08/09/2026
Today, the 8th, is the feast of the Nativity of Mary. Her birthday, and one of three in the Church calendar. Mary is the Divine Feminine.
In the old Church calendar it had another name: Latter Marymass, the second of the two great Lady feasts of late summer, after the Assumption in August. It fell as the fields were being cleared, and its most widespread custom was the blessing of seeds for the autumn sowing. A feast of a birth that was also a feast of the seed going into the ground.
For centuries Mary was the figure this country walked to. The great pilgrim roads led to her: to Walsingham in Norfolk, to Our Lady of Penrhys high in the Welsh valleys, to shrines in every corner of England, Wales and Scotland. Almost all of it was pulled down at the Reformation, at the same time pilgrimage was banned. The paths to her can be walked again today.
You do not need the belief to feel the pull of it. A birthday at the turn of the year, a seed set for the spring.
Is there a link between the divine feminine and the pull to walk pilgrimage? Join us on Sunday 11th of October for our Walsingham Day Pilgrimage - From Salt Marsh to Shrine. https://www.britishpilgrimage.org/events/walsingham-day-pilgrimage-from-salt-marsh-to-shrine
Images: Virgin, follower of Filippo Lippi; background Autumn Flowers, from The Instructive Picture Book (Charlotte Mary Yonge, 1858).
