Samhain: Turning Over a New Leaf

(I was inspired to give this long-neglected blog another try after seeing that someone had subscribed. Hi!)

I had a relatively low-key Samhain & Halloween this year. I attended a ritual with the Mists of Stone Forest Grove, a group which I have been worshiping with in the past year. Due to various circumstances, I hadn’t been to one of their rituals since the Spring Equinox. I volunteered for the Nature Spirits invocation, though since it had been such a long time, I was a little rusty on extempore speaking. As I have in the past, I called on the animals of the land, water and sky. I named various birds and fishes, but oddly for land I picked the badger and hedgehog. The badger does live here in the Upper Midwest, though I have never seen one in the wild. The hedgehog, however does not live in the Americas.  I am going to think about what those animals mean, but I will save that for other posts so I don’t go off on a tangent…

Our Patron & Matron of the rite were the Dagda and the Morrigan. For the remembrance (an object used to help connect/remember the ritual) gorp was distributed. Obviously this was a last-minute choice that was rather silly. Phil tried to connect it by saying that the raisin was the crone aspect of the grape (Morrigan) and that the peanuts represented the Dagda’s club. A bit of a stretch, if you ask me. I thought some of these were going to be offered to the Gods, but then I remembered the Mists grove doesn’t use food for offerings.

The human focus of the ritual was on setting goals for the new year. Phil (one of the leaders of the grove) referred to the goal-setting as “planting seeds” but turning over a new leaf seems a better metaphor for this season. Some people wrote theirs down on pieces of paper that would later be burned. That is what they consider offerings.

My goals for this year are to once and for all finish the dang ADF Dedicant program, and to finish learning to drive and get my license. It sounds rather mundane, but it is a means to get to rituals in outlying areas and have more job options. This post is a part of the Dedicant path, as reviews of holiday rituals are a requirement. I have written a bunch of these in the past couple years, but the rituals are required to be 8 consecutive holidays.

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