12 Lessons of Yule

Geesh, I need to post more often
Well. here are the 12 Lessons of Yule. I got the idea from Patti Wigington on About.com pagan page, so full credit to Patti for the inspiration.

A Yule Ritual in 12 lessons

Photo credit  Peg Aloi http://religionnerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Winter-Solstace.jpg

The 12 days of Christmas are well known in our part of the world. From December 25^th to January 6^th, Christians of old celebrated 12 days of feasting, foolery, fun and even a little reflection.  I reclaim those 12 days in 12 lessons of Yuletide.

Lesson One—Prepare.  It started early for us this year. Winter. The grey, the cold. The Winter sky 

The Winter Sky, like the eyes of a lost love, so cold and lonely, no mercy for me.
The Winter Sky, gray and bleak, every changing yet always the same.
The Winter Sky, blankets a cold world, lifeless and barren; darkness reigns
The Winter Sky, cut short by the longest night, blocking out the changing moon.
The Winter Sky, can also glow brightly blue with the Winter Sun. Reminding us of its return.


Lesson Two--   A passing season—Winter is just one season, no better, no worse, than all the others.  Remember, we all need to sleep, and so does the Earth.  Rest then, Gentle Gaia.

Sleep a restful sleep, gather up your energy once again
Far below the frozen ground the bulbs nestle in the Earth. Seeds sit waiting patiently, trees, so barren, so lifeless, but sleep.  It is not so long before again they spring into life. Let them rest, let them sleep.

Lesson Three— Elements. Even in winter, the four elements reign. As the grey and cold surround you, remember, the light will return.

Winter winds blow rough
Winter fire frets beneath them
Winter rain is sharp and cold
Winter earth is sleeping
Winter Sun begins its long trek home.

Lesson Four—Remember our ancestors—We have all experienced loss of modern comforts.  Think back now to a time when those and other commodities didn’t exist at all.  Winter was a hard time, but it was a time to gather around, tell a story, stay warm and be human.

The food is put away for the winter,
the crops are set aside to feed us,
the cattle are come down from their fields,
and the sheep are in from the pasture.
The land is cold, the sea is stormy, the sky is gray.
The nights are dark, but we have our family,
kin and clan around the hearth,
staying warm in the midst of darkness,
our spirit and love a flame
a beacon burning brightly
in the night.

Lesson Five—Quit yer whining.  Even the poorest among us in this country are rich when compared to others.  For at least one night, show a little gratitude.

Do not fret over what you don’t have, be thankful for what you do have.  You may have less than others, but you have so much more than you know. Blessed be for just being.

Lesson Six – Peace on Earth.  It is not a wish that only one religion holds.  Cross under the mistletoe, give a loved one a kiss and think gentle thoughts to your worst enemy. Now is a time of peace and a time to forgive past wrongs. 
Come sit with me my brother and sisters
Come enjoy the hearth, the warmth of the fire, the company of friends old and new.
Come and see that our differences are far outweighed by our similarities.
Come, join the family of humankind and humankindness.
Together we are strong. Today, let our differences subside and let kindness reign

Lesson Seven---Yuletide   And so it has come.  Yule is here; the wheel has turned.

Rejoice in the darkness! The Longest Night is here
What we have dreaded is upon us and we find we can celebrate our way through it and on into the night to reach the dawn. The Sun has reached its farthest point away from her Earth. Now it returns to us to awake the Earth, to renew our energy and bring us life-giving night.
Embrace the darkness, for it is fleeing.

Lesson 8 – Celebrate Winter!  Yeah, it’s cold, it’s dark and gloomy. It is also beautiful and stark.  Celebrate Winter, rejoice in its beauty!

Snow like diamonds sparkle on the ground
Red berries decorate the bushes as winter birds
chirp and clamor for their taste.
The winter wind, like a wild child, restless
and skipping thither and yon.
The bluest blue sky joins the coldest days
And brightens the blanket of white beneath which Gaia sleeps.

Lesson 9 – The Winter Goddess- She is cool, and harsh and lovely and joyful all at once. Respect her and learn her lessons well or you will suffer her wrath.

Snow maiden of old, The Ice Queen, the Winter Goddess, in your robes of velvet white snow, you silently watch over us, bedecking the world in your stark beauty. You are danger and joy. You are quiet snow and howling gale.  Thanks to you, we will reconnect at the fire once again.

Lesson Ten—The Battle of the Kings.  The Holly King is vanquished again. The Oak King is reborn. So many Gods have Winter as their season.  It is time to praise and rejoice in them!

The Holly King is gone, and the Oak King reigns
Yule is the time of the old Winter gods!
Hail to Baldur! To Saturn! To Odin!
Hail to Demeter!Hail to Ra! To Horus!
Hail to Frigga and Minerva Sulis. It is their season, and high in the heavens,
may they grant us their blessings this winter day.

Lesson 11—Rah, Rah, Ra!  When it comes down to it, the reason for the season is the Sun!  Call it what you wish, Ra or Helios, our Star or Jesus, we are here to welcome its return as it start the climb back into Summer’s bounty.

Great Sun, Our bright star
I honor you this dark night
While the world sleeps
your light shines strong
your heat is returning
your life-giving energy abounds again.

Great Ra, ruler of the sky
I honor you this dark night
this candle I lit as a token of your gift to us

Great Ra, even in the dark, your light
shines forth and illuminates our world
As this candle illuminates this room.
Hail Ra! Ruler of the sun!

Lesson 12 – Welcome, Welcome!—The longest night is over, the Sun is on its journey home. Break out the ale, pull up the pies—and Celebrate!

It is coming, It returns!
Welcome light

Welcome warmth
Our slumbers are almost done
it is time to awake again
Welcome Sun
Welcome your blessed rays

A Druid Staff...step one. Find the wood

Got me a staff!  okay, no, not yet, but we had to fell a wild cherry in the backyard (umm, we bought the house for the view and, little tree, you were going to be in the WAY!..)  So I feel better that I can make use of the tree in some way.  It was straight as a beam and I now have about a 6 foot chunk of the trunk...PERFECT!  Just big enough, just wide enough.

So, now how to decorate or not.  Leave it plain?, just add some things off the top?  I do see a nice big stone of some sort at the moment a big old Moss Agate would be very cool sitting on the top.

I'll take pics and post.

Just wrote this up on the forum for the Grove of Two Coasts, but hey, I liked it, so I'm pasting it here too.

  The Potato Eaters--Van Gogh

Moonwriter and I were chatting (a dangerous things sometimes) and the reading list came up in conversation. Folks, let me tell ya, we have some required reading, but NOTHING like the founders had when they were going through their apprenticeship! ANYWAY. This idea occured to me to answer the question that some might have about "why do we need to read this ancient stuff"

Most of us will not have a problem with that, we like reading "ancient stuff" but why do it, we aren't going back to those ways anytime soon. I thought of Van Gogh, the artist. Think of his most famous paintings. They are beautiful, wild, "impressions" of the world around him. Starry Night is a wonderful painting, but it is not what we really see on a starry night. But then look at an earlier piece, like "Still Life with Bottle" or "The Potato Eater"  (Above)

and see how realistic they are. Van Gogh knew his stuff. He understood the foundations of art, how to create realistic pictures with balance, movement, composition, etc. all the things that make up great art. Then, when he had mastered the basics, he could stretch and create something new and amazing from it.....Starry Night, Sunflowers, Wheat field with Cypress, etc.

That's what we are doing, IMHO. We are learning our composition, our fundatmentals of our art, trying to see what the Druids of old did in a world where things weren't written down. (so the search is a tough one) THEN, we well be able to create our own new reality. Modern day druids. When we stand on the shoulders of the great pasts...be sure you know what makes up those shoulders before you reach for your starry night.

I'm Back and a change of focus...slightly

Not that anyone reads this, but I'm back and am mixing it up. This blog will be more than an herbal, but I'll still pop herbals stuff in now and again.  It is going to be a LOT less formal.  It is going to be about magickal things, druidry things, interesting things, and just things.

Come to my world!

First up.
I started with the Druid Grove of Two Coasts back in....oh...April?  I KNEW I should not have started it then, but as it doesn't have a timeline, I jumped in anyway. Sure enough, mundane world was way too busy, but I have been reading a bit and am just about ready to start filtering my apprenticeship assignments to Moonwriter, mentor extraordinare.

I had an idea of what Druids did, but confess I jumped in without really knowing. However, even a cursory look tells me I'm on the right path.  I can get behind the type of spirituality. 

So, my friends, stay tuned.  If I can figure out how to change the title of this blog I will, but in the meantime Sapphire's Herbal and Others is open once again.

Where did the summer go?

OH MY!  Well, I didn't mean to leave it hanging out there this long.  Mea Culpa.  Still, my blog, I can visit when I want to.

Peppers--as in Red Bell

I grew some!

The first one was rotten by the time I got to it, something found it and ate it from the inside, but the second one was still firm and really, really red. Thought that meant it was done.  It might have been "done" but it was sure bitter.  sigh.  I still have the little bugger, should probably use it or hide it in something or toss it before it goes bad anyway.  Perhaps it needed to say on the plant longer?  But I didn't want it to rot...I need to read up on it.  Umm, yes, it take nearly 100 days for red peppers to mature, that could be the problem.

Bell Peppers (green, orange or red..all the same) are

Angiosperms
Eudicots
Astreits
Solanales
Solanaceae
Capsicum
C. annuum

They are from South America and they are NOT a pepper...that is the Piper nigrum.  These fellows live in the Capsicum family or the chili...yep!

While they are chilies...they are a recessive plant and lack the heat of most chilis, that's why they're called Sweet Peppers!

Looking forward to my two pumpkins as well.

LEMONS!

OK...You've been more than patient.  Here it is!

Citrus limon


Lemon

Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae—A plant

Subkingdom: Tracheobionta—Vascular

Superdivision: Spermatophyta—with Seeds

Division: Magnoliophyta—It flowers

Class: Magnoliopsida—It has dicotyledonic embroyic leaves (two of them)

Subclass: Rosidae—a huge subclass of plants. Usually having separated petals

Order: Sapindales—usually woody with lobed leaves

Family: Ruteceae—part of the Rue family. Citrus is the most important member of the Ruteceae family that also included, naturally, Rue! The highly scented herb we all know and love. This family usually has leaves with glands on them that create the lovely scents given off by these plants. Ruteceae plants are flowering plants, which we already knew because of the Division citrus falls into—Magnoliophyta. The flowers usually have four to five separate petals. Those petals usually also have some nice smelly glands on them too which make the flowers smell so sweet. Lemon flower, orange flowers, and even rue all smells great. These flowers also tend to have more than one stamen, sometimes up to 8 or more and they are usually bisexual so they can just pollinate themselves.

Genus: Citrus—the citrus part!

Species: Citrus limon (L.)—specifically, a lemon

Description and Cultivation:

Citrus limon or Lemon comes from a relatively small tree that tend to be 10-20 feet tall at most and about 5 feet or so wide. The tree has grayish-brown bark . The branches lead to leaf stalks and the fruit, at the base of each leaf a small, but nasty little spine lurks ready to stab the unsuspecting lemon picker. Its leaves light green and are evergreen and are waxy in appearance. They are oval and have serrated edges. The leaves end in an axial and hold the five-petal, scent-filled flower that is mainly white but fades to pink and purple at the edges. Once pollinated, those fragrant flowers turn into the fruit to which we are familiar. The lemon itself starts as a small green fruit and gradually grows larger and begins to turn yellow. The fruit is egg-shaped with slightly pointed ends. The skin of the lemon contains most of the essential oil glands which is why the zest of a lemon is often cut or grated into food to provide that great lemon taste. Beneath the colorful, flavorful zest is the white pith which is a spongy tissue that acts as a barrier and protective layer between the outside world and the fruit below. Pith is notoriously bitter and should be avoided if one is cutting the zest or grating it for food. Below the pith the sour lemon fruit is separated into cells called juice sacs that contain the sour lemon juice. Real lemon juice is a green-yellow-white translucent liquid and it quite tart.

Lemons like loamy soil and a ph of between 5-6 but it can tolerate a ph up to 8.3 and as low as 4.3. Lemons don’t like too much water, and it doesn’t like to be dry either. It likes warm temperatures although with careful tending a lemon tree can withstand temperatures as low as -35F! However, as a rule, they like tropical climes. It is best if the temperature doesn’t go below 36F to maintain a healthy plant. Anyone cultivating lemons should not use manure as fertilizer as most citrus does not care for it. (And can you blame it?)

The seed of a lemon take two to three weeks to germinate if the temperature is consistently above 45F. The seedlings tend to arrive as twins and stay together for a few weeks before a lemon grower will separate the two plants into individual pots or locations. Lemons don’t like frost and don’t like to be moved, so plant them right the first time in a warm location. This could be why we don’t grow Lemons in Idaho.

Lost in Registration

Hi anyone reading except me

I've been swamped and had no item for herbs and wonderful things.

BUT...that is all ending soon.  Stay tuned.  I'm still here

SS