April 2005 Archives

What we created, we must dismantle. First we thank the Guardians of the Quarters. Move to the East (or the South, if you started the Call from there), and thank the Guardians for their attendance:

(starting in the East)

In the name of Light Arising, I thank you, thou Eastern Warder! Hail and Farewell!

move to the South:

In the name of Light Strengthening, I thank you, thou Southern Warder! Hail and Farewell!

now to the West:

In the name of Light Descending, I thank you, thou Western Warder! Hail and Farewell!

finally in the North:

In the name of Light Returning, I thank you, thou Northern Warder! Hail and Farewell!

Return to the altar. Extinguish any remaining candles burning. Take up your athame or sword and go to the East.

You're now going to reverse the casting of the circle. Some traditions will walk counter-clockwise (widdershins) to reverse the clocwise (deosil) movement of the creation of the circle. Others will simply go clockwise a second time. Either way, visualize the silver ribbon of the circle returning to your blade. When you complete the breaking of the circle, return to the altar. Earth the blade to disperse the power of the circle, or hold it aloft to cast that power to the wind. Thank the Deity one last time.

You've done good Work, congratulations and blessings!

We've raised and earthed power, now it's time to break down our ritual.

If you lit Goddess/God candles on your altar, extinguish them and thank the Deity for their attendance.

No candles? Just thank the Deity. Your thanks can be a simple "Thank you, Lord and Lady!" to a formal chant.

Your ritual has raised power, and now you need to channel that power somewhere. Since Beltane is about growth and fertility, the obvious place to send the power back into the earth. If you're outside, visualize the power going into your athame, knife, or sword. Earth the blade and visualize the power running from the blade down into the depths of the earth.

If you're inside, visualize the power going into your blade, then watch it burst out into the air, to be carried off by the four winds, coming to rest where it will do the most good.

What's important here is to focus the power and do something with it. You don't need all this for yourself, and hanging onto it will most likely create more problems for you than any good you think will come of it.

Everything up to now has been preparatory for the specific work we want to accomplish in our ritual. Since this is a Beltane observance, our Work in the circle will focus on summertime, growth, and fertility.

Take your committment to doing a Beltane ritual in hand. If you have goddess/god candles burning on your altar, light one end of the paper from one candle, and the other end from the other candle. Drop this in your incense burner or cauldron, thanking the Deity for helping you keep your promise to do a ritual. As the fire burns, meditate on the warmth as the planet warms up for summer.

One of the symbols of Beltane is the Maypole. Since a solitary doesn't have anyone to dance around with, make a "mini-Maypole" for your ritual. Take a stick eight to twelve inches long. Cut four lengths of ribbon in different colors, about six to eight inches long. Tack those ribbons to one end of the stick.

After the circle is complete and you've come to this point, take the mini-maypole in hand and begin to wrap the ribbons, two in one direction and two in the opposite direction. Here are two chants you can use while "dancing" your maypole:

Here we come a piping,
In Springtime and in May;
Green fruit aripening,
And Winter fled away.
The Queen she sits upon the strand,
Fair as lily, white as wand;
Seven billows on the sea,
Horses riding fast and free,
And bells beyond the sand.

from Witchcraft for Tomorrow by Doreen Valiente

"Oh, do not tell the Priest of our Art,
Or he would call it sin;
But we shall be out in the woods all night,
A conjuring summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth
For women, cattle and corn
Now is the dun come up from the South
With Oak, and Ash and Thorn!"

from Eight Sabbats For Witches by Janet and Stewart Farrar

Repeat the chant you choose until you completely wrap all four ribbons. Place the maypole in the center of your altar and feel the power you've raised by this Working.

After we have created our sacred space, we then invoke the Goddess and the God. I found this invocation at www.sacred-texts.com and I like it.

If you have candles on your altar to represent the Goddess and God, light them at this time. Then begin the Invocation:

For the Goddess:

Deep within the dream of silence
Blood and passions born beyond,
Gather at the serpent's calling,
Echo to its siren song.

For deep within the cauldron's darkness
Two hearts ache to join as one,
Must answer to the serpent's laughter;
Dance within its spiral song.

For blood is called, and passions gather:
Drum beat rhythms call the blood
To dance the paths of passion's power,
To sing for joy, for life, for love.

Within the shadows of a clearing
Deep within the silent green,
Revealed through a veil of moonlight,
Caught beside a crystal stream.

A woman from the land of beauty
Dances in the silver light,
Entranced within a web of silver
Woven by the serpent's light.
The serpent's laughter, song of shadows,
Echoes through the spinning web,
Weaving dreams with songs of silver,
Calling sacred fires long dead.

Within her body, flames awaken
Beauty and her passions need
Power and a desperate yearning,
Calling to the serpent's seed.

Within the ancient forest shadows,
Roots and boughs that weave and dream,
re-echo to the serpent's laughter,
Weaving webs of dancing green.

The serpent's song now calls the Hunter;
Beast Lord, Master of the Woods.
Calls the Stag Lord from the shadows,
Woodland's Master, Lord of Love.

She dances now, her passions spiral,
Calls her love into the night;
He flies upon the wings of laughter,
Led on by her silver light.

Flesh and sinew, man and muscle,
Loins that ache now hear her call.
She hears the Hunter's horn of power,
Hears his cry and hunting call.

The Stag Lord stalks within the clearing,
She turns to flee, but cannot run.
Transformed she spreads herself for passion,
Calling with her silver song.

Both their bodies rage with passions,
Beasts now dance within their blood.
Their eyes now flash with love's own lightning
As flesh now kindles warm for love.

Her thighs remember mothers' movements,
Moments from her mother's birth,
Cries of silver golden laughter
Plough within the fertile earth.

Their song and cry a single moment,
Pain, and yet a single joy,
As Earth unites a single sunlight
Lust fulfilled, reborn as joy.

For the God:

God of the meadow, God of the hill,
God of the sap and of our true will:
Thee I invoke as Spring awakes,
Thee I invoke as the blossom breaks.

Come young God, come come with the fire,
Lissome and leaping, alive with desire.
Come with the pipe and come with the drum,
With the heartbeat's pounding, come God come!

O seeker of joy, O hunter of pleasure,
Come enter the ring, tread the pagan measure.
Be here in Thy servants, be here in Thy Priests,
Be here in the flesh, and join in the feast!

Pause for moment once the Invocation is complete. Feel the Deity come down on you.

Now you're ready for the Work of the ritual.

Wiccans create sacred space by casting a circle. There are two parts to casting the circle, defining/drawing the circle, then sealing it by "calling the quarters."

To define the boundaries of our circle, we'll "draw" it. Take your athame or magical knife in hand. Some Wiccans always start to scribe the circle in the East, where others vary the starting point based on the ritual. Since Beltane has a strong connection to Fire, starting in the South would be appropriate. Extend the arm with the knife in it (actually, I use a sword for this task), and visualize the knife tracing a silver line along the ground. See it glow in your mind's eye. Chant the Goddess- and God-names while you slowly walk clockwise around the circle. When you come back to the starting point, join the circle together and visualize it sealing itself.

Now, to Call the Quarters. There are a number of visualizations here, depending on your intent, and how you see the relationship of the basic elements to the deity. Having grown up Catholic, I still have a strong appreciation for visualizing the Guardians of the Quarters as Archangels. Others visualize Watchtowers; still others visualize the "four airts," or winds.

For Beltane, I'm going to use a variant of a quarter-call that usually calls the Archangels. If you started the circle in the east, start the call there. If you started in a different direction, start there.

Starting in the East:

In the name of Light Arising, I summon the Guardian of the Air, the Healer, thou Eastern Warder! Hear my Call and bless my Work.

move to the South:

In the name of Light Strengthening, I summon the Guardian of Fire, the Defender, thou Southern Warder! Hear my Call and bless my Work.

now to the West:

In the name of Light Descending, I summon the Guardian of Water, the Herald, thou Western Warder! Hear my Call and bless my Work.

finally in the North:

In the name of Light Returning, I summon the Guardian of Earth, the Escort of the Dead in their time, thou Northern Warder! Hear my Call and bless my Work.

Return to the center. Stand before your altar and trace a pentagram in the air with your knife or your finger, starting with the top point. Go down to the right, then up to the left side, across to the right, down to the left, and up to the top point to close the symbol. Visualize it bursting into a blue flame upon completion.

In the name of the Guardians of the Quarters, I summon the guardian of Spirit. Hear my Call. Bless and watch over my Work.

Your sacred space is now defined.

The key here is Balance. Left/Right, Yin/Yang, Goddess/God.

Block your altar into thirds, going across. The left for Goddess symbols, the right for God symbols, and the center for balanced/neutral tools and symbols.

What you place on your altar is highly personal, but there are some basics common to most Wiccans. For the Goddess, place your cauldron and chalice, incense burner (air and water) and a white candle on the left. For the God, place a wand, pentacle (fire and earth), and a black candle on the right. In the center, place your working tools for the ritual, such as your athame.

Many Wiccans place statues and other Goddess/God symbols on their altar as well. If you have a specific visualization for the Deity, go for it.

For Beltane, make springtime additions to your altar. Fresh flowers, white for the Goddess, Red for the God, greens and yellows all around. Remember the commitment you printed out and sealed? place that in the center area of the altar as well.

If you do the mini-maypole ritual, place your stick and ribbons on the altar.

As you set up your altar, don't forget things you need to work your ritual that you might not necessarily put on the altar. If you plan to light candles or burn something in your cauldron, don't forget matches or a lighter. Same goes for some water for safety purposes to extinguish fire that gets out of hand.

Nine days to Beltane. Time to start laying out your altar. Get a sheet of paper and sketch out the positions of the things you'll place on the altar. Double-check that you actually own what you need. Think about where you'll get flowers from.

When you've got the altar plan laid out, seal it with a pentacle and keep it with your commitment to a Beltane ritual. We'll file this paper away for next ritual.

OK, you've bathed. You've purified yourself with a Ritual Bath. You've anointed yourself and dressed for ritual. Now it's time to purify your ritual space.

Let's start with the word "purification." In this context, a good synonym would be "cleansing." Again, this is a two-part process, as it was with purification of yourself. You need to physically clean your ritual space, then psychically cleanse it. So, first we have to sweep away the dust bunnies, pick up the magazines, move the coffee table out of the way, all that stuff. If our ritual space is outdoors, do a walk-around, clearing trash, rocks, twigs, etc. Make sure you can walk around without stepping on things that will twist an ankle.

There are two approaches to purifying space, depending on your location. Ritual space that is in "civilized" areas as opposed to a more wilderness area needs more clearing/cleansing.

Let's start with a ritual space in a "civilized" setting. This could be your living room, backyard, or one of my favorites, a Spanish-style courtyard like we have here in the French Quarter. These are areas with people-traffic, so you want to clear those influences from the area. We'll do a three-fold cleansing of our sacred space, with water, incense, and the broom.

To cleanse with water, you will need a cup or bowl with water, and a tuft of greenery (I use pine needles from my pine tree in front of the house). Bless the water with a brief blessing to indicate your intent:

"Bless this Water,
Lady Goddess
Make it pure.
Bless this Water
Father God,
Give it the strength to cleanse"

Dip the greenery in the water and sprinkle it around your ritual space. Walk clockwise around your altar, but don't limit the purification power to just the area of your circle; cast out as well as in with the water.

As you sprinkle the water into the air, visualize raindrops washing the area clean and chant:

"Rain, Rain, Rain
Wash it Clean
Rain, Rain, Rain"

Purification with incense is tricky for most people. Catholic priests have those big censors on a long chain to hold when they bless something with incense. You most likely have a small tabletop incense burner. That brass container gets pretty hot when you put burning charcoal in it. Get a small clay pot or dish and fill it with sand. place your self-igniting charcoal in the sand. That should insulate the heat enough for you to walk around holding the dish. Use stick incense as an alternative, but loose incense burned over charcoal will generate more smoke. Use Frankincense for creating sacred space. Chant:

"Fire, Fire, Fire
Smoke and ash
Cleanse the air
Fire, Fire, Fire"

If you use a ritual broom, add a third level of purification, a "psychic sweeping" of the area. "Sweep" the air with the boom while chanting:

"Sweep clean
Brush away
Make it pure"

If you're fortunate enough to work your Beltane ritual in a wilderness setting, you don't need to do this much. Rather than walking around, pushing distractions away from your circle area, cast your water and incense upward to offer it to the wild.

The area is clear now. Time to set up your altar.

Before starting any ritual, it's important that you personally are prepared. Purifying yourself involves several steps:

1. Showering/bathing to clean up
2. Ritual Bath
3. Anointing
4. Dressing in ritual clothing

1. Cleaning up. Shower or bathe, whatever your usual routine is. Clean up, get the grime of the day off of you. If you use soap, make it unscented.

2. Ritual Bath. This is a quite different experience from cleaning up. Clean up the tub, then fill it with clean, warm water. Add bath salts or oils appropriate to the ritual or season. Light the bathroom with a candle or two.

Climb in the tub and clear your mind. Focus on the lit candles, or simply close your eyes. Gather up all of the distractions of your day and visualize them seeping out of you into the water. Breathe deeply and relax. Do this for five or ten minutes, then pull the plug on the drain. Visualize your problems flowing down the drain with the water. Feel the freshness as your skin is exposed to the air. When all the water is drained out, climb out of the tub and towel off.

3. Anoint yourself with an oil or oils appropriate to the ritual for which you are preparing. If you're going to be participating in a group working, keep in mind that strong scents could be a distraction to others in the group, just like the woman with the overwhelming perfume seat 12B on the flight to NYC can drive everyone around her crazy. Still, a little oil can go a long way in tripping psychic triggers for you, so make use of this tool.

4. If you plan on doing your ritual skyclad, slip on a robe until you're ready to start, otherwise, get dressed in whatever you plan to wear in the circle.

Since Beltane is a celebration of Spring turning into Summer, floral scents are appropriate for the ritual bath. You'll be raising power in the circle, so scents to help attune your senses to magical work are also appropriate. Red, yellow, and white work for candle colors.

Practice self-purification at least once before Beltane and tell us how the experience felt.

So, let's make our ritual. This is #4 on the plan, and we'll spend a few days on this, because it's important. Let's start with Cunningham's framework:

The flow on Beltane will be (more or less) a ritual bath, then purification of the ritual area with broom, aspergillium, incense, and bell. Then we'll lay out the altar and cast a circle. Once the Quarters are called and the circle is closed, we'll Invoke the Goddess and God, with a hearty God invocation, since this is a fertility ritual. Then the actual Beltane stuff, maybe a miniature maypole, definitely a floral and/or herbal offering, and some chanting to raise power. That power will have to be earthed and ourselves grounded a simple feast. We'll then thank the Goddess and God and close down the circle.

OK, is everyone with me? Do it now, print out the Beltane plan and draw a pentacle on the page. Seriously, print it out and put a mark of committment on it. We'll burn that in a cauldron to seal the committment on Beltane.

You've got a couple of websites in the plan to read. They're pretty good for the background. If you've read them, you know that the holy day is about Spring tunring into Summer, the opposite of Samhain, which is Fall turning into Winter. It's a time of growth, warmth, and fertility.

The Death card is often misunderstood, because it's taken literally. Wiccans don't see Death with the finality and horror that other religions do. Death is a transition, "every new beginning is some other beginning's end."

This card is about change. To me, I interpret it as the change in how I see my Wiccan path. In spite of the fact that I'm one of the best teachers I know, I've resisted teaching Wicca. That's changed. My reluctance to teach this path has died, changed.

Ellen's companion book to her deck goes into a lot of Qabalistic correspondences, which are cool if one studies Qabala, but that's not within the scope of what we want to accomplish here. Still, the symbolism of the card and the deck are Wiccan/pagan, so go from there. Death (the figure on the card) reaps the old with his scythe, leaving the field clear for the new.

What's old in your life that you want to sweep clean?

I use Tarot for both meditaion and divination. While I have a number of decks, I'm going to focus on "The Witches Tarot" for discussion in this blog. If you use a different one, don't let me stop you. The choice of a tarot deck is a very personal one. My system for choosing a deck is quite simple: I buy the decks that tell me to buy them.

Since this blog is all aobut Wicca, we'll work with Ellen's deck. I've been using this deck for meditation, but when someone asks me for a reading, I invariably turn to Robin Wood's deck. I feel very comfortable doing readings with Robin's deck, and I've yet to reach the same comfort level with Ellen's. I tend to see Ellen's deck as more of a meditation/reflection tool.

I'll do a daily card draw here, and comment on that card and how it fits (or doesn't fit) with what I'm doing/thinking/working with on a given day.

Beltane is second only to Samhain in importance on the Wiccan calendar. We celebrate Beltane from sunset on April 30th to sunset on May 1st. Covens and other groups often have public ceremonies for Beltane, since the weather is usually nice. As solitaries, we all need to make time to prepare for this important day. Here is a suggested plan for celebrating Beltane:

1. Look around on Witchvox or other websites to see if any covens or groups are holding public Beltane rituals near you. Meditate on the possibility of attending one.

2. Commit to doing a serious Beltane ritual. Print this checklist out and dedicate it to the Goddess and God.

3. Read up on the history and background of Beltane. Review what Cunningham has to say about the Sabbat. Here are some other suggested articles:

Beltane -- Holiday Details and History by Christina Aubin
Beltane: Its History and Modern Celebration in Wicca in America by Rowan Moonstone

4. Prepare a ritual framework for your observance of Beltane. We will do this using the framework suggested by Cunningham in Living Wicca. If you don't have the Cunningham books, get them, they're worth the investment. Click on the links to the left (on the blog page).

5. Organize the tools and implements needed for your Beltane Ritual.

6. Plan the layout of your Beltane altar.

7. Prepare any food and drink you'll consume in the circle.

8. Gather flowers and herbs for your ritual.

9. Review your ritual and rehearse.

10. Do it!

Over the next few days, we'll address each one of these steps here. Feel free to chime in with suggestions from your own practices. Share the knowledge!

One of the reasons people are attracted to Solitary Wicca as a path is that it's easy to get started. All the seeker needs to do is declare their intentions and step onto the path. In a way, it's almost too easy a thing to do.

Switching from one church congregation to another can be complicated on a social level. You might be able to blend into the crowd at a big church, but if you're considering a switch to a smaller group, you're going to have to be sociable from day one.

Getting involved with a coven or pagan group has similar complications. Many groups have open ceremonies and gatherings that are good opportunities to meet local pagans. These gatherings can lead invitations to other functions and rituals. This all requires a lot more work on the part of the seeker than going to church. While Wiccan and pagan groups who have open functions are interested new members, they're going to want more from the newcomer than simply sitting in the back pew.

That extra bit of work can be an obstacle to many seekers. It's much easier to simply declare your intention to follow a Wiccan path as a solitary. What's important at this point is that the seeker truly discern their reasons for being solitary.

Whether as part of a coven or as a solitary, the new seeker will be reading and learning about Wicca. While it's easier for the solitary to get started, the path is ultimately more difficult because there is nobody right behind you to give you the occasional nudge, keeping you moving along the path. The solitary must nudge herself, reading, questioning, learning. The solitary must also reward herself as well; with no group to recognize her efforts, she has to be satisfied that her work is pleasing to the Goddess and God.

That's not such a bad thing, to be sure.

i'm taking my time with this blog, there's no rush here...