By Fire Well and Tree

Borage  Hello!! Post festival droop is a real thing. I had wanted to do a review of the latest  festival I attended, Sirius Rising, but I jumped right into a surprise party planning and execution, and juggling family and misdirection, and haven't had a chance to really GROUND back in to the mundane.  I'll be heading to another one next week, so I need to get some stuff off the blog-plate. First, we moved into both a new calendar month and a new spot on the wheel of the year, at the same time.  The rune pulled at Yule for August was Ingwaz which is about the best rune you could pull for the beginning of the harvest!  Literally the name of an Anglo-Saxon deity, and associated also with Freyr, this rune can sometimes be about fertility but also about the frith and fellowship that comes with the harvest. This is the time for fairs, and I'll do another post some day comparing ancient and modern fairs, but both are about larger communities coming together, to meet, to...

  Photo by Simon Berger: https://www.pexels.com/photo/purple-flowers-in-bloom-1353126/ Yay!  The sun is at her peak, and there were some days even in the cooler-than-I-wanted-it-to-be Spring that part of me  doubted we'd get here.  But here we are! A couple of notes. One of the names assigned to this holiday is Liða, sometimes spelled Litha.  I have never known many people locally to call it that (usually Midsummer or Summer Solstice). But if you're going to call it by the Anglo-Saxon name, PLEASE pronounce it correctly!  The "i" is a long e sound (so ee). The ð is called a 'thorn' and it is a hard-Th sound, like "that."  (It's kind of like saying my name with a weird lisp on the 's' really).  I may have talked about midsummer before (sorry to repeat), but it falls between the planting season and the harvesting season. So, really, there's not much to DO besides just maintenance.  If my memory serves, this may have been prime time for ...

A wide purple clover path through lightly wooded area Whether you call it Ostara or not, the vernal equinox has come (a few days ago. And I'm sorry this is late, but thank Covid.) Again, I am blessed to be living where all four seasons tend to correspond to the calendar, more or less, so the 8 Sabbats match up pretty well.  Being a part of the local pagan community means that I have two rites planned, one of which I'm leading (pending  negative Covid test, of course).   Equinoxes have the theme of balance for me, always. Light and dark are mostly even, or as close as one can get.  Per timeanddate.com, we got 12 hours and 8 minutes of daylight on the equinox itself (March 20).  We had EXACTLY 12 hours on March 17.   Why is three days early? I originally thought it was the imperfections of our modern calendar.  But I also had to look it up too. Stepping back a little bit, many of you probably already know the word “equinox” comes from “aequus” ...

  Special guest appearance by Taco towards the back  I am not 100 percent sure how I came to be so...YULE!!!  When I first became pagan, I felt like I was all about the Samhain, the spooky. And heck, yeah, I still love it.  But somehow Yule took hold and now I plan Yule Lad visit to my grove's kids, and Solstice eve vigils, and a Yule Along for the 12 days, and then Twelfth Night sumble.... Anyway, here we are again. The last two years there's been Yule-A-Long and Yule Lads, but that's it.  In 2020, we tried to have a Zoom Twelfth Night. I get that Zoom has been a godsend for many, and we certainly used similar technology (Blackboard Collaborate), but as much as they can help people with some anxieties, they do the exact opposite for mine. So in 2021 I didn't even bother, and was mostly too full of Seasonal Affective Disorder to even care. We didn't even decorate those two years.   BUT, this year is all... well, different. Not normal, but close. (I des...

 ... I mean, it is THE pagan holiday... The first one I ever celebrated WITH people. I think it was 1992, and my roommate and I went to the now-defunct PCCO's "Take Back the Rite" Samhain gathering at what is now Bicentennial Park (maybe it was then?)  The Faith Mission bus was there to pick up homeless since it was cold but decided to attempt to disrupt our rite and then stand in a circle around our circle lobbing prayers at us. Yay. There are probably Neopagans out there that don't like Samhain... But I don't really know them.  I try to explain it to non or new Neopagans as a combination of Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and New Year's Eve.  In reverse order, the connection with the Celtic New Year and fire festival of the same name has many groups (including one of mine) marking the end/beginning of their liturgical year.  And if you have a hard time with resolutions, this is one of the many cultural new year celebrations that you can get a do-over (if you phr...

  Okay, you're right. they're all my favorite.  But Imbolc is different! No, I really mean it.  Imbolc holds many memories of awesomeness on my path, as does my relationship with Brigid (or Bridhe or whichever other spelling you want.) When I first embarked on this path, it was because I wanted to be more familiar with the spirituality of my ancestors. my immediate ancestors were varieties of Christian (Evangelical, Catholic, or Methodist) but i wanted to go back further. One branch was Irish and since that was the cool white ethnicity i explored it. The others were varieties of German and English, which in my mind had historical baggage i didn't then want to engage with. So from the beginning, Bridhe was it.  even when I meandered into heathenry later (having made some peace with that ancestry) and even Vodoun for a bit, she was a constant.  I became a  flame keeper  (next shift February 11).  I made sure I had a fire pit at my new home, I have t...

I forgot to hit enter!!   I had started writing some imaginary fictional stuff around high days. I of course can't find them... so I'm just starting over here... I every so often day dream about my ideal neopagan experience.  I decided to start to record them for... I don't know... a book? a guide to manifestation for the future? Who knows... So what follows here is just that. It is also MINE and I will hold and enforce all applicable copywrite privileges.   The leaves were just beginning to turn. The community had been in the fields for what seemed like days on end, bringing in the harvest.  Those that were not in the fields were in the kitchen, preserving whatever they could for the lean months to come.   The children were grabbing the corn husks and gathering them together fashioning two figures, male and female.   The sun was beginning to set, earlier than the day before, and the people returned to their dwellings for the evening's m...

 Here in suburbia, it is "my Lughnasadh," and I've begun a 12-day devotional in honor of the Many-Skilled One.  If anyone has ever spoken to me at great length about such things, you may have heard me called the Fire Festivals "portable."  What I mean is that the solstice and equinoxes have fixed astronomical points, related to the Earth's orbit around the sun. The fire festivals (Samhain, Imbolc, Beltainne, and Lughnasadh) have been assigned points mid-way between them, but my own UPG is that this is a modern convenience, and the folklore surrounding them may indicate that events in the tribal pastoral/horticultural rhythms were indicators of the time for being festive.  If you take, Imbolc, for example, one of the things surrounding Imbolc was the ewe's milk coming in, so a key indicator of by how much your heard may be increasing. Well, what if that doesn't happen on February 2?  What if it happens on February 5 or January 27?   What if we haven...

 I remembered to do this! And now I've remembered to share it! I used the Druid Oracle.  These are TWO sets of cards designed to work together.  The Druid Animal Oracle I am more familiar with. The Druid Plant Oracle complements it, and I'm less familiar with it. Normally, I take pictures, but as there are likely copywrite issues there, I will kindly request that you Internet search.  They also have a phone app, but I did use the physical cards.  I drew 9 cards from each deck.  There is one for each high day to reveal the energies (animal) and insights (plants) at play starting on that high day through to the next.  The ninth cards are sort of a keynote or theme of the whole year. (I do this type of thing often. Sometimes it's interesting to compare the Samhain card themes with the Yule Rune spread for the year, and then my own Tarot horoscope thread... but that's kind of crazy obsessive too, so I don't know if I can recommend it. So, with out further ...

At this, the balance point of the year, I engaged in a 3 day devotional. The devotional honors my local ecosystem, and the Norse pantheon in the Northern Hemisphere, but it can easily be flipped around for the Southern hemisphere. I also originally wrote this as a devotional to specific deities, inspired by two large group rites in  The Troth 's Book of Blots. I scaled them down to just a simple devotional and offeratory framework, substituting general themes and suggested offerings for liturgical scripting.  I shared this with ADF in the mode of the "Yule-a-long," that druids all over the globe (because we have them now) can drive a current of "druidy energy around the world." Ideally, folks would honor the deities that are most appropriate for the themes from their own hearth practices, and that reflect their local ecosystems as well.  In retrospect, one could also honor the energies of moving from light to dark. The altar is arranged in three sections. On...

It has been a while.  We had a death in the family.  And I could not regain my equilibrium to be able to do my spiritual work.  That is, of course, the time one most needs it...however that is also easy to say and believe when you are not living it. So this evening, after the grove rite, after my spouse had gone to bed, I decided to do some work.  I actually decided after the latest death of a family member of a friend.  This year, 2015, has been particularly hard in this realm.  People I know have lost loved ones.  WE lost a loved one.  I had decided I was quite done with all this loss and was going to give the Lord of the Dead a piece of my mind. I drummed myself to the Underworld, this time trying to be purposeful and methodical as I went through the steps.  (I tend to jump from place to place, or "bamph" as one friend called it.  I always feel I should slow down though.)  I got to the bridge, crossed, found the gate open as ...

Yes, I see the date on the calendar.  I actually did it about three to four days afterward and between flitting here and there with festivals and such, well.... Still, the patterns and energies are still there, so for completeness' sakes..... Again, I'm using the Druid Plant/Animal Oracles combined.  The significator or keynote for the Midsummer to Lughnasadh period is "Celtic Bean."  The first sentence describing the meaning of this card is "Something which you thought was dead has come back into your life in a new form." After the reconciliation of the last six weeks (Beltainne to Midsummer), the fruits of that burst forth in this one.  Projects get restarted or something that was long forgotten comes back to light, and some of these things may do so in unexpected ways. From the mental, intellectual side, the card is Owl.  (One of my favorites!)  Owl respresents wisdom, and especially that of turning "disadvantage into advantage."  This can...

A bit late you say?  Well, as I have mentioned  elsewhere , in my own hearth practice, Beltainne happens either after the last frost of the season, or when I am done with the majority of planting.  I may also time it with the blossoming of my lilac bush, but I am still testing that theory.  Either way, it is about being in tune with and in touch with the spirits of my land and the rhythms of the seasons where I happen to live. However, for a religion to be public rather than hearth, some agreement is needed, and most people have already celebrated it communally.  While I'm waiting for the funds for the last bit of planting, I decided to do a reading for Beltainne.  This can be for the community at large, or for whomever it speaks to, and quite likely it is both. That is the way these things work sometimes. I am using the combined Druid Plant  and  Animal Oracle  by Stephanie and Philip Carr-Gomm deck.  While my primary reading for ot...

And not a moment too soon!  Technically, there is an hour and ten minutes before the sun and earth and relevant celestial bodies are in the right spot for the Vernal Equinox to occur.  And the sun just finally came out for a bit...but not for long. The temperature does not exactly scream spring, but it is also not freezing for a change.  I am also on spring break from my day job, and have spent the last two days preparing for a home Spring Equinox rite. I prefer to refer to almost all of the solar days by their astronomical names, with the exception of Yule. I have no idea why this is. Druidry, as ADF practices it, is a religion of action.  The central concept is one of hospitality with the spirits (called by us the Three Kindreds).  We give offerings (or sacrifices....a topic for another post is the difference between the two) at nearly all rites, and ask for blessings in return. In my own practice, this happens at my daily devotionals, our weekly hearth ...