Transitional spaces, time, or events can be physical points, like a border or the entrance to a temple, or they can define the boundaries of our perceptions or responses. Sometimes, these places are easy to find, the edges of a sacred circle. Sometimes, they are vague or transitory, times or places where we ourselves changed in some way.
I have been thinking about these liminal points more this year, especially at this time of year, the start of school season. Years after leaving college, one of my liminal points is still the end of August and the beginning of the school year. This is where, for me, fall begins. While there is probably another month of warm weather to enjoy, and it is far too early to pull out the flannel and fleece, a light jacket in the evenings is necessary now as the temperatures dip into the low 60s.
Most students probably feel the same way as I do because their seasons are dictated not by the calendar but by the school year. School begins in the fall, and thus, it starts well before the calendar says.
The seasonal calendar is based on the movements of the sun. Fall begins on the autumnal equinox when the sun crosses the equator from north to south. On this date, day and night are roughly the same length, with the day only a few minutes longer than the night.
Meteorologists and climatologists have their own seasons, called climatological seasons, based on average temperatures. The first day of meteorological fall is September 1. I find these new seasons interesting because people are basing the calendar on the climate, not the stars, officially for the first time. I do not doubt that my ideas on seasons are not new; some farmer long ago probably bemoaned that the beginning of spring in the South of France occurs much earlier than in Scotland.
Farmers live by the seasons, those dictated by the weather. In the US, our school calendar was organized around when the children would be needed in the field to assist with planting, tending to crops, and harvesting. Now, with mechanical threshers, greenhouses to start seeds, and hoop houses to protect plants from frost and extend the growing seasons, most people think that we have summer off because that’s when it’s warm and when we want to travel and enjoy amusement parts and camping.
Linking my seasonal awareness to the school year makes perfect sense to me because my life is still linked to the school year. Fall is back to school. Plaid shirts and jeans appear in stores, pumpkin spice is everywhere, and the Christmas decorations are already for sale. By mid-September, the farmstands will have caught up, making displays of straw bales and putting out winter squash to fill your pantry.
Astronomically, the first day of winter is December 21. But where I live, we will have had several heavy snowfalls long before then, often starting in early November. Our first frost in my area is expected in the middle of October, the end of the growing season, and when the harvest is pulled from the fields.
Even the beginning of the growing season doesn’t correspond to the start of spring, with the widespread use of greenhouses for commercial growing and many gardeners starting their seeds indoors under grow lights in February and March, long before the last frost day in May. Our gardens, bolstered by technology and determined by our local climate, don’t often fit with the ancient calendars anymore. So maybe we need to change our thinking about the seasons to match how we live them.
Our lives and cultures have changed, so it makes sense that personal or spiritual rituals can also change. It all depends on who we are and how we live our lives. As an educator, my work schedule is tied to the school district’s, even though I don’t work for the school system. As a gardener, I am now harvesting my summer crops and planting beans, peas, kale, spinach, and beets for a fall harvest.
The quilt shops have the autumn fabric out, with displays of small quilts and blocks using fabric with pumpkins and crows. The tourist towns are winding down. Some places will stay open, but most will shutter their doors after Labor Day, even though, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, we will still have warm weather well into September. It might even be better weather than before, in the 70s rather than the 90s.
Our lives no longer follow an astronomical season; in many ways, they only vaguely correspond to meteorological or climatological seasons. So, let us embrace this, creating rituals to mark our points of change, our individual liminal points. Celebrate the fall harvest whenever you collect your crops or deadhead your flowers. Welcome winter when the snow falls and sticks to the ground. The Earth is a living, breathing entity, so it stands to reason that our veneration of her should be equally alive.
from the r/witchcraft Subreddit
Insightful and beautifully written. Nonetheless, the 13 month 28 day Magoist Calendar points to and relies on “the accuracy” of the matriversal entities. Our planetary seasons are marked according to the cosmic entities with their own stable rhythms. While manifestations of the seasonal points (24 seasonal posts, for example) vary, the Earth and the moon have been going on the precise trajectories.