The feast of Saint Michael’s, All Hallows’ Eve, Candlemas, Saint John's Eve, Imbolc and its Celtic rites, and shamanic practices ushering in the spring: from autumn to summer, light and darkness, as well as death and regeneration, follow one another, engender change, and are accompanied by human efforts to control them and establish a dialogue with nature – generous, yet mysterious and unpredictable, constantly transforming its appearance from one season to the next. Accordingly, pagan and Christian feasts, rites and beliefs are established, overlap and enrich one another. Any attempts to govern them undertaken by secular and ecclesiastical institutions inevitably come up against an unseen, archetypal core of resistance, bolstered by traces of miraculous accretion. The author accompanies his readers on a journey through a calendar that renews and repeats itself, continually strengthening the ancestral relationship bonding humanity and nature.

Duccio Balestracci formerly taught Medieval History at the University of Siena.