June 13–July 10
Ninth Lunation, June/July
Ogham: Coll (cull), C: 
Keywords: Insight, wisdom, intuition, higher perspective, straight to the Source, fulfillment, bounty, the zenith, abundance, summer, encourage wisdom and vision, divination offers clarity, creativity, grail of innocence, the chalice of love, cauldron of wisdom
Totems: Tortoise, turtles, crustaceans, salmon, scarab, hare
Deities: Merlin, the mother and maiden aspects of the Goddess
Practical Guidance: Practice meditations and follow your inner guidance to find the answers you seek.
Coll/Hazel Month Ceremony
Holiday
The Summer Solstice is June 20/21.
Purpose
Celebrating the Hazel month portal. Connecting with our loved ones that have passed through the veil. Letting go of sorrows so that we can make space to create abundance. Honoring the tears that cleanse us. This is a time to celebrate the waters, and our family connections, and to heal ourselves of our emotional burdens and pains.
Preparation
Cut strips of paper four inches long by a half-inch wide. Make them big enough for participants to write on them, but small enough that they can be burned. Gather enough pencils for your participants to use. Prepare a bowl of hazelnuts. Have an abalone shell or bowl filled with earth to burn messages.
Welcome and Greetings
Welcome to our Hazel month ceremony. Introduce yourself and go around the circle having each participant share their name and why they came to the circle. Have them close their eyes and share a moment of silence to prepare for the ceremony.
Call the Directions
Call the directions and invoke the energies of the Hazel tree (intuition, wisdom, insight, higher perspective, straight to the Source, fulfillment) and her totems, guides, and deities (tortoise and turtles, crustaceans, salmon, scarab, hare, and mother and maiden goddesses). Invite Hazel to lead you to the source within. Ask her to facilitate the flow of your creative energy outward in the world to where it is needed. Hazel opens you to your creativity and insight and she supports poetry, art, song, divination, and the power of meditations.
Sing
Intersperse songs and drumming at times of your choosing. Choose songs that honor the summer and the community.
Teachings
This is the portal of the Coll Hazel month and the Quert Apple month, June 13 to July 10. The totems of this month are all the shelled and protected animals, reminding us to protect that which is vulnerable in our world and in ourselves. These are the crab, the lobster, the tortoise, and the scarab. They teach us to protect and make boundaries for what is most sensitive and vulnerable.
We celebrate abundance, fertility, and power. We invite the fairies to our ceremonies and we are grateful for the beauty of nature. We call in the devas of the wild rose, thyme, and especially heather with her healing.
The hazelnut encourages vision and wisdom, the treasure of wisdom within. It is believed that when the salmon ate the hazelnut he immediately became wise, thus the “Salmon of Wisdom” becomes the symbol for this time of year. We honor our own intuition through our own connection to Source wisdom, guidance, and clarity.
Heralding in the sign of Cancer, we honor compassion, love, family life, and mothering feelings; we think about the past and feel close to friends and family. The moon of this month is called “the cry baby moon.” We are close to our tears, and we are invited to honor the cleansing that crying brings. We honor our sorrows and our emotional burdens, but we come together to release these and clear space to create a new story.
We also honor our families and our homes. We honor our mothers and mothering. Our inner sense of esteem and self-worth becomes important to us and we can be protective and defensive if we feel threatened. We honor the “she-bear” part of our nature that will fight to protect her young. We honor our loved ones who have died, as well as our ancestors.
Chant
What is the teaching of the Hazel? Intuition.
Our guidance comes from our heart’s connection to source.
Behold! We receive the abundance of summer with gratitude.
And we receive our oracle in the mother’s chalice of love.
We seek answers as she whispers in that quiet voice within.
What is the teaching of the Hazel? Wisdom, clarity, and healing.
Guided Meditation
Take a moment to go quietly within and just breathe. Be with the silence for a short time. (Long pause)
Imagine yourself in a meadow encircled by a beautiful grove of trees. All around you are family and friends, as well as those welcomed loved ones and ancestors that have passed on. It is a bright, sunny summer day and you have gathered to celebrate together. Look into the face of each celebrated guest at your own personal gathering. Only those whom you love and trust are allowed. You know that they are your cheerleaders. A huge feast has been prepared and there is a great feeling of excitement and celebration in this reunion. You gather in a circle to dance and sing.
Each gives their own prayer of gratitude for all the bounty and abundance they have received. Take a moment to share your own gratitude with your circle. Take stock of these friends and relatives, and for the lineages that they represent. Feel the blessing and encouragement of those that have crossed the veil but totally support you. Accept their love and support into every cell.
Then let the people at your celebration go around the circle and share with you what they love about you. Listen well and allow their words to pierce you. They are here today to help you let go of your sorrows and burdens, and to encourage you to be proud of your accomplishments. They will help you stand in your power. They are also here today to bring you wisdom.
Thank all those present for their gifts and for their love and support and know that you can return to this celebration anytime you want to just by turning inward and intending to do so. Say your goodbyes and slowly begin to leave your inner world and return to this room and this time. Take the time you need. When you’re ready, slowly open your eyes so that I can know that you have returned.
Sharing
Have each of your participants share something from their experience with the meditation.
Activity: Letting Go of Sorrows and Claiming Your Power
Letting go of sorrows: Direct your participants to take a moment to write their sorrows down on prepared strips of paper. Pass around a candle and an abalone shell and have each person burn their papers and have them each say these words: “I give my sorrow to the flames. The Goddess of fire will consume my pain.”
After each participant has completed these words, we all respond with “It is done.”
Claiming your power: Ask each person to think of something that they are proud of about themselves right now in this moment, or perhaps something they have overcome or are creating. Each person takes a turn and repeats these words:
“My name is _____.
I am a powerful person.
I am powerful now because _____.”
After each one speaks, everyone responds:
“As we say it, so shall it be.”
Becoming wise: Pass around a bowl of hazelnuts. Each person should take a nut. Have each person take a moment to close their eyes and go within to imagine becoming the wise salmon. Let them take quiet time to hold that wisdom and to feel that initiation of power and love and truth. Then individually go around the circle. As each person puts the nut in their mouth, everyone responds: “You are wise and loving. All you need to know is alive within your heart.”
Sharing
When everyone has consumed their nut, invite each person to share their visions or experiences.
Sing
Choose an ending song that honors the summer and its bounty, or that honors the mother and the maiden aspect of the Goddess.
Endings
Give your gratitude to the energies of the Hazel and her helpers. Release the directions and open the circle.
A Hazel Story: Healing with the Scarab
Have you ever had the experience of forming a question in your mind and then having answers appear for you spontaneously? Before I left for Egypt in October of 2007, my students of Alchemical Healing were asking whether they needed special protection when working with clients that are undergoing chemo or radiation. (Alchemical Healing is a form of energetic healing, created by Nicki Scully and sourced in Egypt, which uses the help of totems, guides, and deities.) My friend and fellow teacher, Danielle Hoffman, said she asked Thoth, our teacher, the ibis-headed god of communication and healing, to build her some special etheric protective gloves when she was first doing the work. This was a good answer, but I was open to knowing more.
On my trip to Egypt I made friends with a wonderful woman who had dealt with cancer more than once and certainly had her share of chemo and radiation. We were together at Khnum’s temple at Elephantine Island in the ancient underground sanctuary dedicated to his consort, Satet. For a few magical moments, we were held in bliss and loving ecstasy and were transported to an experience of pure love and healing. I knew I would share further healing with this woman as our trip progressed.
On our boat ride down the Nile, she asked about the scarab god Khepera whose image appears on many temples and tombs in Egypt. I referred her to the chapter on Khepera in Nicki Scully’s book, Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt. Khepera is the scarab god that represents our becoming. He spins the cycles of life and assists in our transformational processes. He helps us to recognize our god or goddess self so that we can begin to cocreate with spirit the life we desire. Khepera represents the early morning sun, always carrying the promise of what we can become. The scarab is also a totem of the Hazel tree.
In Luxor we finally arranged a healing session and it became very clear that Khepera was to be my new friend’s healing ally. She was experiencing discomfort around her neck where she had some suspicious glands removed just before our trip. Khepera wanted to be part of the work and since she had been drawn to him already, she was willing.
Together we entered a shamanic journey, which is another word for pathworking or guided meditation. Khepera is often seen rolling a ball of dung in which its larva is deposited and then safely nourished. In this way the energetic beetle went right to work, entering the places of discomfort in her body. He began rolling up the pain, extra lymph material, scar tissue, inflammation, and any cells that were unnecessary. He worked diligently and gently as he rolled up what no longer served my friend. He pulled out discomfort, infection, and soreness from each node until he was quite content and full, sitting upon the ball of dispensable energies from her neck. He deftly worked with the area that had been disturbed by the surgeon’s knife and with the tissues affected by the chemotherapy and radiation.
We filled the places that Khepera had so tenderly worked on with pink light, love, and Universal Life Force energy. And of course, we gave our gratitude to Khepera for his help. When finished, he and his ball dissolved back into the void—what we call Akasha—where all things are created. Thus, this energy can be used to create something new.
Khepera, the scarab beetle, as an insect, is resistant to many of the chemicals and radiation that are harmful to humans, making him a powerful ally for people who are undergoing these treatments. It is not that we are getting rid of the chemo or the radiation, as we want them to do their work. This ally can support whatever protocol you choose and can also help regenerate tissue that is damaged during the treatment.
He also offers protection to me as I do the healing work. Scarab showed me that it is not necessary to handle these toxic energies directly. I do advise great care while working with people with cancer, especially those undergoing radiation therapies. And I do not advise doing Alchemical Healing without training. However, I do want to demonstrate how totems offer themselves for our healing.
After the healing, my friend’s neck felt better and the pain decreased. She experienced more range of motion. She also experienced joy, peace, and reassurance. It was quite amazing to participate in this healing and to witness my friend’s healing. This is a great example of how totems can share their healing powers and gifts with us.
If you have a body ailment, you can invite in the totems of the trees to assist you. In thinking about the Hazel, we can call in the many helpers. Take a moment to think about how the tortoise, turtles, crustaceans, salmon, scarab, or the hare might help you. It was amazing to me that scarab was just the right totem to assist in this healing. You will be amazed as well by who shows up. This could apply to any physical, emotional, or spiritual challenge. How could Merlin the great wisdom keeper or the mother and maiden aspects of the Goddess assist you? What special insight or wisdom might they offer if you but asked?
If you seek clarity, the actual dryad of Hazel is at your assistance. I invite you to ask for her help. The teaching of the Hazel is to look within and trust your intuition. She asks you to go straight to the source for wisdom, and that doorway to higher dimensions of love and understanding lives within your heart. She invites you to make your decisions based on this heart wisdom. She will not fail you.