Week 3: the First High Holy Day (Imbolc)

Week 3: The first High Holy Day: an explanation

Related to Requirement: #2 – Meaning and Discussion of High Days
Required Reading:

• Our Own Druidry, p. 62 - 74 61-75 (Hearth Cultures & High Days)

• ADF Constitution, Article 4

• The ADF Core Order of Ritual for High Days, 

Optional Reading:

• Our Own Druidry, p. 51 - 75 48-76 (The Very Basics of Ritual)

• A Crane Breviary and Guide Book by Rev. Michael J Dangler: <http://www.lulu.com/chronarchy>

• Appendix 1: Resources and Rituals for the Wheel of the Year

• Step by Step through a Druid Worship Ceremony

• The "Liturgy and Rituals" section of the ADF page

• The Three Cranes Grove, ADF, outline of ritual (with example prayers)

Not a whole lot to type up or think about before the ritual actually happens.  Ritual is Sunday afternoon with a celtic focus.  I'm trying to find sources for info on Norse equivalent.  What I've been able to find so far pretty much matches the Celtic/Germanic festival.  Ewe's milk, when winter begins to soften.  Lambing will begin soon (I guess? City girl here!).  At any rate, it's much the same it sounds like, so if I can't find anything at the library, I'll use the existing books I have at home.

The past week the cold has felt different.  It's still cold (the high on Monday was 14 Fahrenheit!), but it's not the bitter cold without remorse of deep winter.  It's the ever-so-slightly more humid cold of very early spring. The grocery store next to work hasn't put up their green house yet (my personal "yay spring!" signal), but they're clearing that area of their parking lot, so it'll be going up in the next month or so.

I think I'm going to end up doing two rituals for each holiday.  The grove ritual, which tends to be I-E, Celtic, or Grecian focused, and then a solitary ritual that's Norse focused.  I'm the only one in the grove with a impulse towards Norse, so I don't' think we'll ever being doing Norse as the main ritual.  And I'm ok with that.   The online Solitary grove posted their February ritual over the weekend.  I have it pulled up at home.  I'll take it and the Disting/Ewemeoluc ritual on the adf website and make them play nice.  It shouldn't be too hard.  Although I should totally do that tonight since K and nephew are coming down this weekend to play (and possibly go to ritual with me?)

I have some notes and thoughts about how meditation is going, but I think they'll get their own post when I'm not piece-mealing a post together from open tabs in stolen moments at work.

useful links:

https://www.adf.org/rituals/norse/general/index.html

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.

Week 2: The First Oath

Week 2: The First Oath

1) Read Week 2: The First Oath in The ADF Dedicant Path Through the Wheel of the Year
2) Read p. 18-19 11-12 in Our Own Druidry
3) Read "Chanting the First Oath" https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/articles/first-oath-chant.html
4) Read p. 8-12 of A Book of Pagan Prayer 

 I'm not really behind this week as much as I haven't had time to write anything up.  I'm doing the readings again tonight and, unless I come up with some brilliant insight that will make the First Oath in Our Own Druidry more personal, doing that as well.  I wonder if the Kindreds will mind if the representation of the tree is a mason jar with green onions growing in it.

I think I'm going to try to work out a knitting meditation.  Probably my intricate lace project won't work, but a garter stitch scarf will, or possibly a different shawl i'm working on.  And as I research this, it appears it is a thing.  I wish the local library had the book I've found, but I'll deal with the fact that it doesn't.  Now to decide if I want to own said book in physical or e-format.  Or maybe both?  I need to discuss this with the group anyway.  The requirement isn't exactly clear for what qualifies and what doesn't:

An essay or journal covering the Dedicant's personal experience of building mental discipline, through the use of meditation, trance, or other systematic techniques on a regular basis.

We're having a study group meeting soon, so I'll bring it up then.  Or in the study group on facebook.

I also need to smudge the house again.  Somehow I've picked up a ghost cat?  Or it certainly feels like a cat. Since I can be looking at Luna across the room and feel a cat moving behind me.

Homework, Week 1

We had a make-up meeting of the study group Thursday night.  We went over most/ all these then, but I want to document my answers and possibly a little less flippant?  Because I'm actually really concerned about some of this and what it'll mean if I fail.

I was going to write all this up Thursday, but Luna decided that I'd been ignoring her far too much and wouldn't let me type or even concentrate.  I'm sure part of this is because I came home covered in dog saliva.  So I'm doing this a couple days later than planned, but writing it up all the same.

DP Through the Wheel of The Year, week 1, homework questions:

• Why have you chosen to take the first steps on the Dedicant Path?

Because I'm the biggest nerd ever.  Because I need to work through many of the questions/puzzles/whatever anyway, and if I do it as part of DP, I both get a guide AND, at the end, outside validation.  2013 was the worst year of a decade that already had very few bright spots.  So I'm also hoping that DP will help me find, if not my balance, at least my footing again.

• Is this a step on your path, or will this become the Path itself?

I have no idea.  ADF is the first organized group that I've not felt like an outsider or fool in investigating. Particularly since the Norse/ Viking end of paganism tends to be full of racist and/or homophobic asshats*, it is more than likely that this will be home for a while.

• What do you expect to learn?

Is it even possible for me to be zen?  To like myself.  To develop and maintain a decent meditation habit.

• What would you like to get out of this journey?

Re-strengthened faith in the basic goodness of humanity.  A rudimentary understanding of the relationship between gods/ deities and humanity and myself.  I feel that I'm missing something.  

• Do you know where this path will take you?

Nope.  And I'm trying to be okay with not being in control.

• If you have just joined ADF, why have you chosen to work on this immediately?

If I do it now, I'll have a study group to work with.  Which is a really superficial reason, but I'm afraid that if I do this at my pace and on my own, it'll just slide to the wayside.

• Does it look hard or easy?
• Which requirements appear to be difficult to you now, and which appear to be easy?

Answering these two together. 

I'm not concerned at all about the readings or writing requirements.  

The daily devotion/ meditation will be difficult.  I have to lifehack myself to remember to take my medication every day.  I'm not sure how to lifehack 'sit down, put the phone and knitting away, and be at peace'.  How do I write an "essay describing the Dedicants understanding of and relationship to ... the Gods." when I've spent my entire life without such a relationship?  By the time I was reading well enough to be reading the Bible, I was feeling the... lack of presence (I guess?).

• Do you have doubts, questions, or concerns that you need to ask about?

How do you even begin to look to find a patron spirit/ deity?  Seriously.  Everyone I know who has that sort of special connection was called.  I have no idea.

*I know not every heathen, norse, arastu, whatever group is white supremacist.  but the vocal (and thus findable) groups online are. And I have neither the time nor the stomach to sort through the hundreds of awful sites and posts for the good groups.

Week 1 with Study Group

I am going to the make-up initial study group meeting on Thursday, but here's what the group is doing this week (copied directly from the study group post):

• Take the time to read up through Week 1 in The ADF Dedicant Path Through the Wheel of the Year (in the Files section) and prepare your materials. 
• Read p. 11-20 and Appendix B of Our Own Druidry (in the Files section). 
• Read the DP FAQ (https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/faq.html) 
• Consider starting a DP blog and linking the group to it when you post. This can be a really great way to generate discussion, and many DP students prefer to keep their journals electronically for convenience and ease of sharing. 
• Read Journaling the Druid Path (https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/articles/journaling-the-druid-path.html) 
• Read Uncertainty and the Dedicant's Journey (https://www.adf.org/training/dedicant/uncertainty.html) 
• Think about the questions Rev. Dangler asks in the Homework section. 

At this point, I've done all the readings (at least once) and, obviously, started the blog/journal.  I'm going to do the OOD reading again tomorrow morning with the physical book.  While reading it as an ebook is more convenient for work, carrying it with me, and doing a quick read through, I don't feel that I'm going to do as well for actually learning unless I can take margin notes, highlight, etc.  I'm out of practice at this whole studying/ read for content/ notes thing as it is, learning a new way of doing it might not be the best plan either.

Journalling is probably going to be an amalgam (really, that's how that's spelled?) of physical paper journalling and online. If I do the notes and initial pass on paper, then I can clean it up and actually make it legible online.  Typing things makes me actually do the mental work to make scholarly sense of things anyway.

Right now, I expect the most difficult parts of this to be the regular meditation practice and creating a relationship with patrons.

I've been trying, off and on, for 20 years to start and maintain a daily meditation practice.  It never seems to go anywhere.  It might be time to admit defeat on the standard western meditation style of sitting crosslegged and clearing ones mind.  So back to the beginning, and what is probably the nerdiest calling to paganism ever: the Jedi calming breath. Which actually isn't Jedi at all, but vaguely Buddhist (I think?  The site I learned it from went defunct so long ago that the Internet Archive doesn't even know what I'm talking about).

Patrons/ Deities/ Gods.  I've never had a relationship with them.  Even when I was young enough to be going to church and sunday school every sunday... I never got it.  Never felt like there was a personal connection with any deity or spirit.  I spent most of late elementary and junior high searching for the force (ok, apparently Star Wars had a bigger impact on my personal development than I thought) before discovering paganism and Tolkien.

I might come back to this in the morning, I might not.  But right now, it's long past my bedtime and my cat is freaking out that we've not commenced the routine yet.
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