This year's Litha celebration had four people. We celebrated the joys of summer, and dogs. We had a huge bonfire, with brush that had been piling up for months. \o/ One of the fun things we did to capture the playful aspect of summer was cast the circle by blowing bubbles, one quarter caller at a time walking around part of the circle to the next quarter. We also did some drumming and dancing around the bonfire. We released the circle by walking it in reverse, with each quarter caller leading for their quarter of the circle. That's a new technique worth remembering.
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I have posted our 2015 Beltane ritual on the Beltane page. This year we did it as a fire festival.
Today we held our Litha ritual. This is our tenth anniversary as a coven and a tradition! Our ritual was a water-sharing, inspired by the Church of All Worlds.
After the ritual, we picked black raspberries. Usually there's more fruit growing here at Fieldhaven than we can pick and use ourselves, so coven members and other friends are welcome to the extras. Last year the drought made for a meagre harvest. This year, there are raspberries and mulberries as far as the eye can see. Tonight we celebrated Beltane. We made a feast with chicken, yams, and asparagus. We built a bonfire, which burned quite well, even considering all the rain we've gotten recently. We danced around a Maypole. It was a vibrating Maypole -- I used holographic holiday ribbon, which when stretched out tight, hummed in the breeze. So that was amusing. The flower crown was made from blooming cherry twigs.
Yesterday, we held an esbat in which we asked the land spirits to ask the weather spirits for gentle rain. Tonight it's raining! Not a lot, but more than we've gotten in the last couple months. So, that technique works.
We wrote a ritual for Lughnassadh but plans fell through and we were unable to perform it. We have posted the text on our Lammas page in case anyone else wants to use it. The theme is drought and harvest.
So as a fallback we shifted to an esbat, because the moon is full tonight, and we kept the drought theme. You can see that on our main Esbats page, since it follows our "ordinary" and seemed like a useful example to share. This month we combined the full moon and Imbolc ritual, due to some schedule challenges. We made several types of firestarters as our craft project. The ritual included a bless
Last night we held our January full moon esbat, also doubling for Yule since nobody was available then. We built a bonfire in the ritual meadow. For some reason it didn't want to catch -- even the PAPER was lighting and going out! But eventually we got it lit. We decided to consider making firestarters as part of our Imbolc celebration next month!
The ritual itself was simple. We cast the circle with bells, read the Charge of the Star Goddess, and sang "Deck the Halls." We also shared personal news from the New Year to honor the turning of the Wheel. Back indoors, we got into an impromptu gift exchange. One person brought craft supplies to share. So I hauled out our box of random Pagan goodies for people to look through -- candles, glass jars, incense burners, mojo bags, secondhand Tarot, etc. That was fun. There is a new article in the "Writing" section, "Sword Without a Hilt: Concepts of Evil." Read it and explore ideas about wickedness from Paganism and other traditions.
Today we celebrated Samhain here at Fieldhaven. Much of the ritual design was laid out during a car ride yesterday, then fleshed out this afternoon. We had a potluck feast with Egyptian leg of lamb, salad, mixed vegetables, bread rolls, and pumpkin pie. Our ritual has been added to the Samhain page, so you can read about what we did.
This ritual focused on pathfinding, to consider where we are spiritually and to help likeminded people find our coven. We built a nice bonfire in the evening and lit it just before the ritual. There were three main sections of the ritual that dealt with invoking the Ancestors, assessing our personal progress, and reaching out to potential contacts. Some fun things happened that were not planned. The first was when one of the pieces of paper thrown into the fire was grabbed by our resident fire elemental and tossed in midair above the flames -- unburned -- for a couple of minutes before finally settling into the fire and being consumed. Another was a spontaneous rhymed chant that was improvised during the spiral dance. These are typical of the whimsy that characterizes rituals in our tradition; we are always open to the inspiration of the moment and to the cool things that happen in a magical environment. I also noticed something on a personal level. I was calling Spirit, and we used Unicorn as an elemental representative thereof in this ritual. Now, I've always had a pretty good connection with unicorns, but they came through exceptionally strongly this time. I think part of that owes to the writing I've been doing for my poetic series Path of the Paladins, which features a poem about unicorns, "Purity." Another project I participate in is Torn World, which features enormous snow-unicorns. It was a reminder that whatever we pay attention to ... pays attention to us. The unicorns were just really enthusiastic when I called to them, and doused the circle with numinous energy. |
AuthorElizabeth Barrette lives in central Illinois. She belongs to the Fieldhaven coven. Her first book is Composing Magic: How to Create Magical Spells, Rituals, Blessings, Chants, and Prayers. Archives
May 2015
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