By Dan Spitzner
September 19, 2021
Calling the Four Directions: Text by Jane Carnwath. Read by Sue Miller.
Grandmother and Grandfather of the EAST — Spirits of the morning, of inspiration, of new beginnings. We ask you to give us your clarity of thought, your quickness, your creativity, and your courage.
Grandmother and Grandfather of the SOUTH — Spirits of joy and spontaneity, of the day at its height. Grant us your gifts of deep emotion, of empathy, of warm hearts and of caring for one another. Let your rich imaginative powers infuse our endeavours.
Grandmother and Grandfather of the WEST — Spirits of the gathering dark, of the shadow, the unknown, of mystery, and magic. Give us the strength to confront and explore our own darkness and fear, for the insights they contain.
Grandmother and Grandfather of the NORTH — Spirits of completion, of acceptance, of integration, and individuation. Help us to take the hard decisions that sometimes face us, that we may achieve reconciliation, balance, wisdom.
Music: Because the service was virtual it was necessary for music to be pre-recorded. I contributed the following two recordings for the service. The first one, “Harvest Moon” was played as a call to worship. The second, “Wish You Were Here” was played immediately following the message.
- “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young. Performed by Dan Spitzner.
Click here to link to the recording.
- “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Performed by Dan Spitzner.
Click here to link to the recording.
Message: “Seeds of Harvest,” by Dan Spitzner
Good morning. Today I speak to you during a season of harvest, a time of gratitude for the seeds planted long ago, which have since germinated, survived into maturity, and have now blessed us and the world with their fruits.
The author Pauline Campenelli writes that in her corner of the world, in the northeast United States, September is the time of the grape harvest, the squash harvest, and the corn harvest, as well as a time to harvest a variety of herbs. In the Celtic lunar calendar, the first full moon after the Autumn equinox is called the Wine Moon, in acknowledgement of the grape harvest. However, a parallel tradition calls it the Harvest Moon, for the reason that it provides light to continue pulling in the harvest past sundown. When days begin to grow shorter, and there is still a great deal of outdoor work to do, a bright moon is a welcome blessing.
Many who follow an earth-based spiritual path celebrate the Autumn Equinox as Mabon, the second of three harvest festival days in the Wheel of the Year, an annual cycle of eight festival days inspired by ancient Celtic seasonal calendars. The first harvest festival took place on August 1, and was celebrated as Lughnassadh, a time when the first fruits of the year are harvested, when people bake bread, and when it may just start to become noticeable that the days are getting shorter. Mabon, the second harvest festival–which is celebrated right about now–, is a time of balance and harmony, when the lengths of day and night are equal. It is sometimes called the Pagan Thanksgiving. This time of year moves us ever closer to Samhain, the third harvest festival, which falls on October 31. This festival day marks a major shift of the spiritual year, when darkness takes over light, and the last of the harvest is brought in.
When we look past Samhain, we are aware that the treacherous season of winter is on the horizon. This is not only a time of darkness, but of death, as the trees, having already put on their blazing display, lose their leaves and go dormant; plants die, and animals enact their meticulous strategies against starvation and other risks of winter. When I stand face-on against a cold winter wind, I find that these risks are palpable, despite our modern protections.
In a book called “Wintering,” the author Katherine May reminds us that the stillness such as one finds in winter is a time for recentering. She writes of the healing power of cold, and also of metaphorical winters–that is, of fallow periods in our lives–when stasis can enable metamorphosis, and when metaphorical seeds may be planted, setting in motion the journey to a future harvest.
This is the cycle that I would like to explore today: the front half of the cycle is from harvest to winter, and the back half is from winter to harvest. Around the Autumn equinox, these seasons are in balance with each other, and each is in balance with itself: The energy and joy of harvest is balanced by its anticipation of a dark season ahead. The treacherousness of winter is balanced by its stillness, hence its enabling of reflection and recuperation.
I have mentioned in past sermons that my own spiritual path is polytheistic, and syncretic–that is, it draws on multiple religious traditions. It is particularly inspired by neo-Pagan practices associated with the pre-Christian religions of Scandinavia and the Germanic regions.
As part of my own spiritual practice, I have recently become fascinated by an ancient writing system known as the runes. The runes themselves are, on one hand, the letters used in this writing system; on the other hand, over the centuries each rune has taken on a mystical meaning, and together they are at the center of a set of pagan devotional practices. This morning I would like to bring in a “runic” perspective to explore our theme.
Historically, rune writing is found most prominently carved into stones that were erected across Scandinavia throughout the middle ages. On these so-called runestones, the purpose of rune writing is functional language: stones were erected to memorialize family members and prominent individuals, some of whom had traveled to distant lands but never returned. Rune writing was influential to J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings fantasy novels, who invented runic systems and included them in his writings.
As I mentioned, the runes themselves are the letters used in those writing systems. Some runes were misused by the Nazis as symbols of their abhorrent ideology, and some are misused today by white-supremicist hate groups. Nevertheless, there is growing energy within the modern pagan movement to reclaim the runes by using them in the manner of their authentic purposes, which includes their mystical purposes.
The runes’ mystical uses are varied. They are attested in reports of ancient divination and spellwork that date from Roman times, and feature prominently in Norse mythology. In the 1970’s, the runes were popularized for their use in divination, as a counterpart to tarot and other oracular systems.
In divination, any of a number of creatively-fashioned procedures are used to draw a subset of runes, which might then be arranged within a template, after which the entire arrangement is interpreted according to the runes’ mystical meanings. Some may say that I am talking about “fortune telling,” but that description is too simplistic. As I see it, the purpose of divination is to help a person to organize their perspectives and priorities around a given topic or question. I will apply the runes today in a similar fashion, as a tool that would offer perspective on our theme.
There are several runes that are relevant to the cycle of harvest and winter. Following convention, I state them using their Old Germanic names.
JERA is specifically associated with harvest. It is taken as an expression of transformation across seasonal cycles, and of balance between primal forces, which must be achieved for life to flourish.
ISA is associated with ice, stasis, and inertia. An image associated with this rune is the “broad bridge” created when water becomes frozen over. It is slippery and treacherous if attempting to cross, but its glistening beauty can inspire retreat into the stillness of inner-awareness.
HAGALAZ is associated with hail. Ancient poems about the runes describe an individual hailstone as an “ice egg.” Though hail can be a destructive force, which is out of our control, the ice-egg metaphor emphasizes that melted hail nourishes the land. This rune is representative of ice becoming a support for new life, and new harvests.
Finally, we have INGWAZ, which is associated with the fertility god Freyr. He is said to have been the seed-ancestor of multiple royal houses across northern Europe.
Let us start with JERA, the rune of harvest.
This is a joyful rune, and I connect to it through a recent metaphorical harvest that is symbolized by a milestone I reached this past summer… I turned fifty years old. This significant birthday had been on my radar for some time, and when it finally arrived I felt very good about stepping across that threshold. Because I am in a good place, personally and spiritually, after having overcome personal history of confusion, self-destruction, and sadness, it felt like a harvest of life experience, grown from seeds that were planted long ago. I will come back to this in a moment.
But first, I would like to share with you the story of my favorite non-metaphorical–actual agricultural–harvest. This took place decades ago, but not in my childhood. Yet, metaphorically speaking, that is when the seeds were planted. Growing up in the country, I was raised in part by an eccentric and curious father with a farming background. He was a hobbyist farmer and I was surrounded throughout childhood by his experimentation. Later, I would forget about this early attachment I had to the land; I would become anchorless, immersed in professional pursuits, and swept away by the puzzling world I had stepped into upon moving away from my little hometown.
The favorite harvest I would like to tell you about took place during my early adulthood, when I was living in North Carolina, and had begun to feel confident enough professionally to put energy into home. I planted my first garden as an adult. As I planned, and shopped for plants, and planted, I rediscovered joys that I had not experienced since those days with my father during childhood.
My North Carolina garden turned out to be a mess. Despite my enthusiasm, I did not know how to take care of most of what I had planted; all of my squash plants developed mold, and quickly perished; however, my strawberries–my strawberries!–they flourished, and gave me more delicious fruit than I knew what to do with. Unbeknownst to me, I had planted June-bearing strawberries. You may know that, in contrast with everbearing strawberries, June-bearing varieties produce their whole crop in a short time period of just a few weeks. The fruit is lucious, sweet, and simply delicious. Once a few berries started to ripen, they all started to ripen. Each night for several weeks I’d fill up a large colander of strawberries. In my memory, this overwhelming success I had achieved in that one small corner of my garden completely overshadowed the numerous shortcomings of the rest of the garden.
This brings me to ISA, the rune of ice.
I still celebrate a great period of stasis in my life, which ultimately led to rejuvenation. This metaphorical winter began in 2014. At the start of that year, I was in the last gasps of a crumbling marriage, which had ended by summer. I was then on my own, trying to figure out how to be a single father. Most of my social connections were linked to my ex-wife. So it was just me. But that state of aloneness turned out to be a state that I embraced for its opportunity to heal and grow. In fact, I do not remember that period as especially lonely. During that time I established a healthy relationship with myself. I established spiritual practices that connected me more closely to the divine and felt more authentic than any I had practiced before. These practices became a salve, and eventually an anchor of my social self. They were seeds that grew into bountiful harvests of connection to human spiritual communities, to friendships, and to love, family, and eventually to an uplifting life-partnership. These were seeds that allowed me to face my fiftieth birthday with joy.
The HAGALAZ rune reminds us that harvest is messy; and it is hard work. Those who reap in the fields during the season of Mabon do not have it easy. They work hard under the light of the Harvest Moon. HAGALAZ is both destructive and nourishing. It reminds us that life does not move in straight lines.
In Katherine May’s book, “Wintering,” she highlights the stirring fact that when certain deciduous trees lose their leaves, the buds of new leaves are already in place. That is, even as the tree’s cycle moves toward stasis, it has taken its first steps toward a new and fruitful season. Such is the energy of HAGALAZ, the ice-egg
This brings us to INGWAZ, the rune of the seed-ancestor; the rune that expands the seed-to-harvest concept across generations.
Ancestry is a challenging topic in the context of pagan spirituality. Some groups problematically misinterpret the virtue of showing reverence to ancestors as implying that particular ancient populations are to be granted superior status. This is clearly wrong. It is wrong not only for its elitism, but for its reduction of ancient cultures to stereotypes and caricatures. In my experience, the wisdom of ancestors is best accessed when reverence is directed toward specific individuals, not their ethnic group or general culture.
The ancestor I hold with special reverence is my father, the eccentric farm-hobbyist I mentioned in my comments about JERA. When he died, it was sudden, and unexpected. It came during my teenage years, at a time when I really needed a dad. But the seeds that he and my mother had planted sustained me in no small way through the years after. My father’s death opened an expanse of emptiness at the core of who I thought I was. Not a day goes by that I do not wish that he was still here. Yet, the memories of that optimistic, love-filled home environment remained; and when the time was right, those memories allowed me to start planting metaphorical strawberries, and to eventually grow a love-filled environment around which I would wrap my own dearest ones. The journey was not easy, as no harvest ever is.
Harvest time, then, as JERA reminds us, is more than the end of a growth season, but a moment in a full seasonal cycle, and a majestic expression of seeds that had been planted before. ISA reminds us of the coming tests of our resilience and fortitude during winter, and opportunities to sow the seeds of future harvests. HAGALAZ reminds us that harvest is not easy work, nor is the path to harvest, which is almost never the straight path we might want it to be. INGWAZ reminds us to not only celebrate the seeds we ourselves have sown, but the seeds sown in us by those who came before.
In addition to these four runes that I have brought forth to explore our theme, perhaps it would be useful to add a fifth rune, one whose ascribed meaning would remind us to cherish what we harvest today. In existing runic systems there are many candidates for such a rune; for example, the FEHU rune has the ascribed meaning of abundance, which may just as well be the abundance of harvest. However, if I were to be imaginative, perhaps I would invent a rune that would have that meaning of cherishing what we harvest. Perhaps it would be symbolized by a strawberry–or, better, gallons of delicious strawberries–to remind us to stay optimistic, and to not become fearful of the mold that has destroyed our squash plants, but to revel in the successes at the corners of our gardens. Let us water them and allow those seeds to grow.
Additional reading, resources, and comments: Provided by Dan Spitzner
- Pauline Campenelli is the author of my go-to resource on the Wheel of the Year festivals. The book is “Wheel of the Year: Living the Magical Life”
- Two good books on mystical uses of the runes are as follows
“Taking Up The Runes,” by Diana L. Paxson
“Nordic Runes: Understanding, Casting, and Interpreting the Ancient Viking Oracle,” by Paul Rhys Mountfort.
There are many other good books available, but these two are my favorites. To be clear, these are not history books, but discuss the runes from a modern pagan spiritual perspective.