Raven Moon & Oestre

This is a wonderful time of the year (for those of us who live in the northern half of this beautiful world). Signs of new life are beginning to appear everywhere. We celebrate two rituals this month:

On 14 March our March Moon will consider the Raven, that proud member of the Corvus family, that has long been associated with mankind.

The 20 March brings Oestre, the Spring equinox, signalling equality and balance and the promise of joy and vitality to come.

Take some time to consider the thoughts of J R Gower, the Gwidion McPagan, who writes;

Taking the longest view, we are beginning to reach for the stars, yet we still act like spoilt, immature infants. Standing under the full Moon, lit by the flickering firelight and invoking the Deities, the human mind that knows itself as part of the whole can transcend mortal perception, as it has since the most ancient cultures, and fleetingly touch minds with the infinite.

That is why we share a language of Goddesses and Gods, of myths and vision, of the celebration of love and life, and hold them sacred. Ours is a tradition of recognising supernality

In reality, both that of the 'experiential reality' of the human mind, and of the 'objective reality' whereby we have now begun to understand the processes of
existence itself. The deepest principles of natural spirituality are also those upon which our future depends.

Nature will provide any cultural species (and we can no longer support the absurd vanity that we are the only, or in any way an exclusive one) with the same lesson. If you don't become sufficiently mature to care for your environment and each other, you will ruin that which provided everything you needed to outlive your solar system and you will end your own evolution. That is, quite simply, the truth. It is also why natural spirituality is reasserting its place in a scientifically aware world, and why the age of 'religions' is ending. Reality cannot be defined by a 'dogmatic set of beliefs', no matter how many choose to 'believe in' it, and such 'beliefs' create conflict.

If we do take the path of maturity and destiny, we shall eventually meet others. Considering whether they will have had to learn the lessons we know are crucial to our own destiny, natural spirituality is inclusive, religion ism is not.

Such a destiny has been considered by cosmologists and anthropologists. It is estimated some six million years will see us colonising the far reaches of our galaxy, but only if we can depend on Earth's environment for many millennia to come. During that future, there will come a time when human genes at one end of the 'sphere of expansion' will never meet with those at the opposite end, and our evolution will begin to branch. The children of Earth will have children of their own.

Does existence have a purpose? Try approaching it from another perspective: If our Universe had never given rise to life, would it have purpose? Without life, whence supernality?

For us, spirituality is our relationship to the infinite whole, and supernality is ; the experiential reality of that whole. Our great spectrum of Pagan traditions is at heart life celebrating existence itself.

Thus, blessed be.