understood, the Great Famine of 1315–1317.
In 1315, an unusually cold summer caused widespread crop failures through-out Northern Europe, including the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, and western Poland.
This meant that the crops did not ripen, there was little or nothing to eat or to feed the farm animals and few seeds to plant the following year. The unusually cold and wet weather continued and what crops could be planted failed for another two years and, due to the tiny amounts of seeds available for planting over the following years, food supplies did not get back to normal until 1325.
Starvation was widespread. 95% of the human population was affected. Many adults starved in order that their children and grandchildren could eat, diseases spread quickly through communities weakened by hunger, some children were abandoned to fend for themselves and there were incidences of cannibalism. Life expectancy dropped to 35.28 years.
It was as though Beltane had not happened in those years. That really drove home for me the essential meaning of Beltane: continuation of life. Of course all the big festivals on the Wheel are about the continuation of life but I focussed specifically on Beltane by looking at what happened when it went wrong.
On a lighter note, I sang a Beltane filk called Dance the Maypole. It’s a sexy and humorous song with Beltane lyrics by TJ Scott to the tune of the Beatles’ Come Together.
Great Famine of 1315–1317
Dance the Maypole filk
Southern Wheel of the Year
Wuruma Wheel of the Year (NSW Central Coast natural seasons)
The next festival on the Southern Wheel was Summer Solstice on the 22nd of December.
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