This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony.
I commonly think of the light part of the cycle as acknowledging and celebrating the manifest reality, and the dark part of the cycle as acknowledging and celebrating the manifesting reality. I take these terms from David Abram’s explanation of Benjamin Lee Whorf’s work in analyzing the Hopi language, because it seems from Abram’s interpretation of Whorf’s work that the Hopi had a sense of space and time that was similar to that invoked by practice of the Seasonal Wheel of the Year. Abram says:
While Whorf did not find separable notions of space and time among the Hopi, he did discern, in the Hopi language, a distinction between two basic modalities of existence, which he terms the ‘manifested’ and the ‘manifesting.’[i]
Abram summarizes the meaning of these terms with:
The ‘manifested,’ … is that aspect of phenomena already evident to our senses, while the ‘manifesting’ is that which is not yet explicit, not yet present to the senses, but which is assumed to be psychologically gathering itself toward manifestation within the depths of all sensible phenomena.[ii]
It is easy enough for the average modern Westernised and Christianised mind to associate light with manifestation; the birth of light at the point of Winter Solstice and its waxing through to the fullness of Summer Solstice is fairly easily taken on as cause for celebration. However, the celebration of the dark is quite another thing; the average modern Westernised and Christianised mind[iii] finds it harder to comprehend, having metaphorized the dark as dead-end, bad, even sordid; and thus largely in a state of denial that it is part of life. Within a linear time frame, where the dark is disconnected from the cycle, the dark is no longer a space for transformation, for ‘manifesting’. Participation in the Wheel of the Year process re-enables the positive and creative sense of the dark. With experience of the Wheel’s cycle (especially with a Southern Hemispheric mind), one may come to always be aware of the polar opposite Seasonal Moment, in the midst of each particular seasonal celebration: that is, to be aware of the presence of the ‘manifested’ in the ‘manifesting,’ and vice versa.[iv] For example, at Lammas (Late Summer/Early Autumn) where the individual self ceremoniously assents to giving over to the dark, there is a memory of Imbolc (Early Spring), when differentiated unique self was celebrated and nurtured; at Lammas, one may become aware that ‘I’ am simply returning the manifested to the Source or the “heart … behind and within all the forms and appearances of nature.”[v].
The practice of ceremonial celebration of the Seasonal Wheel of the Year invokes and nurtures a sense of space and time wherein
… one’s own feeling, thinking, desiring are a part of, and hence participant with, this collective desiring and preparing implicit in all things – from the emergence and fruition of corn, to the formation of clouds and the bestowal of rain. Indeed, human intention, especially when concentrated by communal ceremony and prayer, contributes directly to the becoming manifested of such phenomena.[vi]
Local-particular and Cosmic at the same time
Participation in the Wheel process, particularly when practised as a whole year-long experience and over the period of years, re-identifies one’s small self with the Larger Gaia-Self. It is the experience of many indigenous cultures that their communal ceremony and prayer, along with their daily activities, participate “in acts that evoke the ongoing creation of the cosmos.”[vii] Increasingly, as I practiced this Wheel of the Year process, I came to understand how we create the Cosmos, whether conscious or not. I did not know this when I began; this awareness grew in the practice of identifying with the Creativity of Gaia Herself, through the cycle of the ‘manifest’ and the ‘manifesting,’ the light and the dark, the differentiation and the transformation. Gradually I came to understand (and continue to understand more deeply) how these seasonal ceremonies are a response to awakened relationship with Cosmos – thus in some sense, the celebrations become a
responsibility to the cosmos … to know grace, to know as intimately as possible the mysterious interrelatedness and spiritual powers that infuse being and to live our lives accordingly.[viii]
Perhaps the central/essential significance of the Seasonal Moments (Sabbats) is that they are points of expression of relationship with Gaia, who is a Phenomena of storied events. These “events” are not accomplished and “located in some finished past” but are “the very depth of the experiential present,” as Abram describes this sense when describing his understanding of the Aboriginal Australian notion of Dreamtime (or “Alcheringa”).[ix] Abram understands the “Dreamtime”/Alcheringa to refer to the “implicit life” of a place, the storied events that “crouch within” a place, that the human may rejuvenate with “en-chant-ment” and action.[x] The human is thus enchanted and rejuvenated simultaneously – human and Habitat know relationship, intimacy. This seems resonant with what I have called “sacred awareness” of the Universe we live in, that may be conjured by the ceremonies of the Wheel of the Year. After celebrating the seasonal ceremonies for a period of time I came to have a clear sense, at each Seasonal Moment, as I/we prepared to celebrate the ceremony, of the uniqueness and depth of this space-time moment in the history of the Universe; I understand this as “sacred awareness.” It is a sense of the deep time and space of the moment, and that it is significant Cosmically.[xi] The moment becomes a Moment, as actually all moments are; this sense then has often noticeably carried over into my life at other moments.
NOTES:
[i] Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 191. At first, I used the terms “manifest” and “unmanifest,” which altered the sense slightly, but it seemed clearer to me given my cultural context of lack of familiarity with the unseen. I now use the terms “manifested” and “manifesting” if the meaning to others is clear, but it often may require qualifying.
[ii] Ibid., 192.
[iii] One might add ‘patriarchal’ mind to this alienated, dualistic frame of reference; and this state of mind is clearly cross-cultural.
[iv] This awareness/memory of the polar opposite Seasonal Moment within any current one is enhanced by awareness of the other Hemisphere’s polar opposite inclination/Moment; that is, by a global/PaGaian perspective. It has been easier for inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere to appreciate this.
[v] Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 192, quoting Benjamin Lee Whorf in Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock, eds., Teachings from the American Earth (NY: Liveright, 1975), 122.
[vi] Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 192.
[vii] Spretnak, States of Grace, 95.
[viii] Ibid., 100.
[ix] The Spell of the Sensuous, 193. “Alcheringa” is the Indigenous term, and there is some dissatisfaction with the translation of the term as “Dreamtime” insofar as it may imply something “not real.” For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamtime.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Even though the actual Cosmic significance does lie well beyond anyone’s comprehension.
REFERENCES:
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023.
Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
Tedlock, Dennis, and Barbara Tedlock, eds. Teachings from the American Earth. New York: Liveright, 1975.