The Wheel of the Year

You may have noticed my "Important Dates" list on the sidebar. For those of you not in the know, they are the standard neo-pagan holidays: the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days (the days halfway between solstice and equinox). Those of you who are in the know might draw the conclusion that I am Wiccan. This is not the case.

I choose to celebrate these holidays for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, the fact that only small number of people observe them means they are largely immune to commercialization. It also means that I can celebrate them quietly and peacefully. No stress. No spastic, ill-behaved relatives. No frantic shopping or conspicuous consumption. Just calm contemplation of the changing seasons and the cycles of nature.

Currently, I have no special rituals corresponding to any of these holidays. It is enough for me just to mark their passing. Ironically, without all of the blaring advertisements like those that remind us that Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. are approaching, I sometimes miss a sabbat here and there. That's fine, though. No one will think less of me for it, which is exactly as it should be. Holidays were never meant to be contests or yardsticks by which to measure our success. Failure to realize that is what makes holidays so miserable for so many people.

Labels

I'd like to label myself. Labels make things a lot simpler, even if they aren't entirely accurate. When it comes to spirituality, however, I can't even apply the really generic labels like theist, atheist, pantheist, deist, dualist, etc., much less consider myself a member of a particular religion...ugh, the very word makes me shudder. I think all human beings, for whatever reason, have some need to interact with the sacred, but it seems like the process of defining and codifying that interaction hopelessly obscures whatever we thought of as sacred in the first place. There must be something more intuitive, less contrived that would satisfy that need. Let's see if I can find it.