the raven

As has become the custom at Samhuinn we met at Youth’s beautiful spacious house in Wandsworth. There were two new faces: Samantha, a longtime member of OBOD who’d been practising alone for a while, and Ginnie, who’d just signed up for the Bardic Course after living in the Galapagos Islands for several years and, latterly, finding herself longing for the woodlands of England. With Steffi, Cilla and myself, that made five which I hardly heed mention is an eminently suitable number of people for a pagan ceremony, perhaps especially one where the Goddess was clearly going to be a dominant influence.

We spent some time sharing our progress to date with druidry, and our stories of this year. Then we moved on to our hopes and fears for the next one. These were deeply personal of course so I will only share one of mine which was that I’ve had a great year exploring various themes sparked off by the Ovate Course and druidry in general, healing with herbs, identifying trees and flowers, reiki, storytelling and my first experience of camp, so my fear is that next year can’t possibly be as good as this one has been but we shall see.

Then Cilla took us outside where we carried out a simple rite, calling in the directions as usual, before each peering into Cilla’s scrying bowl and then each taking one of her beautiful Tarot or Deva cards for the year. All I could see in the water was leaves and light and my reflection (scrying not being one of my major talents) but on reflection, if you’ll forgive the pun, that’s not so bad. I was less pleased with the card I drew but decided to look at it as positively as possible in the hope that the positive will then manifest.

Then inside for tea and a selection of cakes – a fine and magical English tradition. Thanks, Cilla for your thought and planning, and thanks to Youth and family for the loan of their house and garden.