By Fire Well and Tree

 <insert photo of Twelfth Night altar> While my liturgical year ended and began two months ago, the rest of the world* turned the page two days ago.  And so, the Twelfth Night of my Yule celebration conveniently coincides with New Year's Eve. As the five or ten of you who read along regularly know, I like to have a party that evening to celebrate.  It can be a bit much for this introvert, but I do it because I genuinely love hosting and making food and serving beverages to those that I care about.  Yuletide, and really all our holidays, began as group and family activities, and while I have done these things solo, it doesn't really put the cap on the season the same way.   Our whole Yuletide season prefaces with the Krampus walk on the first Sunday in December. One grove member has a Wassail party soon thereafter to really kick things off, and then I bookend it on the other side, and then usually Yule and Winter Solstice rites in between.  During...

 A few years back a friend of mine started a "Prayer a Day" challenge, a-la the NaNoWriMo project. There is, of course, a Facebook group, if you're into that sort of thing:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/973579286163091/ Anyway, I think I shall try this year. But, rather than post every day on FB I think I will post them HERE and then the shame of seeing me forget and give up will only be know by the 2-3 people who read this :)  I will try to remember to share a post around weekly.  You can always check in without me posting though. They're supposed to be NEW prayers, but there's some I've written and not ever shared that I may add in here just because. But not today! New Beginnings A child of earth calls out I call to my ancestors, who started over and over I call to the spirits of the land, and their endless rebirth to new beginnings I call to the gods who watch the cycles of time spiral forward Stand with me, Kindreds I take these first steps on a famili...