Black is the chosen colour for PaGaian Lammas ceremonial decoration, for this Season when the dark part of the cycle is just new. It is for the purpose of identification with the Dark, falling in love with this place which is native to all being, becoming re-acquainted perhaps with this darkness in which we – all being – are immersed. After the peaking of Summer Solstice, there is the decline of manifestation, of all that has come to fullness through the light part of the cycle. This is the Season for the marking of endings: it is a “wake”, a celebration of the harvest of life, where there is both joy and grief – as in any funerary moment. 

The blackness of the fabrics and ribbons is for the honoring of this essential nature and pre-dominant quality of the Cosmos; a making of sacred space for contemplation of the blackness that we are actually immersed in and is within our whole being. It may be recognised as a sentient fertile space, perhaps more correctly as the sentient fertile space, out of which all arises.

So, this blackness: is it an end or a beginning? I feel it so often as a beginning, though it is marked as a dissolution and the passing of all in the PaGaian Wheel. The closure of what has been, may offer a refreshment, a “clean slate”, upon which something new can be scribed, the space required for something new to come into being. In GoddessSpeak the end and the beginning are always seamlessly connected – it is a circle/spiral not a straight line. It is common in Western cultures to associate black with death and endings, but an Earth-based mind knows it as the colour of life. With practice we may feel its beauty again, if it has been lost.