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Remember the three‐fold law
Celebrating
the Seasons
of Life:
Samhain to Ostara
Lore, Rituals,
Activities, and Symbols
By
AAsshhlleeeenn OO’’GGaaeeaa
N P B
EW AGE OOKS
A division of The Career Press, Inc.
Franklin Lakes, NJ
Copyright ©2004 by Ashleen O’Gaea
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright
Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented,
without written permission from the publisher, The Spirit Culture
Preservation Project and UFOTV e-Book Publishing.
CELEBRATING THE SEASONS OF LIFE:SAMHAIN TO OSTARA
EDITED BY KATE HENCHES
TYPESET BY EILEEN DOWMUNSON
Cover Illustration and Design by Jean William Naumann
Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Gaea, Ashleen.
Celebrating the seasons of life : Samhain to Ostara : lore, rituals, activities,
and symbols / by Ashleen O’Gaea.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56414-731-2 (pbk.)
1. Sabbat. 2. Neopaganism—Rituals. 3. Religious calendars—
Neopaganism.4.
Witchcraft. I. Title.
BF1572.S28O38 2004
299'.94—dc22
2003064391
To Canyondancer,
with whom I’ve celebrated the seasons of life
for more than 30 years;
and to the Campsight Coveners,
who have celebrated with us for 13.
I am grateful to the ever-turning Wheel,
and of course to the Gods, but don’t presume they’ll read this.
I do hope that the people I’d like to thank will see my gratitude
here, though:
the recently disbanded Campsight Coven,
the newly formed Hearth’s Gate Coven,
and the past and present members of the Camping
Contingent for their cooperation, contributions, and
inspirations;
Rick Johnson, Gamlinginn, and Kirk Thomas for sharing
their experience and offering their information and advice;
and Canyondancer for his supportive editing.
Blank Page
C
ontents
Preface 7
Introduction 11
Samhain, 17
Lore 27
Rituals 39
Activities 49
Symbols 59
Yule, 67
Lore 71
Rituals 75
Activities 87
Symbols 97
Imbolc, 107
Lore 111
Rituals 115
Activities 127
Symbols 137
Ostara, 143
Lore 149
Rituals 153
Activities 169
Symbols 181
Conclusion 185
Appendix A: Casting a Wiccan Circle 191
Appendix B: 199
What’s a Child Ready to Learn About the
Winter Sabbats?
Appendix C: Correspondences 209
Bibliography 213
Index 215
About the Author 221
7
P
reface
What do we mean by “celebrating” the seasons of life? What’s
the point of making rituals to mark the Solstices and Equinoxes, and
what we call the “cross-Quarter” days between them? The Earth will
orbit the sun whether or not we cast our Circles and light our candles;
we ourselves will age and die, and the generations parade through our
lives, whether we notice them or not. Why do we bother?
We bother because we are hard-wired, so more and more scientists
suspect, to cherish and hold holy our connections to the rest of life.
We are social creatures, we humans, and we see and speak reverently
of our kinships—with each other and with other species, and with the
systems and cycles of life itself.
The word “celebrate,” according to my old Webster’s New World
Dictionary (a 1960 edition left over from the undergraduate days of
my husband, Canyondancer), is from the Latin celebratus, meaning
“to frequent, go in great numbers, honor.” Modern meanings include
“to perform a ritual publicly and solemnly; to commemorate an
anniversary, holiday, and so on, with ceremony or festivity; to proclaim;
and to honor or praise publicly.”
Wiccan Sabbat celebrations do all these things, and quite often
in great numbers, although solitary practice is considered equally
valid. It’s not hard to understand how celebrating the seasons of
life, as marked by Wiccan Sabbats, is commemorative rituals and
festivities; it’s not hard to understand Wiccan Sabbat celebrations
as public honor and praise of our Goddess and God. It might be
harder to see how “proclaiming” and “frequenting” fit into Wiccan
practice.
8 Celebrating the Seasons of Life
In the old days, before the Inquisition, Pagans tended to “frequent”
certain holy locations. Whether or not a public ritual was scheduled,
it was not uncommon for individuals to pass by a well or spring, or a
grove, or to climb a hill. Indeed, individuals and families frequently
passed holy sites, and often stopped to make a votive offering or
empower a charm.
Pagan practices in the days of our lore were different than our
practices today, for our understanding of the nature of deity and
how magic works is undoubtedly different than what was “common
knowledge” or cutting-edge theory a thousand years ago or more.
What we share, with medieval (and older) Pagans and with the
Neolithic ancestors of our cultures, is a faith that we are part of
Nature: We belong to the Earth’s powerful systems and cycles.
Do we respond to them as our ancestors did? No. Most of us
don’t believe in Fantasia-like Greek gods living on a literal Olympus,
or in fairy palaces that would show up in photographs, beneath
Britain’s megalithic mounds. Most of us understand the life of the
Otherworld to be in a different dimension, which, from our
perspective, can be called metaphorical or subconscious. We
understand, too, that the effect of metaphor, of our dreams and
emotional experiences, can be, on CT scans, indistinguishable from
our physical experience. Few if any of us fall to our knees begging
for mercy when thunder booms and lightning cracks. Few expect to
meet a triple goddess or a stag-headed god on the street—such
experience is limited to movies and guided meditations.
That doesn’t mean that movies and guided meditations can’t
inspire us, though. The Lord of the Rings movies inspire me; Gandalf
and the Hobbit quartet are real to me in ways that my toaster will
never be. Nor, for Wiccans, does it mean that we don’t meet the
Goddess and God in other people, for we do, every day. The regal
aspects we give them in our liturgies are marks of the awe and respect
we feel for the miraculously mundane world that is their true nature:
Nature, and all its workings. From an infant’s eyelashes to mountain
storms, the power and the diversity and the synchronicity of nature is
that which we hold holy, what we seek to name when we speak of the
Goddess and the God and when we describe their many aspects in
our humble human terms.
