The longest night, the shortest day. The still point of the darkest hours of winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to pause for three days at the southernmost stage of its journey along the horizon, before beginning its slow path back northwards, giving us an increase of light each day. At the moment of the Winter Solstice – which this year is at 21:47 on Wednesday 21st December – the North Pole of our planet is at its furthest from the sun.

Druids celebrate this moment at the festival of Alban Arthan, when the Sun Child is reborn. In the Goddess tradition, we honour Danu, Mother of Air, as well as the Cailleach or Veiled One – aspects of the Divine Feminine that express the awe of the deep starry sky, the dominion of winter and the duality of death and rebirth, creation and destruction. For thousands of years, as their monuments of stone bear witness, our ancestors watched, waited for and presumably celebrated the Winter Solstice as the rebirth of the sun.

​They would have known that spring follows winter as surely as day follows night. Today we put up our small lights to brighten the darkness and bring the evergreens indoors to remind ourselves that the green flame of growth never truly dies. Warmth and light will return to the earth!

And yet, let’s not ignore the teachings of the darkness and the act of wintering. All of nature – which includes us – needs a time to slow down, pause, rest and restore itself,  gathering energy for the active time of spring and summer. Finding a way to sit and watch a flickering fire, walking in your nearest open space and noticing the winter with all your senses, lighting a candle in a dark room and watching the interplay of light and shadow, or just allowing yourself to do less, when you can, and giving yourself that time to sit with your thoughts and notice what wants to come up… these are just a few ways in which to honour the cycles of nature in our own lives.

​Come and visit us at Bristol Goddess Temple to connect with the sacred and yourself in our beautiful, warm space. All are welcome. 

​As we enter Mabon properly I can’t help but feel excited as the beauty of Autumn envelopes us. Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye to the hazy summer days, but Autumn is just such a lovely season. Crisp mornings, crunchy leaves and the world begins its journey into quiet calm. Not to mention the best season of all (for me), Samhain is quickly approaching.

Ceremony Weavers of the Wheel has had the joy of facilitating ceremonies to celebrate the glorious exciting spring energies, sensuous Beltane, and joyous summer, but autumn’s call to return to deep inner spiritual workings is irresistible.

​A simple thing you can do to open yourself to the changing energies is make a change yourself. So this season we invite you to mix up your routine. This could be something small. Maybe switching off the radio or TV in the morning and looking out of the window or sitting outside in the crisp air. Maybe get off the bus one stop early and walk part of the way home. I for example always do a particular walk on a Wednesday, and I always find myself going around the park the same way round, yet this week I chose to walk round in the other direction.

​The stability of the routine walk is great for body and soul, yet a simple tweak of walking a different or reverse way opens you up to noticing again. So often we are caught up in the business of our minds, by mindfully mixing things up it causes us to take notice, and at this time of year spiritual messages may be coming through that we miss. Awaken your senses and take notice once more before we return to a time of stillness and reflection. Be open to change, be open to receive, what message does the universe want you to receive?

​We invite you to join us at our ceremonies if you can, and journey through the dark half of the year with us!

​They will all be on a Sunday 12-1:30pm

18th September - Mabon
30th October - Samhain
18th December - Yule

​Bristol Goddess Temple has been so happy to call Warmley Clocktower our home for an amazing 5 years. The temple space is so lovely and peaceful and was decorated perfectly for our needs. 

​As our community has grown we have been using the larger room next-door for many of our events; Moonlodge Red Tent, turn of the Wheel ceremonies, singing and chanting, gong meditations, Children's hour and many more. This room has witnessed and held us through both tears of joy and sadness.

​So to honour what this room gives to us, and for the other communities using the space, The Friends of Bristol Goddess Temple decided it was time to give back!

​The tired yellow walls have been given some TLC. A fresh coat of paint has been lovingly applied, the white stone wall refreshed! We have also painted one wall white so it will be suitable for a projector for talks. Curtains have been made in a lustrous green to give privacy when needed.

​We are so happy and honoured to have been allowed by the custodians of the building to do this and we hope it brings joy to people who attend our events and the many other groups who use the room. 

​As the Wheel turns towards the Autumn Equinox, we become more and more aware of the Earth moving into the darker half of the year, with changes in the light, the temperature and the trees, animals and plants all around us.

​Many will celebrate this festival as Mabon, while in the Avalonian tradition, we honour the Earth Goddess: Banba, Gaia, Mother of harvest – the second harvest of fruits and berries.

​Druids celebrate this season as Alban Elfed, marking the time of balance between light and dark, a sacred pause to look back with gratitude for the blessings of Spring and Summer, while acknowledging the power and potential of the approaching darkness.

​Without the descent of the vital energy of the plants into their roots, the moist richness of the falling leaves blanketing and nourishing the earth, and the cold that brings rest and hibernation, there will be no glorious green Spring and abundant Summer!

​We don’t have evidence from prehistory of specific celebrations of the equinox, but there is no doubt that the changes in the earth and the sky would have been observed by our ancestors, whose lives and survival depended on living in step with the natural world.

​Autumn would have been a time of harvesting and storing nuts, berries and roots, finding ingenious ways to preserve them for the winter months. Often when we celebrate harvest we focus on the blessings of abundance and manifestation, but there is another aspect to the harvest: a lot of work and husbandry is still needed before that abundance can be transmuted into nourishment that will keep us warm and fed until we start to see the green shoots of Spring again.

​Today we are lucky enough to have lots of options at our disposal for making the most of Autumn’s bounty: we can make jams, vinegars, honeys, alcoholic tinctures; we can cook, bake and freeze, as well as drying or pickling our harvest, whether of hedgerow or garden.

​However, it’s easy to get carried away, so if you are foraging, remember to leave plenty on the bushes for the birds and small mammals.

​How do you mark the Autumn Equinox? If you’re someone who greets it with sadness for the end of summer and dread of the nights drawing in and the cold months, you might want to find a way of bringing in the light and warmth in small rituals, whether with candles, incense or a meditative few minutes with an uplifting warm drink.

​Get as much daylight as you can, especially in the morning – even 20 minutes will be beneficial. Maybe keep a journal for the dark half of the year and explore your feelings around it.

​If you love and look forward to this time, may you find the time you need to rest in the autumnal hush and sense the Earth drawing in, ready for her own long rest.

​Either way, the Bristol Goddess Temple is the perfect place to connect with the energies of the season and all are welcome, whatever your path.

​Blessings of the Autumn Equinox to you!

To all you beautiful women out there who think there may be something strange going on with your body. If you are of a certain age, there may very well be something going on with your body, it may be changing again like it often has before.  You may be peri, ante or post menopausal, if you are or think you may be, then Purple Tent is the place for you to come and enjoy the company of other women who are in the same boat as you.

We are ostensibly a Pagan Group but welcome all women of any faith or none; who are going through, what for some , can be quite a traumatic time.  The good news is it doesn't last forever!

We are currently a small group but are looking to grow.  We have discussions about the menopause and everyone has something to add to the pot of information we are building for each other, by way of support and advice.  We practice meditation - we might even get good at it one day hahaha.  We read poetry and tell stories; we also drink tea, lots of different teas, some therapeutic, others just for pleasure.  We look at what our roles are in our communities, in our workplaces, our families now that we are getting older; how does the world see us, indeed, does the world see us?  How can we make things better for ourselves? How do we acknowledge all the changes going on for us or do we try to bury them?

There are always questions being asked, discussed and sometimes answered.  There are sometimes tears but we always have tissues and support for those times.  We laugh a lot too.

As this year is progressing we have been looking at the five elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit, a different one each month.  We are also trying to put together a kind of rolling number of ceremonies for each of our participants to go through at each stage of this change in our lives so that, possibly for the first time in our lives a huge change such as this can be marked and celebrated instead of being ignored and brushed under the carpet.

We have all been Maidens; Lovers; Mothers; and now what? You decide. Come along to Purple Tent held on the last Thursday of every month at the Bristol Goddess Temple (see our 'Calendar' page for the dates), 1st floor, the Clock Tower building, Tower Road North, Warmley, from 7pm until 9. All you beautiful women out there come and join the fun. 

Before lockdown Bristol Goddess Temple put on some fascinating and very popular talks, and it was great to see this getting going again in February with Caroline Burrows’ talk Riding with the Lancashire Witches: Tracing the Route and History of the 1612 Lancashire Witch Trials.

Caroline (aka the Bristol Bike Bard) is a published poet and cyclist (among many other things) and this talk combined those two passions with the history of this particular episode of persecution, and the landscape that witnessed it, in a unique and moving way.

Just as lockdown was threatening to bite in the North of England, Caroline cycled the 50-mile route that was taken by the condemned witches on their way to execution in Lancaster. It’s not known whether they walked or were transported, but in 2012, as part of a programme of events to mark the 400 years since their deaths, 10 white cast-iron way markers were set along the route.

Each one was inscribed with the name of one of the women and men who died, and with one 3-line verse (a tercet) from a poem written specially by the then poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Aftercoming across the tenth way marker by chance, Caroline decided to cycle the whole route over 4 days, visiting each one in turn.

The talk took us not just through the stories of each one of those 10 people (and others who were part of the context of accusation, trial and execution), but through the landscape in which the way markers are set.

Through a very evocative combination of narrative, photographs and videos, Caroline sensitively told a story that encompassed poverty, privilege, power, religious loyalties, social class, land-grabbing, ambition and perceptions of magic and the supernatural.

This was done in a beautifully objective way, which laid out the known facts and allowed us to draw our own conclusions, without attempting to hide the passion behind Caroline’s project.

At each way marker she recorded a short video of herself reading the tercet and the name of the person commemorated, again letting the words speak for themselves, which made them all the more moving.

Along the way we were treated to a very entertaining account of her cycle ride on the cusp of lockdown, as well as to some fascinating information about the fells, moors and valleys she was travelling through and some of the history of Lancaster and its surroundings.

As this is a part of the country I have never been to, I really enjoyed learning about it and having it brought to life by the photographs and the narrative. There is something about walking or cycling through a landscape that brings you into a relationship with it on a very human scale, and the fact that Caroline’s exploration of the history of the Lancashire witches was undertaken in this way gave it (to my mind) an element of pilgrimage.

I felt that she was honouring each of them as real people with their own lives and experiences rooted in their landscape, lifting them out of the mass of statistics of witch persecutions of the era.

I hope Caroline will come back to Bristol Goddess Temple to tell us about her future adventures.

If you’d like to learn more, Caroline has written an article about her cycle ride which can be found here. You can follow Caroline on @VerseCycle on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

‘The Lancashire Witches’
by Carol Ann Duffy

One voice for ten dragged this way once
by superstition, ignorance.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Witch: female, cunning, manless, old,
daughter of such, of evil faith;
in the murk of Pendle Hill, a crone.

Here, heavy storm-clouds, ill-will brewed,
over fields, fells, farms, blighted woods.
On the wind’s breath, curse of crow and rook.

From poverty, no poetry
but weird spells, half-prayer, half-threat;
sharp pins in the little dolls of death.

At daylight’s gate, the things we fear
darken and form. That tree, that rock,
a slattern’s shape with the devil’s dog.

Something upholds us in its palm-
landscape, history, place and time-
and, above, the same old witness moon

below which Demdike, Chattox, shrieked,
like hags, unloved, an underclass,
badly fed, unwell. Their eyes were red.

But that was then- when difference
made ghouls of neighbours; child beggars,
feral, filthy, threatened in their cowls.

Grim skies, the grey remorse of rain;
sunset’s crimson shame; four seasons,
centuries, turning, in Lancashire,

away from Castle, Jury, Judge,
huge crowd, rough rope, short drop, no grave;
only future tourists who might grieve.