Month 2, Week 2, Earth Path Reflections: Celebration

Three primary questions ..

1-What healing herbs and plants are associated with your favorite High Day? (If you don't know, see the Wheel of the Year link).

**I identify as a bioregional animist.  This term is something of an umbrella that covers: woods walker, staff bearer and wild harvester.  All three are fairly descriptive of not just what I do but who I am.  As such, there is no particular healing herb or plant associated with my favorite tides, because each season brings its own harvest.

There are some standard plants that have, over time, become associated with the tides, like mistletoe at Yule, poppies at Harvest, roses at Imbolc.  In fact, there are comprehensive marketing campaigns that inform consumers what to buy and when.

Like many herbalists, I know the best time to gather healing herbs and plants is during spring and summer.  And so it is that I am in the woods with field guides, harvesting sickle, black marker and baggies, gathering what I find.  Some years are abundant and some years are sparse, and sometimes there will be a few years before I find a particular herb or plant again. 

Because I am something of a traditionalist – choosing to use what I find, following the path the seasons lay before me – I don’t always equivocate a particular herb / plant with a particular ‘high day’.  To me, it’s more seasonal, and again, that is always varied.

2-From the description of the High Days in Lesson 2 .. each High Day honors a specific aspect of spiritual growth and development [snip].  Thinking about your favorite holiday from the Wheel of the Year, how does the aspect of spiritual growth associated with your favorite High Day relate to your life right now? For example [snip] are there aspects of yourself you need to remember or recollect? Are there aspects of your life for which you may need to be more grateful?  Link your High Day's spiritual meaning with your own life.

**As I wrote in the previous entry, Imbolc and Lughnasa, Beltain and Samhain are my favorite seasons.  In my reckoning, Imbolc and Lughnasa (Bron Trogain) are Learning and Lineage – two observances that are very important to me.  Likewise, Beltain and Samhain are Liberation and Legacy.  Additional aspects of these seasons – that I have been observing all my life – include:

-Imbolc / Lughnasa – the Dreaming Circle and Reciprocal Commitment, Meditation, Scrying and the Pledge to Higher Self.

-Beltain / Samhain – Awareness and Breaking Bonds of Illusion, Past Life Remembrance and Unwounding.

For me, these signify Beginnings, Continuations and Ends; they are searching for Self within.  Additionally, I recognize, during these seasons, the birth of the Lady and death of the Lord, and birth of the Lord and the death of the Lady (respectively).  In that this is cyclical reciprocity and I strive to live in accord to the seasons, I mirror this pattern as I walk through each tide.

3-Why is this your favorite High Day?

**This was never an objective decision, but one that has burst forth organically over the years.  I could say that it grew out of my actions, or that my actions grew out of it, but in the end the result would be the same.  It simply is who I Am.