This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony.
The eight points of the wheel in the PaGaian and many Pagan calendars represent ‘seasonal thresholds’ (and there may be more or less in your region), the circuit of Earth about the Sun. This is the sacred site in which we, all this planet’s beings, find ourselves, in which we live everyday. We may think of this journey around Sun as the revolving walk of a pilgrim about a sacred site – what the Celts called a “turas.” This circle of eight stones/objects represents this sacred Journey. Turas is a Celtic word meaning “journey,” “pilgrimage,” and refers especially to the circular, spiralling prayer used by people in Celtic countries as they walked sunwise around a sacred site[i] (and sunwise in the Southern Hemisphere is counterclockwise).
The ceremonial celebration of the “Wheel of the Year” as it manifests in your place, as a whole year-long experience, participated in fully as an art process and relationship with Gaia, IS a sacred site – a kind of virtual sacred site, a morphic field: that is, the ceremonies themselves develop a kind of organism, an alive space (a womb). You can be held within it. One may enter consciously into this sacred site – real space and time – through the practice of ceremonial celebration of this annual journey, the Turas of our planet: and thus enter into the magic and power of deep Creativity – found in real time and space. For this reason I am religious about not doing festivals dictated by the Gregorian calendar, especially since they are out of sync with southern hemispheric seasons – Christmas, Easter. I am on a Journey, a pilgrim in real time and space, and indeed I have learned so much with this creative discipline … I am Her disciple.
Below is a walking meditation, that I have developed to create a mini-experience of this everyday turas. It may be done around a simpler version of a Womb of Gaia altar as pictured here, which includes eight stones/objects representing the Wheel of the Year.[ii]
TURAS EXPERIENCE – a walking meditation
NOTE: if you are unable to walk around your altar that is okay … visualize the process as you sit. Begin sitting at the outer edge of your circle then move into the center as directed in the meditation, if you are able to.
We begin walking sunwise (counter-clockwise for Southern Hemisphere), starting some distance out from your altar if possible.
DRUM if you have one
Let us begin, by walking sunwise, slowly around the edge of your circle, gazing upon the eight points of the mandala … aware that you are passing through the Seasons, as you always have done, every day of your life, joining Earth in Her everyday sacred journey. You are Earth making this Journey.
After you have made a few circuits, begin to spiral in slowly and contemplating this particular Moment – all that it has taken for you to come to this Place and Moment … beginning with taking the time to be with this process, then all that led to your decision to do this, your personal story that brings you to this, the stories of your parents, of your grandparents … and further back … to stories of ancestors and other ancestral beings, who have walked this turas of Earth around the Sun – joining all these.
… and contemplating where your ancestors may have come from, and where every atom in your body may have been … and slowly spiralling into the Centre.
When you have arrived at Centre, you may consider this Centre, THE Centre, our Origin, which is always present.
Ten percent of your bodymind which is hydrogen, is a direct result of the Original Flaring Forth, when all hydrogen was made. The Origin is present right here within you. And all the rest – carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and heavier elements – was born in stars. All this recycled many times over.[iii]
Here in the Centre, you may celebrate Cosmogenesis, who you are
PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOURSELF
- your particular beautiful Self, new in every moment – Virgin
OPEN UP YOUR ARMS
- in deep relationship and communion with Other, the web of life – Mother
DIRECT YOUR HANDS AND ARMS DOWN TO EARTH
- directly participating in the sentience of the Creative Cosmos, the Well of Creativity – Old One.
FOLDING YOUR ARMS OVER YOUR TORSO
All present here … this Creative Dynamic unfolding the Cosmos.
And now, with this memory, turning to your left (right for the Northern Hemisphere) and slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your place in this Moment of time.
DRUM … slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your Place in this Moment of Time.
DRUM until you/all have arrived at the circumference.
And Here you are! And so, it is for every moment.
NOTES:
[i] Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, 31.
[ii] This altar is described in A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos, p.22-25. A simple wheel of stones representing the Wheel of the Year in your place, will suffice.
[iii] This paragraph is a quote from Australian molecular biologist Darryl Reanney when he gave an experiential paper at The Climbing River Foundation conference in Melbourne in 1990.
REFERENCES:
Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Bergen: Girl God Books, 2023.
Matthews, Caitlin. The Celtic Spirit. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.