Good Beer!
Feb. 10th, 2008 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarBet that got your attention.
At CLG's Yule, I stood in the middle of the sanctuary, invoked Heimdall to watch the gates (offered him "good beer"- somehow every invocation that night ended up concluding with "I offer you...good beer!") and then proceeded to open the gates- first time I did that by myself in ritual, previous gate openings in which I've participated have always involved three people (four in one or two cases) I had been back and forth for several weeks at one point trying to figure out if I was going to participate in Yule at all and then I ended up volunteering for the gates.
Then, the person who was to call on Heimdall wasn't sure she'd be able to make the ritual, so I volunteered for backup...and ended up doing it.
After invoking Heimdall and pouring his beer into the erm...what was it called...blot bowl? (Sorry, I'm not one of the Norse folk, it just happens that the only experiences of any great significance with deities aside from Hellenic happen to be Heimdall and Freyja.)
Anyway, so I poured the beer. Heimdall, in my experience, has a rather unmistakable presence. Which I felt, solid and quiet. I stepped to the center of the circle. I've called on gatekeepers and opened the gates numerous times....this was unique. It was the middle of ritual, so people were fairly quiet, but there are always noises- be it the people in the circle, or outside noises...cars, planes, animals, whatever. And I still heard these noises, but it was as if from inside an enclosure. I was telling Caryn last week that it was like I was standing in the middle of the circle, and a bubble went down over the center circle of the sanctuary, enclosing me, the well, fire and tree, and the altar, like a covered fish bowl, cutting that area off from the rest of the world- I almost swear I could have walked up to the edge of that circle and put my hands on a glass wall. There was a feeling of quiet and calm, despite the "muffled" outside noises.
Standing in the center of the circle, I opened the well, fire and tree in turn, using some runic work that I've been working with for about two years now. The three individual gate openings together were like standing in the eye of a whirling vortex. Then the "overall" gate opening was like the bubble was lifted, and I was no longer cut off from the sanctuary. (It was about then that I had to run out of the sanctuary and find something to eat, lest I should have fainted.)
I debated long and hard on whether I should participate at all in Imbolc after last year, and finally after a while got a very clear sense that this time around, I was going to acknowledge and call off the outsiders, and that was it, I would leave. (For the record, I've never taken this part in ritual before.)
I had written something a few weeks ago. One day, it just came to me in a thiurty-second rush of words. It was good. Thought I left it in the notebook where I wrote it. When I went to grab it yesterday, the page was gone. Flipped through the book several times...no trace.
I decided to wing it. I said a nice little piece on how the nature of the outsiders is subject to much debate. So far as I recall, I stumbled on no words. I picked up my offerings of a small bowl of food (fresh fruit, Ghirardelli chocolate, jelly belly jelly beans...lol) and a bottle of Guinness (I wasn't even thinking about it but I did throw in "I offer you good beer!"- I remember hearing a snicker or two at that) and turned slightly humorous and commented for all that would serve to distract from the ritual and deter it's work to follow me out the gates and beyond the borders of the sanctuary, ending with "you have been bribed away!"
This was all just coming out of my mouth without much of any forethought. I didn't really have a whole lot of sense of anything much going on, except for knowing that even if I couldn't see, I could definitely feel when I left the sanctuary space. But I did get several comments later on in the evening about my acknowledgment of the outsiders- (I find it amusing that a lot of people call this part of the ritual "invoking the outsiders"...) which I found kinda funny and entirely unexpected because a generally people even don't comment on what I consider to be my best invocations. I guess I was doing something right in the moment- and I never imagined that I would be good with that part. Some people have come up with some great things, like the time![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jackgreen60 came in with this ancient suitcase and lugged it around the circle.
But there ya go.
At CLG's Yule, I stood in the middle of the sanctuary, invoked Heimdall to watch the gates (offered him "good beer"- somehow every invocation that night ended up concluding with "I offer you...good beer!") and then proceeded to open the gates- first time I did that by myself in ritual, previous gate openings in which I've participated have always involved three people (four in one or two cases) I had been back and forth for several weeks at one point trying to figure out if I was going to participate in Yule at all and then I ended up volunteering for the gates.
Then, the person who was to call on Heimdall wasn't sure she'd be able to make the ritual, so I volunteered for backup...and ended up doing it.
After invoking Heimdall and pouring his beer into the erm...what was it called...blot bowl? (Sorry, I'm not one of the Norse folk, it just happens that the only experiences of any great significance with deities aside from Hellenic happen to be Heimdall and Freyja.)
Anyway, so I poured the beer. Heimdall, in my experience, has a rather unmistakable presence. Which I felt, solid and quiet. I stepped to the center of the circle. I've called on gatekeepers and opened the gates numerous times....this was unique. It was the middle of ritual, so people were fairly quiet, but there are always noises- be it the people in the circle, or outside noises...cars, planes, animals, whatever. And I still heard these noises, but it was as if from inside an enclosure. I was telling Caryn last week that it was like I was standing in the middle of the circle, and a bubble went down over the center circle of the sanctuary, enclosing me, the well, fire and tree, and the altar, like a covered fish bowl, cutting that area off from the rest of the world- I almost swear I could have walked up to the edge of that circle and put my hands on a glass wall. There was a feeling of quiet and calm, despite the "muffled" outside noises.
Standing in the center of the circle, I opened the well, fire and tree in turn, using some runic work that I've been working with for about two years now. The three individual gate openings together were like standing in the eye of a whirling vortex. Then the "overall" gate opening was like the bubble was lifted, and I was no longer cut off from the sanctuary. (It was about then that I had to run out of the sanctuary and find something to eat, lest I should have fainted.)
I debated long and hard on whether I should participate at all in Imbolc after last year, and finally after a while got a very clear sense that this time around, I was going to acknowledge and call off the outsiders, and that was it, I would leave. (For the record, I've never taken this part in ritual before.)
I had written something a few weeks ago. One day, it just came to me in a thiurty-second rush of words. It was good. Thought I left it in the notebook where I wrote it. When I went to grab it yesterday, the page was gone. Flipped through the book several times...no trace.
I decided to wing it. I said a nice little piece on how the nature of the outsiders is subject to much debate. So far as I recall, I stumbled on no words. I picked up my offerings of a small bowl of food (fresh fruit, Ghirardelli chocolate, jelly belly jelly beans...lol) and a bottle of Guinness (I wasn't even thinking about it but I did throw in "I offer you good beer!"- I remember hearing a snicker or two at that) and turned slightly humorous and commented for all that would serve to distract from the ritual and deter it's work to follow me out the gates and beyond the borders of the sanctuary, ending with "you have been bribed away!"
This was all just coming out of my mouth without much of any forethought. I didn't really have a whole lot of sense of anything much going on, except for knowing that even if I couldn't see, I could definitely feel when I left the sanctuary space. But I did get several comments later on in the evening about my acknowledgment of the outsiders- (I find it amusing that a lot of people call this part of the ritual "invoking the outsiders"...) which I found kinda funny and entirely unexpected because a generally people even don't comment on what I consider to be my best invocations. I guess I was doing something right in the moment- and I never imagined that I would be good with that part. Some people have come up with some great things, like the time
jackgreen60 came in with this ancient suitcase and lugged it around the circle. But there ya go.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 05:57 am (UTC)The only ritual I've ever been involved with that where a circle was cast that I really felt something serious was a Norse healing ritual done by Jane Sibley two years ago. That was a really high-intensity ritual, and the circle was actually cast four times around.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 06:35 am (UTC)I ask because i am struggling with whether or not I want to attend rites that are outside of my own hearth culture, and if I do, if I would "get" anything out of it.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 07:50 pm (UTC)I do take part in ritual outside of my hearth culture...just don't usually get as much out of it as I do in rituals for the gods of Greece...though that's not even really a guarantee hat I'm going to be jumping up and down...in fact, the last time I participated in a ritual in honor of Demeter and Persephone, it was rather upsetting.
One of the best rituals that I've taken part in was not a Hellenic ritual, but a Gaulish one....and even that was *after* I had taken a sharp turn for the "decidedly exclusively Hellenic"...and I did a lot in that ritual.
I get the most out of the rituals in which I'm most actively participating, I have a very hard tiem just sitting there and watching, it drives me crazy. I've said before, I'll say it a million more times...I'm a ritual junkie. If there's one going on, I want to be part of it.
Overall though, I tend to get the least from those involving Irish deities (the only ones I've gotten the sense that I should actually steer clear of though are Brigid and The Dagda. Not really sure why.) But overall, they just seem to not exist for me, I get no feeling of their presence.
I would say try attending other rituals, if you're open to the experience, you'll probably get something out of it, even if it isn't some grand cosmic epiphany. Also, you never know when a deity outside of your hearth culture is going to pick up your interest- or you theirs.
Aside from that, if I recall, you are interested in the clergy training program? If nothing else, I suspect that it could be detrimental to stay completely away from rituals of other hearth cultures, there is part I think in the liturgy section, about a discussion of differing cultural variances in liturgy.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 06:43 am (UTC)I get confused easily when it is below zero degrees outside! :)