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Internet Book of Shadows, (Various Authors), [1999], at sacred-texts.com
MAIN RITUAL, UEA 20TH ANNIVERSARY
This ritual came together in strange ways. We are indebted to
Tony Kelly of Celene Community in Wales who wrote the body of it
in a piece called "Pagan Musings" in 1973, Kenny and Tzipora for
the Wine Blessing, and Thomas Palmer of Denver for the Cakes
Blessing. The Quarters calling and dismissals were written by
Rowan Moonstone and revised by Bristlecone Glen. Devin Storm,
Harper to Bristlecone wrote the God and Goddess Invocations, the
Circle Closing, and the Crone's speech. We learned this
particular version of "We All Come From the Goddess/Hoof and
Horn" with the God verse from the Old Timers from United Earth
Assembly and the Witches' Version of " Amazing Grace" was taught
to us by Margot Adler at the America the Beautiful celebration in
Colorado Springs in July of 1993. All these various parts came
together into one of the most powerful rituals we have ever seen.
We give it back to the community now with love and thanks. It is
our heritage and our future. We give back to the Earth that
which we have been given.
- Bristlecone Glen
Cast:
High Priestess
High Priest
Harper
Grey Man
Crone
Quarters Callers
Props:
Cauldron
Cakes & Wine
Dry Ice
Glow Sticks
Chalice
Basket
Flash Paper
Quarters candles should be set up and lit before Circle. Altar
Candles lit. A cauldron sits in the north. In the cauldron
should be glow sticks to light it from within, a pan of dry ice,
a candle, and the chalice. The Crone sits, cloaked and hooded,
by the Cauldron. The Harper sits in the east, an empty stool
sits beside the Harper.
Cast Circle and purify sacred space as is the custom of your
circle.
Spirits of the East!
Air, Breath of our ancestors
Be with us in this Circle
That we may KNOW we are the children of the Gods.
Spirits of the South!
Fire, Will of our ancestors,
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Be with us in this Circle
That we may have the WILL to claim our heritage.
Spirits of the West!
Water, Blood of our ancestors,
Be with us in this Circle
That we may DARE to do the work of the Gods.
Spirits of the North!
Earth, Bones of our ancestors,
Be with us in this Circle
That we may NO LONGER BE SILENT, but may meet as one in love to
do the work of the Old Ones.
HP: Maiden bring Your Flowers
Mother, Bring Your Child
Old One bring your Wisdom
Bright Lady, Cerridwen
We welcome Thee to this Circle in Herne's name.
For we are the blush of Thy silken cheek.
We are the children You hold to Your breast.
We are the Carriers of Your ancient way.
Bright Lady, Cerridwen, Welcome!
HPS: Hunter, bring Your prowess
Warrior, bring your skill.
Father, bring your guidance.
Ancient One, Horned Crown
We welcome Thee to this Circle in Thy Lady's name.
For we are the flight of the arrow from Thy bow.
We are the edge of the sword of Thy honor.
We are the sparks of the flame of Thy love.
Ancient One, Horned Crowned, Welcome!
HPS: We're of the old religion, sired of Time, and born of
our beloved Earth Mother. For too long the people have
trodden a stony path that goes only onward beneath a
sky that goes only upwards.
HP: The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for the people
are scattered in this barren age and the winds carry
his plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy
moors and into the lonely grasses.
(Grey Man raps staff on ground comes into center of Circle
unobserved by the HP/S. When he speaks, HP/S should be
startled.)
Grey Man: Who know now the ancient tongue of the Moon? And who
speaks still with the Goddess? The magic of the land
of Lirien and the old pagan gods have withered in the
dragons breath; the old ways of magic have slipped into
the well of the past, and only the rocks now remember
what the moon told us long ago, and what we learned
from the trees, and the voices of grasses and the
scents of flowers.
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(HP/S begin to spiral into the center of the Circle to meet the
Grey Man.)
HP: We're pagans and we worship the pagan gods, and among
the people there are witches yet who speak with the
moon and dance with the Horned One.
HPS: But a witch is a rare pagan in these days, deep and
inscrutable, recognizable only by their own kind, by
the light in their eyes and the love in their breasts,
by the magic in their hands and the lilt of their
tongue and by their knowledge of the real.
HP: But the wiccan way is one way. There are many; there
are pagans the world over who worship the Earth Mother
and the Sky Father, the Rain God and the Rainbow
Goddess, the Dark One and the Hag on the mountain, the
Moon Goddess and the little People in the mists on the
other side of the veil.
HPS: A pagan is one who worships the goddesses and gods of
nature, whether by observation or by study, whether by
love or admiration, or whether in their sacred rites
with the Moon, or the great festivals of the Sun.
Grey Man: Many suns ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across
the pagan sky, man grew out of believing in THE GODS.
Harper: He has yet to grow out of disbelieving in them.
Grey Man: He who splits the Goddess on an existence-nonexistence
dichotomy will earn himself only paradoxes, for the
gods are not so divided and nor the magic lands of the
Brother of Time.
Harper: Does a mind exist?
Grey Man: Ask her and she will tell you yes, but seek her out,
and she'll elude you. She is in every place, and in no
place, and you'll see her works in all places, but
herself in none. Existence was the second-born from
the Mother's womb and contains neither the first-born,
nor the unborn. Show us your mind, and we'll show you
the gods!
Harper: No matter that you can't, for we can't show you the
gods. But come with us and the Goddess herself will
be our love and the God will call the tune.
Grey Man: But a brass penny for your reason; for logic is a
closed ring, and the child doesn't validate the Mother,
nor the dream the dreamer. (Grey Man turns to face the
seated Crone. Speaks almost as if talking to himself)
And what matter the wars of opposites to she who has
fallen in love with a whirlwind or to the lover of the
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arching rainbow.
Harper: (To HP/S) But tell us of your Goddess as you love her,
and the gods that guide your works, and we'll listen
with wonder, for to do less would be arrogant. but
we'll do more, for the heart of man is aching for
memories only half forgotten, and the Old Ones only
half unseen.
HP: We'll write the old myths as they were always written
and we'll read them on the rocks and in the caves and
in the deep of the greenwood's shade, and we'll hear
them in the rippling mountain streams and in the
rustling of the leaves, and we'll see them in the storm
clouds, and in the evening mists. We've no wish to
create a new religion for our religion is as old as the
hills and older, and we've no wish to bring differences
together.
Harper: Differences are like different flowers in a meadow, and
we are all one in the Mother.
HPS: What need is there for a pagan movement since our
religion has no teachings and we hear it in the wind
and feel it in the stones and the Moon will dance with
us as she will?
Harper: There is a need. For long the Divider has been among
our people and the tribes of man are no more. The sons
of the Sky Father have all but conquered nature, but
they have poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for
the butterflies are dying and the night draws on.
Grey Man: A curse on the conqueror!
HP/S: But not of us!
Harper: For they curse themselves for they are nature too.
Grey Man: They have stolen our magic and sold it to the
mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has
no outlet for they fear the real for the One who guards
the path. Where are the pagan shrines? And where do
the people gather? Where is the magic made? And where
are the Goddess and the Old Ones?
HP: Our shrines are in the fields and on the mountains, in
the stars and in the wind, deep in the greenwood and on
the algal rocks where two streams meet. But the
shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms of
the Moon for our ancient rites to be with our gods as
we were of old, we would be stopped by the dead who now
rule the Mother's land and claim rights of ownership on
the Mother's breast, and make laws of division and
frustration for us.
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HPS: We can no longer gather with our gods in a public place
and the old rites of communion have been driven from
the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where
barely a handful of heathens have remained to guard the
old secrets and enact the old rites. There is magic in
the heath far from the cold grey society, and there are
islands of magic hidden in the entrails of the
metropolis behind closed doors, but the people are few,
and the barriers between us are formidable.
HP: The old religion has become a dark way, obscure, and
hidden in the protective bosom of the night. Thin
fingers turn the pages of a book of shadows while the
sunshine seeks in vain his worshippers in his leafy
glades.
Harper: Here, then, is the basic reason for a Pagan Movement;
we must create a pagan society wherein everyone shall
be free to worship the goddesses and gods of nature,
and the relationship between a worshipper and their
gods shall be sacred and inviolable, provided only that
in their love of their own gods, they doesn't curse the
names of the gods of others.
HPS: It's not yet our business to press the law-makers with
undivided endeavor to unmake the laws of repression
and, with the Mother's love, it may never become our
business for the stifling tides of dogmatism are at
last already in ebb. Our first work, and our greatest
wish, is to come together, to be with each other in our
tribes for we haven't yet grown from the Mother's
breast to the stature of the gods.
HP: We're of the earth, and sibs to all the children of
wild nature, born long ago in the warm mud of the ocean
floor; we were together then, and we were together in
the rain forests long before that dark day when,
beguiled by the pride of the Sky Father, and forgetful
of the Mother's love, we killed her earlier-born
children and impoverished the old genetic pool.
Grey Man: The Red child lives yet in America; the Black Child has
not forsaken the gods; the old Australians are still
with their nature gods; the Old Ones still live deep in
the heart of Mother India, and the White Child has
still a foot on the old wiccan way, but Neanderthaler
is no more and her magic faded as the Lli and the
Archan burst their banks and the ocean flowed in to
divide the Isle of Erin from the land of the White
Goddess. Man looked with one eye on a two-faced god
when he reached for the heavens and scorned the Earth
which alone is our life and our provider and the bosom
to which we have ever returned since the dawn of Time.
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Harper: He who looks only to reason to plum the unfathomable is
a fool, for logic is an echo already implicit in the
question, and it has no voice of its own; but he is no
greater fool than he who scorns logic or derides its
impotence from afar, but fears to engage in fair combat
when he stands on his opponent's threshold. Don't turn
your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly; but
confound him and he'll yield for his code of combat is
honorable. So here is more of the work of the Pagan
Movement.
HPS: Our lore has become encrusted over the ages with occult
trivia and the empty vapourings of the lost. The
occult arts are in a state of extreme decadence,
astrology is in a state of disrepute and fears to
confront the statistician's sword; alien creeds oust
our native arts and, being as little understood as our
own forgotten arts, are just as futile for their lack
of understanding, and more so for their unfamiliarity.
HP: Misunderstanding is rife. Disbelief is black on every
horizon, and vampires abound on the blood of the
credulous. Our work is to reject the trivial, the
irrelevant and the erroneous, and to bring the lost
children of the Earth Mother again into the court of
the Sky Father where reason alone will avail.
Harper: Belief is the deceit of the credulous; it has no place
in the heart of a pagan.
Grey Man: But while we are sad for those who are bemused by
Reason, we are deadened by those who see no further
than his syllogisms as he turns the eternal wheel of
the Great Tautology.
HP: We were not fashioned in the mathematician's
computations, and we were old when the first alchemist
was a child.
HPS: We have walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the
old Green Things; we have seen the cauldron and the one
become many and the many in the one; we know the Silver
Maid of the moonlight and the sounds of the cloven
feet. We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns,
and we've seen the spells of the enchantress, and Time
be stilled. We've been into eternal darkness where
the Night Mare rides and rode her to the edge of the
Abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face of the
Rising Sun.
Harper: Spin a spell or words and make a magic knot; spin it on
the magic loom and spin it with the gods. Say it in
the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in her
name. Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a
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stone.
HP: There are no signposts on the untrod way,
HPS: but we'll make our rituals together and bring them as
our gifts to the Goddess and her God in the great
rites.
(HP/S turn to Circle)
HP: Here, then, is our work in the Pagan Movement; to make
magic in the name of our gods, to share our magic where
the gods would wish it, and to come together in our
ancient festivals of birth, and life, of death and of
change in the old rhythm.
HPS: We'll print the rituals that can be shared in the
written work;
HP: We'll do all in our power to bring the people together,
to teach those who would learn, and to learn from those
who can teach.
HPS: We will initiate groups, bring people to groups, and
groups to other groups in our common devotion to the
goddesses and gods of nature.
HP: We will not storm the secrets of any coven, nor profane
the tools, the magic, and still less, the gods of
another.
HPS: We'll collect the myths of the ages, of our people and
of the pagans of other lands, and we'll study the books
of the wise and we'll talk to the very young.
HP: And whatever the pagan needs in their study, or their
worship, then it is our concern, and the Movement's
business to do everything possible to help each other
in our worship of the gods we love.
HPS: We are committed with the lone pagan on the seashore,
with he who worships in the fastness of a mountain
range or she who sings the old chant in a lost valley
far from the metalloid road.
HP: We are committed with the wanderer, and equally with
the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's milk in
the darkness of the industrial webs.
HPS: We are committed too with the coven, with the circular
dance in the light of the full moon, with the great
festivals of the sun, and with the gatherings of the
people.
HP: We are committed to build our temples in the towns and
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in the wilderness, to buy the lands and the streams
from the landowners and give them to the Goddess for
her children's use, and we'll replant the greenwood as
it was of old for love of the dryad stillness, and for
love of our children's children.
HP/S: This we will do. What will you? (At this point, HP/S
should walk around the Circle and "gather" the pledges
from those in Circle who wish to give them.
Participants should think carefully about what they
wish to pledge before the Gods in this ritual. When
all pledges are gathered, HP/S takes them to the Grey
Man)
HPS: When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure,
and the sun never more rises unrenowned nor the moon
ride in the skies unloved;
HP: when the stones tell of the Horned God and the
greenwood grows deep to call back her own ones, then
our work will be ended
HP/S: and the Pagan Movement will return to the beloved womb
of our old religion, to the nature goddesses and gods
of paganism. (Grey Man nods, receives the pledges and
palms flash powder unobtrusively. Conducts HP/S to the
Crone. Grey Man opens hands and lets paper fall on
candle. Crone pours hot water on dry ice, stands up,
throws back hood of cape)
Crone: I have heard your call across the mountains. I have
heard your cries within the web of life and I have come
once more. Single is the race, single of men and Gods.
From a single source we both draw breath, but a
difference of power in everything keeps us apart. You
are the children of my heart - the light of my Soul.
And I bring with me the seeds of your ancestors that I
have kept safe for you. Like the cycle of the
seasons, I give them again that you may plant yet
again. Sow the seeds for yourselves , for your
children, and your children's children.
(Crone hands basket of seeds to HP/S. Reaches into the well
again and draws out chalice from cauldron.)
The chalice contains the blood of those who have died
for the crime of being different, the sweat of those
who toiled that the path of the Old Ones might survive,
and the tears of those who thought themselves alone.
The cauldron of the Gods is that of change - of turning
evil to good, death to life. Through the power of the
Cauldron, turn the blood of death to the water of life,
turn the crime of being different to the strength of
being whole. Turn the sweat of toil to the joy of work
well done. Turn the tears of those alone to the tears
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of family reunited. The present is the balance between
the past and the future. The power lies within your
heart, within your hands. Do you have the courage?
The choice is his, the choice is hers, the choice is
yours. Can you make a difference? WILL you make a
difference?
(Crone hands chalice to HP/S and wraps cloak around her, sitting
down once more.)
HP/S spiral back out to the Circle.
Chalice blessing:
HP: Be it known that a man is not greater than a woman
HPS: Nor is woman greater than man
HP: For what one lacks
HPS: The other can provide
HP: As the athame is to the male
HPS: So is the cup to the female
HP/S: And when conjoined, they become one in truth. For
there is no greater magick in all the world than that
of love.
Cakes Blessing:
HPS: Be it known that death is not the end of life ...
HP: But the beginning of the cycle of rebirth.
HPS: As grain is touched by death's scythe ...
HP: And passes through fire to be reborn as bread ...
HPS: So are we reborn, passing through death into the next
life.
(High Priest draws Invoking Pentagram over cakes with Athame,
while both say:
HP/S: As the Earth gives its life to strengthen us, so shall
we, in death, strengthen the Earth, for life and death
together are the cycle of rebirth.
HP/S take of cakes and wine and pass the basket and chalice to
quarters callers to take to the Circle.
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop or rain
Flowing to the ocean
We all come from the Horned One
And to Him we shall return
Like a flash of flame
Ascending to the heavens.
Hoof and Horn
Hoof and Horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Vine and Grain
Vine and Grain
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All that falls shall rise again.
(The chant may evolve into others such as the Isis Astarte and
corresponding God chants. Go with the flow. When all in the
Circle have partaken of cakes and wine, the chalice comes back to
the HP and HPS, who take it to the Harper. Harper eats and
drinks, takes cakes and wine to Grey Man. Grey Man eats and
drinks, takes cakes and wine to Crone, who eats, drinks, and
receives seeds and chalice again. Replaces chalice in Cauldron,
covers seeds with cloak. When HPS feels energy has built to a
peak, she calls a halt to it by raising her arms and dropping
them to her sides.)
HP/S: Remember this night. Take the energy that has been
raised here by your sisters and brothers and put it
into your pledges. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
HPS: Hunter, for Your prowess
Warrior, for Your skill
Father for Your Guidance
Ancient One, Horned Crowned,
We thank you and bid you Hail and Farewell!
HP: Maiden, for Your flowers.
Mother, for Your child.
Old One, for Your Wisdom.
Bright Lady, Cerridwen, we thank You
And bid you Hail and Farewell!
Spirits of the North!
Earth, Body of our ancestors.
Go with us from this place
United as heirs of our ancestors.
Spirits of the West!
Water, Blood of our ancestors.
We have the courage to dare to do the work.
Go with us from this place
United as heirs of our ancestors.
Spirits of the South,
Fire, will of our ancestors.
We have the will to do that which we promised
Go with us from this place
United as heirs of our ancestors.
Spirits of the East
Air, breath of our ancestors.
We KNOW that we are the children of the Gods and all one family.
Go with us from this place
United as heirs of our ancestors.
HP draws power back up into the blade of the sword/athame and
earths the power. HP, HPS, Harper, Grey Man and Crone move into
a circle. The next five lines should be shot from person to
person, to form a pentagram:
HPS: The Circle is Open
HP: But not forgotten!
Harper: The Circle is unbroken.
Grey Man: Nothing is forgotten
Crone: The Circle is Free
All: Nothing is ever forgotten
HPS, HP, Harper, Grey Man, and Crone join the larger Circle. HPS
or Harper calls out lines of Amazing Grace to the Circle as all
sing.
Amazing Grace! How sweet the Earth
That formed a Witch like me
I once was burned, now I survive
Was hanged, but now I sing.
Twas grace that drew down the moon
And grace that raised the sea
The magick of the people's will
Will set our Mother free!
Amazing Grace! How sweet the Earth
That formed a Witch like me
I once was burned, but now I thrive
Was hanged but now I sing.
HPS: Blessed Be!
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