Feb. 2 is the exact halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is the winter midpoint or cross-quarter day. The darkest, coldest season is now officially half over!

Though the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the day with the fewest sunlit hours, is...

A year, no matter how it is determined, is simply the marker of a complete cycle. The transition, the precise turning point, between the end of one cyclical period and the start of another designates a new year. Our birthday is our own personal New Year.

I was born...

A year, no matter how it is determined, is simply a complete cycle. The transition, the precise turning point, between the end of one cyclical period and the start of another designates a new year.

A year is like a life cycle.
It starts, it ends, then you...

With the recognition that the solar light in the sky makes it possible for there to be life on Earth, comes enlightened responsibility. As the sun energizes our lives, so too, must we return energy skyward at the solstice when the winter light is at its weakest.

As Mother...

At the close of the growing season in autumn, people, like squirrels, like ants, like bees, get busy gathering the great bounty of the land. We forage and harvest, hunt and herd; industriously amassing the abundance proffered by the earth, water and sky. After the toil, the patient tending of...

Where in the world did October go? September sped by in a blur. And August was gone in a flash. How did that happen? Where did the time go? The weeks and months, it seems, just melted into each other. But each single day seemed endless.

Last week I bumped...

Halloween descends from Samhain, the most significant holiday of the Celtic calendar. Being a pastoral people, the Celts counted their seasons according to the needs of their cattle and sheep, rather than the agricultural seasons that farmers might mark. The year was divided into summer, when the herds are led...

We have been inundated lately on all fronts -- astrological, spiritual, political, economic, environmental -- with threats of terror and trauma. These are indeed very scary times. What is at stake is our safety, our peace of mind, our centered inner selves, our very lives and the lives of all...

Since the world and all of its constituent parts are always turning, there are many possible ways to calculate when a year is new. And, consequently, there is great diversity among peoples as to the determination of the actual new year.

The Slavs and Norse reckoned years from one...

When the planes flew into the twin towers, I was out of the country. It took me more than a week to get past the sealed borders and return home. One thought consumed my mind during that agonizing week of separation from my house, pets, friends and the city that...

Avid moon watcher that I am, I must confess that I never could recognize the face of the man in the moon. How could anyone conceivably mistake that face -- that round, profoundly gentle face, jolly and eternally indulgent, that unconditionally comforting countenance -- for male?

The dark marks...

Summer has become intolerable for me. It is just too damn hot and I am miserable, sweaty and cranky most of the time. But when my little pooch, Poppy, starts panting in the heat -- her little pink tongue hanging out of her open mouth -- I know the dog...

As of August 1 summer is half over. The midway point of summer is like a well-seasoned woman. The galloping growth and sweet blush of spring have slowed and faded in her sweltering heat. She's slower now, and surer. Strong and steady. She's salty and sultry and a little bit...

Because the sun is always, predictably, invincibly there -- in temperate and tropical climates, that is -- it was deemed to be all seeing, all knowing, all powerful. Omnipresence = omniscience = omnipotence. An eye is the symbolic expression of this concept. Several African tribes regard the sun as the...

In archaic times, people perceived the sun, in its shining prime and glory, the giver of heat and light and life, to be the effulgent force of the female. A passionate aspect of the great mother, the versatile jill-of-all-trades who issues forth and supports whole life. She is the heaven...

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun has been inching its way back into our lives ever since the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Rising slightly earlier each morning and setting a minute or two later every night,...

When I first started my shamanic practice 35 years ago, the most common reaction to my work was rolled eyes. People would sigh and look up to the sky as if searching the heavens for a nice, rational, normal person to talk to, instead of the kook I was perceived...

Despite the fact that the surface area of our planet is more than two-thirds water, usable water is not necessarily readily available. Most of Earth's water is in the seas and marshes, and consequently, way too salty to be potable. Most of the rest is frozen solid, locked in ice...

Sometime, usually between about 45 and 55 years of age, we lose our monthly blood and hormonal balance. Menopause marks the termination of our participation in the bottom-line, bigger-than-we-are, biological imperative of our species. Our reproductive potential is now no longer an option. Whether or not we chose to use...

May Day is an old European spring fertility and copulation festival held in honor of the trees and their mistresses, the virgin vegetation goddesses. Celebrated as Floralia by the Romans, Walpurgisnacht by the Teutons, Whitsuntide by the Dutch, and Beltane by the Celts, it centered on romantic devotions to the...