Countdown to the 21st: Eight Days to Go!

I thought I'd take a little time to summarize what this ritual is all about.

June 21st is usually celebrated as the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the midpoint of summer. What’s funny around here is, the beginning of summer (in Canada, the May 24 weekend, according to the Unwritten Rules of Canada, rule two: You must go swimming outdoors and barbeque on that long weekend. No exceptions) it was hotter and sunnier than eight days before the middle of the season.

Though, this ritual could have been done, say, tomorrow I’ve decided to use the summer solstice just because of the re-enforced ritual meaning. Litha is the height of summer. It’s the longest day of the year, and once it is over, the darkness begins to creep back into the light. To me, Litha was always the big celebration before going to war. As the harvest begins, and the weather gets colder, the reign of the Sun King begins to falter, and finally the world is plummeted into the cold and darkness of winter as He dies, only to be reborn on the next solstice six months later. (Forgive me Wiccan friends if I butchered it, this is just what I learned when I was just starting out.)

My ritual is not actually a Litha celebration. Though some elements, such as a vase of flowers and colours I’m choosing for my main altar cloths are associated with Litha, the ritual does have little to do with the sun being at its height. My ritual’s official title is “Rededication and Cleansing”.

The rededication is to finally reaffirm my religion. I did a dedication about a thousand years ago, and from then, I had been obsessed with learning everything I could about my forms of Paganism. I did it in a bit of a backwards way, but I still learned all I could. Some Pagans say that you can’t really learn everything from books and websites without experiencing it yourself. To be fair, I agree with them to an extent. If I had started doing spells and rituals right away from my dedication, I don’t think I would have felt okay with it. I had learned a bit about Paganism before the dedication, and probably would have been very competent, but I still felt too much like a newbie and a “student”. At the time, I was learning from Elise, and though we have very different religious paths, many things will clearly overlap. Being the student, I didn’t think I could go out and work with magic (I spell it without a K) without feeling like a teenager who had just picked up and Silver Ravenwolf book and was going to rebel against her Christian parents.

The cleansing is something I’ve been meaning to do, but honestly kept forgetting. I need to cense my statues, fumigate my room and cleanse all my new tools (and old ones too, come to think of it). It’s a big task, so I’ve made it a central part of my ritual. From the time I cast my circle and settle down until when I begin to tidy up and close the circle, I will be burning loose sage on charcoal. It will be my first time with charcoal, and I will have it in a fireproof container, my cast-iron cauldron. If anyone has worked with charcoal before, I would gladly accept some advice (in fact, I could really use it).

This is the time I will be connecting to my patron Gods, Quetzalcoatl and Cama Zotz. I will also be connected with the faerie folk who live in our garden and forest right near our house. This is also the time I’ll be “opening the mouths” of my Egyptian statues and building a rapport with Them.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.