A Winter Solstice Reflection: Passing the Light

I wrote this brief reflection/working for the Winter Solstice Rite I’m running at ORW this year. I really like the imagery of passing the light. It gives us time to honor the holy dark, but also look to finding hope. If you’d like to do this working, you’ll need a candle (or electric candle) for each person present, and the overhead lights turned off. 

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Celebrating Heliogenna

Heliogenna is a modern Hellenic Neopagan celebration of the Winter Solstice, created by Hector Lugo.  (there is a lot of controversy in the hellenic recon community and modern hellenismos community about whether this should be celebrated at all. Do lots of reading, and make a decision that is meaningful for you) This collection of thoughts and liturgy expands on his original presentation of the celebration. Here is a link to more information and additional liturgy from Hellenion: https://www.hellenion.org/rituals-and-practices/heliogenna-festival/

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Ritual for the First Day of School

Howdy, y’all! It’s about time to school to start back up, or maybe for you it has already started (you poor souls). A lot of my writing lately has been focused on custom rituals for various things. I thought today I’d share with you a ritual for a child’s first day of school. This is written specifically for the first day of Kindergarten, but could very easily be modified for any pre-K or elementary grade kiddo. I will probably be doing something very similar to this with my daughter he in just a couple weeks. Enjoy!

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A Healing Ritual for Mental Health

Mental Health is something that so many people struggle with, myself included. It can seem hard to see the hope and the light when the world seems to be covered in darkness and nothing but feelings of bleak desolation. While religion is no substitute for other medical interventions, such as therapy and/or medication, is definitely has its place in making things more bearable. When the flame seems to have gone out, we can pray in hopes of finding it’s light again.

While this is a full ADF Core Order of Ritual, the working section can be performed as a stand alone piece, particularly if performing the whole ritual seems daunting. The ritual can also be performed on behalf of another, though please do make sure you have their permission first to offer prayers on their behalf.

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Breaking Away from the Earth Mother/Sky Father Binary

One of the things that has come up recently in discussion on various ADF forums is the the binary nature of Earth Mother and Sky Father.  Although not all groves or solitary practitioners include an invocation to the Sky Father, as only the Earth Mother is required in our core liturgy, the implicit binary is still present.  This dualistic Earth Mother/Sky Father present in ADF rituals can be quite off-putting, especially for our non-binary members.

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Special Occasion Rituals

Special Occasion Rituals

This course was designed to expand a student’s knowledge and experiences for liturgical development beyond high day liturgy and specifically targets the development of liturgy for use in everyday life for a variety of different purposes.

The primary goal of this course is for students to enhance their skills for developing special occasion liturgy to meet the needs of individuals and groups occurring within every day life.

Course Objectives

  1. Students will identify, define and analyze several types of special occasion ritual and compare special occasion ritual to high day ritual.
  2. Students will increase their knowledge of creating ritual for diverse audiences.
  3. Students will utilize their knowledge and skills for liturgical writing to create special occasion rituals for a variety of different purposes.

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