Reform Pagans often speak of Paganism through the metaphor and image of the Great Tree of Paganism, whose roots draw from the unremembered past and whose branches grow into the unimagined future. As we approach Mid Summer (the summer solstice, also called Litha), a sabbat often associated with joy, vitality, and power, we have a special opportunity to contemplate the eternal stele that provides and ensures each of these blessings within the Great Tree of Paganism.

For Reform Pagans, of great importance among these blessings’ many sources that together constitute the living vascular tissue and animating life force of the Great Tree of Paganism are an ostensibly paradoxical pair: on the one hand, our connection with past, present, and future of locus, soma, and psyche; on the other hand, our enchantment with the “here and now”.

Reform Pagans purposefully develop a sense of connection with ancestors, siblings, and descendants of place, blood, and spirit because because we appreciate that human life is a spiritual journey—preferably not just a wandering but rather a quest—within the broader spiritual evolution of all humanity and involution of an unfolding Universe. Each individual person is inextricably part of the whole human family and all of Nature.

Yet even while embracing this greater perspective, we appreciate that the “here and now” is all each of us has and all each of us can ever have. So we purposefully cultivate enchantment with each present place and time—not enchantment of (as if we could imbue the Universe with any supernatural magic) but perspectival enchantment with.

The precise mechanism by which connection and enchantment together produce joy, vitality, and power cannot be expressed in words, but the fact that the ostensibly paradoxical pair gives rise to these and many other blessings can be proved through experience, particularly on the occasion of the coming sabbat.

May we ever—especially on the occasion of Mid Summer—find joy, vitality, and power in the eternal stele of the Great Tree of Paganism.

With much love and many bright blessings always,
And particularly on the occasion of Mid Summer,
Your team of kindred spirits at ReformPagan.org