Lughnasadh

It's the time of first harvest. This year, our garden is full of nature's products. We had to remove some birches during spring, because most of them had started to rot. The absence of them has now released much more water to the other plants, one's death is one's life, indeed. Thank you, dear birches, you brought us lots of joy, firewood for winter and also leaves!

Lughnasadh is an agricultural fire festival and halfway between summer solstice and autumn equinox. In seasonal wheel of the year, we are between south and east and between corresponding elements of fire and water. The elements do affect out there. Fire has now special meaning. As evenings are getting darker, I've enjoyed liding an outdoor fire in our small fireplace at the back of the garden. All fields and meadows, with their old plants are gradually collecting colours of fire, but they still keep the green as the main colour. At this time, also waters invite, my daughter wants to swim everyday in our nearby river bay and as I have been enjoying my holidays, I've had chance to do that same. When floating still on warm water, I love to watch moon on the sky and I often also turn to all main directions in order to feel the power of earth, air, fire and water.

listen to your nature

In Finland, the beginning of summer has been magnificent to senses. Green has returned in a very short time and temperatures have been very abnormally high for his period. It's been very easy to tune one's whole being to this growth of wonder.

In a time like this, if you let your self go, open your mind and let the natural and primitive instincts wake in their own manner, the whole universe will open. The unnecessary restrictions created by consious mind disappear and you get closer to real life forces beneath the surface.

You might feel and even see the nature spirits, devas, hard at work (see the faunish creature on the lower right end of my picture I took three weeks ago in a nearby forest....

trees

Spring Equinox time, at least in Finland, is traditionally one of the best times during a calendar year to cut down too long and rotten trees around the houses. Couple of days ago, 4 birches (altogether 7 branches) were removed from around my house. There were good reasons for this: One tree was rotten, two of them sucked pretty much all of the water from my vegetable garden and 3 of them were too near the house (birch roots usually go under houses. Now, however, we still have several trees (also birches) left, which is wonderful.

The birches were cut down by professionals and I took care of the after-work by sorting and cutting of smaller branches. All that is very hard and time-consuming work. I enjoyed it a lot (March full moon was also glowing nicely with a warm shade) as well as my daughter who helped me very much by removing bark from tree trunks (for fire-making) during those days. She enjoyed that much more than playing with some of her plastic toys.

I've lived a decade with those trees. I've received a lot from them; protection (also for the birds) and beauty, but also leaves during the autumn! As a last word, I thanked them for their lives in my garden.

March hares

"Those are hares, not silly old rabbits. Lovely March hares.” This is one of my favourite quotes from the classic cult movie 'The Wicker Man'. 'Mad as a March hare' is an old English phrase which refers to unpredictable and wild behaviour (of hares during their breeding season).

The seasonal wheel of the year is turning towards light (spring equinox is nearing too) and all living things feel this burst of new power within themselves. It's time for us humans to prepare for the approaching spring and summer, start new things like for gardener to sow seeds or for a musician to initiate new songs.

What's important here is to let the surrounding nature to enter and energise your mind. Just like the March hares.

of spirits of the place

For a practitioner of druidism or any other earth-related spiritualism, it's important to know the spirits of your place. By spirits of the place, I mean the dreams, memories, images and even the symbols which are connected to and which arise at places familiar to you. This could be like a larger landscape where you grew during your childhood or a small wild forest spot in the center of a big city where you now live. You can recognize these spirits only if the place is familiar to you, i.e. you visit there frequently or you spend there longer periods. It could be, for example, the garden behind your house.

I personally believe that these spirits, mythical images or whatever you want to call them, can be found from everywhere on our mother earth. On a larger scale, this could be illustrated for example by examining what kind of music (or any cultural products) people living in different areas of the world make up. Finland is a country known for it's dark and gloomy metal music. It's not surprising for a random visitor from abroad to realise from where all this 'Finnish' feel in our metal music rises in to surface. It's in the nature around us, in the forests and lakes, countryside of Finland. The Finnish vibe and sound.

I also incorporate certain elements from my Finnish roots in to our music. It shows most frequently in the melodies. I think that it's also possible to draw in from the sources which, from a short glance, are located geographically far away from us. For me, for some reason, celtic sources have always felt very familiar and intriguing. The 'druid metal' comes from these reflections.

A couple of weeks ago I started also experimenting with Finnish lyrics by trying to concentrate on images and myths of a certain period in history of Finland. With some effort I managed to get som results in form of songs and lyrics. The powerfulness of the images and their vividity was surprising, also the way how they very easily turned into their form.