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A Pagan Earth Day
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Earth Day is about celebrating nature, so what better way to celebrate than in the great outdoors and with a group of people who draw spiritual inspiration from their natural surroundings. Eight Forty-Eight’s Kristin Moo took a road trip north this past Saturday for a pagan Earth Day celebration. The daylong event took place at Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve in southwest Wisconsin, 30-some miles west of Madison.
Okay, let’s begin by dispelling a myth or two:
FOX: You know, that pagan word really has some baggage connected with it.
Selena Fox is pretty much the human incarnation of Mother Earth—she’s a huggable woman, with this long, wavy grey hair. Today it’s pinned back with peacock feather barrettes. And she’s wearing a loose-fitting green cotton top matched with a flowy green skirt. She’s the founder of Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve, and a Wiccan priestess.
FOX: We honor the cycles of nature—that is, the turning of the seasons and the cycles of the moon, and harm none, do what you will. We honor the divine as a great unity and also as goddess and god. And in multiple forms: earth, air, fire, water, spirit.
Today’s Earth Day celebration includes some elements of that spiritual connection with nature, but it’s also about the practical relationships between humans and the Earth.
There’s a workshop on nature mapping—to teach people who see a bird or a bear in their backyard or on a hike how to enter that data into a website, where it becomes part of a statewide biodiversity survey.
There’s a controlled prairie burn, crafts for kids, and a presentation on raptor rehabilitation.
But the highlight of the day is the trip up a hill to Stone Circle, which is pretty much just what it sounds like: a clearing amongst trees marked by a circle of stones. In the center, more stones make up an altar. It feels more than a little bit like a good old-fashioned Girl Scout sing-along.
There are about 30 celebrants ranging from baby to grandmother, from standard crunchy-granola to all-out nature worshiper.
ambi: Kids singing “inch by inch”…
That’s Lula and Greine Franzman-Simmert.
Kate Franzman and her husband brought the kids here from their home nearby.
FRANZMAN: I think that, you know, helping our kids understand that connecting to all of life around them is important.
One of the connections this day particularly encourages is the human connection with wildlife—earlier this morning, the kids made masks of their favorite animals.
And as part of the ceremony, Fox conducts a memorial for extinct animals, and for other animals who have died this year, most notably:
FOX: A cougar departed for Chicagoland and is no longer alive. There are different ways to approach wild animals in our midst. So may the spirit of that cougar be a teacher for us and wake us up to the fact that we’re part of a web of life. Let us remember the cougar.
ambi: bells
The kids then don their animal masks for a happier communion with wildlife.
FOX: I invite all young people who want to be part of the dance of the animals to come forth.
And come forth they do, for a dance around Stone Circle. And to cozy up to a plushy cloth globe:
FOX: Come on up, we’re gonna hug the planet. (Hug the planet!) Hug the planet! (Get your hand on it, ooooh!)You all want to come and hug the planet? Okay (that’s a girl, good job!) We love planet earth!
Chanting: We love planet earth.
After making individual wishes for the environment, and a little more singing. Standing along the perimeter of Stone Circle, everyone clasps hands:
FOX: We are a circle within a circle, with no beginning, and never ending.
The crowd then disperses to check out the green cemetery and to watch the burning of the prairie.
As the tallgrass crackles, I catch up with Caroline Quinlan, who’s from DeKalb, Illinois. She says today’s about remembering that humans are part of something bigger:
QUINLAN: ‘cuz the way we live is so disassociated. The way we get our food, you know, we just all of us, we just don’t get it, we forget that. You know, really the only hope, besides all the political activity, is for people to start to get that again.
Indeed, being out here, it’s hard not to get that, that rolling prairie in front of you, soaring trees behind you, hawk-floating above you feeling.
FOX: Happy Earth Day! Response: Happy Earth Day!
ambi: singing: This land is your land…
The Magic of Beltane May Day Celebration takes place at Circle Sanctuary, May 2-4, 2008.
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Rev. Apophis Samhain Valkyrie, wausau, WI // Friday, April 25, 2008 @ 11:57 PM
thank you eightforty-eight for doing this segment on Pagan Earth Day. More needs to be done to promote communion with the environment and nature. Sincerely the Director of Wausau Pagan Interfaith asv.
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