It's the 30th of August, and apart from getting ready to go a beer tasting and then come home to entertain some friends who're bringing the movie "Serenity" to watch after we grill dinner, Canyondancer and I are getting ready to present a workshop at TAWN's 21st annual Fall Festival.
In case you can make it: it's on Saturday, 20 September, from 9 a.m. to dusk, around ramadas 5 & 6 at Reid Park. For more info, check it out on the Tucson Area Wiccan-Pagan Network's website: www.TAWN.org. (Our workshop's called "It's Never Too Late to Come of Age," and is scheduled for 2 p.m.)
We're trying to do a little more camping this year, and last weekend took the Grania -- that's our 11' inflatable pirate raft, the Grania O'Malley -- up to Woods Canyon Lake with some friends. The weekend before Fall Fest, we may get out again. Yay!
The weekend after Fall Fest I'll be attending the Society of Southwestern Authors' annual Wrangling with Writing conference. This will be the third year I've attended, and I'm looking forward to it. I've been making an effort to get more into my writing this year, and have done that pretty well.
Which reminds me, I've got another book coming out. Not till next August, but .... It's called The Portable Spell Book, and it's my first not-about-Wicca book. It is about magic -- but for people who want to do their spells more informally. Don't worry, though -- there's lots in it about ethics. I hope in the next few weeks to have more book news, but you know how it is ... I don't want to talk too soon and jinx the project! Do check back in 2-3 weeks, though ....
I really did upload photos -- two or three times, as I recall. They're not here, though, and I have no idea where they are or how to see them. If you have better luck, let me know!
I've uploaded -- I hope -- some pix of our Lammas. We made construction-paper cut outs of wheat, corn, and strawberries, and on them we wrote what we were first-harvesting. The first photo is of our dog, Barleycorn, checking out the "crops." Then we harvested them -- and tucked them into the Grain God figure. Also tucked into the God-figure -- which we burn to symbolize the death of harvest -- is a foil-wrapped chunk o' cornbread, which is what the harvest turns into, right? So the last photo is of Canyondancer: "Behold! the harvest Transformation -- it's not death, it's continuation!"
Here's hoping your harvest's coming nicely to fruition, and sustains you in the coming months. Blesséd be!
I must be having fun, 'cause time has sure flown! We're starting to get ready for Lammas, which is a Sabbat we generally celebrate at the Traditionstead (a.k.a. the big Circle in our yard). A few days later, we'll be performing an Initiation into Cronehood for a Pagan friend who's flying out from "back East" for the rite.
Of course, all initiations, even if they follow a Tradition's script, are unique. In that this one is a combination of an initiation and croning, it's unique in a unique way! Unusually for an initiation, it will involve people who have not themselves been initiated; unusually for a croning, it will include men. It's not full-on Wiccan, because neither is our about-to-be Crone. But I hope it will give her the experience she's looking for, and it will certainly be an adventure for the rest of us. Most of us have worked with some of the rest of us before, but this will be the first time this particular group of folks have been in the same Circle.
Not long after the Initiation into Cronehood, we're planning another camping trip -- and that will be unusual, too, in that it won't be for a Sabbat or a Moon. That and the trip we plan in mid-September will be just camping. What a luxury that will be! (Don't get me wrong: we love doing ritual at camp. We look forward to our Sabbat Villages every year. But setting up Sabbat and/or Moon Circles, or rites of passage, at camp doesn't leave us much time or energy to just enjoy the woods. It's nice to do that, too.)
At least one of these two trips will be to a lake -- yes! there are lakes in Arizona! -- so we'll be launching the Grania O'Malley, our 11' inflatable pirate raft. That will give the couples we're camping with a chance to take their first voyages in her. Huzzah!
September will be quite busy: The weekend after our camping trip, I'll be giving a workshop at the Tucson Area Wiccan-Pagan Network's 21st annual Fall Festival; and the weekend after that, I'm attending the 30-something-th annual Wrangling with Writing, the conference sponsored by the Society of Southwestern Authors. Fall Fest is a day-long event (and my workshop will run about 2 hours); Wrangling is a two-day event, and I'll be staying at the hotel where it's being held. (It's here in town, and I could be a day-tripper, but that means getting up at oh-dark-hundred, and missing all the schmoozing that goes on after dinner. I've tried it both ways, and staying over is better for me.)
For more info about Fall Fest, check out www.TAWN.org, where if there's not yet a Fall Fest link, there soon should be; and www.SSA-az.org, where the Wrangling registration form is already available as a PDF.
I'm still answering 50+ letters/month for Mother Earth Ministries-ATC, a local Neo-Pagan prison ministry, and all that keeps me pretty busy. Hope y'all are having as much fun!
As we always are, we were at Samhainville (a four-day camp out) to celebrate Samhain. We got there on October 25th and came home on the 28th. We had lovely weather -- the first trip all year that we didn't get rained on! We hiked and ate and toasted each other and our belovéd dead, and of course, the Gods. Grey Feather and Big Red composed us a wonderful new chant for our full Moon Circle the Friday night (I'm on the left in the photo above, taken after the Circle was opened). That was a very powerful ritual.
The Sabbat rite was lovely, and after the Merry Meet we shared a harmonious mooooooo -- in fond remembrance of the time a few years ago when some curious other campers were skulking about in the woods, watching, and when we hailed them, they pretended to be cows.
This year, Martie MacCoon felt like joining the gang for the first time. You can read her story and see pictures of her Samhainville adventures on my website (www.AshleenOGaea.com). Just enter through the sunset picture, and then click on the raccoon icon!
Back home for the 31st, we had a record number of trick-or-treaters this year: a dozen! (Our street is dark except for individual porch lights, and the houses are far between, so we don't usually get many.) One group of kids stood outside the doors to our little courtyard, just hollerin' "Trick or treat," till the littlest one of them figured out how to open the gate. Hope the chocolate covered almonds were worth the effort -- and embarrassment!
Hope your Samhain/Halloween was a very happy one, and that your new Year's starting out well!
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