Greenhaven: A Pagan Tradition

One of our number is building a new house, so we're helping lay the wards.  Tonight we gathered around a bonfire to charge items that will be going into a witch jar.  The fire elementals really came out to play this time.  \o/

Tonight we held our Beltane ritual with a theme of "fertility."  Six people attended.  We had a feast, a bonfire, and a Maypole.  Much fun was had by all.  We used a modular design this time, and plan to write up a presentation of how to do that for the website here.

For our Yule feast we had a ham, cranberry relish, cole slaw, garlic mushrooms, bread, peppermint chocolate bark, and dark chocolate cheesecake topped with raspberries.  We had five people for the feast.  Then we did the Chocolate Ritual, for which we had four people present and another by phone.

Our Samhain ritual had three people present.  We had a feast with a ham, mashed yams, eggplant spread, and cornbread made from ancient cultivars.  We went outside for ritual.  There was a ring around the moon tonight.  We lit a bonfire.  The focus of the ritual was remembering the dead, particularly Raymond Buckland, one of the founders of modern Witchcraft.  We sang "Gimme That Old Time Religion" with a lot of Pagan verses.

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.