Alban Gaeaf Rite, 26 DEC 2019

This past Thursday was Spirit Valley Protogrove’s annual Winter Solstice ritual. Our cultural focus for this rite was Welsh, celebrating Llew Llaw Gyffes and Gwydion finding him in eagle form after he was slain by Gronw Pebr. As a matter of fact, Hugin the Bard’s song, “An Oak Grows,” featured prominently in our call to the Sun, and afterward, we had a song battle against the Mari Lwyd!

Our omen for the rite was Fearn (guidance), Ailm (foresight), and Iphin (spirit kin), representing a blessing of knowledge and guidance from the Kindreds.

Our primary method of maintaining group trance was group visualization, using British Traditional Holiday symbolism and the Fire, Well, and Tree cosmology to keep our minds upon the power of the Kindreds. We toasted each other and those that couldn’t join us, as we had a smaller group than usual due to the date and various other holiday plans with family. However, those of us that did make it had good discussions, a delicious feast, and a good time welcoming our spirit allies in doing the work of *ghosti.

Beliefs and Practices, part 2: Some Recent Observations

Just a side note: I get most of my subscriptions in email, so I keep forgetting those blogs have “like” buttons. So I’m always surprised when someone “likes” one of my posts.

Over the past twenty years, there are some observations I have made on the experiences I have had concerning the nature of physical and spiritual reality which have strongly influenced the premises I wrote about in Part 1. I’ll be listing some of them here, along with my personal thoughts on them.