badstar

So I'm working on a ritual that we're going to be holding at the grove at the end of the month for a festival invented by erl_queen, Theoxenia Delphinia, which is in honor of all of the deities historically associated with Delphi.

So at the moment, I'm trying to learn more about the deities that I'm not as familiar with...Pan, the Korykian Nymphs, Trophonios, Athena, Poseidon, Gaia, and Zeus. For the moment at least, I'm reading about Zeus.

I will never have the same sort of relationships with these deities that I do with Apollo, and probably never even so much as I do with Dionysus and Hermes, but branching out and learning more is good, eh?

I am excited to be doing a group Hellenic ritual again. It has been too long.

I wrote this one today for the upcoming grove ritual this weekend.

Sing sweet-voiced Muse of the owl-eyed goddess,
Most skilled weaver of splendid tapestries,
Favored daughter of Zeus, you triumphed over Poseidon
to hold the city of Athens and the right to its name.
Your gift of olive trees to mankind is unmatched,
its uses countless.
Goddess of strength, savior, defender,
Sharp-eyed keeper of the city
Under your protection, citizens flourish
and warriors are victorious in battle.
Hail to Athena, glorious goddess!
I will remember you and another song as well.

Last night, grove solstice ritual. I wouldn't call it my ideal ritual (No one's fault, really. while some have come much closer in the past, I would highly doubt that any collaboration would be. But it's a grove ritual, not mine.) but it wasn't bad. Maybe it was because I've been largely uninvolved since the fall, Or maybe it's me overall, or maybe somewhere in between, but it wasn't quite the same. I wasn't quite as in it as I've been in the past. There were some moments of annoyance (Kids in ritual not usually a big deal to me, but if they're not going to stay reasonably under control and make a whole lot of noise about it, it's probably best not to have them right in the middle of things. Kids do that, they make noise.)

All told, it went mostly well, but I just wasn't able to be in it spiritually. The only points where I was really wholly into it were when I made a quick offering to Apollo, and a little later on, a silent request. And that really wasn't so much being in the ritual as it was being in those moments (ha, how ironic, the ritual was about living in the moment....)

I did write a couple of off the cuff, short hymns for the ritual patrons, as well as a brief poem. Not my best work, but I wanted to have a few things prepared because it drives me crazy when a majority of the offerings in a ritual completely ignore the deities to be honored. I'll probably clean them up, maybe expand them a bit and post them. either way, they'll go into the book of hymns that I've slowly been writing to the gods, which I started "officially" as an offering to the Greek gods at the fall equinox. I read those, and sang a song that I had suddenly remembered from back in girl scouts that I had forgotten until just then.

At the moment, I'm feeling slightly blah and ambiguous about a lot of things, a whole lot of "I don't know"...but there is a lot that I've found of late that interests me greatly, so hopefully that won't last long....

Bet 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 jackgreen60 came in with this ancient suitcase and lugged it around the circle.

But there ya go.

I just woke up about 40 minutes ago (I was up til after 6 this morning. I expected to be up late, but didn't expect to be up quite THAT late.)

So I did some ritual work last night. Started around midnight. I actually didn't do everything I wanted to do, but I think the part that I didn't get to should have been its own ritual in another time anyway, and will likely take up more than two hours in and of itself.

I worked in three parts, each essentially a self-contained ritual in and of itself for Hermes Dionysus and Apollo.

For each, I lit some incense, made some offerings, settled in for some mediation and afterwards, did some divination using tarot.

Hermes has still been around, but quiet. Off to the side, just see him in the corner of my eye, so to speak. My meditation turned into a bit of a berating "Dammit, you know exactly why I'm here now are you going to get on with it or not?" (Ya, I know what he's suggesting. What I don't know- not entirely anyway- is why it's coming from him and not someone else. Oh, I also don't for sure know what I'm going to do about it.)

I offered (and drank) some wine for Dionysus. I'm still getting used to the fact that I feel even just a single sip of wine in my system, the second I swallow it, when I drink it in this context. And it's not like a drunk or even tipsy feeling, but like a mild electrical jolt to my entire body and a sort of hyper-awareness of my surroundings. I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not that the card that turned up in reference to current happenings with Dionysus is the death card. Interesting enough, the moon turned up in all three instances in the same place in reference to the future. (I shuffled the cards well each time, I swear.)

Nothing out of the ordinary came up from Apollo (I wasn't expecting it either), much basking in the all-encompassing presence. More affirmation that I'm on the right track with the whole Apollo/Dionysus intertwining, whatever it is thing and that there's far more to come.

When I finally went to sleep, I only initially slept for maybe three hours in which I had a dream that I was doing the same ritual, had just finished the Dionysus bit, and was about to move onto Apollo when one of the roommates walked in and insisted on sitting in the room while I did this. I wanted to continue, I wanted it to not matter, but I couldn't. I woke up for a short time after that, and then fell back to sleep til after 2pm.

I'm going to make myself some food, and then clean up a few things around here. Gotta run to the store and pick up some cat litter and food so that Dominic can take care of the felines til Thursday. Going over to pagandenma's sometime this evening for a cookie-baking marathon and will go to the grove from there tomorrow.

I should probably go ahead and pack my stuff to go to PA awhile too.

Due to an underwhelming response from people on any parts that they might be interested in taking for tonight's members-only Lampteria ritual, I've taken the liberty of writing up parts which have not been claimed and posting them on the grove forum under the Lampteria discussion.

So, if you'd like to do one of these parts, comment on the forum as to which one so others who look after you can know what's still available. Feel free to use what I've posted (two parts are not written by me, they're parts f Homeric hymns) or write your own, but bring them tonight. Jack is going to be telling us the story, and Chrissy is honoring the nature spirits. Other than that, most parts are up for grabbing.

I am happy to know that I am not the only one who is not feeling like she can rightly be present for the grove's Samhain ritual this year.

So, the solstice ritual that I mentioned yesterday...this is the post that I made elsewhere about it:


On my way to work this morning, I had an idea for a solstice ritual (two actually, to be performed sort of in tandem), and then it occurred to me that the reverse would make for an excellent winter solstice.

On the summer solstice, a ritual to Hyperion at sunrise, with Eos as the gatekeeper to celebrate the dawning of the longest day, and a ritual to Nyx at sunset, Asteria as the gatekeeper in honor of the coming darkness.

On the winter solstice at sunset, a ritual to Nyx again, to celebrate the falling of the longest night, and the next morning at dawn, a ritual to Hyperion to celebrate the returning light.

I've always felt much more in tune with the changing of the sun than with the changing of the earth. The Solstices and Equinoxes have had much more impact on me than the cross-quarter days (and the fact that I am not of Celtic leaning, coupled with the fact that I believe that festivals such as Beltane or Lughnassagh should be celebrated in honor of the gods for which they are named, otherwise a different name should be devised definitely makes for some extra distance between me and those particular festivals.)

I think that I will try to write up these rituals and perform them for myself this year and see how they go, and if it works well, possibly attempting to adapt for a group next year and see if anyone else wants to join me.

So Friday after work, I went straight over to the grove. We were doing a guided meditation, and while I'd tried for weeks to write it, it only came to me at the last minute (and I mean, I was sitting there on the floor at the grove writing it while everyone there chatted and wandered in and out.) It was only a few folks- Caryn, Me, Mark, and these two women, Cat and Jodi who show up randomly once in a while.

I've never written a guided meditation before, so I was kinda worried that it would end up being really cheesy...but I think it was decent, and it's been requested that I record it so that it can be used again. Two and a half pages written, and it only felt like maybe 5 minutes spoken, but it was more like 10 or 15.

After that, Mark and I went to Red Brick Station for dinner and were baffled and amused by the waitresses doing what we called "The salt and pepper ritual"- they would walk around, and go to empty tables, pick up the salt and pepper shakers, clack them together three times and hold them up and look at them. Now, we finally realized that they were checking to see how much was in them, but it seemed a little odd that they would do so repeatedly to the same ones, when no one had been seated at the table to use them in between subsequent clackings. So we decided that it was some crazy ritual that they did.

I slept at the grove on Friday night. Saturday morning was gorgeously sunny, and I went to the grocery store for a few things, and the liquor store for some wine.

Then I went back to the grove and slowly (really quite slowly) people started to show up. And the sky got cloudy. And it started to rain on and off...really only sprinkling, but I had these horrible visions of eventual downpours a la last Midsummer. Thankfully it never got worse than a sprinkle.

The ritual script vanished (and finally showed up this morning in the stupidest of places.) One member of the ritual team only showed up as we were in the middle of the pre-ritual brief. We had to go off-script (the only thing that went wrong was that I completely forgot lore of the season until Caryn reminded me while Kat was doing the invocation to Artemis...so it was slightly rearranged, and Jackie did that after my invocation to Apollo. For never having run through the ritual, and for a festival with which no one else was familiar, it went really well. (At some point, I said to someone, though I forget who it was, that this ritual really had no choice but to go well. Sure, it could have been better, it could always be. But in the end, I'm more than ok with how it went.

The offerings went nicely. Instead of confining it to the ritual patrons, I left it open to any Greek gods. Hymns were read in honor of Themis, Pan, Triton, Aphrodite, Selene and one or two others. And we definitely got the attention of the gods. It's been a while since I've felt such a real presence of the gods in ritual. I mean, I usually feel them around but this was...the only way they could have been more real was if they were to show up in physical, corporeal form.

Caryn said that she felt a much closer presence of some of the other gods, but that it was like Artemis was hiding in the trees and looking out from time to time, and that Apollo was sitting on a throne in a temple far away, but seeing it as though he was right there.

Nope, he was right there. If anything, the temple was right there too.

Towards the end of the offerings, I was really starting to get shaky. Partially for having not eaten and partially because yeah, I was nervous as all get-out.

I had intended to read a hymn and pour a libation of wine as my offering...( but plans, like so many trains, can be derailed )

After that, I was semi-impatient for the ritual to be over (mostly because I was really afraid at this point that I really was going to fall over.) but I didn't want it to be either. I was happy that people actually made use of the personal magic segment of the ritual instead of asking of the gods during offerings. I was happy that people didn't seem to balk at the idea of a more serious ritual, and remain standing unless they physically needed to sit. Will did the greatest omen reading using bay leaves, some of the water from the well, coals from the fire, and soil from the base of the tree. Before he did, he told an abbreviated version of the myth of Apollo and Daphne, explaining the origin of the bay laurel tree. I think that this is my favorite method that I've seen him use for omen reading. And then Kat, Caryn, Jackie and I stood in the center and each held up a chalice of the waters of life while I asked for the blessing. I was just beside myself. By the end of the ritual, the rain had stopped altogether, the sky started to clear a bit, and the air temperature was probably ten degrees warmer than when we started. It ended well. (And then I rushed into the house to grab something to eat.)

I should have gone to bed a long time ago. Sleep now.

Some time ago, after setting up my altar to Hestia, I started putting my keys there, and sometimes rent or utility money when I needed to keep it separate but it wasn't time to actually pay it yet. At first, I was a little baffled. I wondered whatever possessed me to put such things on my altar, and when I went to put them there I would often quickly catch myself and remove them right away. Sure, it's a shelf right beside my bedroom door, things are highly visible there. But I never put them there before I started using that shelf as an altar. After a while though, It started to make sense in a way. Altar to Hestia, rent money, house keys...ok, those things all go together. I eventually stopped feeling like I was doing something sacrilegious by putting those things there and went with it.

A while ago, Pier One imports had these plates that I loved. Clear glass plates with red/pink/bronze painted metallic backs. I just wanted one because they were so pretty. But they were also like $20 apiece. And then one day I went in and they were on clearance. There were two left and they were like 3.75 each. So I grabbed one. No idea what I was going to do with it. I eventually decided to just put it on the altar- I didn't really have a reason for it. A few days later, I was getting ready to go to bed, I took the jewelery that I was wearing off and put it on the plate. Again, it seemed weird- up to this point, I had been putting my jewelery on the wooden ledge that goes around my room, which is just the same height as my bed. No idea why I did that. I removed it and put it on the ledge again. The next night I did the same thing. After about 3 nights, I gave up and started leaving my jewelery on the plate on the altar at night. About this same time, my day to day jewelery became more uniform. Rings- chalcedony, apatite, iolite (ad since I've found it again, garnet) I used to wear it only once in a great while, but I now wear my moonstone and iolite bracelet every day, as well as my flame and labradorite necklaces. My moonstone ring, for the moment, seems to just be living on that plate. I put them on the plate, then I light a couple of sticks of incense before I go to bed at night, and in the morning, usually the last thing I do before I go downstairs to leave is to put the same jewelery back on. Sometimes I just grab it and put it on as I'm walking out. I've only failed to do this once, I realized it when I was walking down St. Paul on my way to the train and all day I felt naked.