Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, the zenith of the sun’s reign, the time when our energies being pulled outside of us. The prominence of the solar energy calls us to express our solar, manifesting selves. At this time of year, much of the plant world is flowering. Flowers are connected to the air element, and the realm of communication and expression. How fitting that at this time of outward energies, the plant world is abundant with lessons in presenting ourselves to the world.
As an agriculturalist who lives in the mid-Atlantic, I see Spring Equinox as the time of sowing seeds and Beltane as the season of leaves unfurling and first flowers blooming. Spring Equinox brings the first tinges of excitement, but Beltane is the big hurrah, the time when spring has clearly arrived, the time when we truly feel our energy spiraling outward.
People’s Medicine Workshop (organized by Jersey Community Acupuncture) will inspire folks to start using some simple, available plants in their everyday and to forge a path of access to what the earth offers right in our backyards and neighborhoods.
If you are someone who feels uncertainty at this time of year, if you’re too distracted by anxiety to decorate your Easter eggs, or if you feel like it’s harder to pull yourself out of winter than you were expecting, this ritual is for you. I’m affectionately calling it “Sitting in the Mud.”
At Imbolc, we feel the first stirrings of life within the womb of the earth. The plants are tracking the light, counting the hours, planning their resurgence above ground. Daylight is noticeably longer. The cold is deep, but the light is returning.
