When the Dragons Rise

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Marking the rhythms of the solar year with ceremony and pilgrimage is a wonderful way for us humans to attune to the Way of Nature and the invitations of each threshold of the Wheel of the Year.

At Spring Equinox, with the sap rising, nest-building and first blossoming, the invitation of Nature is to unfurl, sow seeds and draw strength and courage from the underworld journey that has been preparing us for this time of rebirth and renewal.

Rising up rooted, we are ready to meet the expansive energy that more sunlight brings, and the ways the creative life-force is moving us towards new modes of expression and action.

Enacting a Spring rite is a powerful way to harmonise the inner and outer worlds so we feel a greater sense of coherence with this phase of emergence and new beginnings; to shake off the cloak of Winter and step intentionally into this creative cycle.

For a number of years at the Spring Equinox I have walked a pilgrimage within landscapes that speak to me of dragons. Where ridgeways feel like spines, curving valleys the tail, and caves - the belly of these ancient creatures. What is possible when we see the world as animate, with childlike wonder and curiosity? Nature becomes imbued with magic and story as we open to a wider field of perception that includes more than just what the eyes can see. We open to the invisible dimensions, and incorporate the magnificent worlds of imagination, dreaming, Soul and sound.

In my imagination and dreaming, dragons are not merely creatures of legend but ancient embodiments of the primordial feminine earth energy. They are the pulse beneath stone, the molten memory of creation, the serpentine currents that bind water, root, and bone. I see them slumbering and dreaming in the green landscapes of the British Isles, guarding the shorelines with their spiky tails, breathing life into my prayer fire, and occasionally soaring through the skies. I came eye to eye with one once, in a cave in the Peak District.

They are vast, powerful, and fierce beings, but the image of them in legends, such as “George and the Dragon”, feels like a profound misremembering. They are not monsters, but wild protectors: primordial Earth mothers who will go to great lengths to care for their kin and uphold what is Sacred. The old stories have teeth, but they have been turned against the very forces they once sought to honour. We do not need to destroy the dragon - we need to re-sacralise her, to revere her, to enter back into right relationship through care, respect, and reciprocity.

At the Spring Equinox the earth energies stir and shift, ascending from deep within the dreaming body of the land, as though she herself is awakening after the long exhale of winter. This is when the dragons begin to rouse from their deep dreaming. They stretch, they rise - and they are hungry!

To meet them in this season is to remember our role in the exchange. Dragons are fed through acts of devotion and attention: through seeds pressed into dark soil, through good food shared with the land, through prayer-infused water poured as libation, through invocations whispered into wind and root. Offerings need not be grand to be meaningful; it is the quality of presence that nourishes. In tending the Earth with care, gratitude, and intention, we feed the dragons as they rise - and in turn, they feed the great unfolding of life that carries us all.