Thursday, July 25, 2013

Mid-Summer Festivities Preparation

In the next couple weeks, I'll be preparing to mark the Mid-Summer point on the calendar. In my outline of how I do sabbat days and how some of them might change, I mentioned that I would symbolize the change between the light and shadow self with masks. I don't actually know if I will be able to add this one this year. For me, things have to be 100% personalized, I don't seem to be able to connect with quote/unquote "manufactured" items and until I perfect paper mache' and master a technique for making a paper mache' mask of me own face, I'm not going to be able to make it work the way I want to make it work.

So, instead of that, I think I'm just going to do a 30 minute meditation to put the light self in hibernation until I again switch focus in February. That means that my posts may get a bit darker, dealing with some of the hurdles that I work very hard trying to overcome in my life. Fear being a gigantic one. Also, dealing with past abuses that still affect my life, today. Etc. Not that all the posts will be negative, I actually plan to try to turn them positive. But, the darker subject matter; death, fear, health problems, will be the focus of my attention in the next 6 months.

Our meal, I've decided, will be a butter roasted chicken, some roasted veggies and blackberry cobbler. Blackberries are being harvested as we speak where I live, and when I grew up, my grandparents began choosing the chickens that would be processed and frozen for winter suppers around this time of year. I will make some apple butter sometime around August 6th, also! I adore apple butter.

I have chosen a combination for the incense offering. Sandalwood for the evening, but a berry blend for the day time.

I plan to snap some pics to post in the middle of this stuff, except for during the meditation. I will also have some pictures of how the Grimoire is progressing, as I will still be putting a lot of effort into that at the same time.

So, time to prepare for the coming of my favorite time of year: fall! I love it!

Sunday, July 21, 2013

The Buck Moon



My granddad was quite an accomplished gardener. I used to call him a farmer. Because, to a very young witch who had never yet seen a real farm, the large garden he tended qualified as a farm. He got up every morning at around 4am and tended to the rows upon row of vegetables and flowers of all types.

There were strawberries and raspberries, corn and cabbage. He had pretty much anything you could ask for. Even rhubarb, which I hate. My grandma canned everything. Quarts upon quarts every year. Sadly, it's not a skill my mother allowed me to learn.

Granddad died in the mid 90's, grandma is still alive. in 2014, she will be 100 years old. One of the things I still remember about all that gardening is the Old Farmer's Almanac. Granddad loved it! He did everything by that book, including his hair cuts! Everything was on moon cycles and done according to solstices. Funny, since they were Methodists.

Tomorrow is the Buck Moon. So named because by this time of the year, young bucks are growing new antlers. My granddad and my dad and brother are all avid hunters, so these cycles of the wild game were also well known. The Buck Moon is known by a ton of other names. Wiccans and neopagans have their own names for the full moons of the year.  Predictably, I've never referenced the moons by those names. I've always referenced them by the names my granddad called them, which just so happen to be the names in the Old Farmer's Almanac, and were also all of the Algonquian names for them. In fact, I do a lot of things by that book......including haircuts.

So, with tomorrow being the Buck Moon, I needed to get ready for my planned meditation. Moon rituals, or esbats, have always presented a problem. Until I put into focus how the Wheel made sense to me, they were almost impossible to mark. Now, that I've nailed down my relationship with the Wheel, and my connection to the cosmos, I can better define what I need to to.

Meditations for moon rituals will be the norm, but each moon will have a different focus. The Buck Moon is about young bucks growing new antlers and preparing for the slowing of the Earth's energies. My meditation will be on spiritual goals for the darker months. I will be preparing myself for my focus on my shadow self, my dark half who become my primary focus at Mid-summer on August 6th. I will meditate in preparation to put away my light side for the dark half of the year. Since Mid-summer is the hottest part of the year, I will also be meditating in preparation to say goodbye to what must go dormant and begins to die around this time.

Tomorrow, July 22nd, is also the best day to begin logging. Since I don't yet live in Maine, I think I can rule that one out.