Bathing In The Magic Water
Anointing ourselves with intentions for the coming season
Dear Reader,
Happy Solstice and turn of the seasons. I wish for you a week’s end that was spent delighting in the gifts of summer fruits, swimming in cool waters, tending to a garden, walking your neighborhood with the sun on your face. This week I have been thinking about the ways we honor and welcome the coming of a new season, from the quiet internal nods of acknowledgement to the cultural traditions as old as time. Both, imbued with intention.
I am also thinking about the Italian ritual of L’acqua di San Giovanni, a tradition of gathering aromatic flowers and herbs in a bowl of water at sunset on the evening of June twenty-third and leaving it in the garden to soak up the night dew. The next morning the perfumed water is used to wash the face and hands of everyone in the home, in belief that it will bestow good luck and health. It’s a way of honoring the Solstice and San Giovanni, the patron saint of Florence, and whether or not one truly believes in the magic of the blessed waters, the ritual alone is connective to the natural elements of the season.
After several years of intending to participate in this seasonal practice and, in the flurry of life, it passing me by without notice, this evening, in the last light, I will walk out to my wild Wedding Garden with a glass bowl in hand and gather an islander’s collection of fragrant flora and foliage in honor of the coming season of life and of my own patron saint, my great-grandfather Giovanni.
Gardenia for his daughter, my grandmother
Puakenikeni, as an acknowledgement of place
Rosemary for remembrance and the ancestors
Cat Whiskers blossom, also known as Java Tea, for my familiars
Fig leaf for the fertilization of new beginnings
Some say one hundred varieties must be foraged, others say just twenty four. As my understanding of the nuance of devotion and ritual has evolved, it is my belief that intention is the most potent ingredient and that utilizing what is available to you has the power to inspire in equal measure. Preserving tradition, particularly familial ones, is a through line to our ancestors, and also, there is beauty in the organic evolution that allows the old ways to exist in a new world. The ultimate purpose: to get outside, to touch the earth, to introduce yourself to a vast variety of species, to collect them in love, to call protection and good fortune into the new season of your life, to then wash away that which limits and confines you and to replace it with hope.
With the arrival of each new season, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on the last and hold a vision for the one to come. You too might find this to be a natural time to recall who you were at this time last year, the things you were grappling with, the things that brought you joy. I invite you to find a quiet moment to ponder the following prompts, and then forge ahead into the season, bathed in the metaphorical blessed waters of your intentions.
Reflection Questions
What was happening in your life, in your communities and in the greater collective one year ago?
How were you feeling then? What weighed heavy? What did you delight in?
How are you feeling now? What changes do you note?
What is a personal seed, an intention or goal, that you may have planted a year ago that is blooming now?
What vision or intention are you holding for the coming season of your life, for your communities and for the greater collective?
What are you releasing in order to bring this vision to life?
What in your near future do you have to look forward to?
