Merry May! I thought I’d write a post about Maypoles because many people want to do Maypole rituals for May Day but don’t know the details. So here goes… First, you’re going to need a pole at least 12′ long and 5″ in diameter. These dimensions are…
High Spring: Themes, Resources and Ideas
As the vernal equinox (which in my version of the Wheel of the Year I term High Spring) approaches, Pagans everywhere prepare to celebrate this important Sabbath. As the “Spring festival” (whether you consider it the beginning of Spring or, as I do, the height of it),…
The Ritual Cycle of the Rain Baby: An Example
So, last year I wrote about a new tradition for Riverain, the Water Sabbath, which is how I celebrate the holiday that falls between the Winter Solstice (Yule) and the Spring Equinox (High Spring). Riverain comes at the height of the wet season in California’s…
Introducing SLOGG: The Winter Demi-Sabbath
January is a hard damned month for me. There, I said it. After the colorful lights and parties and presents and many festivities of Yule comes a dark, cold time when we all go back to work. No fun for us now: just trudging through the snow or freezing rain,…
Yule Offering #3: Love
My final wish for you all this Yule season is that you be surrounded with love. We are social apes, we humans, and loneliness is a terrible burden to us. Here at the dark and cold time of year, we can feel even more isolated, even more as though we…
Yule Offering #2: Courage
My second hope for you at Yule is that you engage the season with bravery. This is the time when we stand up to darkness and cold and the prospect of much more of it, and we do so with a combination of brazen silliness and real strength: the kind…