City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells and Shamanism - Christopher Penczak 2001

As the World Turns

ANOTHER PROBLEM CITY MAGICIANS, pagans, and witches face when feeling disconnected from the natural world is dealing with the seasonal holidays. The tried-and-true signs of the seasons shifting as the world turns and orbits the Sun are much sparser than for their fellow rural practitioners. Fewer trees mean fewer leaves to turn color in the fall. Less open land yields less grass and fewer flowers to rise up in the spring. The whole point of seasonal holidays is to celebrate the natural forces around you and attune yourself to the natural flow of life force as it changes. For a city practitioner, this is even more important.

Modern pagans, or neopagans, celebrate something called the Wheel of the Year (see figure 23, page 217). The Wheel is a cycle of celebrations based on the changing seasons and the myths—usually European—relating to each season. The image of the eight-spoked wagon wheel is used, ever turning as the seasons shift. Celebrants take an active part, working with the natural forces to turn the Wheel of the Year. The energy of the goddess is expressed through Earth itself, changing as the face of Earth changes with the seasons. The god-force changes form many times during the year, sometimes expressed as the Sun, sometimes as animals, vegetation, or the shadow.

Four of the holidays are solar in nature, based on the Summer and Winter Solstices and the Vernal (Spring) and Autumnal (Fall) Equinoxes, as celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere. Evidence seems to indicate that these holidays were most important to the Germanic, Norse, and Saxon traditions of Europe.

The other four holidays celebrate something called the fire festivals. The four fire festivals fall between the solar holidays, at the cross quarters. Their energy is less astrological and more seasonal. The Celtic tribes, who migrated west across Europe until they reached the British Isles, held the fire festivals sacred. Modern traditions have combined these customs and now celebrate eight major holidays.

Most pagan and witchcraft books contain information and material on these eight major holidays. Although drawn mostly from Celtic, Germanic, and Norse sources, these traditions are well represented in materials relating to other ancient cultures. If you are looking for traditional celebration material, it is best to look at more traditional resources. Here, we will be exploring celebrations for city dwellers, for those on the go, in apartments, and far from the fields and forests. The magick is all around you, as we’ve seen in previous chapters. You need only find creative ways to celebrate the energy and become attuned to the cycles of life.

Here are some modern, urban celebration ideas that are in harmony with the theme and energy of traditional holidays. They are simple to do in a small home or office, or during a lunch break. They require no groups or exotic tools, and they are not fully scripted rituals. Only you can decide which elements are correct for you to practice. Make your own rituals, using what you have and what you may already be practicing. Use your personal city totems and gods, and incorporate your personal mythology into the traditional framework. These archetypes celebrating the earth, sea, sky, and harvest are found in all cultures. In the city, the hard-to-find harvest may be the local supermarket for you. Without its bounty of fresh foods and all sorts of delicious (if not always healthy) foodstuffs, urban dwellers would not go to bed with full bellies. Now, that is something worth celebrating and a great way to remember that, even when not living off the land, you are still depending on it.

Yule Figure 23. Wheel of the Year.

Find the heart of the celebration within you, and do what you can to work with any limitations you may have in location or tools. You will discover that celebrating the holidays in the city need not be limited, but can be filled with wonderful opportunities to be creative.