Over the years I found articles about the Celtic wheel of the year to become more and more assimilated, repeating themselves with surface understanding, your post however was delightful to read, have personal and universal perspective and is a great reminder to us all - who want to re establish this connection - to procreate and immerse ourselves and our families in nature our home and creator/creatress.
The comments make me a bit sad, being a mom who deeply cares for this world and our species, because those of us who do are the best to have children to teach this love and care! Of course also teaching it to other children (doesn’t have to be your own)!
A very wise friend of mine recently said: „who benefits from your fear?“ If you have no kids, would it really serve the world or instead serve the system that wants kids from blindly following puppets?
As has been mentioned below, I appreciate the idea that we are in a time of redirecting our instincts. While we are biologically driven to procreate, those who are still of appropriate age to do so recognize the damage we humans have inflicted on the planet, and worry that they are brining new life into a time of turmoil and scarcity. I see it less as disdainful and more as judicious, thoughtful even. I'm not sure I can argue in favor of ever-increasing population. We have few natural predators (other than viruses and bacteria!) so perhaps there is evolutionary learning taking place in the recognition of limited resources and the need for balance.
Thankfully, nature remains abundant if challenged by what we ask of her.
Thank you for more beautiful storytelling. I would like to comment I think the reason people are rejecting the marriage and kids thing is because women are sick of doing everything, most men do nothing for working in the family home. I am only common law, and if I could re-do it I never would have settled down with 1 person, even though my guy is great. The rage against the patriarchy hit me at 40. It's like I was blind and now I can see it. When you are young and beautiful you are IN IT, you can't see you're being used.
A brave post, when no one wants to speak about the devastating loss of romance, and its eventual entanglements and thus, Life, in our world... as if romance was an extra, a bonus, or some mass-produced fantasy. Thank you! Ahhh, eros... that which makes all we love. May the wild god of the woods and the Lady, too, bless our paths with a good dose of enchantment this Spring. Some say God is good. This time of year, I say: Sex is good.
Hi Jan, I so enjoy reading the Hedge Mystic. Spring is my favourite time of the year! I was saddened to read about the US census showing that the population growth has flatlined. The importance of families needs to return. 💖📒✍️🌞
I love this next turn of the Wheel! I have childhood memories of wearing a crown of paper flowers and dancing around the Maypole holding a colorful streamer as I danced! It’s sad that it isn’t done anymore.
My property is full of wild flowers just waiting for the right moment to burst into bloom. It’s been a bit more chilly here than the lower regions of Texas so pretty sure they’re waiting for the right amount of warmth and hopefully rain!
I sowed the wildflower seeds the previous year in hope of a beautiful spring bloom. We didn’t get the needed rain and had a brutal summer. Climate change has made our seasons unpredictable. This year we seem to be blessed. I prepared the ground and sowed the seeds by hand because I wanted to help sustain the pollinator population which is dwindling because of climate change, pesticides and loss of habitat. We are all Keepers of the Earth. I hope the Lord and Lady are smiling at my efforts.
A beautiful and sorrowful "mixed bag" is your post, Jan....what I mean is that the alchemy of the Green Man and The Lady is the way of nature and the assurance of a potent life force. Gardens, nests, birds, barefooted humans feeling their place in this dance reaches my soul with a hunger for a return to knowing our place in nature's way. At the same time, to go forth and multiply sends tremors through me as I look out on a "death obsessed" world that knows not its place in creation. Mothering is metaphorically a "lost art", a barrenness of 'womb knowing' that makes for very lost children and homelessness in women. A wise woman in the UK described the deep feminine as the river, the flow and source and the divine masculine as providing the 'banks", the borders of protection for this life force of the deep feminine. I do FEEL an awakening among many women to the dance of union of both these energies, call it Shakti / Shiva or Green Man / Lady and yet I FEEL that the great forgetting has pulled us so far from this alchemy and urge to pro-create LIFE in all its forms, human babies being only one. Can we go forward and multiply? Should we go forward and multiply? My own personal thought tends toward humans taking a rest from bringing in more humans and we turn our "maternal gaze" of mothering and care to earth and nature as our focus of "tending life" until such time as we renew the potency of our wombs and the masculine remembers its role of providing banks and safety and protection for what is birthed in all gardens, human and the greater sacred field of nature....thankyou for this theme today....because what is there to nurture and tend other than the great mothering force, the formless river flow and the remembering and renewal of the Green Man, the deep masculine to tend this great mothering force so that birthing and tending is returned to its sacredness.
Thanks for sharing all your wisdom and insights! I’m learning a lot.
This essay was meaningful to me as I was born on May 1.
I wanted to push back a bit against the end of the essay. I dare say many, like myself, choose not to have children because of our love for the earth and the planet’s sustainability. I find that my mothering energies are best used to nurture creation and other people. I know in the deepest core of my being that procreation is not for me (had I been born thirty years earlier I wouldn’t have had that choice).
And it’s clear that younger people are also deeply invested in helping right our planet.
Perhaps this disturbance in the force might be just what we need rather than something to be feared.
Over the years I found articles about the Celtic wheel of the year to become more and more assimilated, repeating themselves with surface understanding, your post however was delightful to read, have personal and universal perspective and is a great reminder to us all - who want to re establish this connection - to procreate and immerse ourselves and our families in nature our home and creator/creatress.
The comments make me a bit sad, being a mom who deeply cares for this world and our species, because those of us who do are the best to have children to teach this love and care! Of course also teaching it to other children (doesn’t have to be your own)!
A very wise friend of mine recently said: „who benefits from your fear?“ If you have no kids, would it really serve the world or instead serve the system that wants kids from blindly following puppets?
As has been mentioned below, I appreciate the idea that we are in a time of redirecting our instincts. While we are biologically driven to procreate, those who are still of appropriate age to do so recognize the damage we humans have inflicted on the planet, and worry that they are brining new life into a time of turmoil and scarcity. I see it less as disdainful and more as judicious, thoughtful even. I'm not sure I can argue in favor of ever-increasing population. We have few natural predators (other than viruses and bacteria!) so perhaps there is evolutionary learning taking place in the recognition of limited resources and the need for balance.
Thankfully, nature remains abundant if challenged by what we ask of her.
Appreciate your thoughts, as always, Jan!
Thank you for more beautiful storytelling. I would like to comment I think the reason people are rejecting the marriage and kids thing is because women are sick of doing everything, most men do nothing for working in the family home. I am only common law, and if I could re-do it I never would have settled down with 1 person, even though my guy is great. The rage against the patriarchy hit me at 40. It's like I was blind and now I can see it. When you are young and beautiful you are IN IT, you can't see you're being used.
A brave post, when no one wants to speak about the devastating loss of romance, and its eventual entanglements and thus, Life, in our world... as if romance was an extra, a bonus, or some mass-produced fantasy. Thank you! Ahhh, eros... that which makes all we love. May the wild god of the woods and the Lady, too, bless our paths with a good dose of enchantment this Spring. Some say God is good. This time of year, I say: Sex is good.
Hi Jan, I so enjoy reading the Hedge Mystic. Spring is my favourite time of the year! I was saddened to read about the US census showing that the population growth has flatlined. The importance of families needs to return. 💖📒✍️🌞
great read good post thank you so much it is greatly appreciated. BB
I love this next turn of the Wheel! I have childhood memories of wearing a crown of paper flowers and dancing around the Maypole holding a colorful streamer as I danced! It’s sad that it isn’t done anymore.
My property is full of wild flowers just waiting for the right moment to burst into bloom. It’s been a bit more chilly here than the lower regions of Texas so pretty sure they’re waiting for the right amount of warmth and hopefully rain!
I sowed the wildflower seeds the previous year in hope of a beautiful spring bloom. We didn’t get the needed rain and had a brutal summer. Climate change has made our seasons unpredictable. This year we seem to be blessed. I prepared the ground and sowed the seeds by hand because I wanted to help sustain the pollinator population which is dwindling because of climate change, pesticides and loss of habitat. We are all Keepers of the Earth. I hope the Lord and Lady are smiling at my efforts.
A beautiful and sorrowful "mixed bag" is your post, Jan....what I mean is that the alchemy of the Green Man and The Lady is the way of nature and the assurance of a potent life force. Gardens, nests, birds, barefooted humans feeling their place in this dance reaches my soul with a hunger for a return to knowing our place in nature's way. At the same time, to go forth and multiply sends tremors through me as I look out on a "death obsessed" world that knows not its place in creation. Mothering is metaphorically a "lost art", a barrenness of 'womb knowing' that makes for very lost children and homelessness in women. A wise woman in the UK described the deep feminine as the river, the flow and source and the divine masculine as providing the 'banks", the borders of protection for this life force of the deep feminine. I do FEEL an awakening among many women to the dance of union of both these energies, call it Shakti / Shiva or Green Man / Lady and yet I FEEL that the great forgetting has pulled us so far from this alchemy and urge to pro-create LIFE in all its forms, human babies being only one. Can we go forward and multiply? Should we go forward and multiply? My own personal thought tends toward humans taking a rest from bringing in more humans and we turn our "maternal gaze" of mothering and care to earth and nature as our focus of "tending life" until such time as we renew the potency of our wombs and the masculine remembers its role of providing banks and safety and protection for what is birthed in all gardens, human and the greater sacred field of nature....thankyou for this theme today....because what is there to nurture and tend other than the great mothering force, the formless river flow and the remembering and renewal of the Green Man, the deep masculine to tend this great mothering force so that birthing and tending is returned to its sacredness.
Thanks for sharing all your wisdom and insights! I’m learning a lot.
This essay was meaningful to me as I was born on May 1.
I wanted to push back a bit against the end of the essay. I dare say many, like myself, choose not to have children because of our love for the earth and the planet’s sustainability. I find that my mothering energies are best used to nurture creation and other people. I know in the deepest core of my being that procreation is not for me (had I been born thirty years earlier I wouldn’t have had that choice).
And it’s clear that younger people are also deeply invested in helping right our planet.
Perhaps this disturbance in the force might be just what we need rather than something to be feared.
Thanks again.