I have to admit that I was a little stuck when attempting to think of how to share a ritual with you for Beltane.
This is a ritual that I typically leave in the hands of the very capable High Priestess of the Circle I belong to. I will attend the ritual, while my child runs around with the other witchlets in her backyard. This year, as I started to think about this post, I sat down and tried to figure out why. “Why don’t we celebrate together, as we do for most other sabbats?” I asked myself some questions:
I’m embarrassed, because here I sit, trying to help everyone else observe the day with their children, I haven’t done it regularly. I’m not ashamed, because, I think it’s O.K., I think that there is nothing wrong with not “doing it up” every year. While I want my child to know that having a spiritual practice is important, I would rather stress the every day, rather than only the “big holidays”. We bring spirituality into our daily lives through cleaning rituals, bedtime rituals, and many other small talks and meditations. However, this year we will be celebrating with our family at home, in addition to with our Circle. I’ve come up with the following ritual just for the occasion, and I’d like to share it with you. As always, fill it in with your family’s traditions and beliefs. Have fun with it and make it yours.
Beltane Ritual for Families
*Note: This ritual does call for the use of fire. Please use caution and always make sure that children are supervised around fire. Supplies
Purpose This ritual is to celebrate Beltane, a celebration of life, love, passion, and fertility*. I typically see Beltane as a huge celebration of love, so I have focused mostly on love. Expressly, love of life, love for each other, and love of activity. Set-up Take some time before the ritual to give your family a brief explanation of what Beltane means to you. If you’d like to go around the table and talk about this, go ahead and do that now. This is also a good time to acknowledge the representation or the history of the fire. I like to make sure that explanations happen before the ritual begins, so that everyone can ask questions, there can be discussions, and everyone understands what they are participating in.
Ritual Begin the ritual as your tradition, energy level, and children’s attention spans allow. Love of life - Speaker: Beltane, among other things, is a celebration of the fire of life. *go around the table and dish everyone up with a bite of their favorite food.” Food is one of the pleasures of life. Take a bite of your favorite food and think about how amazing it is to be alive to enjoy this wonderful food. When you’re done, take a deep breath, feel the fresh air fill your lungs, and think about how amazing it is to be alive to enjoy breathing this fresh air. Love for each other - Speaker: Beltane is also a celebration of love. Let’s all hold hands, close our eyes, and think about how much love we have as a family. Take time to think about each member of our family and what you love about them. Once you’ve thought about everyone, send that love to each family member, and then out into the world. Passion for activities- Speaker: Beltane is also a celebration of passion. We all have passion for different things. At your place is a representation of what you’re passionate about. Take a moment to think about how you feel about the item at your place. *start with the person at your right, and give everyone a moment to talk about their passion*. Speaker: *thank everyone for sharing* and close the ritual according your tradition and beliefs. Then eat the delicious meal and dance to the happy music. The dancing is very important. :) *In this ritual, when we talk about fertility, we are focusing on the creation of ideas and the fertility of the mind. I hope you enjoy celebrating Beltane with your family. Bright Blessings, Rowan
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"Send healing, please!"
That phrase. It calls out to me whenever I see it. “Help me”, it says. With the advent of social media, especially Facebook, allowing us to reach out and connect with more people, that phrase becomes even more of a beacon. “If you could send healing energy...” “Could you pray for so and so...” These requests always make my heart burst. This seems such an easy task.... but how? Is there a proper way to do this? Energy, prayer,spells? These are all very intangible things. After all, in many cases I haven’t met the person, or their family. Often I don’t even truly understand what the illness or situation is and this brings me to the question of this article... What can I actually do? Here are some things I’ve been trying. Since I am not a very formal ritual person, I have a lot of ‘conversations’ when I do things. 1. I get a request over facebook, email or other social media that someone is sick or in for tests or simply having a terrible day. If I know the person, I close my eyes and picture them. I remember them looking great and laughing. I then talk to them. “I am sending you energy for health, patience to help you through this painful time....etc” I try to call out as much information as I can to target my thoughts towards that. I figure the more I can focus my thoughts maybe the more of my energy is received by the person. 2. If I don’t know the person: I will close my eyes and think of my children. I picture them playing and happy and joyful. This creates in me an overwhelming feeling of love and peace it helps me to center and connect to what I want to send. I then repeat the name of the person who needs help and I picture creating a column of energy and joy and connecting that column to their name, perhaps visualizing creating their name out of that energy. I also try to include their family in the healing energy by sending out some extra thoughts to them too. 3. Many folks will set out a small altar with something to represent each element (small bowl of water, rock for earth, incense for air and for fire, a candle. When doing a healing ritual, it is believed that burning a red or yellow candle and concentrating on the flame will help you to send healing energy to those who need it. Though a white candle will work too as it represents the whole person. Truthfully, I use whatever candle I have available. Because let’s face it, if this is an impromptu request, I am likely to forget or not get around to it if I can’t do it with what I have available. 4. We perform the “Ribbon Ritual” It is the most fun and joyous as well as being closer to a traditional ritual for me. I’ve included the ritual below, so you can give it a try with your family. What is your favorite way to send energy and healing to someone? How do you explain to your children what you are doing? Are they involved and helping you?
Ribbon Ritual
This ritual is one of my favorites for: • healing requests • cleansing my home • embracing a stressful time of life • even good as an any day thankful ritual Supplies: A representation of each element (I use these, but pick whatever means something to you or better yet, let your children choose, they are wonderfully intuitive creatures and may connect to something you never thought of) - Representation of Fire: candle or dragon figure or if inside we light our fireplace* -Representation of Water: bowl of water or small watering can -Representation of Earth: rock -Representation of Air: feather or flying dinosaur figure *Note: please remember that if using flames in this ritual make sure they are safely to the side and out of the ribbons way as there will be lots of swirling and twirling and it will defeat the healing purpose if there is a fire. -Long length of ribbon, or scarves or cloth for each participant. -Table for everything to be placed on. -If the ritual is for healing of someone and you can have a photo or something that helps you think of them, that is a great thing to put on your altar. Alternatively, write their name on a piece of paper Instructions: Begin by calling the elements and creating the circle, or however suits your tradition. This is our wording, feel free to create your own depending on your needs and feel free to change the element/directional representations as best fits your beliefs or intuition: We sit in a circle (very duck duck goose like) (pick up the rock walk around the circle behind everyone). Individual: Welcome North, our foundation, please give us solid footing to dance upon today. All: Welcome North (pick up the feather or dinosaur and walk around the circle behind everyone ). Individual: Welcome East, our breath, please bring playfulness to help us create. All:Welcome East (pick up the dragon figure and walk around the circle behind everyone - If using a candle or fireplace, have the person walk and wave their fingers like a candle flame). Individual: Welcome South, our energy, please give us lots of energy that our dance may go longer. All: Welcome South (pick up the small water bowl and walk around the circle behind everyone - (If a child they can make wave motions with their hands instead of carrying the water bowl). Individual: Welcome West, our movement, please let us move with our thoughts and embrace change. All: Welcome West Have person in charge of ribbons now hand out a ribbon to each participant, talk about what your are hoping to do: Today we are using these ribbons to dance. As we dance we are raising energy for the health and healing of “name”. Unfurl the ribbon and dance to your hearts content, think of joy and health (note: as this ritual centers around the people don’t worry about staying within your circle confines). Dance until you fall over are out of breath or the giggling gets out of control. Return to your circle (pile the ribbons in the center) and release the elements. (pick up the small water bowl and walk around the circle behind everyone - If a child they can make wave motions with their hands instead of carrying the water bowl). Individual: Thank you West, our movement now done, go with our blessing and our thanks. All: Thank you West (pick up the dragon figure and walk around the circle behind everyone ). (If using a candle or fireplace, have the person walk and wave their fingers like a candle flame) Individual: Thank you South, our energy now spent, go with our blessing and our thanks All: Thank you South (pick up the feather or dinosaur and walk around the circle behind everyone ). Individual: Thank you East, our breath now ragged, go with our blessing and our thanks All: Thank you East (pick up the rock walk around the circle behind everyone). Individual: Thank you North, our foundation now silent, go with our blessing and our thanks All: Thank you North Go and enjoy, T.S. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Spiral Scouts Oh my! “Hey mom, can I join Boy Scouts?” This was a day I had dreaded. I’d heard about the Boy Scouts. After all, I grew up with two brothers who were both in boy scouts for a number of years. I had friends whose sons were in boy scouts and it always seemed like a great idea. But then there were those rumors and the discrimination overtones and frankly it frightened me off. Would my little boy join only to be kicked out because he was not Christian? Turns out there are LOTS of pagan kids who are members of the Boy Scouts - the key seems to be in the leaders. The kids who I know are in, well their parents are running it. Or as my friend Matt says, “We are correcting the issue one pack at a time. Our pack welcomes everyone.” And that seems true of most of them. Well, my son hasn’t joined because: 1. We haven’t found a good group around here, though he has gone and participated with some events with his friends. 2. Because it's not just religious intolerance but also social intolerance. However, some things to remember: adults and parents are looking at boy scouts differently than the boys are. We see the overall portrait of the Boy Scouts, the big picture. But we sometimes miss what it teaches on a small scale. Friendship, survival, independence. So much like so many other things in this world, the Boy Scouts comes down to a choice. Let your son try it out, interview the different troops. Trust yourself as a parent and that you have raised your child to have good values. Also remember that many boys choose not to stay in the troop more than a few years. Girl Scouts - this one I have significantly less issues with. My husband says “If your willing to sell cookies, Girl Scouts are willing to have you!” Well the real reason I don’t have an issue is this note attached to The Girl Scout Promise: “Girl Scouts of the USA makes no attempt to define or interpret the word 'God' in the Girl Scout Promise. It looks to individual members to establish for themselves the nature of their spiritual beliefs. When making the Girl Scout Promise. Individuals may substitute wording appropriate to their own spiritual beliefs for the word 'God'”. Also there doesn’t seem to be any purpose other than to teach girls independence and learning. There is also Spiral Scouts. This group is much less widely known and its often hard to find a group in your area. Myself and many other people have thought to start a group only to be stymied by how difficult it can be to find information or other interested people. So in the end, joining Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts has to be a decision that both you and your children are interested in. Remember that what your children will see and what you will take from it the experience will be different because of your ages and experience. And remember that you can always stop being part of the group. T.S. |
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July 2015
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