the raven

Long ago, in another world, in another universe, a a call went out to those initiated into the path of Water Magic to gather together by the powerful spring that was the source of the Stream of the Hog and its Mill at an appointed time. So it was that in early summer on that planet, a band of fair folk shimmered into being, in ones and twos, in the ancestral lands of the Great Lord Bourne. And when there were some fourteen gathered, including the young  adept, Jack, Keeper of the Staves, and Sir Gregory the Bold, of renown for his baking and his intoxicating honey drink, one Andrew the Freespirit bade them follow him into the woods, besides the waters that ran clear over the pebbles of that planet.  And he bade them be wary, to see what they would see, and feel what they would feel, and at all times to show loving kindness to one another and to all other created beings in the travails and the joys of their journey.  And the Lady Cilla and the Damsel Hilde did carry with them awareness of strange symbols, and as the heron waded in the green and dappled light Lady Cilla did seek to capture its soul with her soul capturing ray machine. The enchantress Elizabeth did lose her magic staff so rapt was she, but behold it was restored to her through the agency of the Damsel Hilde and a youth called Toby. And the stream seethed with fish, and the bulrushes grew tall into the sky while the Lord Ferdidad and the Lady Ria gathered the fragrant elder flowers to make cordial.

What was found by each on that journey where dragons teeth were discovered and dragon flies were seen as the roses cascaded down over hawthorn bushes, each knows in their own heart.  But surely the Goddess gave glimpses of immortality. All agreed this at least when they were finally gathered at the hermitage of Andrew the Freespirit to share a feast before separating once more, each to their own place and time.  They gave thanks to Andrew the Freespirit and blessed his family and his fair wife.  And all hoped to meet at other times, in other universes, to deepen and confirm ther fellowship and love.

On Sunday 8th February we celebrated Imbolc at Box Hill and here is my poetic take on it – with much licence:

An Imbolc Romance

In Modern Times there were three knights
Upright, handsome, sturdy wights
And they yclepèd were Sir Trui,
Sir Andrew and Sir Gregory
And into the woodland they did go
To seek out where the snowdrops grow
One Imbolc time in Februar
Riding out from lands afar
To kneel before the Goddess bright
In hope of Spring’s returning light.

There met they comely damsels four
All come the Goddess to adore,
All dressed in gowns and cloaks of green
Right fit and comely to be seen.

“Come with us”, cried Greg the bold,
“Ye newborn snowdrops to behold.”
Sir Trui said nought for it did seem
That he was wrapped up in  a dream.
But brave Sir Andrew gave the ladies
Many flowery cortesyes.

So they passed on through the snow.
The cold made cheeks and noses glow.
And there beneath a beechen tree
Were snowdrops nodding, one, two, three.
The ladies stopped their sweet palfreys
And the knights they knelt on bended knee.
“This is the place”, Sir Trui said,
And gladly bowèd down his head.

They gathered in  a sacred ring
There to dance and chant and sing
To honour Brighid, the goddess fair
With fire and water, earth and air,
And palm to palm, with love they stood
Within that  magic, snowy wood.

That night right merry made they all
Within Sir Andrew’s generous halls
With mead and pasty, cake and tea
And Sir Andrew’s lady’s company.

But fragments of their souls had stayed
Enchanted in that icy glade
Where roe deer run, and foxes tread
And the Goddess lingers with her God.

Liz Cruse

February 2009

Some time past, in autumnal mists of yesteryear – though in fact it was only last year (!)  – we gathered at the appointed time and the appointed place – round about tea-time in Cilla’s front room (!)  – to celebrate the ending of the cycle of the year and beginning of the new according to the tradition of the ancients who once walked this land.

There were a good number of people there – some regular faces, some new faces and some faces that we had not seen for a while.  After catching up on each other’s lives, we did a round or two of talking sticks and assimilated all that we had learned about each other from that before deciding on the nature of our ceremony.

Cilla had proposed a ‘Ceremony with Tarot and Devas,’ which we were all looking forward to, and wanted to make use of her ‘Spiral pathway’ laid out in carefully placed stones in her garden in south London.

After the opening, Cilla took herself off behind a convenient bush and took the part of the Cailleach and, in turn, each of us went to her and drew two cards from the pack (her own design!) and we were given a reading to help us through the trials and tribulations that the long winter months might throw our way.

As we each rejoined the circle we then walked, as best we could in the cramped space, the spiral path round which we had formed our ritual.

After that came the point, as usual every year, when we honoured those that had passed on from our lives into the Summerlands and this proved to be an emotional time for quite a few of us.

As always for Samhain, we were accompanied by the bangs and whizzes of fireworks celebrating Guy Fawkes / Diwali and made a nice little accompaniment, celebrating the lives of those who had touched us.

After, it was inside for refreshment and various concoctions of tea infusions.

We would like to thank Cilla for the use of her home for the duration of our ceremony and apologise for the lateness of the posting of this write up.

Liz wrote:

Thanks Cilla. You’ve said it much more economicaly than me but here is my piece.

We met at Sydenham Hill Station. There were Cilla, Kris and myself, and Jo and Mike. Trui did very well and was only about half an hour late, Jan, a long time solitary pagan joined us for the first time.

The weather was perfect. Clear blue sky and a melting frost, the skeletal trees showing to best advantage as we did an impromptu talking twig session outside the station (although I had remembered most other things I had forgotten to bring the talking stick). We reviewed the year and thought about where we were at this moment of the sun’s movement away from the Northern Hemisphere. As ever, this varied but we were all looking forward to marking the return of the light.

Once we were all there we set off into the woods. There was oak and holly aplenty, and after climbing over a fallen tree, trunk wreathed with thick strands of ivy, we left the path and were drawn ever deeper into the woods until, creeping beneath holly brush we arrived at the perfect glade on the side of a slope, protected by a tall oak tree. The light of a pale amber sun filtered through the branches and blackbirds flitted high up in the trees.

Trui had brought oatmeal to mark out a circle which he did while Kris and Mike (holly king and oak king respectively) prepared crowns of the relevant leaves. Kris’s oak crown, glittering with tinsel was particularly impressive. The ceremony began in the usual way but then came the battle from supremacy between the holly king and the oak king. They were equally matched in strength and histrionic power but eventually the holly king succumbed as the oak king’s spear penetrated his side. He showed great dignity in defeat, knowing, of course, that his time would come again, and that he had the pleasure of resting his head in the deep bosom of the Goddess for six months (I quote Mike’s words in the ceremony).

Then Cilla lit a candle to symbolise the return of the light, and I lit three smaller ones to mark the presence of those of our group who were not there with us. Libations of mead followed, and then a healing meditation for all those in need of it, especially our order and in particular the OBOD camps part of it – which has gone through some turbulence of late. The day was so still that the candles burned steadily throughout these observances with no protection, a small pool of yellow fire resting on the wet rotting leaves.

After closing the ceremony we set off for the pub, it being too cold and damp to sit in the forest with no tarpaulin underneath us (Oh Greg where wert thou?) But getting there proved harder than we anticipated as we were pixie led through the wood in a large circle, in a liminal russet glow as the sun set, making the dead leaves of the occasional beech tree glimmer here and there among the trees. There was a three quarter moon, and the western sky was all those blended shades of pink and orange that are so impossible to describe. It created a foxy light of unreality, which was fitting given that we had had three fox sightings that day: two of them outside the station and one that suddenly streaked past us in the woods, followed a few moments later by a large honey coloured dog. The dog came pell-mell towards our circle, skidding to a halt at the oatmeal border and circling off in pursuit again. Reminders of wildness and cunning and solid faithfulness – qualities sometimes at war in our souls perhaps. Well, OK they are at war in mine. Then one of those weird post ritual picnics that Cilla has described, the relaxation of the time between the ritual that has stripped us momentarily of our worldly concerns and re-entry into that world of electric light and mobile phone signals.

Happy Solstice everyone.

Cilla wrote:

After realising it would be difficult to access Oxleas Wood thanks to British Rail’s ‘investment programme’ (or is that the Tube?), Jo and Mike suggested we return to Dulwich Wood for our Winter Solstice ritual. It was a beautiful day with the setting sun dancing through the bare branches, and turning even the wet leaves on the ground to gold, and the colours deepened as the sunset progressed. Mike had written a small scenario for the battle between the Holly King and the Oak King, with the solstice marking the time of the Holly King’s bi-annual defeat. We watched this slightly tongue-in-cheek graphic illustration with Kris as the Oak monarch and Mike the Holly; and applauded the Oak King’s gradual return to power! We then offered a mead libation to the earth (thanking the bees for their help) and lit candles for those members who couldn’t be with us – in particular Hilde and Andrew. We then repaired to the nearby pub where we feasted on chocolate and carrot cakes, nuts, halva, Indian snacks and warm mulled wine, thoughtfully supplied by Jan, a welcome visitor (whom we hope will return for more events)!
Liz will no doubt give a more substantial report with pictures (I was looking for the Samhain event but got side-tracked into doing this…)

After some to-ing and fro-ing from the local station, five of us assembled at Cobham Park for our Autumn Ritual on Sunday 21^st September.  Cobham Park had fallen into some dereliction in previous years until the Mausoleum featured in the first BBC Restoration series some years ago.  Although it did not win, it did prompt a major restoration project on what is essentially a ‘Folly’ (it was never consecrated and no bodies are interred there) erected by The Darnly family in the 18^th C.  This seems to have brought much life and ‘positive energy’ to the surrounding parkland, riding it of the ‘spooky atmosphere’ I personally encountered when I first went there in the 90s.  The Park lies in Kent, just off the A2, near the village of Cobham (the setting and inspiration for Dickens’ ‘The Pickwick Papers’) south of Gravesend and just east of Meopham.  A bit of a journey for some but it was nice to get out of London and into some real countryside, and still be not to too far from the Great Thames Himself.

On what may turn out to be the last lovely day of the waning summer, we walked into the wood past many a strange, hollowed out and twisted tree.  Some with faces and one with a branch hanging like a crouching dragon.  With all the tree hugging that was going on, I wondered if we would ever get to where we were going.

The area I had chosen for the ritual was a little clearing where some of the old spookiness had seemed most intense all those years ago.  We found a secluded spot (or so we thought!) and  precariously perched on a bit of a slope with brambles catching our clothes and new cloaks – though with a lovely view of the valley below and what I assumed to be some of the North Downs in the distance.

On the way, we found a large twig with a languid, sleepy face on it to use as our Talking Stick and took a round just to catch up on what we were all doing with our lives and how we were all doing.

I had prepared a script for the main part of Ritual celebrating the gathering of the harvest and the gifts of The Goddess.  Liz kindly volunteered the be the Lady Ceridwen Cariadwen for the first part of the Ritual and the second, more informal, part I left up to the group to decide what to do.

After some discussion as to the directions (I will remember to bring a compass next time!), we started, and it was then we discovered that we were not as off the beaten track as we thought as a succession of ramblers and mountain bikers paraded past, some displaying more interest than others and it became apparent that the revitalisation of the woodland was welcoming people once more into its environs.  Once the circle was cast though, we were isolated from any outside influences, merely curious or otherwise, and with the sunlight dappling the ground through the branches of an oak under whose canopy we had selected our spot, I some how managed to direct us through the opening with out too much of a hiccup.  I then bid the Lady Ceridwen Cariadwen to enter our circle and She very kindly obliged us by doing so, bring gifts of the fruits of the earth and the wine of the vine, which were graciously distributed among those assembled.  At some point, the script I had written went out of the window, but I knew when that happened everything was going right and we were being guided in our words by beings higher and wiser than ourselves.

Next, the Lady (Liz) was asked to bless a wheatsheaf which had been kindly given to us by wiccan friends of ours from Wicca Moon (thank you and Bright Blessings on ye!) in Eltham who had used it as part of their own ceremony on Friday night, and asked that it be left as an offering to the place when we left.

After thanking the Lady Ceridwen Cariadwen for Her time and help and Liz was allowed to become just plain old Liz again and we sent healing energies to Hilde who had unexpectedly gone into hospital the day before for some tests – get better soon, Hilde, thinking of you,.

Next, we sat down and for a round of reflection on the summer just passing and our affirmation of what we expect and want to do with our lives over the coming winter months.  On the whole, we all seemed to be rather up-beat with some of us looking forward to new beginnings in our lives or the continuation of important works in progress.

I am not sure how, but I managed to get us through the closing though I am not sure queries of ‘what’s next?’ are included in the ancient rituals of this land – thank you, Cilla, for your timely prompts.

After feasting and finishing of the gifts of the Lady (as well of many libations given to the earth) we followed the path up the hill and paid a visit to the famous Mausoleum – a lovely building, I’d admit, but a little too ‘Classical’ for the setting I thought, I prefer my follies a little more Victorian Gothic.  But, by turning away from it, the view was improved with vistas over some lovely countryside and the near-by (just audible) A2 not obscuring the view in any way.

Somehow, we managed to cram the five of us into my Fiat Punto, and, leaving behind the wheatsheaf – against the base of the oak tree that had kindly sheltered us hopefully to spread some more healing energy around the park and make it even more welcoming than it is now – we headed back to the urban environs of Caer Lundain.

Thank you, to Cilla, Liz, Jo who took the pictures, and new person Kris for coming all that way.  Blessing on you all and Blessing on all who read this!

Mike Firecrow