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.
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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.
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. |
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
June 2017
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