Back when I was creating a Tarot spread for every spoke in the Wheel of the Year, I would try to imagine my way back to what my ancestors—Northern Europeans—would have experienced in that season and how they might have marked it. As each year passed, I would learn a little bit more about the futility of the task that I had set myself, but it was only during the lockdown of 2020 that I began to grasp the extent of my hubris. I went into lockdown thinking that, as a crafty introvert, I was fully prepared for that moment. To give you some idea of how full of myself I was back then, here’s something I wrote at Beltane of that year:
I know that Neopagan holidays are pastiche—a mix of real history, modern invention, and, often, wishful thinking—but we’re on fairly solid ground when we talk about the ancient roots of Beltane. The halfway point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice, Beltane is a riotous celebration of fertility. Most years, it takes some effort for me to imagine how much of a triumph and a relief it must have been to have survived until this moment—the moment when cattle can be let out to pasture, when the first seedlings are shooting up, when the frost is finally gone.
This year, though, it’s not that hard at all. Like everyone else I know, I’ve turned half-homesteader during lockdown. I’ve got herbs, vegetables, and flowers growing on every sunny windowsill. I’ve got sourdough starter I’m trying to keep alive. And it does indeed feel like a triumph and a relief to have survived until this moment.
Bless my heart.
At Litha, I was delighted with my little plant babies—and giving myself a pat on the back for raising them from seeds even as I acknowledged that nature was doing pretty much all of the work of growing my backyard garden. By Mabon, though, I had come to my senses. As I wrote at the time:
Expanding my backyard garden has taught me that I don’t know a damn thing about subsistence farming.
During our interminable March, I started a lot of bean plants, of many varieties, hoping to grow a superabundance of beans. (Beans are my love language.) I tended these plants as they grew on windowsills. I hardened them off outdoors. I planted them in the yard, and I watered them every day. Now it’s September. My bean plants are drying up. And I have just about enough beans to make a single pot of soup.
My point here is that, over the past few years, I’ve found it increasingly ridiculous—and spiritually unfulfilling—to try to live the Wheel of the Year as if I am a medieval European peasant or an Iron Age Celt. The Wheel of the Year as I know it is a modern invention, created by modern people to meet their own needs. As it turns out, the needs of our neopagan progenitors are not my needs.
Maybe it’s time to reinvent the Wheel.
Cecily Sailer and I are trying to do something like that with A Postmodern Witch’s Guide to Litha. Or, at least, we’re inching our way towards doing something like that.
I first became acquainted with Cecily through Typewriter Tarot, and I got to know her better when we talked about the Magician for her podcast. We were looking for a project to work on together when I realized I needed a fresh approach if I was going to writer about Litha for the Postmodern Witch’s… series. It was Cecily who suggested that we address climate change and how it has—as well as how it might—transform the way we celebrate the Summer Solstice. Co-creating with Cecily has been an absolute pleasure, and I certainly couldn’t have produced this zine without her inspiration; her contributions; and her organizational skills, which border on the sublime.
A Postmodern Witch’s Guide to Litha: The Climate Change Issue is available for preorder now. I hope to start shipping June 11.
This zine includes
An introduction to Litha
Some thoughts about fairies, the past, and how nostalgia shapes Neopaganism
An essay on living mindfully while temperatures soar
Poetry about our burning world and a brief interview with the poet
Ideas for addressing climate change at a personal, local, and collective level.
Our goal in creating and offering this zine is twofold. We want to encourage conversation about how we might reimagine pagan holidays, and we want to help readers find ways to turn their climate grief into positive action.
In the spirit of supporting collective action, we are donating all proceeds from this zine to the Waterkeeper Alliance, a venerable organization with a solid record of good governance. Why this organization? Because, in the language of the Indigenous people of the land where I live, Bimaadiziwin Nibi—water is life.