Fáilte go dtí Tara Celebrations - Celebrating the celtic year in ritual and meditation

AUTUMN (FALL) EQUINOX

---

Saturday 24th September, Mornington Beach, Co. Louth  5pm Picnic on the beach, 6pm Tara Celebrations:

“ Winding Down – The End of the Journey”

 

 

Autumnal Equinox Blessings to all

Its Lughnasadh Equinox and a time for natural endings and as such it is our last Celebration of the year before our re-emergence at Samhain at the start of the next Celtic cycle.

 

Gurbh maith agat for each and every one of you who have signed up for our e-mail notifications over the course of the year, those who tune in at a distance- literally from all over the world, those that travel to the celebrations and those that find it inspirational and fun. We have received much warm feedback and have had people plan their foreign holidays around the celebrations, so that we know we must be doing something right.

 

 

 

 

 

What’s Happening in Nature

Autumnal Equinox, Sun in Libra, Moon in Leo with Chiron rising, Day and Night of equal length, but from this point onward Night shall have the upper hand. The nights will get longer than the days. The temperature will get colder and the plants will start to die back, but give a grand finale of the autumnal colours. Harvest predominates the agricultural year and we can settle into the leaner, harsher times of winter living off the harvest of the Autumn. Of course those in the Southern Hemisphere have summer to look forward to.

 

Deletion of E-mail list

By the time you read this we will have closed and deleted the e-mail list. If you like what we did and how we did it you can always put in the effort to sign up again, this is your commitment to the group that you have an active interest in a living energetic process. All you have to do is send an e-mail to: martin.dier@gmail.com be included on the 2011-2012 list. (Simple!)

 

Underlying energies

Autumn Equinox is a time for recall, reflection, remembering . A time when we pause to consider in the light of mature recollection how we have invested our time and energy in; family, projects, relationships, social activities, education and improvements. It is a time to harvest that which has been productive for us and a time to remove the chaff from the kernel truth of our experiences. It gives us time to reconsider where we are investing energy and where we are going, especially since we are heading into lean and challenging times. Everything that is false will be challenged to pass away . It is a time for testing what we are made from, gathering the great delights of our soul and being grateful for all that we have experienced over the last 12 months. So our celebration this year will focus on Release and Gratefulness.

 

Overview of the Celebration

We will meet on Mornington beach, where the River Boyne ends her great journey, at 6pm, close to the turning of the tide. (But why not join us for a picnic at 5pm prior to the celebration).

 

Gratefulness and Remembering:

There we will bring the fruits of the harvest to the centre of our circle acknowledging the time of season of the year within as well as without. We will remember our Journey through the Year as a group, marking on the sand each Tara Celebration as a picture or symbol that we are acknowledging and release to the universe.

 

 

Release:

Then conscious that we are individuals as well as a group we will each draw our own individual human sized spirals and within them we shall mark each unresolved situation within us. We do this by drawing a tightening spiral to signify that we are turning off energy to this unproductive issue. We will then gather water from the River Boyne and symbolically wash away some of the mini spirals leaving the rising tide and the Grace of the God(ess) to totally transform and erase all our unresolved energies.

 

Open Heart – Everyone then gets a chance to share something of themselves perhaps in word, song, or artistic expression - ideas that have inspired them during the year.

Celebration: We will then come together as a group to celebrate with food and fun our endings to better enable us to celebrate the cycles of our lives.

 

Le Grá agus Solas - With Love and Light

The Tara Celebrations Team - www.TaraCelebrations.org

 

 

 

 

 

 Buíochas - Thank you - to everyone who came, participated and helped out-  Anne in the taking of pictures, John and Eileen in the food preperation and All who sat through a night of brainstorming to hammer out what was a beautiful spirit filled celebration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diary Dates

• 24^th Sept, Mornington Beach, Co. Louth.   5pm Picnic on the beach,

 6pm Tara Celebrations: “ Winding Down – The End of the Journey”,

• 28th Sept, “Saltwater Scribblers Talk” Illustrated lecture on Journey through the Celtic year, Drogheda
• 29^th Sept, “Quantum Leaps”  Life Changing programme, Headfort Arms Hotel Kells 7.30pm
• 1stOct “Be the Change” Dalgan Park 9.30am Tel 087 6760157 / meathbethechange@yahoo.ie, www.bethechange.org.uk
• 6^th  November -  Tara Celebrations -  Samhain ....details to be announced
• 11 Nov - 11:11 on Tara .....details to be announced
• 3-4 December – Holistic Pulsing Pulsing Weekend , An Tobar, €200 Learn how to gently rocked at rhythms close to the foetal heartbeat (120-160 beats per minute). The technique involves using both large and small movements as well as stretching and kneading.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owwD9j7pF0k
• On going - Monday meditations
• As of now - email list closed .Click here or send an e-mail to go onto the 2011-2012 list

Directions

Driving from the south pass through Bettystown and into Mornington with golf course and sea on right. At the first sharp left bend take the right hand road towards the beach.  Pass under the height bar into the car parking area.  If you get to the Texaco / Centra on the right you have gone too far.

Driving from the north, as you enter the housing area at Mornington you will see the Tower on your left.  Continue past the Texaco / Centra and where the road takes a sharp right you continue straight on, under the height bar and into the parking area.

Car parking area [circled] - this has large and deep potholes so drive with caution.  After the height bar, there is a large black domed construction surrounded by railings and with metal ladder, and one storey buildings, on the right side of the road.  You can park amongst the sand dunes in this area. But hide any valuables out of sight. (map attached)

 

---

21st September 2010

Many thanks to Anne, Bernadette and Sean for the photos.....

Walking past Dowth monument we arrived in the natural amphitheatre of St. Bernard's Well

 

Grasshopper was kind enough to share his corner of the field with us.

End of the year

In the modern world we usually assume that the day begins with dawn and ends with dusk.  However for the Celts we know that they believed that night preveded the dayand they started the timing of their days at night.  Similarly they believe that the year was born out of the darkness of winter so Samhain was their New Year.  That makes Autumn (Lughnasadh) Equinox the end of the celebratory year.  A carry over from that tradition is still with us everytime we celebrate things like Christmas Eve, Halloween or Hallowed Eve, Mid Summer Eve or St. John's Eve.

• We have come full circle through the wheel of the year and this time last year we were on the Hill of Tara and constructed a wheel of the year mandala, remembering the previous year's activities.  Brigid met with the Cailleach on equal terms and John gave us a colourful leaf blessing

• Samhain was celebrated at Dowth with some prickly gorse bushes!  We remembered the web of life of which we are all part, our ancestors, our inner dead selves represented by grotesque masks, and new beginnings, by burning the masks, releasing that which no longer serves

• Winter (Samhain) Solstice was so intensely cold we had to postpone the intended celebration on Tara and do it two weeks later on a smaller scale.  But we did celebrated and had a bon fire with magical blue flames thanks to some modern Druid alchemy

• Imbolc saw us return to Fourknocks, one of the most magical places on the planet, where we considered liminal space and participants were challend with riddles before entering into the cairn.  We drummed, danced and listened intently.  The Cailleach stripped off and transformed into the virgin Brigit, bringing with her the promise of fertility and growth.

• Imbolc Equinox celebration took place at Ardmulchan where we expereienced th polarity of malign and beneficent energies and chosse to rebalance ourselves in the positive.  Under the trees we listened to the River Boyne, built a mandala of branches, did a dance of balance, listened to a story of Lent in the 1930s, meditated on balance and blew bubbles thanking our past and welcoming the future.

• Bealtaine was an amazing journey over the Hill of Tara through the four quarters led by candle bearers with the golden apple of the sun and the silver apple of the moon.  We knocked on the fairy mounds to encourage the spring energies to awaken, gifted water to our mother earth and stood surrounded by the riotous gorse and had a powerful “clash of the ash” to let us know summer was on the way.

• Bealtaine Summer Solstice was a peach of a day. We entered the sacred space of St. John’s well  through summer herbs and a gong.  Celebrating summer we created a flower and herb mandala set into the petals of a St. John’s Cross, meditated in the peace of our surroundings, danced a circle dance based on the opening of a sun flower, and finished with ice cream!

• For Lughnasadh we celebrated pattern, pilgrimage and pleasure by drawing a giant triscle on the beach at Port and used it like a labyrinth. Keeping in the spirit of the three we picked out  some of the wisdom of the Irish triads.

 The end of the old E-Mail list (2009-2010)  Thank you for being part of our wheel of life over this past year which has seen both tragedy and triumph for many of us, the Buddhists might be telling us to find the middleway and certainly equinox is an expression of the balance.  After this E-mail goes out the E-mail list will be deleted (including additions as recently as this afternoon!).We encourage those that enjoyed their journey with us to request to be put on the 2010-2011 list and perhaps even suggest to others that may like to be part of what we areand what we may yet become. We have always had a great time planning and doing the celebrations and we have genuinely loved every minute of reading your e-mails and meeting you in the flesh,  and we hope you have enjoyed being part of it too. Here’s to the death of the old, roll on Samhain 2010.

Some of the folded up banners that were untied for the end of the ritual, Brigit puts on her dark winter cloak and begins her transition to the Cailleach. The scales (Sun now in Libra) reminds us of the balance of night and day, Anne had a bottle of Florida water in there and Conquers were threaded for a match in which the ultimate prize was the golden conquer. There's also a flowery head band, some crystals, nuts, seasonal fruits and water collected from St. Kierans  well near Carnaross.

 

Themes of Endings and Re-memberings

The broad theme of this celebration is endings and re-memberings. When we choose one course of action over another we end the possibilities of the other.

When we harvest the food from our gardens we end the growth and ripening and end the time we spent caring for the crops wellbeing. We also take time to re-member or to re-collect scattered memories from our past so that we may “live and journey here”.  This is why in this celebration we will be calling in the direction or energy of “Time” .

 

After calling in or re-membering the directions we will construct a radial pattern  with coloured cloth to represent each of the eight  celebrations, gathering in the energy of that celebration.  A meditation and poem should assist in this. Berni will prepare a dark winter cloak for the Bridóg who will end being the fertile woman persona and will start to embody more of the Cailleach persona.  Then we will do a simple anti-clockwise circle dance and push the energy deep under ground in complete reversal to what we did for the summer solstice.  This time of the year also presents us with obstacles so we will represent that by playing a conquer tournament and then invite people to harvest their own minds to share memories of the past.  If you cannot be there in person we can of course read out, on your behalf, anything you wish to send via e-mail saying why it is important to you.

  

  

Let the games begin.......                and the prize is......               a golden conker          

 

 

The Symbol:  

This year the symbol that arose spontaneously and essentially instantly

was based on the idea of the number 8 ,with the upper worlds being mirrored

on earth, and on the 8 spokes of the (pre) Celtic year. Combining these

concepts (on the 8^th Sept) brought out this symbol based on simple shapes

which include;

 

The sun, the closing of the sun flower, the rotary blades of a combine harvester, the balance at this time of year between the day and night, sun rising and setting directly opposite each other on the horizon line, Brigit with plats in her hair opposite the Cailleach also in plats, yin and yang, 8 celebrations of the year, cycle of the moon, At least 12 sickles,  The eyes open , The eyes closed, amongst other things.

 

 

Doing the circle dance of the year to Pachelbel's Canon in D

touching the earth with love and the ritual center

 Unfurling the spokes of the 8 fold year to become flags

 

 Many thanks to  Davide and Stefania for sharing this verse at the celebration: 

Oh Grano Maturo  Oh, Ripe Grain

Nella terra di primavera sei stato protetto, oh grano,  In the land of Spring you have been protected, oh grain,

nel sole d'estate sei diventato maturo, of grano,  in the summer sun you became mature, oh grain,

tra cielo e terra sospeso per una vita, grano maturo,  between heaven and earth for a life, ripe grain,

oggi noi ti raccognliamo per l'ultima volta.  today we will gather you for the last time.

 

Brighit, madre della primavera tuo figlio trovera il suo cammino,  Brighit, mother of spring your son will find his way,

Lugh, padre dell'estate il tuo seme trovera il suo cammino,  Lugh, father of the summer, your seed will find its way,

tra cielo e terra sospeso per una vita, grano maturo,  between heaven and earth for a life, ripe grain,

oggi noi ti raccogliamo per l'ultima volta.  today we will gather you for the last time.

 

Accompagnaci nell'inverno, tramutati in cibo,   Guide us in the winter, turned into food,

letto e tetto per le nostre case,    bed and roof for our houses,

portaci le gioie che porta un bambino in casa,  bring the joys of carrying a baby in the house,

cresci con noi diventa uomo, oh grano.  grow with us, becomes a man, oh grain.

 

 The entrance gates onto Dowth.  In our ceremony we remembered to 'knock at the door', as you would when visiting friends or neighbours,

before entering the space where we were to hold the gathering.

  In spiritual terms you might say that we were connecting to the guardians and spirits of the place asking for permission to enter. 

A short ode to endings…

 

 

The summer ends; the fall begins

 

Not all my chores are done.

 

I’ve tried and tried

My best besides to start the season done.

 

But alas, alack, summer’s now past

The autumn begins a new.

 

 The leaves will fall

 

 

 

The rake will come out

And jumping the piles will begin

 

 by  Edaine one of our distance celebrators

 

---

Hill of Tara - 20 September 2009

Thanks to the Mother

Autumn

I suppose we were inspired to create this symbol of the equinox during our planning meeting.

It can be read at many different levels and represents:

1. The Sickle of Autumnal harvest cutting the corn

2. Waxing, waning new and full moons ( We are holding the ceremony on a new moon)

3. Healing hands and the creative/healing space inside

4. Look deeply and you will also see 2 hands holding a heart

5. It's also 2 hands beating a drum

6. 2 hands holding the sun, moon, earth, the atom, a flower blossom

7. 2 intersecting Vesica Pices door way to the sacred

8. The open eye

9. Balance

 

Below: We had a "Churn" after the ceremony eating what nature and Tom and Anne provided us. This Lady Bird was joining in too.

 

Below the magnificant setting of our Autumn Equinox ceremony 2009

Here we go again At a time of balance it made us think about it 'cause we had to balance ourselves on the slope!

8th Ceremony 8  sideways is like a scale  and balance. - equinox

Loved the setting -  8 trees from the Ogham list stood around us. Elder, Pine, Oak,  Hawthorn, Gorse, Blackberry, Wildrose, Ash. ---- *  and the horsechestnut makes the Celtic sacred number 9

The Mandala looked great.  8 sections - and the sickles for balance -  looked almost like a see-saw.   (or sickle and ploughshare)

The Swallows swooping over head like sickles. (isn't it late for them?)

A butterfly kept flying in and out of the circle over the afternoon- tranformation and change

We all turned over a new(old) leaf!! :-)

The smudge reminded me of the autumn fires. the smoke rising in the air.

I love the way the chestnut tree has the conkers, the new buds and the old leaves

Autumnal Poem

Equal day and equal night, the wheel turns 'round. The dark half of the year calls, The harvest's safe and sound. Long nights by the fire, Inside warm cosy walls. Outside in the cold dark air The dark Cailleach calls. Time for resting. Time for dreaming. Time for just being. Anne

Below: one of the magical pine trees clearing the ley lines near our ceremony

Celebrating the finale of the celtic year before its rebirth at Samhain

Sacred native corn rich in colour grown from seeds used in out Tara Ceremonies. 100% organic and as native to Ireland as the humble spud!

Equinox is the end of the Celtic year when day and night are experienced in equal measure, a time to take a deep breath before diving into the darkness of winter. It is a time for considering the polarities in life such as; light and dark, poverty and abundance, living and dying, lofty ideals and grounding reality. Even the trees, who all summer moved sap up into the leaves, change, and start to pump it down into their roots. This date is a cardinal marker for the year and was considered sacred as far back as 5000 years ago when our Neolithic ancestors constructed solar aligned monuments (Cairn T Loughcrew) to mark the precise moment in time when the earth was in balance. The Greeks also had an understanding of the yearly cycles. They left us the legacy of Libra (the scales/balance), the constellation the sun moves into at this time of the year.

  

It is also a time of year when we are conscious of the travails of harvest and the work that people do to bring foods, goods and services to fruition. They are developing the resources we need to survive during the lean of winter.

 

September 2009 and a few days sun in which the late flowers and fruits glow and the insects share nectar

- then a misty Michaelmas day  & spiders webs appear

 

Below: Gráinneog or Hedgehog in Nobber

 

and yet we know....

the weather is noticeably getting colder and although not severe it is a firm reminder to prepare, that winter is on its way.

 

Harvest thanks giving 2008

Our ritualised meditation/ceremony on the Hill in 2008 honoured these principals through, meditation, reflection, and symbolic gestures.

The underlying energy is one of balance; retreating within and building resources,planning ahead and thanks for what has been, actively harvesting in the outer world whilst slowing down to dream a new world on the inner.  We enjoyed a beautiful sunny day which will bring bright memories in the dark of winter

  

   

 

We gifted two gorse bushes to the hedge around the well

   

Spring Equinox 2010 - the southerly plant has died but the northerly one thrives & 18 Jan 2011 & 24 April 2011

 

and sunset at the well brought a surprise when the photo was scanned

 

Page last updated: 27th Oct 2011