By Fire Well and Tree

Sundays were always days for extended family. Maybe it was an aunt, uncle, or cousin's birthday, or holiday, or some other reason, but we'd head over to one or the other side of  the family's house with grandparents, too, and spend usually the afternoon.  So for me Sundays are ancestor days.   Older version. Sadly it has more photos, etc. on it now On an ideal Sunday, I will have poured the first cup of coffee and given it to the ancestors.  I light a candle and their incense (usually copal).  I really like to do this before anyone else gets up.   This prayer is actually adapted from one in Malbrough's Magical Powers of the Saints . I give thanks to my dearly departed ancestors I give thanks to my great grandparents:  Kerns, Wheelers, Barrs, Roberts, Nobles, Quinns, Stevens, Roofs I give thanks to my dearly departed great uncles*: Tom, Paul, Bernard, Charlie, Albert I give thanks to my dearly departed great aunts* Mary, Dorothy, Louise, Jemim...

 Oops, I missed last night. Stormy the cat was INSISTENT that I put my tablet away for some laptime.  So I am doubling up. Prayer #1 is for last night's new moon.  I like to merge ideas from a variety of sources for my lunar rites (when I do them....that's another post...). I look to 1) the moon names from various indigenous tribes.  I am on their land. I am living with their spirits, ancestral and otherwise.  When I go to someone's house, I like to follow their rules and customs, and frankly I see this as no different. (If you want a lecture on what the term "appropriation" ACTUALLY means, the tl;dr is...this isn't it, but I'm happy to go on at length in the comments if anyone wants to go there...) So first, this is the Beaver Moon, attributed in one source to the Algonquin. Technically they lived north of here (side project...figuring out those that are more locally specific).  The Almanacs that have adopted these talk about the full moon, but I'ma t...