The Light Returning

Author and teacher Waverly Fitzgerald has been fascinated with calendars and seasonal lore since her Catholic childhood. She wrote period novels and calendars for many years. In the early 1990s, she joined with Helen Farias and Joanna Powell Colbert in reviving the noted women's spirituality journal The Beltane Papers.

Later editor of the journal, Waverly resigned after a few years to devote more time to her own writing and teaching. Her self-directed learning course, School of the Seasons, introduces individuals to seasonal correspondences and the circular nature of time. Her School of the Seasons Web site offers a generous helping of the spiritual insight to be gained -- Waverly's world- and era-spanning knowledge is impressive, her tone is warm and welcoming, and her ideas and creative suggestions are often startlingly simple.

What kinds of people gravitate to School of the Seasons? Have you noticed any trends since putting it on the Web?

I assume most of the people who gravitate to School of the Season are pagans, which makes sense because it's linked into several pagan sites, like my friend Joanna's art and Lunaea Weatherstone's site.

You've been connected to the pagan community for many years. Have you seen changes in that community over that time?

Although I know other people see me as part of the pagan community, I've always felt rather peripheral to it. I haven't seen too many changes within the pagan community but then I'm in the new guard of paganism--post-Starhawk.

Most of the pagans I meet go through a predictable phase of total infatuation with the Craft, which gradually mellows, as in any relationship. Spiritual practices or beliefs that don't work get discarded, others (perhaps from previous religions or new paths) get added. What emerges is a new and individual blend.

What I have noticed that's new is an increasing acceptance of pagan ideas in the mainstream.

Your calendars and curriculum easily blend Christian feast days and holidays with the earth-based seasonal holidays, as well as those from other spiritual paths. Why is that blending important to your approach?

I love blending holidays from many different religious traditions because I like looking for the underlying commonalities, especially those based around the energies of the seasons. I think too often people use differences to separate themselves from others. This is an early stage in the process of defining your own spirituality, I think, and one that is essential. But it gives way, at least in my experience, to a desire to find and make connections.

No one has ever objected to the blending of customs found on the website. However, back in the old days when I was the calendar maker for The Beltane Papers, a journal of women's spirituality, we had one reader who cancelled her subscription after I mentioned the folk custom of planting potatoes on Good Friday to honor the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. She thought such a Christian reference did not belong in a pagan magazine. I thought Christ was as deserving of mention as any of the other dying and resurrected gods of spring like Tammuz and Adonis.

You mention "the energies of the season". Our ancestors' day-to-day lives were much more intimately tied to the cycle of the seasons. Today, our lives are so insulated from many aspects of that seasonal energy. What's your advice to people who are just starting the process of becoming more in tune with the seasons?

Many people find it easy to stay in touch with the energies of the season because they live in rural areas or have a deep connection with the earth through gardening or daily nature walks. I often feel like I am writing for myself when I talk about being disconnected.

Growing up in a suburb, I feel I've been dislocated all my life. And now I live in an apartment in the heart of a big city. But there are still ways for me to maintain a connection with the earth. Among the ones I choose:

• walking my dog around the block every day twice a day (it's not much but it's effective)
• gardening at a local community garden
• taking the bus rather than driving a car
• celebrating seasonal holidays that require me to interact with nature (in terms of gathering seasonal foods or evergreens for a seasonal wreath)

I'm also well aware of how the seasons affect me personally and give myself more alone time and down time in winter, and more space-out, don't have to be productive time in summer, while reserving my go-ahead, start-new-project energy for fall and spring.

What are the key elements of your own celebration of winter solstice? Is it the same from year to year, or does it evolve?

I almost always celebrate winter solstice the same way. I've been doing this for about ten years now so it may be time to change things.

I take the day off to spend in silence and alone. I try to create an oasis of stillness and quiet. I don't answer my phone, turn on my computer, listen to the radio, watch television, use any electric lights. (On the other hand I don't unplug my refrigerator). I try to interact with the outside world as little as possible (I don't go shopping). When night falls, I light candles and go to bed early.

One other thing I do every winter solstice is go on pilgrimage. I walk to a nearby site which has a lot of winter energy (an old cemetery which faces north) and spend an hour there, just paying attention to the energy of the plants and the place.