Pagans = environmentalists

Most pagans honor Nature in some form or another, so I think its crucial to our spirituality to also take action as a form of that honor.

Here are some suggestions/ideas:

Change.org is an online platform for petitions. Add your voice to many issues that arise, often alerts via email, or you can sign up via the site.

Votesmart.org is a wonderful site that enables visitors to look up laws that are in the law-making process, and to find out who votes on what. This empowers you to write to your representative (you can email via the site) to make your voice heard.

Politifact.com offers fact-checking on many issues.

Care.com is a huge online community that covers many activities for someone interested in the environment, social issues, and more. They have a click-to-donate page, message boards, and tons more.

Freerice.com and Freeflour.com both offer online free games for people to earn rice/flour to help feed the hungry. (I use these in my homeschooling for my son)

TheHungerSite.com offers more than just feed the hungry. Includes veterans, literacy, environment, and more.

Goodsearch.com offers a search site powered by Yahoo to help fund charities whenever you do a search online.

Greatsunflower.org is an interesting project to help study the bee population. You get free sunflower seeds and then you keep track of the number of bees that visit your garden.

Also try;

-Switch to a vegetarian or vegan meals to eat lower on the food chain. More importantly, learn how your diet impacts the environment. TryVeg.com offers some tips and recipes.

-Read up on the issues and learn about activist activities. Earthhopenetwork.net offers some neat articles.

-Recycle. We’re fortunate in our area to have curb side recycling, and the guy who led this told me it seriously impacted the landfill to add another 20+ years to it. You can recycle by giving to the recycling center, giving old stuff to shelters such as women’s shelters, animal shelters, or even churches (who help folks who lost everything).

-Volunteer. Check with local churches or shelters to help out. Work in a soup kitchen, clean out kennels in a dog shelters, or help build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

10 best environmental sites and blogs

Do you already do anything to give back the world? Post in comments, or share ideas, links, etc. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

WordPress Tags: social action, environment, volunteer, pagan, wicca, coven, recycle, nature

Cell phones in ritual

 Electronic gadgets are presently a thing so common as watches and jewelry. So when we have ritual, I feel at odds with asking anyone to give up their phones out of respect for the group. Here are my thoughts for circle etiquette;

Phones need to be off. This doesn’t mean to turn them off completely, but they must be silent, not even buzzing during ritual. This is out of respect for those who speak, invoke/evoke, or silent meditation. Once ritual begins, be polite and make sure the phone won’t make a sound while in circle.

Do not check text/messages/calls at awkward moments. My group happens to be pretty laid back and easy-going, so I don’t mind if we’re chatting if someone ones to share a photo, look up information to give me, or even turn on music they want added to the ritual. But its just polite to ask first, and to judge each situation for the group and mood.

Do not take photos, video, or recordings without permission from leaders. Many people appreciate their privacy.

As a group organizer (leader), I don’t expect members to put them away. I’m a parent, and would never think of giving my phone to someone when my son might call in case of emergency. It’s a tool, like anything else. It’s the attitude of the owner that will make the difference of whether its obnoxious or a useful tool in the magical temple.

What your thoughts? Cell phone or not? Post in comments.

WordPress Tags: cell phone ettiquete, ritual, coven, circle, pagan, wicca, witch, tools

 

Cakes and Ale Choices

I’m not much of a traditionalist when it comes to ritual. Sure, I learned the ‘proper’ way, but more importantly, I learned the reasons why we cast circle the way we do. once you learn rules, you can bend them to your liking. Its not so different with what to serve for cakes and ale ceremony.

Why do we have cakes and ale? the main reason is to ‘ground’ the energy you raise during ritual. There are other ways to ground, from ground-and-center techniques, to snapping fingers, to feasting.

There is also the element of building bonds with a group with the act of sharing food.

Traditional cakes and ale? If you want to get picky, you serve what they did in the good ‘ol days’. Origins of the ritual arise from various places (depending on your tradition) but I’ve known of recipes that go back a few generations. This was often cookie like confections or biscuit like, with wine, ale, or mead. Making from scratch also lends to adding a bit of magick while creating the cakes, and adding what you need for the intended ritual.

Simple Sabbat Cakes

bannock- a recipe for a simple, heavy, but tasty bread

Ritual recipes- a couple of recipes for ritual use.

Non-traditional cakes and ale? With the growing population of individuals choosing vegan, gluten free, or refusing alcohol. fear now, there’s plenty of choices for you too;

Pre-made cake can include anything from the cake with frosting, to breakfast muffin types, pound cakes, or even something like cornbread. You can use cookies, brownies, biscuits, or just about any single serving or sliced confection.

You can also select gluten-free or vegan varieties, switching flour for the gluten free flour.

Gluten free recipes

Vegan chocolate cake

Sparkling juice. I like serving this because its refreshing, more healthy, and adds enough ‘special’ to the occasion. You can select flavors such as grape, apple, or even pomegranate. You can also make your own.

Regular juice or punch. I often find sparkling juice in the grocery store, but you can make your own sparkling juice by mixing juice with seltzer water. You can often select fruit juices to help symbolize the ritual, such as pomegranate for harvest, or strawberry for one of the ‘strawberry moon’.

I would also suggest offering more than one choice. On the plate we serve for cakes, I will sometimes offer fruit along with sliced homemade cake (such as banana bread, cupcakes, etc). It still serves the same purpose of grounding and centering, but also providing unity in the act of sharing food.

What are your favorite traditions with cakes and ale? Do you have a favorite recipes, or preference to the types of food/drink served? Post in comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

WordPress Tags: cakes and ale, ritual, coven, sabbat, esbat, cast circle, pagan, wicca, goddess

Joy and Sorrow Ritual

Joys and Sorrows ritual. I wanted to share a bit more in-depth on the topic of sharing joys and sorrow in group ritual.

There are a few reasons why you might want to incorporate this;

• It builds bonds. Knowing the joy/sorrow of fellow members provides each member some insight on what they’re going through. Empathy and compassion might be enough to keep someone going through troubles afloat, while the person enduring the hardship might find a bit more light in an otherwise dark life.
• Offers support and help. I also find that sharing those bits of your life offers members the opportunity in case someone could help. A member mentioning being out of work might find a someone’s job looking for employment, or getting the word out. Another member, might find an offer of help to get out of their situation, or advice.
• It reminds of us balance. Even solitary, you can light a candle for joys and sorrows. It acknowledges the hardships we must endure to learn and grow, but also reminds us to focus on joys that we might otherwise take for granted.

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How to do the Joy and Sorrow ritual; Select a tray or plate, or a bowl filled with sand. You can use tea lights, birthday candles, or other candles. One for each joy or sorrow.

Ask each member, or if you’re solitary, state out loud the joy and sorrow you want recognized and light the candle. Take a moment to consider- 1) what lesson will you learn, or how can you grow from the sorrow, and 2) bask in the joy you feel to celebrate that.

Let the candles burn through the rest of the ritual and blow out at the end of ritual, giving thanks for what Life/the Gods/Higher Power/etc gives you.

Post in comments thoughts and ideas for this. I’d love to hear from you.

Technorati Tags: joy and sorrow,wicca,ritual,spell,magick,pagan,god,goddess,spirituality,circle,coven

Mix and match scrapbook, smash book, and art journal tips

I’m really enjoying scrapbooking in general, so I can add something more than just photos to an album. I can add tags, index cards, or print out things to add artful pages as well as journaling in my photo albums.

So why not explore the same methods with your BOS (Book of Shadows)?

- You can use altered composition books, blank journals, or 3 ring binders to assemble your BOS. As I have a ‘smash book’ for my goals, I’m finding I don’t like the fixed, never-can-move pages. I’m switching to a 3 ring binder or even a scrapbook binder.

- Pages can be paper or cardstock. The benefits of cardstock is the page is durable and holds up to things pasted on it. Cardstock is less likely to buckle if you use glues like Elmer’s.

- You can use stickers, stamps, and pictures printed from the Internet. I cut out words from magazines, print off the web, or add words with letter stamps.

- You can add journal blocks such as index cards, scraps of paper, or even post-it notes. These are great for adding prayers, quotes, ideas, notes, and chants.

- You can add envelopes. I add envelopes to add cards with recipes, prayers, and even small spells.

- You can add pouches in your album. Pouches can hold candles (tea light or small stick candles), incense, matches, small wands, pentacle tiles, and other portable items. This is great for those who join in rituals with others, and you can bring your own items along.

- Use gel pens, colored pencils, markers, and other mediums to sketch borders, doodles, and other graphics to personalize your book.

- Use various fonts and styles of writing. If you print out pages for the 3 ring binder version, you can also paste pages you’ve printed out into a blank book or the composition book. Use a gluestick or double sided tape to add. The liquid glues tend to warp paper.

- Use folded paper just as booklets, flaps, folders, accordion folds, and more. this technique was inspired from ‘lapbooking’ with my son a few years ago. You can add so much information on a single with this method. An accordion fold, for instance, can include invocation to the Quarters, or list your favorite altar tools.

Here’s a video on scrapbooking a book of shadows;

 

What other ideas do you like? Post in comments

WordPress Tags: bos, book of shadows, scrapbooking, lapbook, smash book, ritual, coven, witch, pagan

Starting your own group

Wow. It’s been a while since I blogged. My son got sick with strep, and we’re a week away from our homeschool portfolio review, and I’ve been busy with my writer’s and my Wiccan meetups.

So…

For those just now joining my blog, I run a Wiccan meetup group in Maryland. We are not a coven; we don’t follow a specific tradition. If anything, we accept anyone following a pagan spiritual path who want to hang out with other pagans for ritual, workshops, and social chat.

Its nice having the best of both worlds between being a solitary (exploring spirituality on my own) with the benefit of a group (to share and ask questions on how others do their thing), without the drama some orthodox groups might develop.

Want to form your own group? Here my advice;

- Leader, guide, or teacher. You can be all three, but every group looks to someone to take the lead and direct the group in some sort of goal. This doesn’t mean you need to always be in charge; I will let other members host an event, share their own ideas and suggestions, and even welcome traditions.

- Keep rules simple. Don’t complicate things with making more and more rules. I have only a few expectations of my members; Take responsibility for what you bring to the group, speak up if you have issues, be solution oriented, and lighten up.

- Remove the troublemakers. Thankfully, I don’t often get many troublemakers in the groups I organizer. I, nevertheless, must think of the group when I see a member causing issues/drama/gossip. I give them a chance to fix their behavior, and if they don’t step up, I remove them. They can rejoin if their offense isn’t too bad. I’ve banned only two people from my group.

- Have a gathering place. This doesn’t need to be a physical place, but you need someplace members can connect. I like sites like Yahoo Groups, meetup.com (there is a charge to be an organizer), or MSN groups (which links the MSN messenger). A site called GroupSpaces sounds promising as well.

- Invite participation. I found over the years some members wanted a leader to pretty much do everything. This meant planning, running, and dealing with all the ritual and workshop stuff. It can be exhausting. Invite members to help in the planning, even little stuff like volunteering to invoke the Quarters, or bring the cookies for cake and ale.

Post in comments you own ideas on this subject. What things do you like out of a group? What are your expectation of a good leader/teacher/guide?

WordPress Tags: group, coven, ritual, study group, wicca, pagan, meetup

Yule Follow Up

Our Yule ritual went rather well. I wish the wind didn’t so much or the temperatures drop so low, otherwise we’d have a fire in the fire pit. I meant to have everyone make banishing bags from black cloth and they’d be burned, but we opted, instead, to use this idea by CharmingPixieFlora (video) where the bag would not only mark what we wished to banish, but also what we needed to replace it.

Potluck- Because of gathering so late in the day, we opted to feast first. Some argue that you eat after ritual, but I feel that has more to do with magick working, meditations, or spell work. In celebrations, the focus should be on the celebrating itself.

The food was great. My husband made a Chicken and Dumpling casserole, while others brought salad, a veggie tray, and desserts. There’s something so delightfully magical about potlucks, where folks bring in various dishes to share as a group.

Ritual- Our group is not at all formal, and we discuss beforehand what we hope to accomplish with the ritual. Members share a document online where we add what we’re bringing to potluck, but also marking what they wish to do in the ritual itself. Some suggestions included some healing, a thumb’s up for the banishing bag craft, and also a ‘joy and sorrow’ sharing ritual.

Joys and Sorrows- I first encountered this practice in the local Unitarian Universalist Church, where members shared a joy and/or sorrow in their lives. This helped build community, strengthen bonds, and enables members to alert others if help was needed. We use the practice for the same reasons.

All you do is light tea lights. One for each joy or sorrow. You can light as many as you need. All of the candles can sit on a plate at the center of circle or the main part of the altar. They are blown out at the end of ritual.

Since I forgot to get the sparkling juice or mead, we ended up using V8 Splash for the ‘ale’ in the cakes and ale. The cake was Rum cake, which was awesome. We then went outside to ‘pop’ the banishment bags, sprinkling seeds on the ground, and making offering of the cakes and ale to the gods amid the wind and cold.

I wish for everyone to have a safe and happy holiday season.

Source: bing.com via Sharon on Pinterest

Technorati Tags: yule,christmas,activities,craft,sabbat,holiday,pagan,wiccan,ritual,coven,solitary

How to make a Book of Shadows

I’m not sure if I’d go so far as making a BOS from scratch, but this graphic shows how to take on this project with easy-to-follow instructions:

WordPress Tags: BOS, book of shadows, craft, wicca, ritual, coven, witch, goddess

So, you want to be a priestess?

Through the years, I’ve encountered new Wiccans professing an interest in becoming a priestess. They’re generally young, only just beginning on their spiritual path, and full of enthusiasm and vigor.

People ask me if I am one, and I firmly tell them no. I never took any oath or even wanted to serve the gods. I don’t particularly enjoy being in any leadership role, and get frustrated when members of my group want me to mentor them when they can just easily learn on their own.

I expect others to take responsibility for their own spiritual path, and not expect to be spoon-fed learning. But that’s me. I’m not altogether patient or interested in the ego-inducing role of priestess.

So I challenge those who want to be priestess with these questions;

What is your goal to be priestess? What do you see yourself doing as a priestess? Does this include your own coven, or just take on study groups? Do you seek respect, perhaps power?

What do you think it means to be priestess? What role does the priestess play? What things must a priestess know to be a priestess?

Generally you need;

Education. Any priestess not only studies to achieve this role, but continues to do so. It never ends, and she’s open to learning new things.

Dedication. A priestess often makes an oath to Goddess, or to a pantheon of gods, to work in service to them as well as the community. A certain level of selflessness is required.

Humility. Ego is the worst thing a priestess can have since this can often corrupt a leader. A priestess puts on her pants like everyone else, and must acknowledge her own limitations.

Understanding. If you intend on teaching others, you should know many topics thoroughly. You should be able to explain this to others and be able to answer questions.

Patience. Students can show many emotion and even trouble to a group, and you will need to cope with them, to guide them in the right direction.

You generally learn through a coven, to work through the ranks and ‘hive off’ to form your own coven with the blessings of the coven elders.

Education can include a number of lessons from learning ritual, spells, invocation, divination methods, herbalism and other healing methods, how to make your own magical tools, etc. I once knew a coven that expected you to learn elvish (from Tolkien).

What are your thoughts on this topic? What qualities and topics do you feel you need to be a priestess? Post in comments.

WordPress Tags: priestess, wicca, witch, coven, pagan, goddess, ego, group leader

Inspiration for spellwork

You can find tons of spells from books or online, but I think the most profound spellcasting will come from your ideas. Lately, I’ve found some neat ideas inspired by things I found on Pinterest of all places; (click on image for the specific post)

From Geninne’s Art Blog she shares some sketches on a leaf. I thought this would be a neat idea to add runes or intentions, then set adrift on a stream or river to release into the world.

At this site entitled Fiddlesnips, the author shares positive affirmation cards. These can easily be adapted to be invocation, incantation, prayers, or even spell cards.

 

This craft idea from IntimiateWeddings sparked inspiration where I thought ‘why not add herbs or drops of essential oil. Maybe you can even add very tiny crystals as well”. It becomes a working spell sealed into a necklace.

This just shows you can find inspiration just about anywhere.

Technorati Tags: spells,crafts,wiccan,witch,coven,pagan,ritual,invocation,prayers,magic,magick