Don’t Bag Your Leaves: An Analysis of Nutrient Loss and Soil Depletion for Leaf Removal November 7, 2014

This is the time of year when the leaves all drop in their delightfully whimsical fashion.  And yet, it seems that fall is not an enjoyable time for many, especially if those leaves end up on the lawn. I’ve discussed problems with the practice of keeping a lawn before, and today, I’d like to look at our relationship to leaves and typical practices for dealing with leaves.  People spend quite a bit of their own energy and fossil fuel energy removing leaves from their lawns (raking, blowing, mowing, and so on).  These leaves seem to end up in three places for a typical American household in the sprawling urban and suburban areas:

 

1. In bags on the side of the roads for “compost” (most common in my area by far)
2. Blown onto the side of the road and left there and/or picked up by the city (more typical in urban settings)
3. In a burn pile smouldering away (this also happens a lot where I live).

 

Some of the more radical folk, like permies and guerrilla gardeners the like, might end up composting their leaves in our gardens or otherwise keeping the nutrients on our properties; but this is a rather rare approach and one not practiced by the bulk of the American populace. Many of us who are radical gardeners go out seeking the bags of leaves left on the curb to bring additional nutrients to our properties (I do this every year).  However, not all of us have the benefit of composting or keeping our leaves–not raking, mulching, or composting leaves is illegal in some township or city mandates and also in many subdivisions throughout the US. And leaves aren’t often the only things found in the leaf compost bags–usually when I go out to collect, I find a good deal of other matter and live plants.  This year, at about 10% of the houses where I picked up leaves, I also found the remains of someone’s backyard garden (tomatoes) and at another 10% I found other kinds of food from trees just thrown away (walnuts, apples, acorns, pears, etc).

 

And so, today, I’d like to explore this practice a bit and its long-term impacts on soil health…and what we might do instead.

 

Leaves from the side of the road for my garden!

What’s Written on the Bag: Linguistic Framing of Leaves

When people talk about the leaves that drop from the trees in the fall, they often call it “leaf litter” or “yard waste.”  Looking at the brown paper bags that people buy to store their leaves in for pickup, they say “Lawn refuse” or “Yard Waste” or “Refuse” on the sides. We label the bags and then frame what we put in them as waste or refuse; something to be discarded.  So we are already creating a framework for seeing materials that come from our yards as “waste” rather than seeing the nutrients in the leaves as a valuable thing.

 

What’s in the Leaves: Nutrients Contained in Fallen Leaves

The other issue I’ve been pondering for some time is the nutritional content of the leaves, and how many nutrients leave a typical American lawn in suburbia each year when they are discarded.  I found a reasonable analysis about the nutrient content leaves here; their calculations are based on one ton of leaves (which, granted, is a lot of leaves).  This section presents a look at the nutrient content in leaves and how much is lost when we put them on the curb (or how much is gained by picking up someone else’s leaves).

 

According to the analysis above, 1 ton (2000 lbs) of leaves has the following:

• 940 lbs of carbon
• 20 lbs of nitrogen
• 2 lbs phosphorus
• 2 lbs potassium
• 32.8 lbs calcium
• 4.8 lbs magnesium
• 2.2 lbs sulfur
• Plus other nutrients and a great deal of organic matter (organic matter not calculated)

 

Before I get into my analysis of how much we lose by putting leaves on the corner, I have a few caveats.  First, this kind of analysis requires quite a bit of assumptions and estimations; I’ve done my best, but what I have found might be specific to my local area in South-East Michigan.  Second, I’m certain that leaf nutrition varies pretty widely based on the  soil profile of the region, the nutrients present or absent in the soil already, the types of trees, the weather for the year, and so on.  With that said, I do think even a rudimentary analysis, like the one I’m presenting, gives us some starting points.

 

Methods: On my trips out to get leaf bags from the side of the road this year,  I did some counting in my area to estimate the amounts and weights typical bags of leaves had.  I went out for three weeks and brought back 46 bags of leaves; I went out twice each week to different areas within a 3 mile radius of where I lived. I counted how many leaves people left on the curb and when I got back, I weighed them to get their average weight.  In a fourth week it rained, and while I collected bags, I did not weigh them because the water weight would have impacted my findings. I then did some simple math using the numbers above.

 

Amount of leaves per bag and per yard: Most leaf bags I picked up ranged from 8lbs – 22lbs, depending on whether or not they were shredded. Shredded leaf bags typically account for about 20% of the bags I pick up.  Even unshredded bags are often compacted and pretty heavy, especially if the leaves fell relatively flat or were slightly wet when they went in the bag.    The average for the bags was just above 10 lbs.  People in the suburban area where I go leaf hunting put out an average of 4.5 bags of leaves on collection day; some had many more, and most had been putting them out for a period of weeks. My estimate is that most families in my area put out at least 7 bags of leaves in a fall season assuming they have a few trees in their yard dropping leaves; this amounts to about 98 lbs of leaves (I’m going to round this to 100 lbs to make the math simple).

 

So for each 10 lb bag of leaves put on the curb, it has:

• 4.7 lbs of carbon
• .1 lbs of nitrogen
• .01 lbs of phosphorus
• .01 lbs of potassium
• .16 lbs of lbs of calcium
• .02 lbs of magnesium
• .01 lbs of sulfur
• And Iron, Zinc, and much, more.

 

That’s a lot of nutrients.  And that’s just the leaves–I don’t have any way of figuring out what whole tomato plants and other plants ripped up from the soil are also contributing, but I suspect these numbers are much higher.  And then, if homeowners are also removing their grass clippings all season long, that’s a whole other calculation to include.

 

There are alternatives!

 

What’s Left in the Soil:  Long-Term Removal of Nutrients and Inadequacy of Fertilization

Now one bag of leaves makes an impact, but perhaps a small one.  The problem is that one bag of leaves isn’t what’s being removed–this is about the long-term systematic removal of nutrients from our landscape.  As I was driving through a bunch of Detroit communities last weekend, what really struck me was the age of the houses.  Many of the houses I was looking at literally were 75 years, 100 years, or older.  In my research on dandelions, I discovered that typical lawn practices prevalent today really rose to popularity after World War II, which suggests that people haven’t been bagging up their leaves forever, but likely they have been doing it for some time.  So let’s assume that for the last 50 years, most citizens of Metro Detroit (or any other city or suburban area) have been removing their leaves from their property.  So if we take the numbers above and assume 100 lbs of leaves being removed each year, we end up with nutrient loss something like this:

 

Nutrient Loss for Fall Leaf Removal for 100 Years (all numbers in pounds)

 

These numbers are striking, but what is even more striking is the fact that I haven’t accounted for any other kinds of “yard waste” such as grass clippings (put out on the curb weekly or bi-monthly by many) or other kinds of yard compost that people don’t want.  I might do a case study of this at some point, but for now, we can see the potential for soil nutrient health decline.

 

I’d like to offer one other piece of evidence as well. My house was built in 1945, so my yard likely suffered the same fate for most of the last 70 years as well.  When I got at my homestead a few years ago, prior to putting in the garden, I ran soil tests.   These are exactly where the leaves (and lawn clippings) would have been taken from (and I knew from taking to my neighbors that the people who owned this house did such practices).  I found that the soil where I wanted to put in my garden was pretty much sand.  It had little organic matter and a P.H. of 8.2 (our PH is high in this area, but the lack of organic matter made it higher).  It had only 8 PPM of Phosphorus (considered extremely low), 22 parts per million of potassium (low) and magnesium of only 27 parts per million (extremely low).  To get my soil prepared for growing crops…what did I do? Went around and picked up everyone’s leaves, imported massive amounts of organic matter in the form of manure, compost, and this year, even a pile of seaweed from a local pond.  And now my soil tests are beautiful and my soil is rich and healthy (and much lower in PH thanks to the organic matter all of the leaves helped create).

 

What’s going back into the soil?  Not enough.

In a natural process, assuming no removal of nutrients, it takes 500 years or more to produce one inch of topsoil.  This gives you a sense, I think, of the enormity of the challenges that face us in regenerating landscapes with these destructive lawn practices.  But, you say, aren’t people putting things back into the soil?  Yes, and we’ll take a look at that next.

 

1) Plants can pull certain kinds of nutrients from the air; typically this is nitrogen and oxygen. So certainly, some nitrogen theoretically could be being brought back into the soil, although typical lawn ornamentals and grass don’t do this well.

 

2) Most nutrients are in the soil, and those nutrients are cycled through the dropping and decay of organic matter.  Trees and other plants (like Burdock, Comfrey, Dandelion), penetrate deep into the ground and pulling up nutrients to the surface, which they then deposit as leaves or dead plant matter.  But how many nutrients are down there for the taking?  If nutrients are systematically removed from the same spot over a 25, 50, or 100 year period, I suspect that at some point, the ground underneath will simply run out of those nutrients. I also have a theory (untested) that this is part of why we have so many plant and tree diseases.  We keep removing organic matter and nutrients from our landscapes in this form, through logging, etc, and those aren’t going back into our system.

 

3) People also often add fertilizers; but most commercial fertilizers focus only on the three macronutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.  All of the micronutrients (some of which are critical to plant and human health, such as magnesium or calcium) are not added.  Fertilizers also come in a water soluble form (nitrate) and cause substantial problems for our waterways (I am not going to spend the time today to describe soil ecology, but a good introduction to it is here).

 

4) Mulch is sometimes also added to select areas.  But wood mulches are very high in carbon and little else.

 

5) Some people do buy compost and add it in select areas (say, a garden) but this is in select areas; I don’t see people dumping compost all over their lawns to make up for the loss of nutrients.  More on this in my next post.

 

So even with the inputs, it seems likely that a substantial net loss in nutrients in the soil immediately surrounding most of our homes and communities due to the “composting” practices of leaves and grass clippings.

Concluding Thoughts

What concerns me about this analysis, if its in the ballpark range at all (and I have reason to believe it is) is that each year, the soil surrounding our homes and in our communities gets more and more depleted as we continue to remove nutrients from our soils systematically through fall leaves and grass clippings.  This leaves me with a few serious concerns:

 

1) More and more people are becoming interested in urban gardening, homesteading, and the like, and yet, if they want to dig up their backyard, they are facing soils with literally no nutrients, organic matter, or life in them (as I faced when I started my homestead).  If we all wanted to do this, where would all the nutrients come from?

 

2) We aren’t looking at a few places of depletion, but probably we are facing it with nearly every suburban and urban home in the US.  When we combine this with modern industrial farming practices that kill soil life and strip the soil bare, its a very worrying issue.

 

3) The systematic loss of particular kinds of nutrients is also concerning; in my herbalism course, we have spent a great deal of time talking about magnesium deficiency (which the bulk of Americans are suffering from) and deficiency in other micro-nutrients; interestingly, many of these showed up in the list of what was in fall leaves and being removed.  Even if you were to grow some veggies in your soil that you added some organic matter to, would there be enough magnesium and other essential nutrients for your own body’s needs?

 

4) Perhaps most worrying of all: if history has anything to teach us, the widespread degradation and depletion of soil and other resources leads to a civilization’s collapse.  Combining this with many other ecological challenges suggests the widespread and systematic need for radical change.

 

I’ll elaborate on these concerns and what we might begin to do about this in my next blog post, which will discuss the concept of restoration agriculture and further discuss permaculture design.

Fall Leaves and the Druidic Garden: Leaves as Compost and Mulch November 12, 2010

With the passing of Samhain, most of the leaves here in Michigan are now off the trees.  As I bike through my neighborhood or visit surrounding communities, I am always amazed to see people bagging up all of those leaves in the brown “compost” bags and leave them by the side of the road or (worse) burning them in the backyard.  Hold on for a minute!

What my illustrious neighbors bagging the leaves up and leaving them for the waste disposal company may not realize is that those same leaves, yard trimmings, and other waste are sold right back to them in the spring time when they want a little compost or rich hummus for their garden.  Unfortunately, this process is damaging on the environment because: A) fossil fuels are used to transport the leaves to and from their destination; high-powered composting facilities often use additional fossil fuels to automatically turn and process leaves; and finally, they have to be packaged back up and sold to the end consumer–sometimes across counties or states.  Another serious benefit is that the nutrients of the leaves–nutrients that would leech back into the soil if the leaves were left on the ground to decompose naturally–continue to be removed each year as the leaves are put on the curb.  This loss of nutrients in the soil eventually causes most to go out and buy petrochemical fertilizers (which contribute to substantial water pollution).

Burning those little leaves is even worse, however!  Leaf burning destroys many valuable nutrients (although some nutrients are retained in the ash, to be fair), substantially contributes to air pollution, and can cause trouble for health of asthmatics and others.  Not to mention the risk of fires spreading out of control.

Alternatives exist to bagging and/or burning leaves!

Leaves are a precious and valuable resource, and can be used in a multitude of ways in your own gardening practice: as a lawn mulch, compost, as a soil enricher, and as a garden mulch.

This year, I’ve used leaves in several ways to enhance my druidic gardening practice.

Directly in the Garden Beds. First, I used leaves as a basic ingredient of my “raised bed sheet mulching” approach (which I haven’t yet written on but plan on writing on soon).  Leaves were added right to the bed in the fall and will compose over the winter, adding much needed nutrients and humus to my sandy soil.

Leaf Composting. I also built myself a simple leaf composter out of some rusty wire fencing I found in the weeds on the side of the property.  I created a sphere with the wire and weighted the bottom down with some rocks.  Next, I layered about 6 inches of leaves with an inch of soil and/or manure and as I layered it, I wet the whole thing down.  If you layer it in this fashion, the leaves are less likely to mat.  If you wet it down, composting will happen much faster!  I have read that you can also use sacks for leaf composting or even build your own large bin.  The key is to make sure that your leaves don’t blow away before they are composted.  Now that I’ve done this work, I will wait and see what happens in the spring–and how far along my leaves have composted.  Leaf composting is super-easy, and you can use the composted leaves as an excellent soil conditioner or garden mulch.

Mulching. One of the most important lessons that I have learned in my short time on this property is that mulch is your friend.  I planted a number of trees and heavily mulched them–and was amazed to find that even after a week or more of dry weather, when I stuck my hand into the mulch, the roots were still damp.  If you want to use leaves as mulch, you can compost them partially (to avoid matting, again) and then spread them thickly on whatever it is you want to mulch.  The leaves will eventually decompose and will release their nutrients into the soil. In this way, you are mimicking the forest’s natural cycle of falling leaves eventually turning into fertile soil (we speed this up a bit with composting).

Do be aware that certain leaves may change the PH level of your soil.  Pine needles and oak leaves are particularly acidic (but this makes them incredibly useful for say, blueberries or paw paw trees!).  I have been using pine needles as a wonderful mulch on my newly planted blueberry bushes.

If you have a lawn mower, you can also mulch your leaves directly onto your lawn.  Apparently they make mowers just for mulching, but I’ve never seen them so I can’t write more on that process.

This is my first year using leaf composting, so I’ll report how things went in the spring!

How to Create Your Own Tarot or Oracle Deck for Personal Use October 6, 2019

 

My local ogham-like oracle system 🙂

Ever since I self-published the Tarot of Trees, I get a fairly regular stream of people who are interested in creating their own oracle decks and want to know how to do it. So in today’s post, I’ll share the process of developing a variety of different oracles. Some were published oracles, like  The Tarot of Trees and my forthcoming Plant Spirit Oracle, while others were private oracles just for me, such as the Ancestor Oracle and my ongoing East Coast Ogham project and tree spirit project. Through these projects, I detail the process for how you might create your own. We’ll talk about the act of creation itself, as well as options for if you want to get it out into the world (self publish, print on demand, etc).

 

In today’s post, I’m going to focus on oracle decks that you make just for you–without the intention of mass-producing them. I’ll share various options for your deck and my own experiences in making many such decks.  In next week’s post, I’ll share details about how to make an oracle with the intention of getting it published or self-publishing).  I’m splitting up these posts for a very good reason. If you are making your own deck that is only for you, you don’t have to worry about a lot of considerations that go into printing and mass production (funding a print run, marketing, standard printer die-cut sizes for cards, etc). If you are making one just for you, you can do whatever you want, however, you want it.  If, however, you want to publish your work (either through a publisher or through self-publishing means) then you have to pay attention to certain considerations–which I’ll cover at some point in the next month or two!

 

What is an oracle? Why create one yourself?

An oracle is a set of cards, stones, or other objects that allow you to ask questions from spirit.  Typically, oracles have a theme (e.g. plants, angels, divinity) and through various imagery or objects they can offer you messages.  Many oracles work on the principle of the archetype–which is simply a recurring symbol or theme that is common to the human experience.  The maiden, mother, and crone are three such archetypes, as are the fool and the magician from the tarot.  When you are creating your own oracle, you can choose what kinds of symbolism and energy you might want to connect with.

 

There’s a lot of differing opinions about what you are connecting to with when you connect with an oracle deck.  Again, I think this depends on the person.  Some folks may find that they want it to remain a mystery.  Others believe they are connecting with their higher self or subconscious.  Others believe that they are connecting with some form of the divine or greater spirit, god/goddess, or universal energy.  For some people, these questions matter deeply and for others, they really don’t care where the messages come from as long as they are helpful.  While it doesn’t matter what you believe to create your oracle, it can be a useful exercise to consider what the source(s) of the energy is that you are drawing upon.

My Tree Spirit Oracle – a project I’m still working on!  I got this printed through a print-on-demand printer to see how it would look.  More on POD next week!

Self-created oracles have a certain kind of power that you can’t get from an oracle someone else created.  A self-created oracle is yours, and only yours.  You choose what goes into it.  You create it yourself. You choose your symbols and meanings. You are the only one involved in visioning for it, choosing the archetypes or meanings, choosing the media, choosing how it is used.  Tremendous power exists in self-determination.  You will learn a lot about yourself and what you value through the process of creating your own oracle.  At the same time, recognize that it can be a considerable undertaking, sometimes over a period of time (particularly if you are searching out objects for your oracle).  It may also be limited by your artistic skill, but there are ways around not being able to draw (e.g. fancy lettering, collage, etc). But it is certainly something worth doing as a “next step” for divination work.

 

Setting Vision and  Intentions

For creating your own oracle deck, I have found it helpful to start by meditating and exploring your own intentions. Each person is unique, and an oracle we create is likewise unique, that should in some way reflect upon who we are as people and what our needs for divination are. Some of the questions you might ask to help you set your intentions are:

• Why do I want to create my own oracle?
• What kinds of questions do I want to ask?
• What questions do I ask of my current oracles regularly?
• What do I like about the oracles/tarot decks that I already have worked with?
• What don’t I like (or is missing) from the oracles/tarot decks that I already have?
• Do I have themes or media that I’m particularly drawn to?
• Do I want to be able to add to my oracle over time?
• How big do I want my oracle to be? (e.g. simple yes/no/maybe questions or deep understandings?  The more cards/objects, the more complex of questions and answers you can ask).

Once you have some sense of these questions, it is likely a good time to start making your own oracle. If you don’t have a sense of these questions, you might want to meditate on them for a time and return to the oracle project at a later point. Oracle ideas have a way of sneaking up on you–you may one day be struck with the awen (inspiration) and be ready to go after months of not being sure what to do. That’s ok–these things are rooted in spirit and they work on their own time and in their own way.

 

The Tarot of Trees

Your Oracle: Established Meanings or New Ground

Planning is your first step, and a multitude of options exist for you designing your own oracle.  First, you have to decide if you are going to use an established set of meanings (runes, ogham, or Tarot) for your basis for creating an oracle or if you are going to create something entirely new and unique.  This is an important choice.  Here are your two options:

 

Using and adapting an established oracle/tarot system.

Choosing to use something that is already established (runes, tarot, ogham, etc) gives you a basic blueprint of how to proceed.  Your major work using this approach is interpretation and manifestation. Your planning, then, has a lot to do with how you interpret the existing body of meanings to your specific theme and plan. If you are going to start with a set of established meanings–then those meanings will be a guide as you plan your deck. In this case, the plan is already before you (e.g. 78 cards, 4 suits + major arcana in the case of the tarot, 22 ogham staves in the case of the ogham, etc). Your job is simply to interpret those archetypes how you see fit.

 

The Tarot of Trees took this approach–I made a tarot deck. I changed some of the meanings and adapted the suits to fit a seasonal and elemental approach, but ultimately, the suits and cards are familiar to anyone who works with other Tarot decks.  There’s still a lot of room for flexibility and creativity in this approach but it does give you some structure, which is helpful to many people.  In the case of the Tarot of Trees, I focused on one tarot card at a time, starting with the majors.  I meditated on each of the traditional meanings and then envisioned what that might be when translated to a tree focus.  I read different interpretations of the cards. Thus, while some of my cards were fairly classical (the 3 of swords) others, like the Wheel of the Year (Wheel of the Seasons in the Tarot of Trees) or the Heirophant, went off in interesting directions.

 

Creating an entirely new oracle system.

The alternative is to go off in a completely new direction and create an entirely new oracle that is specific to you and that does not use an existing framework. This allows you to create something entirely unique, with your own symbology and meanings. Deeply personal oracles that are self-created have real power because they speak directly to you and are created by you. I highly recommend you do so at some point on your spiritual journey! In this case, your work is very different.  Not only are you creating the oracle itself, but also the entire framework and system for meaning. Let me give you two examples, which will help illustrate this process.

 

The Ancestor Oracle Deck is one such example that I’ve created (not the only one I’ve made, but the only I’ve shared publicaly on this blog prior to this post). In this case, I wanted to create an oracle deck that evolved as my own life did–I wanted to create an ancestor deck that I could connect with and use at Samhain, and I wanted to be able to add ancestors to my deck as loved ones passed on as part of my own mourning process. Obviously, since this deck was so personal, I would never publish it or share it with anyone else (and I’m even careful about which cards I photograph).  This deck had a very specific and meaningful purpose for me–a tool to use for divination, but also for my altar, and my mourning work as I lose someone important.  In the case of creating this deck, I did some pre-planning.  In the weeks leading up to Samhain, I opened up a sacred grove and invited my ancestors in. I reflected on each of them, and began to keep a running list of three things:  who they were, what they meant to me, and what core symbolism I might use to represent them. In the weeks following that, I created the deck itself and made the imagery (see link above for that process). I made a lot of extra cards for that deck, as I know that my collection of ancestors will grow as my dear ones pass. After I made the initial deck, I also spent some time with Ancestry.com, doing my DNA test, and learning much more about my distant ancestors.  At this Samhain, I’m going to be adding some of those more distant ancestors that I’ve been connecting to–my oldest tracable ancestors, for example, and some of the core family clans.  The deck itself has also helped

My ancestor oracle

I used a very different approach to create the Plant Spirit Oracle (PSO).  Unlike the Ancestor Oracle, which I planned out in advance, the PSO was extremely inductive.  I didn’t even know I was creating an oracle till I was about 7 or 8 paintings into the process!  I was doing some serious journey work with the Celtic Golden Dawn system.  As part of that system, you work with elemental groves and journey between those groves.  Each journey introduces you to a guide.  When I started the process, I met a plant–black cohosh–and she showed me a painting as part of my journey.  I painted it.  I kept doing these pathworkings every few weeks.  I’d meet plant spirits, and gain an image of what to paint, and use the painting process itself as a meditative tool.  Sometimes I would have to journey further to get the meanings or have the meanings revealed to me through meditation, even after already getting the image of what I wanted to paint. For this oracle, I did not plan it in advance, but once I got later in the process and had most of it complete, I did figure out an overall organization for the deck that worked with what I had and created a few cards tht “filled in” the gaps of the meanings I needed,  I would say, it was almost an intuitive and spirit-led approach.

And so, some general principles we can take away from these two examples:

Like most things, multiple options exist for how to proceed for designing your own oracle. One is the intuitive or inductive approach, where you simply work with one card or object at a time and use intuition/spirit to get you where you are going (my example of the Plant Spirit Oracle).  The other approach is and one is the plan-ahead or deductive approach (which is what I did with the Ancestor Oracle).  Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks, and they really will depend on who you are, the vision you have, and how you are most comfortable proceeding.  You might also find that a bit of both is the best approach–planning what you know you want to include, and leaving the rest up to divine inspiration as you create.

If you are coming into this process with a fairly strong vision for your oracle, it might pay to plan it in advance.  That is, it might pay you to sit down and map out what the meanings are that you want to create, the kinds of things you need in your oracle, what you want it to look like, and maybe even ideas on how you’ll read it and use it.  A map (visual) or outline can be helpful as you plan, think through, and revise before beginning.

If you are not coming in with a strong vision, then I suggest you simply look to the world around you for inspiration and use your core spiritual practices to get you there.  As you are in the act of creating, you may come across experiences or things in nature that resonate–write them down, collect them and help build them into your oracle.  Or you can create or adapt a specific set of practices just for oracle creation.

 

Whew!  There’s a lot to think about when it comes to which path you want to take to creat your oracle.  Now, we move into the next phase of creation.  You will need to make decisions about what (matter) and what the meanings will be (spirit).

 

Matter: Options for Making Your Oracle

You can make your oracle literally out of anything–collage or found images, photography, hand-paintings, small objects like bones, wood burned slices of wood, stones, acorn shells and much more more. Even if you have you have not honed your drawing or painting skills, there are still lots of other options for you. I’ll cover some of those options here and offer you some ideas to get you started.

Paper-based options

 

A handpainted “mockup” deck of the PSO to figure out how to best use it!

Paper-based options are good for oracles–a heavy paper (like watercolor or bristol) stands up well to repeated use, and paper-based oracles can travel easily. Here, play around with some potential ideas till you find something you really like and start to make the cards.  cards can be any size or shape (and feel free to get creative here–round oracle cards are a thing). Make a few mock-up cards and see how the awen is flowing. If you are thinking of going this route, here are some options for you.

 

• Pre-cut cards.  If you look online, you can easily find different sizes of pre-cut cards that are ready to go.  These include various kinds of colors, thicknesses, etc.  Using these as a starting point is a great way to go–get some stamps or markers, or your printer, and away you go!
• Watercolor backgrounds and Lettering:  An oracle can be made just of watercolor backgrounds and lettering (see the watercolor background technique in the Ancestor Oracle post).  Anyone can make these backgrounds, and if you put them on a good watercolor paper, you can end up with a really nice place to start for images or lettering.
• Lettering is an art form in and of itself and does not require the same level of skill as drawing. I would suggest checking out this list for books that can inspire you.
• You could use a handmade paper technique where you use recycled papers or natural materials.  Again, handmade paper techniques are easy to learn and require no drawing ability.  Then put some nice lettering on your cards and away you go!
• Handpainted cards:  Create fully handpainted cards.  Paint them at the size, or patin them larger.  I did both for the Plant Spirit Oracle:  I made a “mockup” deck work out the meanings and uses for the Plant Spirit Oracle.  I also had larger 11×14″ paintings for each.  For the Ancestor Oracle, I made only one card, and that was handpainted.
• Collage techniques.  Gather up some inspirational magazines, glue, and some heavy cardstock and go to town! You can create wonderful, intuitive collages (similar to a vision boarding technique).  You can do these very intuitively–light some candles, put on some quiet music, and put yourself in a good place.  Then, go through the magazines and material and pull things out that speak to you.  Cut them, and assemble them into cards with words and pictures.  An oracle is born!
• You can do digital art and then do a one-shot print run (such as through makeplayingcards.com).  Or you can print them out locally or on your home printer.  I did this for my Tree Spirit Oracle (which may or may not become a deck I release).
• You can carve vegetables or various kinds of blocks (wood, linoleum) and create a printed deck (I’ve always wanted to do this, but haven’t gotten to it yet.  But I did make a set of cool elemental garden flags some time ago!)
• You can also do basic stamp techniques with natural materials like leaves, etc.
• There are papers you can get that turn colors when exposed to the sun. Use these with natural materials to create amazing and accurate prints. Look for “sun print paper” or “sun-sensitive paper”.
• Doodles/pen and ink.  Zentangle techniques are meditative and fun and again, something anyone can do. These done intuitively with words or images would make a really cool oracle!

These are just some of many, many paper-based media options.  Play around and see what speaks to you.  Browse places like Deviant Art or Instagram to get ideas of what is possible and what may speak to you.

Object and Wooden options

Because of the prevalence of oracle decks, sometimes we forget that other materials also make great oracles.  Thus, your oracle does not have to be paper-based but rather can be made of objects of all kinds.  Objects give you a different kind of interaction, a much more tactile interaction, and can be a lot of fun to put together.

• Found natural objects: sticks, stones, shells, and feathers can make a great oracle deck.  Put different gathered objects together in a bag, assign meanings, and you are ready to roll.
• Stones: Collect or purchase different colored stones.  Paint them (or not) and assign meanings. You might also want to tumble them or leave them as is.
• Bones.  In the hoodoo tradition, throwing the bones is a very common divination practice.  I have a friend who has a wonderful bone set–she collected them all herself, over time, and she also created a great casting cloth (see below) for her bone set.
• Wood and sticks: You can do a lot with different kinds of wood, either slices of wood cut with a miter saw or sticks cut just with little hand tools. You can slice off one end of a stick and give meaning or symbol. Wood rounds make excellent sets for runes and other things. Woodburning these works best (see a photo of my ongoing East Coast Woodlands Ogham project for a simple example).
• Clay:  You can do natural pottery (fired in a hot bonfire), air dry clay, or polymer clays like Sculpey or fimo.  You can shape things with them, or roll them out, use a little circle to cut out shapes, and then press other things into them (like stamps, old buttons, etc).  I would recommend you think about the portability of clay objects–how heavy will they be together?

 

Spirit: Developing Meanings and Uses

The spirit of the oracle refers to what it means and how you use it.  Meanings and how you gain those meanings are obviously central to any oracle deck. Developing an oracle, even if you plan it in advance, requires working with it to finalize the meanings and develop your understanding and relationship with that oracle.

Developing meanings

I began talking about how to develop meanings above, and I will continue that discussion here.  The first way of developing meanings is through lots and lots of research. My East Coast Ogham project, for example, is mostly a research-heavy project where I explore the different history, folklore, herbalism, physical uses, and mythology surrounding trees here in the eastern part of the USA and then derive my own meanings for it. That project has been a labor of love, and when you see a sacred tree post from me, that’s part of that project.  (Thus far, I’ve covered Cherry, Juniper, Birch, Elder, Walnut, Eastern White Cedar, Hemlock, Sugar Maple, Hawthorn, Hickory, Beech, Ash, White Pine, and Oak as part of that project!).  I’ve made many more tree stick oghams that aren’t yet researched.  Each of these trees requires many hours to research, but the process is so rewarding.  In the end, this oracle will probably take me the longest of any I’ve created–but it will be all hand-gathered and from the heart.

 

The second way of developing meanings is through spiritual work such as meditation, nature observation, and sprit journeying. That’s how I developed the Plant Spirit Oracle. I did extensive journeying over a 4 year period and through those journeys, received not only the design of each card but their overall meanings. I already shared that process above a bit.

 

Another way of developing meanings is by meaningful personal association.  This was how I developed the Ancestor Oracle.  I had ancestors, I wanted to think about their role in my life and what messages they might have.  Sometimes, I had done spirit journeying work with them, and other times, it was simply what I remembered of them, stories I had been told, or what they meant to me personally.  For example, in the Ancestor Oracle, I have a card for “The Conservationists.”  I honor those who worked to create the beautiful state and national parks that I so enjoy as a druid.  This included many of the members of the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps, who built cabins, created paths, and really built our national and state park system here in PA from the ground up. I created that card several years ago and each Samhain, I honor those as one kind of ancestor of this land. I was only a few weeks ago I was camping with my family, and we were staying at Parker Dam State Park staying for the weekend in one of those CCC-built cabins.  My mother mentioned to me that my great-great uncle had been a member of the CCC.  How delighted I was to find this out! Now the card takes on additional meaning, as now it also represents at least one ancestor of my blood. These are the kinds of personal and meaningful associations that can develop over time, even after you finish your oracle.

Ancestor oracle

The final way is if you are working with an existing framework (tarot, ogham, runes, etc) and making it your own.  This is what I did with the Tarot of Trees. To do this, I first started by working with other tarot decks and books and just learning how the Tarot worked.  I took my own notes and as I used these decks, I intuited my own interpretations over time.  I painted the first card of the Tarot of Trees–the Tower–to better understand this card through meditation (I do a lot of meditation through my bardic arts).  Then I just kept going.  The general idea here is that you need to understand the system you are working with enough to interpret it and adapt it in whatever way you choose.  You can also add cards or subtract cards–this is your work.  For example, in the Tarot of Trees in the 3rd edition, I added a 79th card to the deck, “regeneration.”  This card, for me, was about hope and life.  I did this after studying permaculture design and feeling empowered about the potential role that humans could play in regenerating the earth.

 

Regardless of how you create your meanings, the final thing to remember here is that meanings and oracles evolve.  Even with original meanings, you have to work with the oracle to figure out the fine details of the meanings, the ways that different cards might interact, and the ways that you interact with your creation.  Allow for flexibility and time for these meanings to develop and understand that this is a process.  Keep a journal of what you understand the meanings to be, and allow yourself to

 

Developing Ways of Use

So you have an oracle and you have some basic meanings. Congratulations! The final thing you need to consider is how you can ask questions: that is, how do you draw objects or cards when you ask questions? How might you arrange them in a logical fashion?  You have lots of options here as well.

• For cards and objects, you might consider different kinds of spreads.  You can invent your own spreads for use with your divination system or you can use previously created spreads that you like. For example, a commonly used spread in the Tarot community is the Celtic Cross spread. Experiment with your oracle, see what kinds of placement and meanings speak to you.  I suggest you start simple and then work your way to more elaborated spreads and readings.
• You can also use different kinds of casting techniques.  These are particularly useful for objects like runes, bones, stones, etc.  Perhaps you craw one after another out of a bag.  Perhaps you cast the entirely of your oracle on a casting cloth, where different positions and directions on the cloth mean different things.  Perhaps you draw 4 then drop them on a table, seeing which directions they point and how they interact.  If you google “Casting cloth” you will see a lot of possibilities for existing casting cloths that can help you be inspired to create your own.
• Consider interaction: how do different cards interact with other cards?  how might they

 

Tree Spirit Oracle

 

 

Use your Oracle

Oracles are meant to be used, either by you or perhaps by you reading for others.  The process of creation continues as you use your oracle, develop deeper meanings and relationships between the different cards/objects, and develop a deep connection between it and yourself.  I’d like to conclude by suggesting that you allow yourself flexibility in adding and adapting your oracle even after you consider it “done” as you never know what new meanings or messages spirit will have for you.

 

As a reminder, my sister and I are working to get the Plant Spirit Oracle released by early next year!  If you are interested in the PSO, please visit the Indigogo crowdfunding campaign.  We have lots of levels and extra perks.  Please check it out!

 

Using an Oracle or Tarot Deck to Establish Sacred Space September 22, 2019

Plant Spirit Oracle

As some of you may know from my posts on Facebook and Instagram, in early 2020, I’ll be releasing the Plant Spirit Oracle as my second self-published divination deck (if you want to support the project, see link in the right sidebar with the Oak image). I described the Plant Spirit Oracle project a bit in an earlier post. For today’s post, I wanted to share a ritual space strategy that I developed as part of the PSO project–how to use a tarot or oracle deck to establish a sacred space.

 

The idea in a nutshell is that rather than calling in th elements or powers in a more static way, you can use an oracle deck to draw upon them in a more dynamic way. Thus, each time you create sacred space, you will be asking the cards to help you select the right energies for the space.  I’ve been using this in my own practices for about a year and it works beautifully. While the Plant Spirit Oracle is used and mentioned below, you can adapt this to be used with any oracle or tarot deck that you enjoy using–I have instructions at the end for how to do so.  Most sacred space openings use one set of energy (e.g. calling air, fire, water, earth, and spirit) and the energy is always the same for any sacred space. This approach allows for the divine/spirit/nature (through the use of the divination deck) to call forth specific energies for a specific need–thus, spirit helps you create the specific sacred space you need. Thus, each sacred space you create using this method is different and unique to your specific circumstances.

 

Tje following segment on how to use the approach is adapted from the fourth chapter of the Plant Spirit Oracle book. While the first three chapters of the book focus on how to use the PSO as a divination tool, the last two chapters offer deeper work.  The fourth chapter focuses on the ritual, magical, and spirit journeying approaches to working with plants in the PSO.  The 5th chapter focuses on herbalism practices–thus, working deeply with the sacred plants both on the outer and inner planes.  And without further delay, here is how to establish sacred space with an oracle deck!

 

Excerpt from the Plant Spirit Oracle Book: Establishing Sacred Space with the Plant Spirit Oracle

To do many of the deeper activities with the PSO as described in this chapter, you will want to establish a sacred space in which to work. You may even find it useful to establish a sacred space when using this oracle for meditation or divination purposes. Creating a sacred space can help you get into a more receptive mindset and clear away (and keep away) negative energies that may interfere in your work.  It also helps you create a mental shift, shifting you from “everyday time” to “sacred time.”

 

Preliminaries: Setting up a physical space is an important part of establishing sacred space. If you are indoors, you might set up a small altar with candles, incense, herbs, and so on. This is also a place to put your PSO deck for use during the ceremony. If you are outdoors, find a quiet space you are drawn to, and, if you feel led, make a small natural altar from stones, sticks, flowers, and such. Lay out a cloth and your PSO deck in the center of the space.

 

The Great Soil Web of Life

Opening a Sacred Space

 

Step 1: Clear yourself and the space. Begin by using a technique to clear yourself and the area around you. For example, you can use a smoke cleansing (smudge) stick of dried herbs. Clear yourself and smudge the space. If you don’t have a smoke clearing stick, you can burn some kitchen herbs (Sage or Rosemary) on a piece of charcoal. Alternatively, make a strong tea of herbs (Sage, Rosemary) and then asperge yourself and the area by flicking drops of the tea around with a branch or your fingers. If you are outside, you can use a branch with leaves or pine needles to asperge the space. You can also use music, like ringing a bell, sounding a drum, or using a singing bowl.

 

Step 2: Declare your intent for the ceremony. Indicate to the spirits why you are establishing this sacred space. Are you working with the oracle for divination? Finding your plant spirit ally? Journeying? Let the spirits know. Here is an example: “Sacred plant spirits, I call to you to assist me in doing a plant spirit journey to learn deeper wisdom from the Reishi.”

 

Step 3: Shuffle your PSO deck. As you shuffle, keep your sacred intent for the ceremony in mind.

 

Step 4: Call forth four plant spirit allies. Now walk to the east with the oracle cards in hand. Hold the deck up to the east and say, “Spirits of the East! Powers of the Air! I call to you to reveal my eastern guardian.” Draw a card from the PSO and speak the plant’s name. Then say, “I thank you [plant] for your protection and wisdom this day.” Set the card down in the east as you move to the south.

 

In the south, repeat the above: “Spirits of the South! Powers of Fire! . . .”

 

Move to the west and repeat the above: “Spirits of the West! Powers of Water! . . .”

 

Move to the north and repeat the above: “Spirits of the North! Powers of the Earth! . . .”

 

Move to the center of your space put your deck on the ground. Say, “Spirits of the land beneath me, spirits of the interconnected web of all life, I call to you to reveal my guardian spirit below. . . .”

 

Stay in the center and raise your deck to the sky above you. Say, “Spirits of the skies above, the celestial turning wheel of the stars. I call to you to reveal my guardian spirit above. . . .”

 

Hold the deck to your chest and say, “Spirits of the spark of life, of the hope of regeneration. I call to you to reveal my guardian spirit within. . . .”

 

As you do all of this, you are physically creating a circle of cards around you (leave them for the duration of the ceremony if you feel so moved).

 

Step 5: Envision a circle of plant protection. Stand in the middle of your space and visualize the energies from the seven cards creating a powerful protective sphere of plant matter around your space. When you have this firmly visualized, say, “I thank the powers of nature and the plant spirits for their protection and healing.” Gather up your cards (or leave them in place, if you are not doing divination or do not need the full deck). The sacred space is now open.

Closing a Sacred Space

Once you have completed whatever work you want to do with the PSO, you should close out your sacred space. Closing out the space helps you return to normal space.

 

Step 1: Make an offering. Make an offering to the plant spirits who have helped you hold your space.  If you do not have a physical offering, you can offer these words or your own:

 

“By bramble and by seed; by star and by thorn; by root and by bud, I honor you, great spirits of nature. Earth mother, plant spirits, thank you for your wisdom and guidance.”

 

Step 2: Thank the four directions and plant spirits. Now, move to the north and thank the plant spirit who protected the space, saying, “Spirits of the North, powers of Earth, and [plant spirit], thank you for your wisdom and protection this day.” Move to the west, south, and east, and repeat, phrasing appropriately.

 

Step 3. Return energy of the plant protection circle to the earth. Return to the center of your space and once again focus on the energy of the plant protection circle that you created. Envision any remaining energy moving out of the sphere and into the earth, for her healing and blessing.

 

Step 4: Close your space. Cross your arms and bow your head, saying, “I thank the plant spirits for their wisdom and blessings.”

 

 

Example Sacred Space Opening

Let’s say that you want to do a harvest ritual at the fall equinox to honor the many gifts you have been given, make offerings to spirit, and focus on the quiet of the winter that is to come.  You decide to open up your space using the PSO (or other divination deck). Before beginning your ritual, you clear your mind and focus on the intent. Then, you do the opening ritual as above and you get the following cards at each of the seven directions:

 

There is a clear energy being brought into this space from drawing these particular cards. In the East, we have Spruce, which focuses on openness, journeys, and travel. In the south, we have Catnip, which focuses on opposites, contrasts, or separation. This energy may be helping us overcome those things (depending on the working), or bringing in that energy.  In the west, we have Burdock, which is all about recovery, rest, and fallow periods. In the north is Comfrey, which is about resources, wealth, and personal action. The three center cards are Above/Oak: masculinity, strength, and wisdom; Below/Sweet flag: clarity, concentration, and insight; and bringing it all together is Within/Apple: abundance, comfort, and harvest. These energies, in their different positions, would lend you their strength–bringing in the openness, wisdom, and separation from the “always-on” mentality to allow you to rest; enjoying the resources that you were given; enjoying the abundance of the season. These cards would not only offer you a ritual space but some commentary on the nature of the ritual work you might want to do. They offer you a message on what to focus on as you proceed with your ritual.

Adapting this Practice for Other Oracle/Divination Decks

You can use this same sacred space opening and close with any other oracle deck.  With that said, I suggest you choose carefully.  An oracle deck with weird or dark energy will bring that same kind of energy into a working–which might be appropriate for your purposes or might not.  Each oracle or divination deck has a mind of its own, and may or may not be open to this kind of work.

 

Conclusion

Regardless of what deck you use, this is a very accessible, and yet, deep way to craft a magical space for whatever purposes you might need.  As I mentioned in the opening, the crowdfunding campaign was released this week to fund our print run.  If you are interested in supporting the PSO, please visit the Indigogo page.  We have original art, readings, and the chance to preorder book and deck sets!  As always, thank you for reading and for your support. I hope you find this helpful–and blessings upon your journey this harvest season!

Earthen Nature Spirit Statues with Cob September 15, 2019

An earth spirit statue in my greenhouse, freshly made with sticks and an oak gall

A lifetime ago, myself and a dear friend dug some clay out of a hillside.  We each took half of it.  My half of the clay was used to form an earthen statue, a guardian statue, for that same friend who was struggling with terminal cancer while still in his early 20’s. It had a wooden tree knot head, stones for its belly, a stick staff, and an earthen body.  My friend accepted it reverently, and it went with him everywhere, even till the end. As he struggled with his battle with cancer, it grew nicked and chipped.  The wooden head fell off, just as my friend’s brain cancer grew more serious. When he passed on, the earthen statue passed on with him, returning to the earth. This statue was an impermanent being; fashioned of unfired clay. It was brittle, yet, in its own way, full of strength. It was ephemeral, and yet perfect in its lack of permanence.  It was a spirit statue, channeled from nature, with a bit of spirit within it, there to help my friend on his journey.

 

I had forgotten about this small statue until quite recently.  I’ve been cobbing several times a week, working to get my back greenhouse cobblestone/cob heatsink wall done.  One day, I had just a little cob left over. Not enough to set more stones on the wall, but enough to play with.  I started to shape it and felt the power of the Awen and of spirit flowing through me.  I saw a vision of all of these earthen statues, shaped, with sticks, shells formed and strong. I saw them left, to break down quietly in the elements and return to the earth with her blessing. And then, I remembered that earthen statue that I made all those years ago to try to provide healing and strength for my friend. And so, I’ve been experimenting working with such earth spirit statues. After sharing a few of my photos with friends, several suggested that I write about how I make these and how I use them ceremonially.  So today’s post, part of my cob building series, looks at the process of making earthen nature spirit statues all from simple materials found in your local landscape.  This is something that ANYONE can do, regardless of artistic skill.  So let’s get muddy!

 

Ephemeral Sacred Objects

In earlier posts on this blog, I worked with the idea of building nature shrines and sacred spaces of all kinds.  One of the things I often stressed as part of that work was not bringing things into those spaces that might be harmful or damaging to the land.  So I suggested natural things, things like shells, stones, wood, bones–things that you gather yourself, from the land, and allow to return to the land.  Or I suggested things that would easily return to the land, like wood burned object, hand-dyed natural fibers, etc. These will break down quickly due to the elements, but that’s exactly the point.

 

Many earth spirit statues

As I have talked about over the last few weeks, Cob is a natural building material made of clay, sand, and straw.  When you make something from Cob, it’s not fired.  It will not hold up to water. It will break down in the snow, wind, rain, and ice. Why, then, would you make statues out of cob if you know they will break down? First, because there is a magic in impermanence, magic in the making.  When you know something is only going to be a certain way only for a short period of time, it holds additional value.  For example, when my strawberry patch starts to produce the best-tasting strawberries, I know there is a short window, maybe 2 weeks, where I get to enjoy them fresh from the plant.  The rest of the year, I might enjoy preserves, but never that fresh succulent strawberry right from the vine.  Sacred objects can be like that too–an object you carefully construct, with the full knowledge that it will be broken down, creates a different kind of relationship. A sacred relationship based on the immediate moment. Creating these statues asks you to be in a place for this moment in time, to simply be present, making these, working with the cob between your hands. Letting the natural objects find their own shape and in their own time.  And not rushing it.   For there is much magic in the making.

 

There is magic in the making, and there is magic in the placing. An earthen spirit statue’s goal is to return gracefully to the land.  If you want, you can work slow magic with these, on nature’s time and at nature’s pace, as part of this work.  Almost all of my earthen spirit statues are used for the purposes of land healing.  As I shape them, I speak my healing words into them, I work healing energies through my fingertips. I sing, I chant, I smile, I laugh. I put the energy of life and light into my statues. And maybe when they are done, I put some more into them ritually, adding the powers of the elements and the sacred animals of the druid tradition.  Then, they become like little healing shrines all to themselves.  Carefully wrap one and put it in your backpack while you are on a hike, leaving it in the nook of a tree.  Place one on a stone in a stream, knowing the floods will carry it away.  Bury one in a snowdrift in a logged forest to offer peace to the survivors.  Offer one to your local lady of the lake.  Place one in your garden to nurture your plants to grow, letting it become soil you will plant in.

Gathering Materials and Decorations

There are two parts to an earthen spirit statue.  Natural items, such as feathers, leaves, sticks, stones, nuts, roots, seeds, and more are one of those parts. Take a small basket into the woods, beach, bog, desert or whatever is near you.  Walk intentionally and slowly, letting small bits of nature speak to you.  If they call out, pick them up, and leave an offering in thanks.  Once you have a good selection to work with, its time to make your cob!

 

Making Cob

And so, let us put our feet and hands into the earth and make our cob! For an introduction to our delightful material, you should look at the introduction to cob construction here, and how to make cob here. I will also offer basic instructions here, as they differ slightly from the instructions on my introduction to cob page. In a nutshell, cob is a combination of clay, sand, and straw.  This combination, in the right amount (1 part clay/silt to 2 parts sand) makes a perfect material for building earthen spirit statues.

To make your cob:

• Dig down to the subsoil (see here for more details).  Fill up part of a wheelbarrow (1/2 or so).  Screen it, removing any rocks, sticks, or other debris.  The goal is to have just clay, sand, and straw.
• Put your material on a tarp.  Make a well in the center of the soil, and then, add water.  Mix with your feet, putting your prayers, energy, and love into that material.  Dance with the spirits as you dance on your cob.  Take a side of your tarp and flip the cob, adding more water to make a good firm dough consistency.
• If you want extra strength, you can add a bit of fine straw.  To add straw, take your scissors and carefully cut the straw up into 1/2 in pieces or less.  then sprinkle it through, working it in with your feet.
• Pick up some of your cob.  It should hold its shape well and you should be able to work it.  Add more soil if its too wet and more water if it’s too dry and crumbly.
• The goal is a nice firm but doughy texture that will hold its shape and that you can form.

 

Goose blessing of my cob

Make Your Statues

Make your statues however you see fit.  the easiest way is to create a cylinder by rolling the cob in your hands or on a solid surface. Then, find the natural objects you want to include.  Press them into the cob, shaping it as you go.  Stick some sticks coming out of it, shells, or dried turkey tail mushrooms (or similar small polypore mushroom). Let the objects speak to you, and let the clay speak to you. Make no thought if it is “good” or “right”; refrain from any value judgments. Your goal is to channel the spirits of nature, and they are not concerned with the physical vessel you are creating.  Don’t fuss over it.  Let it be complete, and make another.  And another, and another, until you feel you are done.  As you make, laugh. Get muddy. Sing to the statues, drum.  Call for the sacred powers of nature who might aid you.  Put happy, healing, and light energy into your work.  Let go.

 

Bless your statues

If you feel the need, you can do an additional blessing for your statues.  Draw upon the power of earth, air, fire, and water, and give a blessing to them–smudge them with incense, drip some beeswax on them or hold them to the flame.  Give them some water drips, smear them with soil.

 

More earth spirit statues!

Place your statues

Find a home for your statues in the nooks and crannies of the landscape.  They want to travel, go somewhere, send their healing energy out as they begin to break down. Put them in unconventional places.  Put the in places in need of light and healing.  Put them on nature shrines.  Put them in your druid’s anchor spot. Visit them and watch them break down, or leave them never to return. You can put one on your altar for a while, but make an agreement between the two of you how long it will be there so that you can return it at the right time (these energies are meant to move between you and the land freely). There is no right or wrong path, just you, the spirits of nature, and how spirit moves through you.

Building with Cob, Part II: Soil Tests and Mixing Cob September 8, 2019

Happy feet mixing cob!

In a meadow under the summer sun, a group of dancers laugh and fling mud.  Beneath their feet, clay, sand, and water become mixed together, creating a sticky earthen blend that sticks to their feet, their legs, and, after some play, faces and fingers! This is a cob mixing party, one of the best times you can have with good friends. After the cob is mixed, it is added by others to the bench and more soil is added and the dance continues.  In last week’s post we explored some reasons to consider exploring natural building as a potential way to build sustainable structures and be more attuned with the energies of earth.  In this week’s post, we will get into how to test your soil and how to make some cob!

 

One thing I want to share about cob–you don’t have to build big things, like houses or ovens, with cob.  You can also build really small things–candleholders, paperweights, primitive statuary, and so on.  You can do an earth plaster on a wall in your home, or build a small cob bench overlooking the woods. I think the underlying practice with cob is simply to work with the earth in this very earth-honoring and embodied practice.  This post explores how to test your soil and make cob, which you can then use to shape your world!

Preliminaries for Cob: Testing Your Soil and Quality of Cob

Soil Horizons and Your Subsoil

Making cob requires you to understand a bit about soil horizons and how soil lays on the earth.  If you dig a hole in the earth straight down, you’ll see that soil show up in layers (horizons).  The first layer, the O layer, is an organic layer–where dead and rotting organic matter can be found.  This is the layer that is created when leaves fall and rot, creating dark, rich, humus.  This is what we want to grow plants in, NOT what we want for natural building.

 

The second layer, the  A Horizon, is the surface layer.  It is usually less dark, but still contains nutrients and organic matter. It usually appears lighter in color. Again, this is for plants, not for cob.

 

The third layer, the B Horizon, represents the sub-soil.  It is here where we find clay, sand, and silt; our basic building blocks for cob construction.  You’ll notice another break in your soil as you go down–in my region, the soil gets quite orange, representing the high iron content that we have here.

 

The fourth layer is the C Horizon, or sub-stratum, where you get quite rocky before hitting the final layer: the R layer, bedrock.  We don’t really want that for cob either.  Depending on where you live, the bedrock may be very close to the surface or dozens of feet down, so you may never see it.  Here in Pennsylvania, however, you can get a good look at the C horizon less than a foot down!

 

The amount of O and A Horizons you have is based on your own soil ecology as well as the long-term land use and land history. Parts of the world were stripped to bedrock by glaciers.  Other parts have a 15 foot A Horizon due to long-term patterns of beneficial animal herd grazing.  The same is true of the B, C, and R layers–the depth of these layers is based on a lot of land history factors spanning back tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

 

The good news is that in many parts of the world, clay and sand are fairly abundant and easy to get to with only a shovel!  You can learn more about soil horizons in your area by looking at recently dug up areas–a fallen tree that has taken the roots with it as it fell offers one such opportunity; new construction into a hillside offers another.  Or, you can simply get out a shovel and start digging–the secrets of the soil horizons will be revealed to you with a bit of sweat equity.

 

The Soil Jar Test

To find out how much sand, clay, and silt you are working with in your subsoil, you can perform a simple soil jar test.  Dig down into the subsoil and get yourself a good cupful of subsoil.  Break it up well if it is compacted as much as you can (this might mean letting it dry out for a few days in the sun and then breaking it up that way). Place this in a quart mason jar and fill with water to the top, leaving about an inch or so to shake it.  If you have animal helpers, this is a good time to enlist their help. Shake it very well.

Soil jar after shaking well.

 

Goose inspection of the jar. All is well.

Now, let your jar sit somewhere undisturbed or 24 hours.

• The sand (a large grain particle) will immediately sink to the bottom, within a few minutes.  Mark this with tape or a marker if you can, or mentally note where it is.
• A layer of silt (a medium particle) will settle on top of the sand in about 30 min.  You should .again mentally note where that ends.
• Over the next 24 hours or so, the clay (a vey fine-grained particle) will settle out of the water.
• You will also see any organic matter floating at the top of the jar.

24 hour later, all has settled.

You can look at these ratios as a way to determine if you will need to source some off-site materials to make an effective cob blend (2 parts sand, 1 part silt/clay).  As you can see from above, I am blessed in that I have an excellent ration of sand to clay/silt, and the cob from my land is almost perfect without any additions.

Any organic matter will settle on top (or float) but if you are using subsoil and you dug below the A horizon, you shouldn’t have much of that. (As an aside, you can use this same test for garden soil on the surface and it will tell you how much organic matter is in your soil, which is a very good thing!)

 

Clay Ribbon Test

Another good thing to do to test your clay in your subsoil is to do a ribbon test.  This gives you a simple test that lets you know how pure your clay is and how it will hold up over time.  A good example of how to do this is here. You mix up your cob as usual and work to create one of those clay snakes (like you may have done as a kid). When you have it mixed, you see how well it can be worked (bending) without breaking.  The higher the clay content, the more bendy it is.

 

Making cob at my PDC in 2015!

Soft and Sharp Sand

Not all sand is created equal and it is very good to know what kind of sand you have in your subsoil. Some sand has very soft edges; you can think of beach sand here. The waves and water over a long period of time have softened the sand to the point where it is smooth. It is possible that the sand in your subsoil is like this–it is very soft because at one time, it was on a beach somewhere! Sharper sand contributes to a stronger cob. If you are doing major load-bearing building projects, you might consider adding some “builders sand” (which is a sharp, coarse sand) to your mix.

How to Make Cob!

Without further delay, let’s mix up some cob!

To make your own cob, you will need the following tools:

• A shovel to dig out subsoil, wheelbarrow
• Subsoil
• Straw (chopped up), aged manure, or other grassy things (this adds strength)
• A mixing tarp (any tarp will do, at least 6′ across  so you can move the cob around on it
• A water source (hose, bucket, etc.)
• Some happy feet for cob dancing (you know you want to!)
• A large wooden screen sizes (use 1/2 or 1/4″ screen; see “tools” below)
• A rock or small board to help sift subsoil

 

Tools

Probably the only tool you will need to make is your screen sifter. For general cob applications, you will want a 1/2″ screen for coarse/building cob. For finer cob applications (finish plasters, earthen candleholders or statuary, etc) you will want a 1/4″ screen. I made my screen by making a simple wooden frame out of scrap 2×4″ board. Then, I used a good amount of staples to staple my hardware cloth (1/2″) to the frame. The process took about 30 minutes, which mostly involved cutting and stapling the hardware cloth.

Screen with soil

It is necessary that you screen your cob in most locations–you don’t want those happy dancing feet to step on sharp rocks, sticks, or other stuff.  If you are taking your cob down to the 1/4″ level and have really rocky and uneven subsoil, I suggest starting to screen it at 1/2″ and then rescreen it down to 1/4″.

Making Cob

Dig your soil. The first thing to do is to dig out a good amount of subsoil.  I usually mix two medium wheelbarrows full at a time.  If you mix too much at once, it becomes unwieldy, particularly if you are mixing it yourself.  You can see how rocky our subsoil is!

Wheelbarrow full of subsoil

Screen your cob. Now, screen your cob. To do this, break up the hard chunks as much as you can with a shovel.  Wet soil will not screen.  Really dry soil (as in, you haven’t had rain for quite a while) may get hard to screen as well, so there really is a sweet spot for soil moisture (experiment, you will see what I mean). Put a few shovel fulls of cob in your screen and then start moving it around. After you break up the big stuff, you can use a rock or small piece of board to really push the soil through the screen. Once you’ve screened all of the cob, place the stones and other debris in a bucket, and continue with more subsoil.

Using a stone to work out the last bits of subsoil/clay chunks from stone

Make your cob. Once your subsoil is all screened, you can dump it into the mixing tarp. Make a well in the center of the subsoil, and just like you’d do making a dough, place water in the well in the center.  Don’t overdo it, just fill up that well.

The well with water

Now, start mixing the cob together with your feet. As you mix, grab an edge of the tarp and pull part of the soil over on itself. Add more water. Mix with your feet again, and continue the process–flipping over the cob, adding water, etc, until all the cob is firm yet pliable. How wet you want your cob depends on the application. If you are using cob as a mortar for a stone wall or brick rocket stove, you will want it much wetter. If you want to make bricks and build with it (like an earth oven), you will want it more firm.

Work it!  Mixing in the straw.  Sprinkle lightly to prevent clumps.

Optional: Add straw. At this stage, if you want your cob to have extra strength, you can mix in some straw or other grassy matter. This addition is excellent for building cob ovens, walls, and so on. The straw will suck up some of the moisture in your mix, so you may have to add a bit more water till you get a perfect consistency!  For fine applications, a lot of cobbers actually use dried out horse or cow manure–the cellulose stays in the plant matter as it moves through the animal, giving a really nice soft strengthener.

 

In my photo here, I am using this cob as a mortar for my greenhouse back wall, so I have added straw to help strengthen it.

A good mix!

Create anything with your cob! Now, you have a wonderful building material that you can do anything with!  If you don’t have anything to build yet, consider not adding the straw and instead, making some primitive statuary, cob candleholders, paperweights, and so on.  I love the way that some cob statuary and candleholders look on an altar!

Ready to use!

Cob and cobblestone wall ongoing in the greenhouse!

 

The photos in this blog post show two different locations–at my permaculture design certificate program, where the soil was more brown/gray and then here in PA, where we have beautiful yellow-orange iron-rich soil.  One of the other delightful things about cob is that it reflects the land where it comes from–we can truly see the colors of the land through this practice.

I hope this post was inspirational to you and you consider experimenting with this amazing building source!

The Tears of the Earth: A Hike on Sólheimajökull Glacier July 21, 2019

Sólheimajökull

It was our final day in Iceland before returning back to the US. We so many great experiences visiting this country of beautiful extremes, but more than anything, what we wanted to see on our last day was a glacier. We talked about it, and decided that we should see a glacier, as we might never be able to see one again. We booked a beginner glacier hike on Sólheimajökull glacier, a hike that took you way up into the glacier.

 

Where the glacier used to be, 2010. Where I am standing and taking the photograph is where it was in mid 2009.

It was a misty and cool day; small droplets of rain pressed against us at the parking lot at the base of the glacier. Before us, the Sólheimajökull glacier loomed, white and black and gray. After getting fitted with safety harnesses, helmets, crampons, and pick axes, our group of twelve set off to the glacier hike. Our guide, who was originally from the Alps and who had been hiking glaciers his whole life, first took us to a sign as we walked along the edge of an enormous lake. He stopped and said, “In 2010, this is where the glacier was. Each year, it gets smaller. In the winter, it stops melting but never regrows. But we’ve still got quite a hike to get to the glacier as you can see.” The sign he showed us had many different numbers with years. Last year, in 2018, the glacier receded more than any other year: 118 meters. And so, we continued our hike, which took about 15 minutes, walking along the edge glacier’s melt pool.  This link offers a video that shows the melting of the Sólheimajökull glacier from the years 2007- 2015.

 

One of the tours they now advertise in Iceland the “kayak the glacier” experience. There is a kind of horseshoe shaped lake that is made when a glacier reaches its largest size and then begins to melt. You’ve seen this shape before on a map: its reflected in the bowl-shaped bottom of Lake Michigan. That bowl shape is created by the melting of a glacier. As a glacier advances, it  moves earth itself, pushing up stone, soil, and bedrock; the powerful edge of it creating a wall of stone. As the glacier recedes, it leaves that wall of stone behind, and as it melts, that stone creates a natural dam, and the bowl-shaped area behind the dam fills with water. Water that tourists can kayak in. Water that is created, in part, by the 2600 miles it took me to fly to Iceland. Water that is, for all intents and purposes, the tears that the earth cries.

 

Icebergs and the melt pool at Sólheimajökull

As I stood at the bottom of the glacier, I realized how small I was in comparison to the massive block of ice. The Sólheimajökull glacier took up all the space, moving into our field of vision, white, black, and sometimes blue, daunting in its appearance. As we got close, you could see the shimmering of the melt water coming off of it, moving into the lake below.  Icebergs, also, floated in the lake–our guide explained that those icebergs crack off the glacier frequently and will likely be gone by the end of the summer.  So much ice.  So much to melt.

 

We carefully put our crampons on our feet and, single file, began our ascent into the glacier.  As soon as we stepped foot on the glacier, my heart grew heavy with sorrow. The most striking feature of the glacier wasn’t the beauty. It wasn’t the black ash from various volcanic activity, or the white and blue ice. The most striking feature was how fast it was melting. Everywhere the glacier was melting. The day we were there, it was around 50 degrees, now a fairly common temperature for Iceland this time of year. And everywhere you looked, the glacier was glistening. Little drips became streams, streams became bigger streams, and eventually, they flowed into quite large rivers, running down the glacier. Standing anywhere on the glacier, you could observe this and watch the ice melt and take milennia of black and gray ash along with it.

 

At one point, our guide stopped and pointed to a mountain quite far off from where we stood. Less than a decade ago, he told us, the glacier reached up to that nearby mountain. Now, that mountain isn’t reachable, the glacier is much lower, and there is a glacial river between us. I stood there and thought about it: that must have been millions of gallons of water in that short time, all melted away into the lake and eventually, ocean nearby.

 

Mountain where Sólheimajökull used to reach

The amount of melting made the Sólheimajökull a bit difficult to traverse. The tour company maintained a trail on the glacier, but it was an ever-moving target. As we hiked, we two people working on the trail on the glacier. They would cut a set of stairs, and then, within an hour or two, the stairs would melt and become dangerous and they’d have to cut new ones. This ever-evolving trail was now just part of the experience of walking on a glacier, as our guide explained.

 

The walk was a walk of extremes. The solid white and blue ice. The black and gray of the volcanic ash becoming unlocked as the glacier melted. One of the folks on our walk asked, “can we tell what volcanic eruption this ash came from?” Our guide said, “No, it all just melts together.” You could be standing on ash and melt from 10,000 years ago or even 100,000. Scientists with specialized equipment drilling core samples could tell, but we could not.  Here is an image of the entire glacier, Myrdalsjokull, from 1986 to September 2014.  The glacier we walked was one “arm” of this larger glacier.  You can see how massive it is, and you can glimpse the volcano that sits beneath.

 

Throughout our week in Iceland, I didn’t get a strong sense that the spirits of the land were welcoming or open to outsiders. Icelanders certainly capitalize on their island’s natural beauty as part of their tourist industry. And while you might enter a lava cave and be told of rooms called “the banquet hall of the elves” or “the troll’s den”,  or, you might see the stone stacks throughout the land that are there to appease the little people, the Icelandic people are not willing to talk about those aspects of their land.  They don’t speak of their relationship to the land spirits with outsiders. And neither do those spirits of the land seem interested in saying hello.  So I spent the week in Iceland not engaged heavily with the spirits of the land; things were just quiet.  Thus, I was certainly surprised when even before I walked up to it, the glacier immediately reached out to me and wanted to convey a message.

 

Meltwater on the Sólheimajökull glacier

As we climbed Sólheimajökull, I connected deeply with the spirit of place. The glacier itself, and the spirit of the mountain—between two active volcanoes, Katla and Eyjafjallajökull. Sólheimajökull first shared with me its anger, so angry that it was melting away. So angry at humans. I could feel the stress and strain as it spoke to me: to tell people what you have seen here. Tell of how the melting will flood their cities. Speak of the truth you have witnessed. I felt the anger in its voice, the anger radiating out of it, as it knew it was dying.

 

We continued to climb the glacier, witnessing its tragic beauty among the melting ice. Then a second voice emerged from Sólheimajökull, this one of sadness. I am losing myself, the glacier said. I am crying tears for the world. How many people who climb me today will speak of what they have seen? How many will change because of it?  How many have made me cry further just to walk upon me? I cry for us, the glacier said, and I cry for the world.

 

We had to climb over a large crevasse with water rushing through it. Our guide explained that this kind of crevasse was very dangerous and could easily drown you if you fell in.  Eventually this crevasse would literally crack a large chunk of the glacier off into the melt pool. As I navigated the crevice, I heard the glacier speak once again, this time, in despair. What is happening is happening. There is nothing to be done.  Our melting will reshape the world. I have been here for so long, and someday, I will be here again. But in the meantime, my waters will travel far and wide.

 

Upon meditation on this experience after returning home, I realized that I was hearing the many voices of this glacier working through the many stages of grief.  I was experiencing the grief that this sacred place was experiencing, conveying to me, perhaps so I could convey it to you.

 

Crevasse in melting glacier

We got to a high point on the glacier where you could see it continue to rise up for many miles into the mist.  Here the glacier flattened out quite a bit. It was here that our guide swung two pickaxes in the ice to create handholds and let us kneel down on them to drink the fresh glacial melt-water. Pure, cold, refreshing. As I drank the water, thirsty from our climb, I could feel the energy of the glacier. As I drank, the emotions that the glacier was conveying to me welled up within me, overflowing. Anger, fear, sadness, despair, acceptance. All at once, those feelings spread throughout me. As we made our way back down, I simply allowed myself to experience the myriad of complex feelings of this place.

 

The next day, on our flight home, we flew over Greenland and the lower part of the Arctic before landing back in the US. I looked down, out of the window of the plane, and saw so many small chunks of ice participating in their own complex patterns of melting, this time, with nobody to hear or witness up close.

 

Melting ice from the plane

How much damage did this trip to Iceland cost the earth? That’s the part that has been perhaps the hardest for me to process, as I’ve been thinking about and meditating on this experience. I went on this trip for pleasure. I’ve had little chance to travel, and I wanted to experience new things and visit somewhere completely different. But my very engagement with this glacier, my presence there, was part of why it was melting. Sure, you can say, but Dana, you can always offset your carbon for this. And yes, I always do offset my carbon from travel at the end of the year (most of it work related). But does that  offset matter? In the end, I chose to engage in an activity that speeded the melting of this sacred place.helped this glacier melt. One article, I read recently suggested that each trans-Atlantic flight, like the one I took, melts about 30 square feet of Arctic sea ice.  So for myself, my round trip contributed to 60 square feet of ice melted in the Arctic.

 

Just like the glacier, I’m full of a myriad of complex emotions. I’m glad to have this experience. I’m saddened by it. I recognize my own part in this.  I feel sorrow and anger and acceptance. We are all on the front lines of climate change, the 6th extinction happening, the age of the Anthropocene.  Every one of us is living in a time where we are aware of the problem, many of us trying to do something about it. At the same time, by participating in modern life, we can’t help but contributing to it.  This is the great Catch-22 of our age.  To see the glacier is to destroy the glacier.  To use fossil fuels necessary for modern life is to burn them.  How can I afford solar panels for my home without commuting to work each day in a fossil fuel powered vehicle?  The glacier weeps as I write.

 

But the other thing that this lesson has powerfully taught me is the power of experience. How many people, in seeing that melting glacier could really deny the truth of climate change? How could it be denied that these things are happening, powerfully and directly, before our very eyes?  This experience has changed me. I “knew” about the glaciers melting before.  Knew as in I intellectually engaged in an understanding about the fact that glaciers worldwide were melting. But it was not till I stood upon one, till I connected with the spirit of that place, and until I confronted my own contribution to that melting, could I really have wisdom surrounding it.

 

The glacier

As I write these words, I’m attempting to convey some of that wisdom, that direct experience, but my words cannot have the impact of that weeping glacier. Book knowledge is what we engage with intellectually and logically, what we read or hear in order to better understand something. Book knowledge is mitigated by human language, words on paper or spoken aloud. These words, as I write them, are read by your eyes and processed by your brain. But they are a pale representation for the experience of standing there, of seeing the glacier weep, drinking its meltwater, and feeling its pain. But I’ve done my best, dear reader, and I hope it gives you a small piece into this experience and into that of one melting glacier. Can we find these same kinds of changes in our own ecosystems, and use them as local teaching tools? Perhaps we can, and perhaps that’s a message I can leave you with today.

 

PS:  I’m excited to announce that I just signed my first book contract a few weeks ago!  Because of this, I will be taking a few weeks off of blogging so that I can prepare my manuscript to submit to the publisher (which is quite a bit of work).  I’ll keep you updated on the progress, release date, etc.  Thanks for your understanding!

A Druid’s Primer on Land Healing: A Healing Grove of Renewal June 30, 2019

Reishi growing from a stump in my sacred forest

Many years ago, I shared the story of the “mystery of the stumps“, which was my path into druidry. I grew up spending all my days in a forest that was rich, full, and bountiful.  When I was 14, that forest was logged.  My heart broke, and afterward, I tried to enter the forest but it was horrible: downed trees everywhere, so much damage, so many friends that had been cut and taken away.  I thought the forest would never heal.  I withdrew not only from nature, but from my spirit and creative gifts, and spent a time in numbness and mourning–a period that lasted almost 10 years. I didn’t return to the forest till I was 24.  When I finally went back in, so much had changed–the land was regrowing.  Large thickets of birch, blackberry, and cherries were everywhere, springing up to regenerate the land. It was then that I discovered the Reishi mushrooms on the stumps of the hemlock trees, a testament to the true healing power of nature.  Not only had the forest regrown–but it had produced some of the most potent natural medicine on the planet for humanity.

 

I retell this story today because I think its important to realize how much time it takes nature to heal.  Nature works on “slow time“–seasons upon seasons, cycles upon cycles, each year passing where nature, given the opportunity, works towards ecological succession and more complex and interwoven ecosystems.  When I entered the forest just after the logging, the forest was so damaged.  If I had returned even a few weeks later, however, I would have likely started to see the first stirrings of rebirth and renewal.  Where the forest canopy broke, new plants and trees could spring forth.  The seeds and seedlings were already there, waiting for their opportunity to heal. Every year after, more healing and growth takes place.  Slow, but steady is natures healing pace.

 

Just as nature uses time to heal, so too, can we use ritual and sacred space over a long period of time to help enact nature’s healing. Today’s post explores this idea through the development of a “grove of renewal” that works with time and the seasons and focuses on both inner and outer magical practices and techniques for healing. Using this approach, we might see the druid and the living earth walking hand-in-hand to enact healing upon the land. As nature heals through the seasons, we, too might use this same principle for land healing.

 

(I will also note that this is a post in my land healing series, which is now sprawling over several years with many posts!  For other posts in the series, you can see A Druid’s Primer on Land healing I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, as well as rituals and more rituals, and finally, refugia and permaculture as physical land healing practices. Those aren’t required reading for this post, but certainly offer many different perspectives on land healing: what it is, different approaches, and different ways we might work with it.)

 

Slow time, Slow Ritual, and Nature’s Healing

Part of the challenge we have in the ecological reality of the 21st century is time.  Our culture moves very quickly, with cycles of consumption and production intense and overwhelming.  Everything is too fast, as I shared in my earlier series on “slowing down the druid way.” Fast food, fast lives, fast jobs, fast relationships; everything moves so quickly. Sometimes, we unfortunately try to apply this same thing to our spirituality and expectations.  One-off rituals or false starts, rather than sustained practices. The speed of the 21st century doesn’t just influence us: it also means that nature is being consumed/destroyed/damaged much faster than she can heal.   Part of the challenge, too, is that the earth takes time for damage to show: melting ice caps and glaciers aren’t responding to today: they are responding to previous years, and we won’t see the full effects of today’s carbon emissions for some time.

 

But nature’s own powerful lesson resonates deeply here:  with healing, time moves differently. This is true of land healing as much as it is true of our own heart healing.  One way nature heals is through a process called ecological succession. Ecological succession, from a mowed lawn to a pinnacle oak-hickory forest (which is the final ecosystem where I live) takes about 250 years.  That is, if lived in my region, and you stopped mowing your lawn today and did nothing else, in about 250 years you’d have a mature oak-hickory forest. Or, maybe you could speed that up to 75 years if you planted all the oaks and hickories in your front lawn (and again, stopped mowing)!  This same lesson applies to us, as we are part of nature: time heals all wounds in ways nothing else will. Time is the ultimate healer.

 

Most of the time when we think of ritual, we think of a single event, a sacred moment in time. We do a ritual, it is good, the energy radiates outward.  This is also true of a lot of land healing: we do a ritual to heal the land, and hope it has some effect.  However, this isn’t the only approach. I’ve been developing a technique that I call the “Grove of Renewal” that uses permaculture design, more than traditional ritual, and works with nature’s ultimate healer: time.  So, rather than thinking about land healing as a ritual or series of actions, I’m thinking about it as a permaculture designer: cultivating a space for healing as an “extended” ritual over time. By focusing efforts on a small space, that healing energy can radiate outward to the broader landscape for the benefit of all.

A safe space for all life

 

The “Grove of Renewal” approach focuses on one small space.  By focusing our energies on this one space, we can help this space heal in a powerful way.  Each day and cycle that goes by, more healing happens both physically and energetically. At some point, your grove of renewal is a healed and healthy space, so much so that you can now direct that healing energy outward in a much broader way. Its important to note that this is slow magic, very slow magic. It unfolds over a period of years, and thus, requires patience, peace, and connection.  You are building a relationship with a piece of land as a healer, observing and interacting, and doing regular work. You are on nature’s time.

 

So let’s look at how you might create your own “Grove of Renewal”!  First I’ll explain the basic steps and then I’ll share my own example so you can see how one of these might work in action.

 

Step 1: Choosing Your “Grove of Renewal” Space.

 

For your grove of renewal, you’ll want to choose a small physical space to help heal. Perhaps it’s a segment of lawn you want to convert to a native plant garden and butterfly sanctuary, perhaps it’s a strip of land behind an alley nobody cares about. Perhaps its a new piece of land you just moved to, and you can now tend. Wherever it is, you can make this place a center of land healing, your own “grove of renewal.”

 

On the physical level, this should be a space where physical land healing can happen.  That is, it should be a space that is protected in some way (in the sense that someone else isn’t going to come and mow down all of your efforts). It should also be a space that you have direct and regular access to, the easier, the better.

 

On the metaphysical level, you also need the “go ahead” from spirit–that you are working in accordance to the spirits of the land and their wisdom.  Thus, you might be directed towards a particular place where spirit wants this grove of renewal to happen.  Use outer and inner listening techniques and make sure you are aligned with the land itself.

 

Selection is so critical, as you will be working this space extensively over a long period of time. Take as much time as you need for this step–remember, this is slow healing, slow time.  Make offerings, visit a number of times, and allow yourself to resonate with the space.  In permaculture design, a year and a day is not unreasonable, and is a generally accepted permaculture design techniques for observation and interaction. That’s the kind of slow time I’m talking about here.  When you are certain it is the right place, move on to step two.

 

Step 2: Create your plan.

Because your grove of renewal will function as a shrine for physical and energetic land healing, you want to consider what kinds of things would work best with that intention and any other specific intentions you may have.

 

On the physical level: Create a plan for the plant life and animal/insect/bird/reptile/amphibian life that you want to invite to the space.  If you are working from scratch, you might be able to carefully design it.  If there is already life there, you will want to work with it and tend it. Learn what kinds of plants are native to the area, what kinds of plants support diversity, and build diversity in. Learn what used to grow there, and think about how you can help restore it to a healthy ecosystem. You might combine this with other physical land healing techniques, like the refugia garden.

 

In order to do this work on the physical level, you will need to carefully observe and interact with the space over a period of time . Think about the space you have already (wind, light, soil, water, potential pollutants) and how you might intervene.  Consider what you want the final result to be in 10 or 50 years: a forest environment, a wetland, a meadow with wildflowers, etc.  Consider what plants may grow there that are rare and endangered. Consider what insect life and wildlife that may need a space to live.  Look at what may already be growing there–what will you do with what is there?  Will you remove it and plant natives? Will you work with what is growing?  These are important decisions!

 

Larger Spiral Garden Design Inspired by the Three Druid Elements

On the spiritual level. Since this is also a ritual space, you may also want to mark it ritually in some way. Thus, sacred objects can be included in the plan, but should be naturally-based and locally sourced.  You might create a stone altar, stone cairn, use statuary, decorate the space with found natural objects (shells, bones, stones, etc), hang a flag, etc.  I like to decorate my shrines based on what I can find locally and in the immediate area.

 

Putting it all together. Once you have the pieces in place, create a plan: what do you need to do first? Second? Third? Realize also that the best laid plans can be changed, so also be ready to adapt as necessary.  Nature isn’t going anywhere!

 

 

Step 3: Create the Space, focusing on inner and outer work.

Creating the space itself should be a ritual activity, working on both the inner and outer planes.  I suggest timing your beginning of the work to one of the eight festivals in the druid’s wheel of the year.  When you are ready to begin, take your first step and start the work. You are working both on the physical and the level of spirit.

Spiritual work.  I usually start with the spiritual work.  One of the things I’ve done to help further this work is to create a permanent sacred space.  I do this similar to creating an open grove (or open circle, like the kind you’d use for magical work or celebratory work), but creating it as a sacred space with a particular intention: healing.  Additionally, I strongly recommend putting up energetic/magical protections around the space and renewing these regularly.

Other spiritual work may also unfold, such as creating a shrine or other permanent spiritual focus for the space.

Physical work.  Physical regeneration of land usually involves building soil fertility, planting trees or other plants, and doing any other clean up that is needed.  This work takes muscle, time, and regular tending.  See this work not as a moment in time, but as a process that unfolds (much like growing a vegetable garden–it takes a plan, seed starting, planting out, tending/weeding, and harvesting, all before you begin the cycle again!)

 

Step 4: Visit your space regularly and let it flourish.

After your initial work and once you have things in place (which may take you some time), it is time to let nature do its own healing.  Visit your space often as it grows and heals, pay attention to the ways that the energies of that space may change.  Pay attention to these changes on both an inner and outer way:

• What is growing there that you haven’t seen before?  Can you identify it?
• If you planted anything, how are the plants growing?
• Observe life: insects, birds, animals, etc.  Do you see anything new?
• How does the space change in different seasons?
• Energetically, do you sense any shifts? If so, what are they?
• How do you feel when you are in the space?
• What messages from spirit might you be experiencing?

This step requires us to be very intuitive.  You come and visit as you feel led to do so. I suggest, at minimum, visit at least once each quarter of the year (for example, at the spring equinox, summer solstice, fall equinox, and winter solstice).  You don’t have to be visiting every day (although you certainly can).  In my own experience, its almost better to let nature work on her own for a time and then return.

 

Another thing sometimes happens: nature tells you to leave the space alone for a while.  The space needs its own energy and time, and you may be asked to let a year or more pass before you are asked to return.  Honor any requests made to you on the part of spirit.

 

Step 5: When the space is healed, radiate that healing outward.

At some point, your space will have a very positive energy, a sense of peace and quietude that only healed spaces can have.  This may take place across a single season or series of seasons.  Or it may be a very long process, depending on the healing that you are working to enact.  You’ll know when the time is right; this space will be bursting with energy and you will feel it start to flow outward.  At this point, you can do a “radiance” ritual, envisioning the sun and earth’s energy and radiating it outward.  This ritual can be as simple as meditating on the energy in the space and encouraging the excess to flow outward into the landscape and to places where it is needed.  Again, working intuitively here, with spirit, can be helpful.

 

Spirals of energy

Example: A Woodland Grove of Renewal

For the last two and a half years, I’ve been working to convert a burn pile on the edge of a forest on my own property into a Grove of Renewal.  This wasn’t the first space I’ve tended in such a way, but it certainly is my most intentional of spaces.  My first step was identifying the space: I was starting a fire one day and looking for some extra kindling.  I wandered into a section of the property I hadn’t really explored before. Suddenly, I saw this beautiful circle of stones surrounding a stump–it was calling to me, almost radiating light in my direction. As I got closer, I realized, sadly, that these stones had been used as a burn pile, and had half-burned plastics, lightbulbs, wires, hairspray bottles, and much more all over them (there were many such burn piles on my land when I arrived here).  My first task was to sit with the space for several sessions quietly, meditating on the energy of the space.  In one such session, I brought my drum and drummed a bit, but otherwise, simply listened and held space.  This lasted some months, through the fall, winter, and into the spring.

 

Once I felt the impetus to proceed, I setup a small altar nearby and then cleaned up the space, which had many years of garbage and debris from burn piles.  I chose to start this work at Beltane and conclude it by the Summer Solstice. I recycled what I could and removed what I could not. At the summer solstice, I also stood a large stone upright to bring light and healing energy into the space. I brought in additional materials to help the soil heal from the toxic ashes; leaves I had been composting from another part of the property and some aged manure to increase the soil fertility.  I was planning on adding plants, and I wanted them to have good and fertile soil.  Since this was a woodland environment with already mature tree cover (oak and hickory, yay!), the following season, I decided to populate the shrine with some of the rare woodland species that have been disappearing from the landscape.  Here in the Appalachian mountains, we have many such species under dures due to overharvesting including three I selected for the shrine: black cohosh, ginseng, and goldenseal.  I planted these around the shrine and tended them until they were well established (and I’m still in the process of tending them and adding additional plants).

 

Now, I am in the process of creating a small pathway into the shrine and going through that section of the woods–with the idea that the rest of the woods is sacred, and this path is the only path that should ever be walked by human visitors.  That will further protect my rare woodland species.  I have already created a small pathway into the shrine, planting solomon’s seal (another native woodland medicinal) at the entrance. While this was ongoing, I am continuing to do regular ritual with the space, helping clear it energetically of the “burn pile” energy and bringing it into a more positive place.  I’m also just visiting the space from time to time, saying “hello” and seeing what is going on. Regularly, at the new moon, I work with the space, usually doing some flute or drumming. Since establishing this space, I have a pileated woodpecker pair who have moved into this patch of forest and is now nesting nearby.  I also regularly see Jays, Sparrows, and many others!

 

Hemlocks in a quiet grove

It still has a lot of time before the energy builds enough to radiate outward and send the flow of healing energy back to the land, but I know it will.  At that time, I will work to create a flow of healing energy from that space outward into the surrounding environment (which in the vicinity, includes strip mining, coal mining, and factory farms).

 

Concluding thoughts

The “Grove of Renewal” is a simple yet profound technique to help you establish a space for healing energy: both for an immediate ecosystem in need of healing, but also, as a way to engage in land healing energetically in the broader landscape.  I think this is exactly the kind of work that druids can do who want to “give back” in some way.  Your “Grove of Renewal” is likely to look very different than my own, but any space can be brought back physically and energetically to a place of healing, light, and life. And certainly, this is work worth doing.

Sacred Tree Profile: Cherry (Prunus Serotina)’s Magic, Mythology, Medicine and Meaning June 23, 2019

Butterfly on choke cherry

When most people think of cherry trees, they think about plump, juicy, red or purple cherries from cultivated cherry trees.  However, here in the USA, we have a variety of wild cherries that are an interwoven and rich part of our landscape. An enigmatic tree found throughout the eastern part of North America and South America is prunus serotina, the wild cherry, black cherry, mountain black cherry, or rum cherry tree. Most people interact with this tree not in its living form, but through the beautiful reddish-brown heartwood that this tree produces, and that can be frequently found in their furniture and flooring.  And yet, this tree has so much more to offer than just beautiful wood! While I’m targeting my comments today about the black cherry, many of the material found here can be about *any* cherry tree local to you, including domesticated cherries.  Many other kinds of wild cherries may also be found along the US East Coast region: prunus avium (the wild sweet cherry) and prunus virginiana (choke cherry). Black cherry and other wild cherries of the prunus species are truly American trees and hence, should be considered as part of our magical landscape here in the USA.

 

This post is part of my Sacred Trees in the Americas series, where I explore sacred trees within a specifically American context, drawing upon folklore, herbalism, magic, and more. I think it’s particularly important that US druids and those following other nature-based paths in North America understand how the trees here might be different and just as magical as traditional European trees. Thus, this series provides research and insight on the many trees here in the US East Coast.  Previous trees in this series include Juniper, Birch, Elder, Walnut, Eastern White Cedar, Hemlock, Sugar Maple, Hawthorn, Hickory, Beech, Ash, White Pine, and Oak.  And now, let’s learn more about the Black Cherry!

 

Black Cherry Growth and Ecology

Black cherry is a medium sized tree, often found on the edges of forests. When it is young, it can be shade tolerant, but older cherries prefer to have more sunlight, and thus, you can often find them along the edges of forests, pushing the forest into new areas. Cherries are prone to being blown over by strong winds because they primarily have lateral/fibrous (spreading) root systems rather than a deep tap root. Cherries can live between 150 and 200 years.  They are commonly found in the ‘dry’ or ‘mesic’ forest habitats more broadly. Here in Western PA, they are a very common tree, often growing in mixed oak/beech hardwood forests or hickory/oak forests, but also found on the edges of hemlock forests.

 

Identification of the tree depends on its age. Leaves are typically about 2-5 inches in length with fine tooth and an ovate-lacerate shape (elongated oval with points). Young cherry trees have a dark, smooth bark which is banded with lighter brown lines that are horizontal.  Older cherry trees have very dark gray/dark brown or almost black bark that is highly textured, but you can still see the bands (see photos).  A strong almond scent (very unique to cherries) can be smelled when leaves are crushed or branches are broken–more on this later in the post).

 

Younger and older black cherry trees

Birds, butterflies, and moths feed and grow on black cherry, including the eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, who lays eggs individually on the black cherry leaves.  Other caterpillars who depend on the trees include the red-spotted purple caterpillar and the coral haristreak caterpillar. Unfortunately, it is also a favorite of the destructive eastern tent caterpillar, which can make large nests in the tree and strip trees of leaves. Usually, the cherries can bounce back the following year after a serious Eastern Tent Caterpillar issue. When the cherry is in bloom, it is a nectar source for many insects including bees, wasps, and butterflies. When the cherry is in fruit, it is a food source for many animals and birds including raccoon, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, bears, and more.

 

Wood and Other Uses

The wood of the cherry is well known, as it is a common wood used for interiors, furniture, tools, flooring, and more. Cherry is a beautiful, reddish brown wood with a straight grain. It is a favorite of woodworkers as it is delightful to work with and beautiful when polished.  It is not as hard as oak, near as soft of maple, making it a wood that is firm yet beautiful to work with.

 

The berries, when using methods I’ve described before on the blog, can be made into a great ink or dye; it offers a purple/blue color. It doesn’t have a good light fastness (like most other natural berry dyes) but in my experience, if you use alum as a mordant, it can improve the light fastness. The berries are almost always in abundance, but they can be difficult to reach on high up trees.

 

The cherry pits (seeds) are also often harvested and eaten by wild critters. If you visit the base of an older wild cherry tree, you will often see the little half-cups of the seeds, dried and brown. If you are interested in natural crafts, these can make nice beads (with a tiny hole bored or drilled into them).

 

Cherry Leaves and Cyanide

Cherry is an interesting tree because while the fruit is edible and medicinal, and the inner bark is also medicinal, most of the rest of the tree is extremely toxic. Cherry foliage and pits contain hydrocyanic acid. You can smell this when you crush a leaf or cut a part of a cherry tree–it has that distinct bitter almond smell. The leaves have the highest concentration of hydrocyanic acid, and as the leaves wilt, they produce cyanide. This makes the leaves extremely toxic to humans and many livestock animals, such as goats or sheep.  In fact, we had planned on getting goats for our homestead here for fiber, milk, and for clearing brush, but after we learned about the toxicity of the cherry leaves (which we have everywhere on the property) we decided not to do so and went a different route with our animals.  This is because one handful of wilted cherry leaves is enough to kill a full size goat!  Needless to say, Cherry’s toxicity is not to be trifled with.

 

Foraging for Cherries

Thick bark of an older black cherry tree

At the same time that cherry’s leaves have such poison, black cherries are delightful and abundant to eat, high in antioxidants and nutrients, and an excellent wild food. Sam Thayer notes in the Forager’s Harvest that you should harvest the berries only when they are overripe, that is, a deep purple color.  I will also note that in my experience, different trees may produce slightly different tasting berries, some more or less bitter than the others.  If you are going to forage for them and you have some choice, I suggest tasting various trees! The variety in different trees can be quite distinct, with some tasting almost like a commercial cherry and others being nearly inedible and very bitter. So, once you find a tree that you can eat raw, you have found a good tree to turn the fruit into jelly or other tasty treats.  Even if a cherry tree has a little bit of bitterness, you can usually use sweetness to counteract it and allow for an enjoyable tasty tree.

 

Like many other fruits in the rose family (including apples and peaches), cherry pits also do contain hydrocyanic acid, and those, should be removed during or before preparation.  You can cook them slightly, mash them down, and strain out the pits, which is probably the easiest method of removing them.

 

This bitterness of any wild cherry can be reduced with the use of sugar, but any jams or jellies that you produce from it will still have some bitterness if your fruit started off bitter.  I have found that the bitterness is pretty tasty combined with meats or fish and add dimension and complexity (and bitter foods are healthy for our digestion). A simple recipe, offered by Euell Gibbons in Stalking the Wild Asparagus book is a cherry jelly.  He suggests adding apple juice to the jelly to improve the flavor.  Take any number of quarts of black cherry and add 1 cup of water.  Take unripe apples and slice them and add them (or add some pectin as per package instructions).  Simmer this for 30 min then strain.  Take 2 cups of cherry juice and 2 cups of apple juice, and add 4 cups sugar (you could also add less sugar by using Pamona’s pectin; I prefer to can with honey using this approach).  Boil till it jells and then hot water bath can using standard fruit approaches (10 min for half pints, 15 min for pints, etc).

 

In Using Wayside Plants, Nelson Coon notes the difference between serotina (wild cherry) and virginiana (choke cherry) are as follows: chokecherry has more pointed leaves, bitter/acidic fruit, and shorter fruit clusters  He notes that while both can be made into tasty jellies, the choke cherry produce more bitter fruit.  I have also found this to be the case, and often, the serotina and virginana are growing right next to each other!  Sam Thayer recommends another approach to working with black cherry. After harvesting them, he puts them in the fridge for two days.  This reduces the astringency and bitterness, and then you can make jellies or fruit leather.

 

Cherry as Medicine

In Matthew Wood’s Earth Wise Herbal: New World Herbs, Wood notes that in the 19^th century, wild cherry was considered an “indispensable” medicine by both pioneers and Native Americans; he suggests that it was likely one of the most commonly used herbs native to the US during that time period.  Wood notes that wild cherry works as a sedative, particularly for the circulatory system.  It is particularly useful for coughs due to irritation, coughs that linger on after an infection has passed, and those that have fluid or mucus in the lungs, such as through bronchitis, pleurisy, etc. He recommends collecting root bark if at all possible, and preferably in the spring when the cyanogens are lowest. He notes that while the bark does contain trace amounts amounts of cyanide, it is not enough to cause any health issues, particularly when it is used medicinally and for short term issues.

 

Prussic acid in found in wild cherry trees are particularly useful for coughs and many herbalists use it as a their go-to cough syrup remedy.  For this, you want the inner bark from any wild cherry. This is to be used for acute conditions short term only, but it is very effective. A simple cough syrup is to boil down 1/2 cup of the chopped inner bark of wild cherry for 30 min in 1 pint water.  Then, strain it and let it cool. Add raw honey at this point to taste.  Usually, I will freeze this in ice cub trays, then you can keep using it as needed and keep it till you need it.  Alternatively, you can simply make a strong tea of the wild cherry bark that you dry.  If you have a wild cherry nearby though, no need to dry it in advance–just harvest it fresh and prepare it as needed!  I have used this recipe many times myself, and it is just as effective as over-the-counter medicines.

 

Euell Gibbons gives another recipe for wild cherry cough syrup in his Stalking the Wild Asparagus book that I really like: 1 cup red clover blossoms, 1 cup white pine needles (preferably new growth), 1 cup mullein leaves, and 1/2 cup inner bark from the wild cherry.  Boil all of this in a quart of water covered for 20 min.  Strain and add 1 pint honey, then can it.  (I like this recipe, but I’d omit the honey and can it without, then add the honey later.  Raw honey is amazing, but heat removes much of the medicinal virtues).

 

Magic of the Cherry Tree in Global Traditions

Cherry does not seem to have much of a place in the traditional western magical traditions, particularly those deriving from Europe–which makes sense, as cherry is a North American Tree.

Leaves of cherry tree

In the European traditions, when it shows up, it does not often show up as a tree of power.  For example, in Celtic Myth and Legend by Charles Squire, the book describe the Battle of Godeu (or the Battle of the Trees) and in this battle with Hades, while many trees fought valiantly (oak, hawthorn, heather, holly) many others, including the poor cherry tree did not fare so well and was broken during the battle. This battle is told in the Book of Taliesin as well.

 

What information there is about the cherry’s power suggests that cherry is tied to love, emotions, and romance, something that is consistent both from Europe as well as from folk magic here in the US.  Culpepper notes in his Herbal that cherry is a tree governed by Venus. In the American hoodoo traditions, according to Cat Yronwood’s Hoodoo Root and Herb Magic, cherry is used primarily in love-drawing spells for drawing love, romance, or enticing someone. Thus, in American Hoodoo, it is frequently used in love-drawing mojo bags, oils, dressed candles. We see this same association in an old book, Grimories, who talks about using the “essences of the cherry tree” when when desires another. Interestingly enough, Native American talking sticks can also be made of cherry, and when they are, they are also tied to expression, emotion, and love. Yet, Cherry trees do not feature prominently in the stories that I have been searching (and that I usually share as part of these posts). Occasionally, someone eats a cherry in a story, or, someone notes that cherry is not good for making bows. But the tree has no distinct magical connection in the mythology of the Americas that I can ascertain.

 

In another American classic grimore, The Long Lost Friend by John George Hoffman (1820), which is one of the premier books in PA Dutch Braucherei, the cherry tree is used to help cure the “poll-evil” in horses. The Poll Evil is an inflamed back of the head which can burst (today, this is treated with antibiotics). The full charm involves breaking off three twigs from a cherry tree, one in the morning, one in the evening, and one at midnight.  You wrap these in pieces of your shirt, then clean the poll-evil with it.  Then you have to poop on the twigs while the twigs are facing north. Then you stir the wound again with the dirtied twigs a day or two later.  Yep, good stuff :P.

 

One of the places that cherry tree is very dominant is in Japan, and Cherry has different meanings in eastern societies.  Japanese cherries, or “sakura” symbolize the concept of “mono no aware,” or the understanding that life and things are transient, impermanent, and that a small amount of sadness or wistfulness can be had at their passing.  Cherry blossoms, which bloom en masse in Japan are thus symbolic of “mono no aware” and encourage people to reflect on the transience of all things.  We also see the tie to love from myths like “the Holy Cherry Tree of Musubi-no-Kami Temple” where a magnificent old cherry tree encouraged people to build a shrine dedicated to the “God of Love”.

 

Meanings and Magic for North America

So to summarize all of the above, we can see three distinct meanings for the Cherry tree, based on its ecology, medicine, uses, and mythology:

 

Cherry tree as a drawing love and romance.  The American traditions are strongly consistent in this, showing that cherry here in the US has the power for love: to bring it, to help it last, and to foster romance.

 

A small grove of cherries on the edge of the homestead

Cherry tree emphasizes the fragility, impermanence, and ephemeral nature of life.  The Japanese tradition is strong here, but so is, frankly, the fact that cherry can produce such a noxious poison.  The leaves of the cherry tree wilt and cause livestock (or people) to die who consume them.  That ecology sends, to me, a very strong emphasis on the idea that life is fragile!

 

Cherry, likewise, sends the message that the same aspects of nature can be both healing and destructive. Cherry is a tree of extremes: both one of the best natural medicines we have native to the Americas while also being one of the most destructive poisons we have.  Much of nature is like this, and this is a powerful natural lesson. The ocean is a very good example of this: the ocean can provide food and medicine, but also tidal waves and tsunamis.  I think every part of nature is truly like this: and cherry so beautifully emphasizes this lesson.  Nature is.  It is not good, it is not evil, it simply is.  I can be harnessed as a powerful tool, or it can harm or kill you.  Part of that depends on your own knowledge, and part, on the conditions at hand.

Working with and Honoring the Sun at the Solstice June 16, 2019

Sacred rays of the sun

The sun’s rays come over the horizon, on the solstice, the most sacred of days. The solstice goes my many names, the day of high light, midsummer, Alban Hefin. Across the globe and through time, it has been celebrated since before recorded history. In the light of the sun, we have strength, warmth, growth, energy, abundance, healing, and wisdom. The sun has been shining down upon our beautiful planet has been shining for at least four billion years and we can expect it to remain unchanged for another five billion years. The sun is also enormous–it accounts for 99.86% of the mass of our solar system.  It is such an incredible thing that it’s hard to image in the scope of the sun as it compares to of human lives or human history.  You might say that the sun is one of the most constant things we’ve had–since before humans were humans, since we can trace our ancestry back to some fish crawling up out of the ocean, the sun has been offering its light and warmth to us in its steady and powerful way. The same sun that shines upon you today has shined upon your every ancestor before you. You can see why ancient cultures all over the world celebrated the time of the greatest light and honored the sun as a deity–for without the sun, we would not exist.

 

Thus, on this sacred day, many choose to honor the sun in some way.  In the last few years, I’ve shared some sunrise rituals and a sunrise journey ritual. These sunrise rituals certainly offer us a glimpse of that first ray of the light, the power of the sun as it shines forth–and are excellent for people who want to rise early and see the dawn’s first light.  Today’s post is for those who are looking for additional ways to honor and celebrate the solstice through a variety of “small rituals” and “solstice activities” that you can do to celebrate this most sacred of days.

 

Honoring the Sunrise, Noon, and Sunset

Sunrise ritual

A simple way to mark the Solstice (either one, actually) is to honor the rising, high point, and setting of the sun.  You can do this as elaborately or as simply as you want. A very simple way is to use a drum or singing bowl, and simply allow the sound to come forth.  You can also do this with a simple ritual (chanting “Awens”, saying the druid’s prayer, doing the AODA’s Sphere of Protection, saying the OBOD’s Druid’s Prayer for Peace, etc).  Or, you can do this with movement or anything else that you like.  Choose something meaningful to you, and allow the energy to flow.

 

Make a Sundial and Attune with the Sun

You can honor the sun by creating a permanent or temporary sundial.  Sundials are some of the oldest forms of time pieces, and they are a wonderful way to connect with the movement of the sun across time.  There are two ways to make a sundial: working with the sun or working with sacred geometry.

 

To work directly with the sun, you simply need a timer or clock that can go off on the hour (or on the half hour, if you prefer).  You will want whatever you are using for your sundial and place it in the full sun.  You can do this with simple materials, like a pencil and a paper plate.  Or, you can get more elaborate and plan on carving into or painting a wood round or stone as a final product.  Put your dial into an area that gets full sun. On each hour, mark it.  I do this in pencil, and then later, if I’m doing a more permanent dial, I can come back to it and mark it more permanently after I have the marks.  After the hours of the day, you will have a sundial–but that sundial isn’t yet complete. The sun’s position in the sky changes, so to really do this perfectly, you would do this again at the winter solstice.  Draw a line between the marks for summer and winter, and those are your times for the dial.  While it takes you a full season to complete the sundial doing this method, it is a wonderful way to work with the sun directly.  If you want to get *really* fancy, do this at the equinox (either one) and then you can also have a mid point for the equinox.  What is wonderful about this approach is that you have done this by observing and marking the path of the sun at three sacred points of the year–and honoring the energies of each of those points.  This, truly, is a sacred sundial.

 

The alternative is to use human knowledge and sacred geometry–so you make the dial in advance, and then place it out on the solstice, marking it. To make one for your latitude, you will need to use a calculator, like the ones on this page.  Many of the instructions online work from the premise that you want to create a sundial and use it to tell time–so you start with the latitude, which gives you angles, and you create the points.  It is a fairly easy thing to do once you know where to put the marks and there are plenty of tools out there for you to try.

 

Sunbathing Energy Ritual

Find a quiet place in nature where you won’t be disturbed and where you can lay in the full sunlight.  You can lay on the earth or on a blanket if you prefer. This is best done at noon, as that is the time of highest energy, but anytime the sun is shining down on the solstice (or the day before or after) the ritual will work. This ritual is best with minimal or no clothing so your body can best absorb vitamin D from the sun, but use your best judgement.

 

Begin by honoring the sun however you see fit. Singing bowl, sphere of protection or grove opening, calling to the power of the solar current and the fire, etc.  Once you have honored the sun, lay down and simply absorb the sun’s rays. Feel the sun soaking into your skin, the heat and light of the sun warming you. Flip over and again, simply lay and absorb the sun.

 

I will note that some people can do this longer than others.  I happen to have rather fair Irish skin, so I do this ritual only for about 5-10 minutes per side.  Its enough to get the energy and enough to not get a sunburn.

 

After you have concluded sunbathing, thank the sun for his light, saying anything that you would like (let the words flow through you).

 

Hemlocks in the Path of the Sun

Energizing Liquids and Objects

For those of you who’d prefer not to lay in the full sun, you can get the effects of the above ritual (and save those effects for a later time) by using the sun to empower and bless a liquid.  For this, I like to get a bottle of my Dandelion wine or other alcoholic beverage.  I place it in the noontime sun for 30 or so minutes, allowing the sun’s rays to fully permeate the bottle (yes, I know that too long, and the rays will damage the contents.  But this is an energetic blessing!)  After the blessing, thank the sun.  Now you have a bit of bottled sunshine, and you can open it and drink it anytime you like.

 

A variant of this is to create a solstice tea.  Combine any number of sacred herbs, particularly herbs that are in their full power during the summer solstice (chamomile, mint, elderflower, rose petals, a small amount of yarrow, etc).  By this I mean herbs that are in bloom during the solstice.  Get a large mason jar, and fill it with pure water.  Add the herbs and let it sit out in the sun.  For this particular blend, I will actually allow it to sit out all day–from the moment the sun is visible to the moment it sets.  Then, as darkness sets in, I will drink the tea.  (You can also freeze this tea to use at a later point, say, for ritual at the Winter Solstice).

 

The same kind of “energizing” can be done with simple ritual tools, stones, anything that you’d like to put a burst of energy into.  The nice thing about working with the sun is that it has so much energy that it radiates and it gives that energy constantly.  You placing that energy into an object will never be a problem for the sun!

 

A Solstice Frolick

Another fun thing to do at the solstice is to go for a frolick.  A frolick is different than a walk or hike–the point of the frolick isn’t to go anywhere.  It is simply to experience the simple joy of being outside on a beautiful day with the sun shining down.  Maybe even get a bit lost for a while. For the frolick, go somewhere you love or somewhere new, somewhere where nature has power and strength.  Spend time wandering without any real goal; take whatever trail you fancy, or maybe take no trail at all.  Allow yourself to experience the wonder and awe of the living earth.  Wear ridiculous clothes.  Play panpipes.  Pay close attention to how the sun’s rays shine down through the leaves, or on the surfaces.  Explore every nook and cranny.  Note the movement of the sun.

 

Standing stone

Set a Solstice Standing Stone

The druids of old understood that standing stones have power. Setting a standing stone at the solstice is a particularly powerful act. A stone, buried 1/3 of the way in the earth, channels the powerful and healing solar current into the earth, intermingling with the telluric current. It allows the healing rays of the sun to shine forth, powerfully and meaningfully. You can set the stone as a sacred act, with as much ritual and fanfare as you like. When I set stones, I usually determine in advance where the stone should be placed using inner listening and spirit communication. open up a sacred grove, sit with the stone and the earth for a time, and then set the stone. I bless the stone with the four elements, sing to it, and then spend time in meditation. When the work is done, I close out the sacred grove. Stones can be set anywhere for blessing, energizing, or healing: in a sacred garden, a sacred grove, a field, a refugia garden, a place in need of land healing.

 

I hope these solstice activities offer you some ideas and suggestions.  Readers, I’d love to hear more about how you celebrate the solstice!