About The Gathering Path
🌲 About the Name
I love the process of finding a name for a project and when I imagined our community rituals I wanted something simple that invoked a sense of many ways of practicing coming together around a common fire of inspiration. The name also speaks to my lineage of practice and the communities that shaped how I facilitate and participate in community spaces.
Imagining this project, I think of not only circles around campfires, where knowledge and energy and connection is shared, but the many paths that bring people to a campfire. For me The Gathering Path speaks not only to knowledge gathered along a path of practice but the energy itself of being gathered up and together to a common meeting point. In other words, we are not only gathering wisdom on our path but being gathered together through our practice.
✨ The Practice
Once a quarter, on a New Moon, I'll post about a general theme of healing practice, incorporating both traditional western herbal and magickal concepts, that we can all prepare, practice, and share our thoughts about between the time of a New Moon to a Full Moon. As part of The Gathering Path, I'll share a simple community ritual that we can perform on or just before the Full Moon.
There will be a variety of practices that you can choose to do - a might-do list of options meant to help you develop your practice while feeling held in a container of community enthusiasm. So, if we are working with a theme of clarity, I might suggest learning about brain tonic herbs that help alleviate mental fatigue and promote focus, recipes to consider creating, as well as provide journal and poetry prompts to work with, tarot spreads, and so on. The simple ritual, which will have plenty of space for adaptation, will help to pull together all that we've been exploring while strengthening the weave of our community web.
🕸️ The Structure
Our first pathway will take place from the New Moon in Scorpio (November 1) to the Full Moon in Taurus (November 15). On November 1 I will share the details of the path, including a simple worksheet you'll be able to download to help guide you through the suggested practices. Everyone will be encouraged to share their practices, studies, and questions throughout the path period in the comments. I will also be creating a chatroom just for The Gathering Path.
FAQ
When will The Gathering Path take place?
At the moment, I'm thinking once a quarter around the fire festivals, but the timing of this is still an experiment, so it might have less or more. So the first pathway will happen in November 2024 and for the rest of 2025 I envision pathways happening:
January 29 - February 12
April 27 - May 12
July 24 - August 9
Oct 21 - Nov 5
What if the timing doesn't work for me and I can't perform the ritual on or just before the Full Moon? Can I perform it another time?
Of course! You can perform the ritual whenever it works for you - magick isn't particularly fussed with linear time. That said, having participated in community rituals during a specific time period, there is a current of energy that is really special when that coordination is able to happen. I hope everyone gets to experience some of that community current at some point in your practice whether through The Gathering Path or elsewhere. But, again, perform the rituals when you feel called and able to.
I don't have a magickal practice - can I still participate?
Yes! You can choose to participate in just the herbal study portion, but the magickal aspects of The Gathering Path will be designed with a variety of experience levels in mind, and you're invited to participate in whatever way you feel most comfortable.
I am brand new to herbalism - how technical will The Gathering Path be?
The herbal aspects of The Gathering Path will be open-ended and allow for a variety of experience levels to find it useful. If we're exploring the theme of clarity, for example, a beginner might choose to focus on one herb like Peppermint (Metha piperita) for their path while a more experienced student or practitioner might explore the different ways that clarity can be hampered in the body (i.e. brain fog that arises from indigestion versus brain fog that arises from hormonal shifts).
Can I do just one pathway? Or do I have to participate in them all?
You can participate in as many or as few pathways as you feel called to, joining us at any time throughout the year.
What are the little symbols that I see on each of The Gathering Path pages?
I painted the little watercolors circles and added in symbols from the Cochno Stone in Scotland, a beautiful example of Bronze Age rock art. I find a lot of inspiration from megalithic and prehistoric art - many of these symbols were record keepings from maps to stories. It felt like an appropriate tradition to draw upon for our community.