Happy Minoan New Year!

I haven't lost my mind, I promise...

Seasons are a funny thing. Many of us grew up believing that the way the seasons worked where we lived was a universal pattern all over the world.

I don’t know about you, but when my first-grade teacher told my class about spring, summer, fall, and winter, she didn’t mention any other climates. She just said, “These are the seasons.” So I spent most of my childhood thinking that the whole world ran on the four-season northern temperate zone schedule.**

Of course, I did eventually learn about other seasonal cycles. The first one I remember was the southern hemisphere temperate cycle, which reverses the northern hemisphere order - they have spring when we have autumn, and vice versa. I was totally enchanted by this concept as a child.

Eventually I learned about all the other variants, including the Mediterranean climate. This unique seasonal cycle, based on rainy and dry seasons, has become very important to me because a large part of my spiritual practice focuses on Minoan spirituality. And the Minoans lived on Crete, an island in the eastern Mediterranean.

Why am I going on about seasons? Because the Autumn Equinox is coming up in a couple of days, and it’s an important point in the Ariadne’s Tribe sacred calendar.

But I don’t live in a Mediterranean climate. So I find myself thinking about both what’s going on in my local world right now (the leaves are beginning to change, my garden is dying down, it’s harvest time) and what’s happening around Crete: The rainy season is beginning, the soil that had dried and hardened over the summer is softening, and the farmers are plowing their fields and planting their crops.

Those crops will grow over the mild, rainy winter and be harvested in the spring. Just the opposite of what I’m used to. But that’s the way the seasons work over there.

The beginning of the Mediterranean agricultural season - which is right now, around the Autumn Equinox - is the date we celebrate as our new year in Ariadne’s Tribe.

We often characterize the equinoxes as times of balance. They are, after all, the times when sunrise and sunset are exactly twelve hours apart, dividing the day into equal halves.

I’m contemplating this concept of the balance of opposites as I hold two very different Autumn Equinoxes in my mind and honor them both.

Aren’t we blessed to be a part of a world that contains such delicious variety?

** Which is especially funny given that I grew up in Florida (USA) where the four seasons are more like Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas.