Seasonal Paganism

Nimue Brown

Oct 5

(Nimue)

I'm going to be talking about seasonal Paganism at the weekend, at a Faery themed event at The Folk of Gloucester. I'm particularly going to be talking about this in relation to the folk traditions of the UK. We're not long past the autumn equinox, and one of the really notable things about it is the lack of songs. The same is true for the spring equinox.

Most of the traditional folk music in the UK that relates to the seasons has to do with stuff people were doing - bringing harvests in, making beer, shearing sheep, going to seasonally specific markets and fairs, and so forth. Some of the things that seem seasonal are basically just innuendos. Almost anything that starts on a bright May morning is likely to be romance, voyeurism or a mix of the two! Of equinoxes, you don't hear much.

The Irish festivals we honour as part of the wheel of the year relate to settled farming life, so there are plenty of things that tie in with them, and plenty of folk songs to draw on. As Samhain relates to Halloween, which is very much present in folk tradition, there's plenty to draw on. Imbolc and Candlemas fall at the same time so there are also traditions there. There are plenty of traditions around Midsummer and Midwinter that a modern Pagan can draw on. Equinoxes? Not so much.

If you want Pagan associations for the equinoxes you have to look at the alignments of prehistoric monuments. However, the people who built our stone circles were nomadic, or semi-nomadic so their wheel of the year was not the one we now celebrate. I would assume this must have been a very local thing and depending on which resources you were travelling to at any given point in the year.

The folklore for Samhain brings up some interesting things too because in terms of folk traditions it most certainly isn't just a festival of the dead. On the Christian side, All Souls Day, isn't as important as All Hallows Day / All Saints Day which follows it. This is a time when the fairy courts might ride out (as with Tam Lin). While there are some divination traditions around who might be going to die in the winter, there's also a lot of seasonal divination for romance and partners - mostly involving apples or apple pips which are of course most plentiful at this time of year. This isn't even slightly weird because there's a lot of divination out there about who your sweetheart will be, regardless of the time of year.

Traditions shift over time, and reflect people's lived experiences. As most of us aren't working flat out with harvesting and getting livestock in before the weather turns, we can afford the time to honour the equinox. Our more recent ancestors couldn't and so didn't. Further back, things were different. Seasonal responses are an interplay between human culture and the natural world, which is why there's no fixed right way of doing things.