In a few hours I will be driving west with my híredmann Taren Martin and my dog Lucky.  On Tuesday, May 25th, Taren and I will be speaking at Aquarius Books in Kansas City, and after this we will continue westward to attend the 25th annual Heartland Pagan Festival.

Last year I was an honored guest at the festival.  This will be Taren’s year to shine.  He designed the artwork for the 2010 festival tee-shirt, and both of us will be giving a presentation discussing why and how we designed the 33 cards of the Martin Rune Deck.  We were given an excellent time slot at 12:15 on Sunday afternoon.  I am very excited about promoting this deck of illustrated cards.   They are an excellent tool for anyone who would like to master the runes, and will complement my book Wyrdworking: The Path of a Saxon Sorcerer when it is released early next year.

I am also pleased that Taren is finally getting the recognition that he so richly deserves as a Pagan artist.  The Martin Rune Deck is perhaps his most ambitious accomplishment to date, but just earlier this month one of his prints brought the highest bid at an auction benefit for a local (Pittsburgh) non-profit Pagan organization.  He has created some truly inspirational illustrations.

The Martin Rune Deck can be purchased online at www.wolfden-designs.com.  If you have a Pagan shop and are interested in a wholesale price, use the “Contact Us” link.  Of course if you are going to be at Heartland, you can just come up and talk to either of us about the cards.  And be sure to stop by for our workshop!

Today I have mowed, and both the front and back garden are ready for May Day.  The lawns are dotted with purple violets and bright yellow dandelions.  The azaleas and lilacs are in full bloom, and I saw delicate pink blossoms on the comfrey.  We have a healthy frog population around the pond.  Our “house snake” greeted me at the back door.

I love this time of year.  Here, at the start of summer, everything feels so vibrant and alive.

Earendel traditionally celebrates the May by building a scarecrow to represent Old Jack Barleycorn.  The Old English word for barley was also an inclusive term for any productive or useful plant, and as an adjective (berende) meant fertility in general.  For us, Old Jack symbolizes the potential blessings we will receive over the coming year.  While building the scarecrow we each take a scrap of cloth and stitch onto this runes defining our own hopes for the season.  These rune cloths are then sewn to Jack’s garments, and he is placed on land belonging to one or more of our gesiðas, where he stands throughout the summer.

At the end of summer, at Haligæfen (Halloween) we stand Old Jack Barleycorn on a pyre and set him ablaze as an offering to our gods.  Thus the two liminal tides – the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter – are ritually conjoined.

What do you do at this time of year to acknowledge the summer season?