Gwydion's News
Saturday, 4th September, 2010
On this page:
Current News: - A little welcome to the Pandimensional site.
Moon Planting in the Southern Hemisphere (Thanks to all who requested this little addition.)
Words from the Path' - One of the essays due to be included in a book of the same name during the next year, concerning the underlying principles and concepts of Pagan spirituality.
Current news:
Annual publications: Moon Calendar - currently the 2010 - 2011 (Midsummer) edition. (covers from 21st June 2010 to 21st June 2011.)
The 2011 Moon Diary is now listed here, please order early to avoid the rush in November & December - when it will take a few days longer to arrive.
Our Moon Planting Guide's annual Year Sheet for 2010 is now available, and the 2011 Year Sheet will be available from around this Midsummer too.
I hope that old and new customers alike will enjoy being able to buy online at this website, which will develop over time to provide insights about natural sprituality, unique little downloads, readings, booklists and so on. Come back and visit whenever you like - and tell your friends!
You can pay online instantly by PayPal, or if you prefer, by posting a cheque. Wherever you see a product you'd like to buy, just enter the quantity in the box, and click the 'Add to Shopping Cart' button - then when you go to the 'Checkout' page you can choose to confirm your order, and the website will take care of the rest!
Stay tuned for item updates and for special offers!
Best wishes & B.B.,
- Julian Gower.
Moon Planting in the Southern Hemisphere
I recently received the following enquiry, and I trust this information will prove useful to others too.
"We are using the moon planting guide on our allotment and it is fantastic. We have friends who are moving to Australia later this year and we were wondering if there is a moon planting guide available for the southern hemisphere.
Would you be able to assist us in this quest by pointing us in the right direction?"
Kind regards, Susan."
Dear Susan,
Thanks for your enquiry. Regarding Moon Planting in the southern hemisphere, of course the seasons are annually opposite to the seasons of the northern hemisphere, so most sowing & planting takes place in their Spring. (During our Autumn period.)
However, wherever you are on the Earth, the times of the Moon's cycles are exactly constant, for instance, the moment of a Full Moon given in Universal Time (same thing as Greenwich Mean Time) applies wherever you are on the Earth. Thus wherever you are, you simply go by Universal time/G.M.T.
If you're in New York, you're 5 hours later than g.m.t.
If you're in Autralasia, say 10 hours ahead of g.m.t., you know that your local clock time is 10 hours in advance, so you simply adjust to use g.m.t., of course!
Gwydion's Planting Guide and the annual Year Sheets give all times in Universal time/g.m.t., and the method described is of course the 'real' traditional method, based solely on the effects of the lunar cycle, which is what Moon sowing planting is all about.
It's important to understand that other, newly 'invented' methods, often including planetary data and other factors, don't actually address the characteristics of plant development, being largely based on 'beliefs' of various new-age fictions, and don't actually explain 'real' Moon planting.
The leaflet I always enclose with Guides & Year Sheets explains all this in detail, and I've put it on the website too - please give your friends moving to Australia this link to read:
http://www.pandimensional.co.uk/pguideextra.php
The important thing is to know for sure that you're using the original, 'real' moon planting method, then use the time slots as deliniated in the Guide & Year Sheets to promote either root or above ground growth as appropriate, and if you like, sowing/planting only when the Moon is in Water or Earth Signs within those slots - just as you've been doing in
the U.K.
Obviously, it'll be necessary to find which months various crops & plants germinate in their locality - local gardeners are the best source for this, and australian books on general gardening, but use exactly the same Moon Planting times as defined in g.m.t.
I trust that gives a good start, and please give your friends my best wishes for their new life and successful Moon Planting in the antipodes!
Best wishes,
Julian Gower.
The 'Words from the Path' essays
For readers interested in the principles of Pagan sprituality, I've included here the essay from the 2009 edition of the Moon Diary. The collection will be published, with other original material as a little book 'Words from the Path', during the next year or so - and it'll be listed on this website at the time, of course.
This extract is the 7th essay in the series, I haven't edited it, so it reads as if in the Moon Diary, hope you enjoy it! - Julian.
W.P. 7: As part of living nature, we have a unique ability.
Other creatures cannot choose how to live; we can.
In previous W.P. essays, I’ve described the way we as Pagan folk see ourselves as part of the living world, a central theme in our approach to spirituality. It’s important to understand our pantheist definition of supernality as a quality integral to all that exists, and our concept of deities, the symbolic Goddesses and Gods of Pagan myth. (The little readings on back page 7 are useful if you’re new to these essays.) It’s essential to understand how these definitions differ from the versions and ‘model’ of spiritual concepts most people in Britain today unthinkingly adopt from monotheist ‘faith in a set of beliefs’ religion.
I’ve also tried to encourage the awareness that true spirituality must be in harmony with the progress of wider human knowledge. In particular, to encourage a personal awareness that we are part of the whole continuum of all that exists, from the first moment of the ‘unfolding’ of time and space to this precious web of life upon which we depend.
The simple truth that the dust of an earlier generation of stars, moulded by forces fundamental to existence, coalesced in such a way as to make a perfect home to engender life, has inescapable and profound spiritual implications. The underlying principles of our pantheist perspective enable us to see ever more clearly our relationship to the supernal whole, as humanity learns more of the story that led to our existence, and why our Earth is so perfect a home for our kind.
All that being so, let’s just consider what we have, on this little planet floating through the vastness of space. We have energy! We have the Sun, whose warmth enabled tiny fragments of ancient stardust to replicate and led to this glory of green abundance and all the life it supports. We have great oceans fed by clear streams and mighty rivers, we have mountains and meadows, forests and plains, and a myriad of other creatures who share the same story. All that is needed to support us is here because we grew as part of the whole, and truly we could live in a paradise; all we have to do is care for it and for each other, for that is the responsibility we have as a ‘cultural’ species. That simple understanding is absolutely central to any meaningful human spirituality.
Now let’s consider what humanity does with this potential paradise, and why. The human mind is the key, uniquely, we are a ‘cultural’ species, we interpret the world around us with a shared understanding of archetypal ideas, abstract and symbolic constructs which form the mental building blocks of our shared reality, our greater ‘human culture’. With this ability to symbolise, accumulate and pass on knowledge, we built the world of human societies; we chose a destiny beyond that of our primate ancestors. Always keep in mind that all but a tiny recent portion of our human past was in the great playground and school of the palaeolithic world, that is where we learnt to be human, as part of the natural world around us.
Now, we have probably reached the most crucial time in our entire history. Our global impact is devastating the living world around us, half the human population lives in helplessness and poverty, many live under the rule of warlords and tyranny, regional wars are fuelled by ‘my beliefs are best’ religions, and even in more fortunate societies economic structures keep many in situations of exploitation.
Our world is thus not because anyone planned it this way, but because our global social and economic structures are the result of history, and the conditions that created them have changed drastically. Immense change is needed on a global scale, and it cannot be beyond the ingenuity of humanity to plan together to create the paradise this Earth offers. Our planet is alive with free energy! The Sun shines, the tides move vast tonnages of water, reafforestation and ecologically appropriate agriculture will provide if managed and planned globally, and we could create such a destiny so easily, but for the insular social and economic structures of our own making. In a world without war, the resources to enable such change would be available many times over.
It is time for humanity to grow up. Taking the longest view of our history, we are faced with the necessity of taking real responsibility ‘en masse’ for the living planet we depend on, yet we still behave like immature, spoilt and selfish infants, taking anything we want right now, whilst ignoring the fact that we are interdependent with the greater whole for all we have.
Part of the ethos of pantheist spirituality is that we create our own destiny, and that requires taking responsibility for our own actions, individually and together. Nowadays, we need to act as a global species. A green agenda fits naturally with Paganism; we have always recognised our role as interdependent with the living world.
Such change requires a profound maturity of outlook. For instance, it is obvious that competitive market economics are inappropriate to dictate how we use the resources of our planet; they are a primary cause of the present crisis and need to be subject to control with the needs of the environment and all humanity as the primary factor. Such changes also have the potential for enormous conflict, and our survival depends on the inclusion and agreement of all to create a viable and kinder world. As part of living nature, we have one unique ability. Other creatures cannot choose how to live; we can. Choose wisely, humankind, or spirituality will be something you only glimpsed before your extinction.
© 2008, Julian Gower. All rights reserved. (Magical sanctions also apply - no copying!)