Secular New Year

Many Pagans start their new year at Shadowfest (Oct 31). And to be fair "The Manuals" indicate that the ritual year starts at Shadowfest.

But I've always felt that there were Ritual Seasons which fade out of and into each other. There are no hard and fast rules for when each "ritual season" starts. The environment, which is primarily influenced by the weather but which can be affected by other things as well, influences the edges of these seasons.
The "Growth & Harvest Season" typically includes Summerfest and Cornucopia.
The "Introspective Season" typically includes the Autumn Equinnox and Shadowfest
The "Rebirth Season" typically includes the Winter Solstice and Lupercus.
The "Renewal Season" typically includes the Spring Equinox and Lady Day.

The whole cycle of rituals is designed to work together, to create a web of life, inner and outer life. We have been culturalized to a Cartesian Separatist approach to life. We break things down into their component parts. We categorize things, ideas, experiences, responsibilities. I am wife, mother, breadwinner, supervisor, strega, neighborhood activist... But in reality these are all connected. Experiences and influences of one area or idea affect the others, affect the whole. The rituals both Solar and the monthly Full Moon rituals are designed to ensure that we experience this fullness, this integrated cycle, the web of life.

During Cornucopia we are to review what is good and worthwhile and what can be eliminated. During the Autumn Equinox we are to look at what is passing or has past and work the hidden, introspective aspects of our lives, at Winter Solstice we experience the potential for rebirth in the darkness, at Lupercus we attempt to connect to the past and to what is wild and natural in all of us, at Spring Equinox appreciate tender new growth.

The secular new year starts at the calendar change in January. Considering that this month is named for Janus, a god who looks both forward and backward, it seems that the secular new year works perfectly to bridge the fruits of the Introspective Season to those of the Renewal Season during the Season of Rebirth. So take the time The New Year,the secular world gives you and do as Janus encourages us and look back and forward at the same time and weave your own web of life.

1st Pagan Invocation at governmental function

Many legislators open their meetings by what is supposed to be a secular prayer. Most of these are done by Christian ministers though on occasion another religious leader may be allowed, usually with some controversy. One by a Pagan minister only happened the first time October this year at the Wisconsin State Assembly. This event comes only after decades of dedicated and public service as a pagan. See details in a interview that Selena Fox gave to Christopher Blackwell for his Yule 2009 edition.

Below is a copy of the opening Remarks & Prayer written & delivered by Rev. Selena Fox, Senior Minister, Circle Sanctuary for Wisconsin State Assembly Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at Assembly Chamber, Wisconsin State Capitol Madison, Wisconsin

"Greetings from the colorful forests and fields of Brigham Township, near Barneveld, in Iowa County in Southwestern Wisconsin.

In this Autumn season, let us appreciate Nature’s beauty in the many colors and patterns on the land throughout our whole great state of Wisconsin.

And, let us also recognize and appreciate the beauty and richness of the diversity of all of us gathered here today in this Assembly Chamber.

We are from many places, many backgrounds, many walks of life, many viewpoints: yet we converge here to serve, and also today, to remember those who have given their life in service of our great nation.

Let us now reflect a few moments on being part of a collaborative and creative community of service, helping the people of Wisconsin and the greater Circle of Nature of which we are all part. (short pause)

And now, in the next few moments of quiet, each in our own way, let us connect with Creative Source, according to the religion, spirituality, and/or philosophy that informs our lives. (longer pause)

O Creative Source, Within and Beyond, You who are known by No Name and by Many Names, including: Higher Power, Great Spirit, Divine Mother, Divine Father, Still Small Voice Within, God, Goddess, Truth, Eternal Light, Reason, Love, and by many other names, across religious traditions, spiritualities, and philosophies.

Watch over and bless this Assembly, its members and its staff -- and all those who are here today.

Bless All with Wisdom, Understanding, Creativity, Love, and Compassion,
in Considerations, Deliberations, Communications, and Decision-making.

Bless All, so that that there is a spirit of cooperation and success in finding effective solutions to the challenges before us,

And so that we can work together for more liberty and justice -- and environmental well-being for all.

So Be It, So Mote It Be.

Amen, A’ho, Ashe, Namaste.

Let It Be So."

Thank you Selena. Thank you Christopher.

To view Selena delivering the invocation Click here,
then go to Wisconsin State Assembly Floor Session (Part 1) for 10.27.09. The first ten minutes of the proceedings is the roll call. That is followed by an introduction of Selena (starting at time stamp 10:10 or 12:11 PM) and then her invocation (starting at timestamp 11:22 or 12:12 PM).

"It is all connected" - Tribes buy back land

Indian tribes buy back thousands of acres of land
By TIMBERLY ROSS - Associated Press Writer
Published: 12/27/09

OMAHA, Neb. — Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust.

Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining.

Tribes put more than 840,000 acres - or roughly the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island - into trust from 1998 to 2007, according to information The Associated Press obtained from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act.

Those buying back land include the Winnebago, who have put more than 700 acres in eastern Nebraska in federal trust in the past five years, and the Pawnee, who have 1,600 acres of trust land in Oklahoma. Land held in federal trust is exempt from local and state laws and taxes, but subject to most federal laws.

Three tribes have bought land around Bear Butte in South Dakota's Black Hills to keep it from developers eager to cater to the bikers who roar into Sturgis every year for a raucous road rally. About 17 tribes from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Oklahoma still use the mountain for religious ceremonies.

Emily White Hat, a member of South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux, said the struggle to protect the land is about "preservation of our culture, our way of life and our traditions."

"All of it is connected," White Hat said. "With your land, you have that relationship to the culture."

Other members of the Rosebud Sioux, such as president Rodney Bordeaux, believe the tribes shouldn't have to buy the land back because it was illegally taken. But they also recognize that without such purchases, the land won't be protected.

No one knows how much land the federal government promised Native American tribes in treaties dating to the late 1700s, said Gary Garrison, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The government changed the terms of the treaties over the centuries to make property available to settlers and give rights-of-way to railroads and telegraph companies.

President Barack Obama's administration has proposed spending $2 billion to buy back and consolidate tribal land broken up in previous generations. The program would pay individual members for land interests divided among their relatives and return the land to tribal control. But it would not buy land from people outside the tribes.

Today, 562 federally recognized tribes have more than 55 million acres held in trust, according to the bureau. Several states and local governments are fighting efforts to add to that number, saying the federal government doesn't have the authority to take land - and tax revenue - from states.

In New York, for example, the state and two counties filed a federal lawsuit in 2008 to block the U.S. Department of Interior from putting about 13,000 acres into trust for the Oneida Tribe. In September, a judge threw out their claims.

Putting land in trust creates a burden for local governments because they must still provide services such as sewer and water even though they can't collect taxes on the property, said Elaine Willman, a member of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance and administrator for Hobart, a suburb of Green Bay, Wis. Hobart relies mostly on property taxes to pay for police, water and other services, but the village of about 5,900 lost about a third of its land to a trust set up for the state's Oneida Tribe, Willman said.

So far, Hobart has been able to control spending and avoid cuts in services or raising taxes, Willman said. Village leaders hope taxes on a planned 603-acre commercial development will eventually help make up for the lost money.

The nonprofit White Earth Land Recovery Project has bought back or been gifted hundreds of acres in northwestern Minnesota since it was created in the late 1980s. The White Earth tribe uses the land to harvest rice, farm and produce maple syrup. Members have hope of one day being self-sustaining again.

Winona LaDuke, who started the White Earth project, said buying property is expensive, but it's the quickest and easiest way for tribes to regain control of their land.

Tribal membership has been growing thanks to higher birth rates, longer life spans and more relaxed qualifications for membership, and that has created a greater need for land for housing, community services and economic development.

"If the tribes were to pursue return of the land in the courts it would be years before any action could result in more tribal land ... and the people simply cannot wait," said Cris Stainbrook, of the Little Canada, Minn.-based Indian Land Tenure Foundation.

Thirty to 40 tribes are making enough money from casinos to buy back land, but they also have to put money into social programs, education and health care for their members, said Robert J. Miller, a professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who specializes in tribal issues.

"Tribes just have so many things on their plate," he said.

Some tribes, such as the Pawnee, have benefited from gifts of land. Gaylord and Judy Mickelsen donated a storefront in Dannebrog, Neb., that had been in Judy Mickelsen's family for a century. The couple was retiring to Mesquite, Nev., in 2007, and Judy Mickelsen wanted to see the building preserved even though the town had seen better days.

The tribe has since set up a shop selling members' artwork in the building on Main Street.

"We were hoping the Pawnee could get a toehold here and get a new venture for the village of Dannebrog," Gaylord Mickelsen said.

The pantheistic gospel of Avatar

Heaven and Nature
By ROSS DOUTHAT Published: December 20, 2009
(Published in TP 12.27.2009)

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.

But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.

In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on the planet Pandora is threatened by rapacious human invaders. The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.

If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”

Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them. From Deepak Chopra to Eckhart Tolle, the “religion and inspiration” section in your local bookstore is crowded with titles pushing a pantheistic message. A recent Pew Forum report on how Americans mix and match theology found that many self-professed Christians hold beliefs about the “spiritual energy” of trees and mountains that would fit right in among the indigo-tinted Na’Vi.

As usual, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming. The American belief in the essential unity of all mankind, Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s, leads us to collapse distinctions at every level of creation. “Not content with the discovery that there is nothing in the world but a creation and a Creator,” he suggested, democratic man “seeks to expand and simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one great whole.”

Today there are other forces that expand pantheism’s American appeal. We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse.

At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.

Indeed, it represents a form of religion that even atheists can support. Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.) Sam Harris concluded his polemic “The End of Faith” by rhapsodizing about the mystical experiences available from immersion in “the roiling mystery of the world.” Citing Albert Einstein’s expression of religious awe at the “beauty and sublimity” of the universe, Dawkins allows, “In this sense I too am religious.”

The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.

Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms. We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality.

This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.

Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago.

But except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back.

Solstice Wreath & Offerings

The Fire Pit was full of water because it's been raining, a lot. This December is the wettest December on record, ever. We cut the branches off of the bottom of our "Noble Fir". When I saw the water in the pit, I put the branches into the Fire Pit to stop them from drying out. When the rain stopped and we were finally able to see the sun again I spread them out in a circle creating a large wreath. A candle in the center will be a great way to mark the Solstice outside.



Very early New Orleanians typically used Citus Trees instead of firs & pines as their Christmas Trees. The citrus trees bear golden hued fruit at this time of year and are perfect for the Solstice celebration. My kumquat tree never fails to ripen by the Winter Solstice. The Sweet Gum a block away drops its balls. They look remind me of sputnik and also of the Sun and its solar flares. I spray painted them gold and added to the Solstice Offering.

Plants Know

Plants know naturally the science of seasons
By Dan Gill

In just a few days, on Dec. 21, the 2009 winter solstice will occur.

Here in the Northern hemisphere, we are tilted farthest away from the sun on that day. That means the period between sunrise and sunset is shorter than on any other day of the year, making the night the longest of the year.

The length of our days and nights vary from season to season because the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted in respect to its plane of orbit around the sun.

The winter solstice marks a turning point: While days have been getting shorter and shorter and the nights longer and longer since the summer solstice in June, after Monday, the days will gradually begin to lengthen and the nights shorten. From ancient times until today, humans around the world have marked this time of year with various celebrations, festivals and religious rituals.

Plant sense
What does this have to do with a column on plants?

Well, I could mention that for thousands of years certain plants have played a role in human observances of the winter solstice.

In Europe, plants that stay green during the winter often had special significance. They were a reminder of life in the midst of freezing cold and leafless, dormant trees and shrubs. Evergreen plants such as holly, English ivy, mistletoe, and conifers such as fir, spruce, cedar and pine, are still used today to decorate our homes, along with winter-flowering plants such as poinsettias.

Speaking of poinsettias, have you ever wondered why these colorful plants bloom now, rather than for the Fourth of July?

Here’s where the horticultural lesson about the winter solstice comes in. It is important for gardeners to understand that the changing length of days and nights from season to season has an effect on the way many plants grow and what they do throughout the year.

Just like us, plants living in temperate climates where major temperature changes occur during the year need to be able to tell when the seasons are changing.

Two ways that plants do this are by measuring hours of darkness that occur in a 24-hour period, and by measuring how much cold they have experienced.

Counting the hours
The fact that seasonal changes in light during a 24-hour period have an effect on plants was researched thoroughly back in the 1900s, and the term photoperiodism was created to describe the phenomenon.

In 1920, two employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered a mutation in a type of tobacco called Maryland Mammoth that prevented the plant from flowering in the summer as normal tobacco plants do. Maryland Mammoth would not bloom until late December.

Experimenting with artificial lighting in winter and artificial darkening in the summer, they found that Maryland Mammoth was affected by the relative length of light to darkness in a day. Because it would flower only when exposed to the short-day lengths that naturally occur in winter, they called it a short-day plant.

Once this behavior was discovered, it was found to take place in many kinds of plants, such as chrysanthemum, poinsettia, Christmas cactus, camellia and kalanchoe.

Other plants, such as spinach and radish, flower only after exposure to long days and short nights, and so are called long-day plants. Still others, including many annuals and vegetables (such as the tomato), are day-neutral; their flowering is not regulated by photoperiod.

As it turns out, the terms short-day and long-day are not quite accurate. It is not how long or short the period of light is, but the length of the darkness. Photoperiodic plants actually need a sufficiently short or long period of darkness to develop a response. However, once people start using a term and get familiar with it, it’s hard to get them to change, so we still use the terms short-day and long-day plant.

Ready for a change
Plants don’t only determine when to bloom by measuring the length of night. Increasing darkness also plays a large role in some plants’ ability to anticipate the coming of the winter and respond.

It’s why, for instance, shade trees drop their leaves in November and early December, even if the weather is not intensely cold. Because the nights have been getting longer, they know colder weather is on the way.

What mediates this remarkable response are various pigments, called phytochromes, which allow photoperiodic plants to measure how many hours of dark they receive in a 24-hour period. The phytochrome, in turn, can trigger the release of various hormones or growth factors that may cause the plant to bloom or to drop its leaves or to begin forming a bulb.

How do plants know when spring is arriving, so as not to be deceived by an early warm spell?

Some photoperiodic plants can perceive the shortening of nights to know spring has sprung. Many others are able to measure the amount of cold that has occurred to determine when winter is over. When a sufficient number of chilling hours accumulate, they are triggered to bloom or send out new growth.

As the winter solstice approaches, it’s interesting to note how remarkable plants are. They have abilities to sense the world around them and to respond to it.

It might not have occurred to you that it is just as important for a plant to know when it is time to bloom or drop its leaves, as it is for a farmer to know when its time to plant a crop.

And just as we have used Earth’s movement around the sun to develop calendars that allow us to do this, many plants can also determine the time of year based on similar perceptions

Living with the Land

I'm a New Orleanian. A relatively recent one as my maternal German family only arrived here in New Orleans from German around the 1850s. My father's family was 1700's from Spain and Scotch-Irish from before the American Revolution. But my mother drug him to New Orleans.

You may have heard about a little event and its aftermath called Katrina. Katrina was a terrible storm. But I was here and we survived only to have the man made levees and drainage canals and shipping canals built and maintained by the Corps of Engineers fail and flood our home. We floated bicycles and ourselves out on air mattresses and then rode to dry land were we were, after a day on the side of the Interstate and under the guns (literally) of what passed for law and order, rescued by family.

This makes what is said about this place and why we should or shouldn't live here something I can at least have an opinion about.

Today the Huffington Post published an article highlighting just how unnatural the aftermath of Katrina was for us.

The real problem with the Corps of Engineers is that they are run by as an arm of the miltary and they are (primarily) engineers. I have nothing against engineers as people or as a profession. But engineers who work rearranging and controlling the natural landscape need to work closely with other scientists who specialize in understanding how the natural landscape works. Geologists and Coastal Scientists have been saying FOR DECADES that the Corps approach was onesided and not working with Nature. Katrina showed the flaws in their mechanism. We need to learn from this and begin to undo what the Corps has done.

For too long the people of South Lousisana have assumed that those making the decisions were making good decisions. We know better now. We watch many things more closely. We're learning. New Orleans PostKatrina was the canary in the coal mine for our future. We've had our "awakening". I think there are many things that we have done technologically across the globe that will have to be rethought and undone. I'm sure there are examples in your backyard. Pay attention. It's not all about CO2 levels. There's lots more. The Web of Life is rich and complex.

Winter Dress

Information below taken directly from International House in New Orleans

For generations New Orleanians have upheld the tradition of altering their homes for summer and winter in response to climactic conditions. Homes are often outfitted with formal wool rugs and furnishings in the winter which add warmth to tall, drafty rooms. As winter gives way to summer, wool gives way to sisal rugs and cotton slip covers, which allow furnishings to breath during the months of heat and humidity found in this semi-tropical climate International House continues this temporal tradition by dressing the hotel for summer each Easter and for winter each Labor Day.

From Labor Day through Easter, or the "not so hot" months in New Orleans, International House dresses the lobby for fall and winter. Exuding almost living room warmth, set in an exalting space with 23" ceilings and enlivened with activity from the candlelight only bar, intimate groupings of lobby furniture have been tailored in the most sensuous fabrics. Colors are derived from those found in New Orleans' native spices and in her verdant, semi tropical landscape. Fern greens and a gallery of earth tones, for instance, compliment a subtle reaux-like cayenne, and formal wool rugs coupled with flora, such as Vetiver and palms, complete the sartorial composition for the cooler season.

Equally important is staff dress, for in New Orleans people not only dress their homes but themselves in response to climate. In contrast to the cream colored seersucker suits worn in summer, staff members dress in a classic, tropical weight, black suit from Banana Republic and an earth tone shirt, reflective of the more autumnal palette during the winter months. As such, with seasonal change International House celebrates the rich traditions and mores of this temporal city.

Moonlight Sonata

Just listen

I think this could be perfect music for a mediation during a Vegilone.