I've always been extremely obsessed with lunar and solar cycles. And even from my childhood in the desert Southwest (where the seasons are very different from the typical agricultural cycle) seasonal change was a huge driver for my emerging religious and magical practice. But it wasn't until I lived in Minnesota that I really understood the traditional "wheel of the year" that most Wiccans and Pagans use by default. The weather in Southern Minnesota replicates those traditional holidays very closely and living there was the first time I really understood Imbolc or Lammas. The other thing I learned from living in Minnesota was the importance of seasonal rituals as part of the passing of time. From spring cleaning, garden tilling, gutter cleaning, leaf burning, holiday light hanging / removing, and hanging storm windows, the people I saw who grew up in that landscape (where there were large extremes between different seasons) had these rituals that they'd grown up with and that they just naturally kept up as part of yearly maintenance for their households.
No, most of these rituals weren't deliberately magical, but they did have meaning beyond just the act itself and were conscious acknowledgements of natural changes (and it's not really a stretch to put a sigil for safety on your snow tires every autumn, is it?). For many of the people I met, these activities were also time markers. A way of anchoring themselves in the cycle of time. When I lived there I was still young and didn't appreciate the march of years and rhythmic traditions of people with a more defined sense of place. I was still focused on motion and change through action. Hey, I came from a tradition of striking out to new frontiers without the bulwark of family, so it's no wonder my 20s found me and my partner doing the same.
But now that I'm older, more settled, with a family of my own, I absolutely see the value of these acts. Time tends to blur as you age and especially buried in the busyness of parenting. Having these stakes in the ground are a reminder of the slow steady march of the seasons. That I can make these actions magical is a bonus. It's a way of preparing myself and my household for seasonal change and coming into tune with it.
Next to my front door, I have the following plaque (picture taken from a site where you can buy your own):
I originally purchased this from the local Pagan / Newage shop about ten years ago. It had been dropped and chipped (it's plaster) and so was massively discounted, but I touched it up with paint and it's not noticeable. Each arm of the cross represents a different season and there are four hangers on the back, so you can rotate it throughout the year. The description on the site I got this image said that the current season goes at the top, but that doesn't make sense as the image is only upright at the bottom so I always have the current season at the bottom of the cross.
Anyway, I've been hanging and rotating this thing for a decade now. This is much longer than most of my personal rituals and it's built up something of a magical charge. I don't rotate it on a fixed schedule, but based on the local environment and my intuition of when the seasons are actually changing. And what I've found through this process is that deliberately acknowledging the seasonal change through magic is extremely good for me. I don't live in Minnesota anymore, but I do live someplace that has four seasons with distinct energies. When I'm in harmony with these energies, I feel better and things go more smoothly. When I fight against them, then things are more difficult. And knowing this, I find that openings in our family's schedule appear that allow me to do the work I need to in order to transition.
One of these quarterly transitions usually involves updating the various charms and sigils around the house and switching them out as necessary, refreshing certain perishable components, and giving everything a good cleaning/cleansing. This is also the time to retire any sigils that have served their purpose, either because the goal was met or the situation changed enough so that the original goal is no longer necessary (I'm always surprised at how frequently the latter occurs). And naturally it's a time to start thinking about upcoming goals in order to create new sigils.
The summer has been busy this year, but the tide is turning (I need to change the calendar today) and I'll be doing more art and craft in the coming months. I have my quarterly goal clearly in mind and am planning a working this weekend to create some sigils and take some photos of existing artwork.
