Wicca recognizes the cyclic patterns of everything–even spirituality. In some ways, I think the Judeo-Christian religions emphasize a linear spirituality: we are born sinful and must constantly progress toward a resistance of our sinful nature in order to one day embrace the perfect God. Perhaps Wicca shares some aspects of this linear path: after all, we always have personal progress in mind. But Wicca also recognizes–even embraces–constant change. Falls are just as important as rises.
Roderick notes that Wicca looks to nature as a metaphor for spiritual development, with the changes of the seasons in particular. We see that cool follows warm, death follows life, dark follows light, and that it all comes around again. None of it is really progressive–just cyclical and gradually unfolding. When nature is experiencing as season, it does not look forward or back: it simply exists fully in that season. Perhaps that is a model we should strive to match.
Roderick’s exercise today is to determine my own spiritual season first by reviewing the following list:
- Spring: newness, beginnings, birth, potential, seeding, awakening, freshness, individual way
- Summer: achievement, fruition, full potential, activity, growth, externalized expression, group way
- Fall: ripening, wisdom, maturity, reaping, receiving, realization, gratitude, reflection
- Winter: silence, internal expression, inward movement, release, repose
Exercise:
If you have any additional or alternative seasonal associations, take time to add those to the words listed above. As you consider your life as it is right now, which season seems to represent your current phase? Which represents your spiritual life? Honor your seasonal phases today by dressing in seasonal colors, eating seasonal foods, or listening to music you associate with your season. It is a good practice to periodically note your current spiritual season, so try this exercise again–perhaps at the next full moon.
I think Roderick’s list is a good one, though I am confused at the placement of “seeding.” Sowing seeds would be a spring thing for me, but a plant seeding? That’s fall, and the process of being a seed is more winter.
Either way, in both calendar season, life season, and spiritual season, I feel that I am square in spring. Daffodils and tulips are in riot outside; I’m beginning my adult life; I’m beginning graduate school; I’m just starting to find my feet. In addition, I’m starting to become more systematized about my spiritual practice–really for the very first time. I’m definitely trying and doing a lot of “new” things every time I turn around.
Three Hundred and Sixty-Six 