According to pagan belief, every day is a special day. Each new stage of life - birth, leaving home, entering a permanent love commitment, retirement - are all landmarks to be celebrated. Where there is loss, it should be mourned and so relinquished.
In the modern world, apart from weddings and 18th or 21st birthdays, the milestones of life largely pass publicly unmarked and those occasions that are celebrated can be overshadowed by their increasingly commercialised emphasis.
Even children's birthday parties can become stressful because of the need to match other parents' party bag contents and elaborate entertainment in order to ensure a child's popularity with classmates.
One answer I found to this problem was to invite only best friends, not the whole class, and go to a conservation park and have a picnic, or plan a beach barbecue or maybe overnight forest camping. Word spreads that you have exciting events and your child does not lose popularity, while at the same time other parents may feel more able to scale down their jamborees.
Weddings can put the couple marrying and their parents in debt for years and take many months of detailed planning. This can lead to the expectation of a day that must be perfect in every aspect, and the slightest deviation from the wedding plan or wet weather can then overshadow what should be a happy family celebration.
Indeed the people involved can occasionally feel like bit players in an elaborately stage-managed performance. For example, I know of a bride whose wedding cost over £25,000 and who was told by her wedding planner she should not have her childhood friend as bridesmaid because an overweight and red-headed bridesmaid would ruin the pink-and-purple themed wedding photographs.
Twenty years later it is the funny moments you remember and the fact that your best friend even now was your bridesmaid then.
Baby-blessing ceremonies can offer a spiritual alternative for those who do not regularly attend church or want a formal christening where other unknown families may share the ceremony.
You can organise a home-based indoor or garden baby-naming ceremony, to which you need invite only friends and family - there is no need for a priest or priestess, pagan or Christian.
At a family naming ceremony, you can either ask close friends or relatives to act as god or goddess parents or welcome the input of all those present in the life of your child. These equivalents of traditional godparents can be asked to make a promise to offer support to the growing child in whatever ways are most needed.
If the god or goddess parents have or plan to have children, you can make promises towards their families too and this can be a wonderful way of creating an extended family in a world where blood relatives may be scattered.
The naming ceremony can of course be restricted to just immediate family, including grandparents or just parents and siblings. The informality also makes it easier to invite step siblings or step grandparents, as everyone can play a part in a ceremony that can be structured to fit the needs of the participants.
Neither are there any limits on who can be god or goddess parents, so no one need feel left out.
An informal ceremony to welcome a baby into the world is not an exclusively pagan concept. My three younger children were born as Quakers, a religion that believes there is good in everyone and has no priesthood or organised services.
People speak or do not speak, according to whether they feel moved to do so during a Quaker meeting, where everyone sits equally ranked in a circle. Even small children are encouraged to speak if they wish during the meeting hour, which is largely meditative.
When a new born baby is first taken to the meeting house, another Quaker member close to the family welcomes the new baby and everyone present at the meeting offers good wishes and blessings. There are no godparents as such but other Quakers promise to help with the new baby if possible and when needed.
In fact, I was ill after the births of both of my youngest two children, Miranda and Bill, and Quakers offered babysitting, brought cakes and included my other children on outings when I was tired. They were always offering serviceable equipment and hand-on clothes for my growing family, a gesture that was reciprocated as my family grew out of toys and clothes.
Many modern Westernised baby-naming ceremonies are inspired or at least influenced by Celtic birth customs or what is popularly attributed to the ancient Celts of Scotland, Wales, Brittany and Ireland. The Celtic tradition is still largely oral, much of it pieced together from records made at a later date of old oral accounts and what people recall from their own family traditions.
Some of the following ideas have been passed on to me by readers of Celtic origin or people I have met in my travels. As you adapt them and pass them on to people you know, the tradition will evolve whether or not you claim Celtic ancestry.
Even if you have a conventional christening for your baby or decide not to have a naming ceremony, you may like to follow some of the Celtic birth customs with your birth partner or a loving friend or family member as soon after the birth as is practical. You can adapt parts to a hospital setting or wait until you and your baby go home.
Immediately after the birth the Celtic midwife would put three drops of water on the infant's brow, blessing him or her in the name of the earth, sea and sky, the three sacred realms, saying in the version I heard from an old Irish druidess,
By earth and sea and sky be blest.
Even in hospital you could anoint the baby with water soon after the birth or ask the midwife to do so.
You can also ask friends and family to light candles for you when you go into labour and another one for your baby when he or she is born. The candles and the water are linked with St Bridget the Irish saint who was in legend, though not in fact, the midwife of Jesus and was supposed to have performed this rite on him. (There were four centuries between Jesus's mother Mary and Bridget, who was sometimes called Mary of the Gaels.)
Deep in the magical forest of Broceliande in Brittany near Rennes, there is a natural spring called the Fountain of Youth. Here local legend tells that on the summer solstice the chief druidess blessed all the babies born during the previous year with the spring water and lit fires to keep them warm.
The baby's first bath doubled as a baptism. The bath water was warmed over the fire and traditionally run over iron to give the infant protection from any potential danger, earthly or paranormal.
The Celts were very superstitious about spirits lurking as the dimensions parted for the child's birth. A gold and silver coin were added to the water to represent the power of the sun and the moon and to call prosperity to the child in future.
Holding the child over the bath, the midwife would fill her palm with water nine times and rub it over the child. With each handful of water she would endow a gift on the child, rather like the concept of the good fairies in the story of Sleeping Beauty. These gifts included gentle and wise speech, generosity of spirit, wealth, health and grace.
Then the child would be passed from the midwife to the father in front of the fire that was lit to keep the mother and infant warm and to keep away harmful spirits. The father would then carry the infant three times clockwise around the fire and promise that he would give the child a good home and protection from the dangers of the world.
After this it was the mother's turn to complete the ritual (sometimes at noon at a later date). She would touch the child's forehead to the ground thanking Mother Earth for a safe delivery and asking that Mother Earth would bless and care for the child throughout his or her life.
Finally the child was carried by the midwife to a higher level up a slope to ensure he or she would do well in the world. This continued as a superstition for hundreds of years, with newborns on coming home from hospital being carried upstairs.
The water ritual at birth has echoes in the Eastern European Slovakian bathing rites of a new baby that still prevail in remoter regions. When the baby was bathed by the midwife for the first time soon after the birth, small tools and coins were placed in the water in the hope that the infant would become a handyman or craftsman and become a wealthy person.
Sugar and salt were also added to the water with the expectation that the child would grow to be good-tempered and healthy. In well-to-do families, a pen and pencil were given to the baby so that he or she would be scholarly.
After this bath, the midwife gave the child to members of the household and relatives to be kissed as a sign of welcome, after which the mother was given the baby to nurse.
You can have a baby-naming ceremony as soon as you feel ready after the birth and it can be a good way of combining all the visits by relatives and friends. Make it a 'bring and share' meal to reduce the practical strains, and enlist friends and family in the organisation.
Ask a relative or friend to print out the order of ceremony with any chants or formal blessings you are using and a photograph of your baby on the front. Everyone can play a role and so no one need feel left out.
The ceremony can be held in the garden if fine or indoors.
By earth and sea and sky be blest.
May the blessings of the earth and angels grow within this child as the tree grows.
A traditional opening blessing
May the blessing of light be with you - light outside and within.
May the sunlight shine upon you and warm your heart 'til it glows like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself by it.
May a blessed light shine out of your two eyes like a candle set in two windows of a house bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.
May you ever give a kindly greeting to those whom you pass as you go along the roads.
May the blessing of rain - the sweet, soft rain - fall upon you so that little flowers may spring up to shed their sweetness in the air.
May the blessings of the earth - the good, rich earth - be with you
and all who meet here on (name child's) special day.
A closing blessing
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rain fall soft upon the fields, and until we meet again
May God/the Goddess hold you in the palm of his/her hand.
And until we meet again may Mother Earth protect and bless you.
All customarily reply,
Blessings be.
In the modern world with remarriage and single parenting much more common, we can acquire all kinds of step relations, of all ages, who become grafted on to the family.
Existing family members may find it hard to welcome people who inevitably still have loyalties elsewhere and new members of the family may not immediately feel comfortable with their new relations.
In earlier societies such as the Native North American and those in the pre-Christian Scandinavian world, where children were frequently orphaned through war or disease, there were formal welcoming ceremonies. At these occasions, called 'making of relations' ceremonies by the Native North Americans, families would adopt the orphaned children.
At the end of many ceremonies, Native North Americans still use the phrase 'we are all related', or a similar expression to emphasise the link between all people, past and present.
In these ceremonies, the person to be adopted sat on a carpet of sage and was covered with a blanket. An eagle's feather was tied in their hair, hair being a symbol of a person's life because it is constantly growing and being replaced. It is also believed to contain a person's wisdom, and their connection to the past and the path still to be trodden.
Attached to the feather was a medicine (power) wheel made of rawhide and painted or created out of porcupine quills. In the modern Westernised world these symbols have less meaning, but the concept remains valid.
You can, of course, alter the details of this sample ceremony to suit your family's needs.
We are one family and we welcome you in love.
If someone leaves the family permanently, perhaps because of divorce, transplant their plant a little way off, so that they are separate but still come under your care. Add new plants, pictures and names on the family tree for each family addition, even if it is a birth of a sibling for one of your step children with the absent parent's new partner. This can take an immense amount of goodwill on your part but pays dividends if only for your own peace of mind.
If you are adopted and do not know where your birth mother and father are or if you were separated from your child when they were born and cannot trace them, an anniversary or birthday can be a very sad time when you will naturally be thinking about each other.
The following ritual may help to mark the occasion as significant without overshadowing the day.
Mother/Father/Son/Daughter of mine, though far away,
I call to you in love this day.
I send this message on the wind to wherever you may be.
Wherever you are, I ask that you will try to find me.
If this cannot be, I send you love and peace and carry you in my heart as a precious part of me.
This may help you to open the channels of communication and love or will give you some peace of mind as you acknowledge what is a part of you, even if you never talk about it.
Pagan marriage is called handfasting, from the old custom of a couple tying their hands together to symbolise unity and fidelity. Formal marriage is still sometimes called tying the knot, which recalls this old form of wedding.
Those who unite in a handfasting, usually do so with the intention of staying together for life, or some indeterminate long period such as the Ancient Egyptian phrase 'so long as the sun shines and the waters flow'.
Couples who are not ready for a forever commitment but feel seriously about each other have the option of following the old custom of dedicating their union for a year and a day, after which they may then decide to commit formally to settling down and bringing up a family.
Others believe that an ongoing year-and-a-day renewal ensures that the couple choose to stay together and so offers a more whole-hearted commitment through the years than a single lifetime dedication.
Modern handfasters may have a civil ceremony beforehand to make the marriage legal or may wish to keep the union one of the heart and mind.
In an age of frequent divorces, handfasting offers a thoughtful alternative or prelude to marriage, a substitute for rushing into a legal commitment with all the stresses and expense of a modern wedding. It also provides a form of dedication if for whatever reason a couple cannot legally be married.
Even if you are having a formal ceremony you could adapt parts of the ritual, and use these together in the week before the wedding to remind yourselves why you are getting married.
Traditionally held around the full moon, May Day or the first of August, you do not need anyone to conduct your ceremony though it can be very moving if the parents or godparents or friends who brought the couple together lead the ceremony.
Handfastings are usually held outdoors either on a beach, in a forest clearing, at an old stone circle or near an ancient sacred site. If the place is publicly owned it is as well to ask in advance and find out about any restrictions and help or facilities on offer.
Some sacred sites like the Rollright stone circle in Oxfordshire can be reserved and you will be provided with a fire dish. Choose a quiet time when you know there will not be too many people walking through.
If your own or a friend's or family member's garden is large enough, you can have the ceremony there and hire a large gazebo or marquee in case it is wet. If you are getting legally married first, then allow time to get between the sites and have refreshments.
In the US you can get legal certification for a handfasting but would need someone to officiate.
Preparations
The homeliness of a handfasting is to me its strength and the couple usually do not hide from each other before the ceremony but share the preparations, though of course with some delegation.
The ceremony
Now we are one
plus anything else they wish to add.
May no one part those whom the God/Goddess or Mother Earth has joined together except by the couple's own free will.
Four or five generations ago, an older member of the family would have kept a family Bible or a scroll in which family births, marriages and deaths were carefully recorded in copper plate handwriting.
You don't have to be the most senior member of the family to take on the task of record keeper; you just need to be persevering enough to track down past generations and set up a family tree.
This can be done by questioning family members and searching through official records (in the UK, these have only been kept since the 1830s, but church registers go back hundreds of years).
Having created a family tree, you can add more recent events - births, marriages, re-marriages, permanent unions, deaths and adoptions. Once your record is as complete as you can make it, take it along to family occasions where family members may help to fill the gaps.
In creating a book, you are symbolically creating the heart of a family, perhaps one that is geographically separated.
You could also start a family treasure box. Collect mementoes of shared occasions such as jubilee celebrations, the location you live in and events in individuals' lives.
These can be passed down through the family or, if you have no surviving relatives, you can bequeath them, along with video film or photographs saved on CD, to archives or schools.
This will ensure that the collection survives and becomes a resource for future generations.
Modern funeral services, conducted one after the other in regimented graveyards and crematoria, can make the loss of a loved one even harder to bear as you try to link the fun-loving person you knew with rows of orderly marble urns and stone crosses, especially if he or she was not a Christian.
The expensive decaying cut flower wreaths in the days after the funeral may seem a symbol of waste and not regrowth.
In contrast, a natural burial in a woodland site offers the blessings of Mother Nature, and a growing tree as a memorial is a reminder that there is rebirth and renewal - whatever you may believe about the afterlife. In Montana, a fruit tree is often planted over a grave. Some non-conformist priests will bless a natural burial spot or you may choose to carry out your own ceremony and either employ gravediggers and undertakers or even organise your own transport.
Eco-friendly coffins are made of wicker, bamboo, local woods or cardboard and the site will become a haven for wildflowers and wildlife as well as a source of oxygen for the planet. One wildlife burial place I encountered even had little frog shelters on the graves.
Your body can be buried by friends and relatives in a garden or farm with the permission of the landowner. Subject to certain regulations, you do not require permission from the council planning department or the environmental health department. Unless you have a huge garden, however, you may prefer a woodland burial.
By 2010, the Natural Death Centre estimates that 12 per cent of UK burials will be natural ones. Some natural cemeteries allow pets to be buried close to their owners. At the time of writing this book, the Church of England has consecrated its first natural burial ground in Barton, Cambridgeshire.
Burials can occur very fast after death and this can make mourning hard. Increasingly, people are returning to the old ways and having their relative's body at home for a day or two before the funeral so that family members can spend time letting the person go. This can also help children who may fear that they too may disappear.
Candlelit vigils before the funeral were traditionally held at home, and a wake, during which photographs, tools of the deceased's trade and mementoes were displayed, was held on the night or two before the funeral. Visitors would come to share food and drink at the kitchen table and pay their respects and write memories of the deceased person in a special book.
Traditionally, clocks were stopped and the body was never left alone. However, in the modern world, unless you have your relative home for the day or two before the funeral, it may not be practical to have the two traditional companions day and night.
The vigil still occurs with royalty and great people but it was common in Ireland in ordinary homes until the 1970s. During my childhood a local woman in my street always prepared a body after death. I myself did this for my own mother, who died at home.
If you can see a relative before the funeral and it will not offend anybody, put three drops of water on the brow and say,
By Earth and sea and sky be blest.
This reverses the birth custom, and returns the soul to spirit.
Even in an impersonal hospital and certainly in a hospice, there can be special moments with the deceased person. Kasja, a Swedish ex-nurse, told me of her experience:
I was nursing very ill patients and one old man had very bad gangrene. When he died all the windows in the ward were opened and the ward was closed for cleaning. Since I had nursed the patient, I volunteered to get everything ready. Suddenly a small brown bird flew in through the window and perched on the end of the old man's bed. It showed no fear of me and sang beautifully for several minutes and at last flew away. For me it made what seemed a sad painful dying very beautiful.
I told Kasja about the belief that souls could take the form of birds. This dates from the Ancient Egyptian Ba or hawk-headed part of the human spirit that was said to fly from the mummy after death.
In European folk custom, a bird entering a house or tapping at a window when someone was dying was thought to be the spirit of a deceased relative come to fetch the soul of the dying person.
In Finnish mythology, it was believed that birds were servants of Sielulintu, the Soul-Bird. On his behalf, they carried human souls into their bodies at birth and took them back when the person died.
If you are having a more formal funeral service you might like to book a double session in the chapel or church. This then allows plenty of time for arranging photographs and other mementoes around the building and gives everyone who wants to speak the chance to do so.
Go on in peace and in blessing but know you are always welcome at our table and in our hearts.
Return to the arms of the Mother. So long as your name is spoken so shall your light remain with us, which is forever.
After the funeral it can be hard when everyone has gone home, or you have gone home alone with your thoughts, to link with the essential person who has been buried or cremated.
Sometimes too because of the physical distance to the place where the funeral is held, because of some family estrangement or if your love for the person must remain secret, you may not have been able to say goodbye publicly.
Some people dream of the deceased person soon after the funeral or sense their presence in the home, but this does not happen to everybody - and, indeed, some would not wish it to.
You may find this ritual helpful in the days after the funeral or on an anniversary, not necessarily of the death but perhaps of some personal shared date.
You will need: A small memento, perhaps a gift bought by one for the other of you, an item bought on a shared holiday that evokes happy or humorous memories or anything that for you sums up the deceased person at their most vibrant; a rose- or lavender-scented candle
Each time you come to a change point, whether it is your children leaving home, a new job or a change of location, take time to mark the occasion with a simple candle-lighting ceremony or by planting flowers, casting petals off a bridge or burying a stone or dark crystal to help ease a transition you find hard.
Even if you are alone, try to mark birthdays and anniversaries with a special meal or outing and by buying yourself a small memento of the occasion. Make your plans for the year ahead, including something you have always wanted to do, however modest, and try to build your life around that, rather than fitting your plans in around life as it happens.
There are many small deaths in everyday life: opportunities that do not work out, paths that seem promising and yet go nowhere, an unfair dismissal from a job you do well or a betrayal in love.
Some people are held back for years by being unable to let a faithless or unkind love go in their minds or accept that a money loss was unfair and will therefore never be repaid.
These endings often coincide with the twilight and waning moon periods and the natural seasonal down turns, but for a specific injustice, loss or act of unkindness we may need to mark closure with a small ceremony if we are to move naturally from one stage to another and open ourselves to new experiences.
About 40 per cent of people who contact me for advice feel trapped in a negative situation where bitterness, anger and resentment, which are ultimately self-destructive, may linger from childhood abuse or cruelty. Early negative patterns can result in lack of self-belief and can be repeated in subsequent relationships.
I am not talking about forgiving and forgetting, for to do so may not be possible if the wrong was grievous.
Rather, rites of ending focus on drawing a line under the past, cutting off communication with the source of destruction if possible or limiting it to necessary, polite, non-confrontational contact and establishing a personal way forward (the other person has to make their own destiny).
I have focused on the most common situation: divorce or a major relationship break up. However, you can adapt the same methods to mourn other losses and to separate yourself from sorrow or injustice so you can move forward.
If your ex-partner is still alive and you are forced to see or hear of him or her - or must meet because of children or for business reasons - it can be very hard to grieve or heal. Rituals can be very helpful in enabling you to walk away emotionally with dignity and without bitterness and to draw boundaries.
What is more, the power generated by a rite of ending can give you the strength to leave a destructive relationship or an affair that is going nowhere because you know the person you love will never leave their marital partner.
The following is the single most effective ending rite I have found. It is suitable for everything from letting go of abuse in childhood or accepting that short of a miracle (and they do happen) you may never have a child of your own to leaving a lover who will never commit.
If a couple who are handfasted end the relationship they may untie the cords that have been knotted over their bed. Each then takes their own cord back, with the option of burning or burying it or keeping it as a reminder of the good times and the intention of finding future love.
In other relationships too, or where there is bitterness or regret associated with a situation rather than a person, cutting the cord is a powerful outward expression of an inward intention.
If you are bound tightly to the person or situation, you may need to repeat this action many times with different cords, but each time it gets easier.
I have a cord graveyard under my olive tree. This is a very old ritual and I have described a similar one in my Complete Book of Spells, but like all magic it is actually based on sound psychology.
You will need: A deep blue large candle in a holder; a metal tray or flat metal holder to put beneath the candle; small dish of salt; 25 cm/10 in of thin dark blue curtain cord; a deep pot of earth
The cord between us is long.
The bonds between us were strong,
But now they are decaying, fraying,
Burning, breaking
And so it must be.
The cord is broken and with it the power to hold me back.
This gentle candle ritual is particularly useful if there are children involved in the end of the relationship or if for whatever reason you have to stay in contact with your ex-partner.
It is also good if you have to leave a business partnership, a workplace or a home that you love. It will act as a reminder that you can and will go on alone.
In America, and increasingly in other parts of the world, divorce and separation ceremonies are being held to mark the end of a relationship.
This ritual, however, can be carried out less formally alone or with your ex-partner perhaps on the day the divorce goes through or when joint property is being sold.
While it may be difficult to perform the ritual if your ex-partner has acted callously or deserted you, or if he or she is making matters hard financially or manipulating the children, it will help to heal your own negative feelings.
Even if the other person continues to behave destructively, you and any children involved will benefit from your positive intent.
You will need: A large beeswax or white candle; two smaller beeswax or white candles representing the two separated/divorced people or you and the situation, business venture or property you are leaving behind or being forced out of
The flame of love grows dim, and so we go our separate ways, with regret, in peace and with thanks for the happy times we shared.