The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2017
Meditations for Every Season
Manifest the Power of the Seasons
Discovering the Green Witch
Meditating at each seasonal shift is one of the most direct ways of experiencing the energy of the natural world and tracing your own response to its ebb and flow throughout the year. Use the following seasonal meditation outline as the basis for your meditations. Appropriate seasonal variations (as listed in the section on each season) are given. Using a consistent meditation with only these small variations lets you easily sense the minor differences that come out of the meditation that you might otherwise miss if you followed a different sequence each time.
SEASONAL MEDITATION BASE
Ideally, this meditation should be done outside: in your garden, in a private and secure spot in a public park, even on your balcony or your patio. If you have access to forests or fields, these too make ideal places in which to encounter and attune to the energy of spring. If you choose to meditate in a public place, make sure that you are comfortable and feel safe enough to allow yourself the freedom to meditate. If you are concerned about others interfering, go somewhere else or do the meditation in your home.
1. Settle yourself comfortably and close your eyes. Visualize a fine green mist rising from the ground and radiating out from all the growing things around you.
2. Take three slow, deep breaths. Each time you inhale, visualize that mist of verdant green energy flowing into your lungs and spreading through your body, bringing with it the feeling of comfort and relaxation, of oneness with your surroundings. As you exhale, release any tension, stress, or worry you may be feeling.
3. Allow your personal energy to expand slightly so that it merges with the natural green energy around you. Direct your awareness downward into the soil. Allow it to sink deep into the earth, slowly and gently. Do not force your energy, but let it sink and sift through the particles of earth. When you feel comfortable, stop and feel the energy of the soil around you cradling you, enfolding you.
4. Insert the appropriate seasonal visualization here.
5. When you feel it is time to return to normal consciousness, offer the soil around your awareness a small gift of gratitude (emotion is energy, after all), then allow your awareness to slowly rise up through the soil to return to your physical body. After spending time within the earth like this, you will probably be so relaxed that slow movement will be natural to you. Make sure that you take the time to return thoroughly. Do not simply snap yourself back, or you will be disoriented and your personal energy will be unbalanced.
6. Once your awareness has returned, ground yourself (see Chapter 3) and take three deep breaths.
7. Open your eyes and gently move your arms and legs to warm them up and to reaffirm your physical form. Stand up slowly and do a few gentle stretches to loosen up your muscles.
Write a summary of your experience in your green witch journal. How did it feel to interact with the earth at this season? Did the interaction teach you anything new? Did you learn anything new about your geographic location? Did you pick up any insight from the experience? Write down your thoughts and questions, any visions you may have had or new understandings you may have come to. Make notes on how you feel as this season begins, what the energy of the location you chose felt like. Remember to note the weather, too.
In future years, you can make reading notes in your witch’s journal the beginning of your seasonal celebration. Compare how you feel now to how you felt in previous years. What are the similarities? What are the differences?
THE VERNAL EQUINOX
The movement of the seasons is a never-ending cycle. Although in reality there is no place that we can firmly point to as the beginning of the seasonal cycle, spring is often seen as the first season in the sequence. This comes from the fact that earlier calendars began the year in the spring. Spring is also traditionally associated with new beginnings, sowing, childhood, and young things in general. Spring is a time of potential, a time for planning and planting, and a time for making wishes about what you want the future to hold. The vernal equinox can be likened to the dawn of the day. New light emerges, touching the landscape with a gentle glow, and life brims with wonderful possibilities simply waiting to be realized.
The vernal equinox takes place at the moment when night and day are of equal length for the first time after the winter solstice. From this moment on, the sun will be in the sky for a few more minutes every day, and nights will slowly become shorter.
SPRING MEDITATION
Perform this meditation on or around the spring equinox. If the day of the official equinox doesn’t work for you, try it around the time of year when there are many new things emerging in the natural environment where you live.
Begin the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.
Once you have reached a place of comfort deep inside the earth, breathe in that energy and feel it fill your body. Feel the soil’s energy at this time of the spring equinox. Feel the potential that vibrates in the earth. Reach out and sense the first movements of roots and seeds where they curl in safety, absorbing the soil’s energy and using it to nourish their own life force, growing stronger in their sleep. Sense the slow awakening of these roots and seeds, and think about the potential they hold and the luxurious life they will soon display.
Remain cradled by the energy of the soil as long as you like, enjoying the feeling of potential and the first stirrings of life.
Finish the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.
THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
The summer solstice, or midsummer, marks the moment when the sun is at its highest. It is the day when the sun spends the most hours above the horizon. Traditionally, this day is associated with expansion and great energy. The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer, a period in today’s busy world that we nostalgically associate with play and relaxation and summer vacations. Conversely, it is also associated with hard work, for in the agricultural cycle the fields must be tended. Crops continue to mature quickly and with great strength and can easily grow out of hand.
SUMMER MEDITATION
Perform this meditation on or around the summer solstice, or whenever you sense summer has arrived where you live. If this doesn’t work for you, try it around another time of year when things are in the middle of a period of growth and expansion.
Begin the meditation as outlined in the previous seasonal meditation structure.
Once you have reached a place of comfort deep inside the earth, breathe that energy in and feel it fill your body.
Feel the soil’s energy at this time of the summer solstice. Feel the energy of nourishment and growth that vibrates in the earth. Sense the expansion, the throb of life as it flows through roots and stems. Explore the interactive system of minerals, nutrients, water, and fertile decomposed vegetable matter that feeds the new generation of plant life. Sense the feeling of vitality, of life, of expansion and increase, of reaching up and opening out, the flow of passionate and joyful creation that pulses through the land.
Remain cradled by the energy of the soil as long as you like, enjoying the feeling of vitality and fertile life around you.
Finish the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.
THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX
As at the vernal equinox, the minutes of day and night are precisely equal at the moment of autumnal equinox. From the summer solstice, the minutes of daylight have slowly decreased and the minutes of night have increased.
Fall is traditionally associated with harvest and thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth, which has been tended from even before plants began to grow. Fall also incorporates themes of sacrifice, loss, and gentle regret, for the precious days of summer have passed and winter now approaches. Autumn is a time of weighing. What is necessary to keep? What can be left behind as the cycle passes to a time of scarcity?
FALL MEDITATION
Perform this meditation on or around the autumnal equinox or whenever you sense that fall has arrived where you live. If this doesn’t work for you, try it around the time of year when things are in the middle of a period of fulfillment and harvest and nearing the end of their cycle.
Begin the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.
Once you have reached a place of comfort deep inside the earth, breathe that energy in, and feel it fill your body.
Feel the soil’s energy at this time of the autumnal equinox. Feel the energy of completion and contentment that vibrates in the earth. Reach out and sense the fullness, the feeling of achievement as it flows through roots and stems. Explore the gentle, slower movement of energy throughout the soil and the roots of plants as the cycle of producing fruit and seed comes to an end on the surface of the earth. Sense the feelings of contentment, of life, of pleasure and satisfaction, of appreciation and offering that pulse through the land.
Remain cradled by the energy of the soil as long as you like, enjoying the feeling of plenty and serenity around you.
Finish the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.
THE WINTER SOLSTICE
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, when the sun’s height is the lowest that it is all year. Although the hours of night outnumber the hours of daylight, from this moment on, the sun begins to regain its lost time.
Winter in the life cycle is traditionally associated with apparent death, which is necessary to enable the rebirth associated with spring. Without death, there can be no new life.
WINTER MEDITATION
Perform this meditation on or around the winter solstice, or whenever you sense that winter has arrived where you live. If this doesn’t work for you, try it around the time of year when things have reached a point of rest, of apparent death or cessation of motion.
Begin the meditation as outlined in the previous seasonal meditation structure.
Once you have reached a place of comfort deep inside the earth, breathe that energy in and feel it fill your body.
Feel the soil’s energy at this time of the winter solstice. Feel the energy of quiet and stillness that permeates the earth. Reach out and sense the darkness, the feeling of slowness as it flows through roots and stems. Explore the barely perceptible movement of energy throughout the soil and roots as the world above lies sleeping. Sense the feelings of relaxation, of incubation, of dreams and the breath of what may become that trickle through the land.
Remain cradled by the energy of the soil as long as you like, enjoying the feeling of warm stillness and sleep around you.
Finish the meditation as outlined in the seasonal meditation structure.