By Fire Well and Tree

  Photo by Garon Joseph: https://www.pexels.com/photo/band-plays-wind-instrument-at-the-street-during-the-parade-3521559/ February is shaping up to be way better than January. I'm almost all packed to head to Convocation , a really good indoor festival, even if it is in The State Up North. We have our midwinter thaw, even getting up to the 60s today. I was greeted by birds singing and geese honking when I stepped out my door this morning. AND I have Winter Olympics on, although I have not been able to watch as much as I would like. I will end up missing the curling and hockey gold medal games due to my travels. Fat Tuesday morning found me doing a big ol' Internet search on the origins of Carnival, and Lent.  I have this informal armchair-anthropological theory that many of our religious taboos and customs surrounding food have to do with survival, and we dress them up with religion to convince people to not violate them. So, if oxen are more valuable alive than dead, eating c...

 Well hello! I wanted to take a few minute before the year gets cooking...  FIRST... finally, at long last... this happened: If you are one of the two or three people who have participated in the various "a-longs," here they all are :)  As such, I'll be removing those from this blog eventually (as I've seen them reproduced by both human and probably AI types).  I chose the spiral bound because there is nothing I dislike more than trying to follow a ritual script in a book that won't stay open.   Exclusively available at  The Magical Druid  or you can just email me directly.   On to the new year :) The Yule omen was for Mint (Druid Plant Oracle) bringing clarity, concentration, and renewal.  My omen pulled during the first night of Yule for January was Laguz.   The coming weeks are about digging deep into that inner well of wisdom that you have, your intuition, to find new focus and new purpose as to your work for the year....

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” ...

 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 ...

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 ...