Week 2, The First Oath, aftermath

**I had this post mostly written.  Then Luna walked across my keyboard, highlighted everything, and replaced it with cat speak.  And google autosaved before I could revert.  Am kinda irritated.  Mostly because she'd not even cuddling with me to make up for it**

Looks like my subconscious had been pondering and plotting my first oath without me.  I got home from work, re-read the assigned readings for this week, and, as I was actively thinking about how the example oath would work, it wasn't really me.  And there was no chance I would be able to remember it.  So I wrote my own.  I had a bit of input from a friend (word choice), but mostly I knew what to say and how to phrase it.  I made some changes as I was going through it and I'm still not 100% happy with it (which is why I'm not publishing it yet), but for the most part, was not nearly as big of a deal as I was expecting.

The ritual itself.

I pretty much followed the self-blessing and first oath rite from Wheel of the Year.  I choose to use the Two Powers meditation available on the ADF website instead of trying to get myself into the appropriate state. Luna did not appreciate the speaker, but calmed down to go do cat stuff after that ended and I switched to my ritual

Offerings: dragon's blood incense to the ancestors; hard cider to the spirits (side note: Woodchuck's cellar series, Dry Hop is really tasty); jade bead to the Gods.

Runes drawn: I used an old deck of flash cards for this.  Was not happy with how it worked out during the ritual and need to find a different solution for moving forward.

Ancestors: ; ken.  torch, controlled fire, creativity, illumination.  Regeneration through death and sacrifice.  the importance of kin.
Spirits: ; eoh.  yew tree, Yggdrasill, the world axis.  Communication.  the mystery of life and death.  Defense/ protection at the expense of others.
Gods: ; isa.  ice.  prima materia, anti-matter.  attraction, gravity, inertia.  stillness.  the self ego.

I'm seeing a lot of death and change in there.  Which makes sense.  The entirety of the last year has been about death of institutions in my life and a changing life.  I'm not sure if these are just a reflection of the past year or if the future is going to be this way too.

I'm amazed by how much more... resonant my voice is during ritual.  It never sounds like that during normal speech or even public speaking.  Just during ritual.  I don't know if i'm listening more to myself, if my register changes, or what.  Doesn't really mean anything i think, just interesting to note.