Wheel of the Year | Contemplative Inquiry

DEEP AUTUMN 2025

“All things ripen and rot that rose up at first,

And so the year runs away in yesterdays many,

And here winter wends again, as by the way of the world it ought,

Until the Michaelmas moon has winters boding brought.” (1)

Even today, deep autumn opens the door to winter. This was even more the case in the North Staffordshire and Derbyshire regions of 14th century England, where Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written. Even in castles, people were less sheltered from the growing cold and damp than we are. So readers and listeners of the period are reminded that the coming of winter is both natually and divinely ordained.

Here and now, the sight of the apple harvest in its later stages (pictured above) seems quite different than in the early ones (2) – less bright, less novel, less shiny. Rotting apples lie on the ground, now fallen outside the wall of Gloucester Cathedral’s orchard. From Nature’s exuberant perspective, this is all part of the plan. Waste is built in.

This time draws me further into the declining year. I am in the cathedral’s grounds, now looking at a yew tree and its associations with death. I’m thinking of the approach of Samhain (aka Halloween/All Hallows) at the turn of the month. Once it marked the 3rd harvest of the year – the blood harvest, where animals were slaughtered in preparation for winter. Now it is more a time to remember our ancestors, and our dead more widely.

Yet the seasonal moment, and the yew, can also be linked to wisdom and transformative change in life. I launched my contemplative inquiry at Samhain 2011. Like many people, I find that this period can be a resonant and creative time.

Below the yew, I have included a section of the cathedral itself. I have old personal associations linking medieval Gothic architecture with the feeling-tone of the declining year. I am also aware that this building is linked to the trees I picture and discuss. Gloucester Cathedral was a monastery when Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written but many of its features were already in place.

In the same space, I find both holly and ivy, with berries on the holly tree. I immediately thought of the Christmas carol The Holly and the Ivy. It is an ancient folk carol, which interweaves Christian themes and others that belong with the land. The version which is now popular was collected by Cecil Sharp in 1909 in Gloucestershire from Mary Clayton.

Many people think that the indigenous Pagan themes are the oldest, and that the central focus here is on the holly. The authors of The Green Man Tree Oracle say: “Holly’s connection with the Green Man is especially strong. In his guise as the Holly King – an ancient giant and symbol of fertility – the Green Man makes a notable appearance in the 14th century poem Gawain and d the Green Knight. Here he takes the form of a fearsome knight, who comes to King Arthur’s court to offer a midwinter challenge, carrying a club of holly and wearing a holly crown (as symbols of his true identity).” This challenge happens every year, where the Green Man/Holly King demands that we encounter him through our dealings with the natural world.

Elaine and I went to the Gloucester Cathedral Close and its surroundings on Saturday afternoon 18 October to outrun an extended period of gloom, wind and rain. We are now in it, so the lessons of the trees in deep autumn, anticipating the coming of winter, are not lost on us. The dark of the year is on its way.

(1) J.R R. Tolkien (translation of anonymous texts) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo New York: Ballantine Books, 1980.

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2025/08/22/ (3rd photo)

(3) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle: Ancient Wisdom from the Greenwood London: Connections, 2003

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October 13, 2025

SIMPLE PLEASURE IN AUTUMN LEAVES

Recently, Elaine and I walked to our local park after a considerable absence. We were both adequately bold and mobile at the same time. We found a park very different, at least visually, to the sad, dried-up space of late August and its premature turn.

Here, above, is lush life against a background suggestive of mist. Close up, we enjoy the patterns and colours of the leaves. They seem fresh, radiant and alive.

Below, the distinctive yellow of the tree of heaven, and its fern-like leaves, provide a powerful contrast that adds to our enjoyment.

Looking from a somewhat greater distance, below, I experience a sense of majesty in seeing the whole tree (right) leaning into blue sky. Its slightly closer neighbour (left) provides a subtle colour contrast with a deep green intermingled with brown leaves ready to fall.

Below, I have stepped back further from the trees. My picture is of a clump of trees in the park. They are largish trees. The person walking past them is dwarfed. But I’m still enjoying leaves. I like the reddish brown emerging from residual green. I see Nature at work in a way that is both understated and beautiful. I know also that it can be a sheltering space within a generally flat and open park.

I still have a particular affection for willow, going back 20 years when I was studying Druidry. I was in Bristol and befriended a willow on the banks of the Bristol Avon, where it moves out from the old city towards the Clifton suspension bridge and the gorge. I became a literal tree hugger. It was part of a process that indeed changed my life. Hence my affection for willow. I am glad that there are willows in the Gloucester City park.

The road we took to and from the park offered leaves of autumnal red. I believe that the tree in the front garden is a stagshorn sumac. When I walk past the tree I get a little distracted by the property’s obvious need for a little tlc. Elaine however celebrates the opportunity taken by the Virginia creeper, as seen particularly in the second of the pictures below. It is great to see such abundance in this unpromising space.

For me, the great virtue of simple pleasures is their simplicity itself. Paying attention to the everyday Nature around us can be deeply nurturing and involves little risk. Yet for some, it can be a portal to re-enchantment in a largely disenchanted world.

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October 9, 2025

UNSHELTERED

Now in the fourth week after my shoulder fracture, I have ventured out on a contemplative walk.

I rested for awhile in the erstwhile physic garden of Llanthony Secunda Priory. It is a friendly space for me. Yet at first I felt very small. An alien energetic sky raced high above me towards an unknown horizon.

I wasn’t used to the outdoors. The garden stretched in front of me, defined by a long straight path. I experienced the world as a place of distance and extension. I felt alarmingly unsheltered, until I stilled myself and looked down.

The sight of Michaelmas daisies altered my state. Seasonal flowers and a living, shining green. Although I didn’t move to touch them, I felt like a toddler reaching out for a mother’s hand. I was held again within the wheel of the year. Autumn, the season of bearing fruit.

I looked out further and received rhe assurance of an old stone wall, and the majesty of mature trees. The trees might be turning. The wall might be part of a ruin. But they were still in place, still present in time, still offering a quiet companionship.

These changes in perspective allowed me to experience the garden afresh, more closely and intimately. It was easier to be in, and easier to connect with. Still unsheltered, but unalarmed, I knew that I belong.

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September 27, 2025

BEYOND THE EQUINOX

these dark mobile clouds

racing through the autumn sky

as the soft light fades

Picture taken, 6.55 pm, 27 September, sunset in Gloucester, England.

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September 20, 2025

LIMITATION

A familiar scene, in its equinoctial clothing. My experience of it is made different by a recent fall, in which I fractured my left humerus bone near the shoulder. I am left-handed, so it’s the ‘wrong’ side for a break. Happily my wrist and fingers remain flexible, and I don’t need surgery for the fracture. It could have been much worse.

Nonetheless Elaine, still depending on a rollator for walking, and I have to be resourceful and strategic in leaving and re-entering our apartment. Essentially I specialise in legs and she specialises in arms, though we each have some capacity in the other’s domain. We’re a team, after all. We work together. But we aren’t getting out much for the time being.

I look out a little wistfully and write a bit ouchilly. I feel limited and constrained. I also feel loved and supported. I’m a little foggy in my thinking, but I don’t see an episode like this as time off from my contemplative inquiry. All experiences are there to be acknowledged, moment by moment, day by day. Otherwise the practice becomes an alienated exercise, or performance, separated from the ups and downs of life. In reality, it sits ever-present within them.

I look within myself. I look across at Elaine. I also look out of window to connect with the world outside and its changes over the year. The grey sky is typical for this September, but blue sky is too. Variation is the overall story. It’s an inherently changeful and unsettled time. I’m intrigued by the way in which Robinswood Hill retains its green cover, when the town trees are in an advanced stage of turning. I’m alive.

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September 4, 2025

WATER ON THE PATH

Walking on a familiar path, I found a trail of puddles in front of me. It felt exotic and refreshing. For this had been a parched and dry place for a many months. I dimly recall a past life of finding puddles a minor nuisance – almost an obstacle. Not today. They brought joy and fascination.

I found myself contemplating these small accumulations of fallen rain: noticing their shapes and patterns, seeing how the water creates mud so easily from dried soil, watching the slight movement fallen leaves in these tiny ponds. The circumstance of the long dry period and its ending made rainwater and its effects interesting and worthy of attention in ways that seemed new and almost strange. I opened myself up and became present to them, before moving on.

On my way home I was caught by a brief deluge. I made a brief video of rain on a puddle. I got wet too, yet it somehow completed my walk.

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August 22, 2025

LATE AUGUST 2025: SETTLING INTO AUTUMN

It is evening and for me autumnal. The sky offers the water a soft light, seemingly pink and grey. The water reflects this back, adding its own hint of mist. It is a tranquil scene.

For the first time this year, I feel a tug towards the Equinox, just under a month away. These canal waters are gentle, but they are drawn from the River Severn, site of the Severn Bore (1). Perhaps the waters are nudging something – maybe the water – in me.

A little later, facing into the declining sun (below) I see the sunset and its effects. I notice the concentrated power of the orb as it appears to reach the earth, and the way in which this energy disperses into the sky. The colour coding shifts from intense white to yellow to red-orange to an orange becoming increasingly grey. I live at latitude 52 north, and the sunset is getting earlier every day, now 8.15pm. Another autumnal feature.

Autumn is also the season of the fruit harvest. This year, many people are commenting that the fruit harvest is arriving early. Below, against the background of a clear blue daytime sky, an apple tree is fruiting. The tree is close to Gloucester Cathedral and may belong to it. Medieval Gloucester was a place of churches and priories. It was also a place of orchards, many of them cultivated by monks and friars. The picture points to natural and cultural continuity, though the fruit are early this year. I am no longer at a point tension between seasons. I am already settled in autumn.

(1) The Severn Bore is a natural tide phenomenon occurring in the River Severn in England, where a large wave surges upstream. It’s caused by the Atlantic tide pushing into the Bristol Channel and funneling it into the narrowing Severn Estuary, creating a more powerful wave that can be up to two meters high and a speed of up to 21 km/h. The Bore travels up the Severn Estuary, from Awre to Gloucester, a distance of 25 miles. It is strongest in the equinoxes (especially spring) and a popular challenge for surfers, kayakers and paddleboarders.

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August 17, 2025

PARK TREES IN A DRY SEASON

Yesterday evening I went to my local park and was struck by changes in the trees. I seemed to have walked into a premature autumn. Trees were shedding leaves. To me, the trees in the picture above appeared distressed. Looking at them again now, I wonder about disease as well as simple unseasonal shedding.

In the park, I found beauty too, with new colours becoming manifest. In my part of the world, the latter part of August has always included intimations of Autumn. But 2025 feels unusually dramatic and unusually early. Some trees, like the horse chestnut below, seem to be shedding their leaves particularly fast.

Other trees seemed to be weathering this period more easily, like these medlars now bearing their fruit – bringing autumn into August in an apparently unstressed way.

Standing back, I could see new patterns in the no longer quite so green Greenwood. They illustrate new conditions and are, for better or worse, harbingers of a new time. There will be more changes. I hope that the trees will continue to adapt and stay in place for many years to come. But nothing is certain, in this time of climate crisis and the rise of willed ignorance about its severity.

The sunsets continue to get earlier. I walked into one as I left the park. The sun asserted it’s power in a late stage of its descent. It’s been a hot summer as well as a dry one. I took this powerful, almost too powerful, late summer solar image with me as I walked back to my home.

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August 10, 2025

ROWAN’S LATE SUMMER SIGN

Where I live, late summer is often the warmest time of year, and the driest. This is likely to be the case in 2025, already a warm dry year. But in the sun’s apparent annual journey, it is also a time of waning. Sunrise is an hour later than at the solstice, and sunset is forty-five minutes earlier. This change will accelerate from now on.

I do not see waning as negative. There is power and beauty in this ‘waning’. In the rowan (aka mountain ash) picture above, the berries are moving from tentative orange to bright scarlet, an effect of the seasonal changes in the light. Rowan is an ogham tree, linking a group of indigenous Irish and British trees to an ancient Irish alphabet. Its Gaelic name luis means bright or flame.

Looking at the year as a whole, some of the berries will still be holding on beyond midwinter, by which time the tree, which can live for up to 200 years, will be making its annual comeback. At that time, as described in William Anderson’s justly venerated in Green Man poem (1):

The hungry birds harry the last berries of rowan

But white is her bark in the darkness of rain

‘I rise with the sap’, says the Green Man

‘I rise with the sap’ says he. (1)

The resilience of the tree runs throughout its year and lifetime. In late summer specifially, this resilience is manifested in berries at their brightest, against the backdrop of a still blue evening sky.

Traditionally Rowan has strong associations with protection, spiritual protection not least. According to The Green Man Tree Oracle (2), ‘it can also offer insight into danger through the invocation of higher wisdom’. Ancient Druid shamans were said to breathe in the smoke from rowan fires to initiate a trance state that allowed them to predict coming danger.

The Druids also planted rowan, as well as oak and ash, in their sacred groves. But Celtic Druids were not the only people to place a high value on the rowan tree. Our modern word rowan is probably descended from the Norse runas – narrowly translated as ‘charm’ but in fact bringing the wider runic and Norse traditions with it.

When I encountered the rowan I was strongly moved by it. It stood out from everything else. I had previously decided not to take pictures on my walk, but felt compelled to change my mind. I didn’t need ancient lore to feel more alert and heartened. It’s just that the framing it provides added cultural depth. The encounter with rowan put a spring in my step and was a highlight of my evening.

(1) William Anderson Green Man: archetype of our oneness with the Earth Harper Collins: London & San Francisco, 1990

(2) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle: ancient wisdom from the greenwood London: Connections, 2003

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August 7, 2025

HARVESTING INSIGHT

Noticing a single corn stalk under our neighbouring birch trees, I wonder whether the seed simply blew in or was planted by an unknown hand. If the latter, what was their intention? I realise that I will never know.

I do know how much I enjoy its presence in this space at this time. I experience it as a miracle inviting gratitude and it has marked the seasonal moment for me, this first harvest of a now declining year.

With increasing clarity I understand that I do not work well with personified and individualised images of the divine. Something seems subtly off, as if I am failing to sound my own authentic note in the Great Song of the world.

I believe that we are given different gifts in our encounters with the Cosmos, leading to legitimately different understandings. When I lean in to the notion of divine personality – even when using the term ‘Spirit’ in that sense – I am not fully living my own truth. I subtly disempower myself and weaken my connection.

For in my universe, when I rest in my own clarity, there is no separation between nature (including culture) and spirit. In the awkward activity of identification and labelling, I answer to terms like animist, panentheist and nondualist.

These words are approximations, with the power to be distracting and slightly depressing. I can find words that point to my experience well enough. But the explanatory words, the more formal and generalised terms, feel clumsy. There’s a necessary level of unknowing that these isms don’t recognise.

When consciously living in spirit, I am neither alone, as a single human person, nor am I with another being. I am simply in a different dimension of embodied awareness, supported and empowered by the bubbling source from which I spring. For me, Nature is more than the ‘nature’ of dualist spiritualities and of the scientific humanism that grew out of them.

As I harvest the learning, or relearning, of this lesson, I renew my commitment to practice and path, once again revising the beginning and end of the modern Druid’s prayer (1). I move from from ‘Grant, Spirit your protection, and in protection, strength … ‘ to ‘In spirit I find protection, and in protection, strength …’. I end with ‘and in the love of all existences, the love of this radiant Cosmos’ rather than ‘the love of God/Goddess/Spirit and all goodness’. These small changes formalise and anchor my understanding. For me, they are an important affirmation, illuminating my path.

(1) Traditionally, this prayer runs:

Grant O God/Goddess/Spirit, your protection,

And in protection, strength,

And in strength, understanding,

And in understanding, knowledge,

And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice

And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it

And in the love of it, the love of all existences

And in the love of all existences, the love of God/Goddess/Spirit and all goodness”.

NB Providing the options of God/Goddess/Spirit is I think an OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids) innovation. The original version, from the late 18th century, simply said ‘God’. Some modern Druids say ‘God and Goddess’.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Wheel of the Year

October 19, 2025

DEEP AUTUMN 2025

October 13, 2025

SIMPLE PLEASURE IN AUTUMN LEAVES

October 9, 2025

UNSHELTERED

September 27, 2025

BEYOND THE EQUINOX

September 20, 2025

LIMITATION

September 4, 2025

WATER ON THE PATH

August 22, 2025

LATE AUGUST 2025: SETTLING INTO AUTUMN

August 17, 2025

PARK TREES IN A DRY SEASON

August 10, 2025

ROWAN’S LATE SUMMER SIGN

August 7, 2025

HARVESTING INSIGHT