Monthly Archives: January 2014

Invocation to the forces of nature

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Molly

East, power of air, we welcome you. First breath of the morning. Sweet breath of the baby. Deep breath of the soul. Welcome to our circle. Sweet breeze. Brave wind. Swirling. Stirring. Sweeping away and through. Breathing with us. Welcome air, welcome east.

South, power of fire, we welcome you. Fire of the sun. Fire of the heart. Fire of the spirit. Fire of connection and love. Welcome to our circle. Heat of transformation. Forging strength. Crucible of change. Burning in our hearts. Welcome fire, welcome south.

West, power of water, we welcome you. Sweet life’s ocean. Waves of change. Crests of power. Flowing. Growing. Changing. Healing. Welcome to our circle. Rivers. Oceans. Streams and lakes. Cool, comfort, soothing space. Blood flowing within us. Welcome water, welcome west.

North, power of earth, we welcome you. Solidness of body. Strength of bone. Height of mountains. Reach of trees. Heartbeat of Gaia. Welcome to our circle. Strengthening us. Holding our bodies. Stability. Rooted around and within us. We are people of the earth. Welcome, earth, welcome north.

I’m in the final phases of creating the Ritual Recipe Kit that we are going to be giving away with the official launch of Brigid’s Grove on February 1st (sign up for our newsletter and you’ll get the kit too!). As I’ve contacted authors to ask for permission to use several different pieces in the book, I had the sudden realization that almost everything I was asking permission to use was an invocation. The kit contains rituals for maiden, mother, and crone as well as some bonus rituals. For each ritual, I’d used an invocation written by someone else. My husband said, “instead of trying to get permission to use these, why don’t you just write one?” I thought about all the things I’ve written over the past year and while some are invocations of sorts (like my body prayer and this body blessing), I’ve never actually written a “traditional” invocation. I also thought about all the rituals I’ve done and all the coursework I’ve completed and realized I’ve never used an invocation of my own during any ritual or class. Ever. My first thought was, “no. I can’t do it, we’ll just wait to hear back about the permission.” Then…I thought…maybe I can do it?! Yesterday was a beautiful day and so I took my big old drum and headed to the woods. And, surprise! I had an invocation in me after all. At first, it ended up being a little song again—weird because of my notable non-skills in singing—and I sang it out and then came back in to type it up like I do all of my poems. After looking at it for a while, I re-formed it out of the poetry and into the format you now see above. It isn’t perfect, but hey, it is my first time! 🙂

Categories: invocations, liturgy, prayers, priestess, readings, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess, writing | 1 Comment

Birth mama, birth goddess

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Molly

Earlier this month, I finished a new sculpt for a medium-sized version of our classic birth goddess pendant and my husband cast and finished some of them this week. On Tuesday, I woke up with a phrase from a past piece of poetry floating through my mind over and over:

Soft belly
no longer bearing children
I am pregnant with myself
ripe with potential,
possibility, power
I incubate my dreams
and give birth to my vision…

I also thought about what I hope to communicate to others through my sculptures and when I took the new pendant down to the woods with me, a little song emerged to go with her:

Birth mama
birth goddess

reaching out
to join the circle of mothers

feeling her way
finding her place
in the web of women

Birth mama
birth goddess

hold strong
hold steady

make way for baby
make way for baby

Body opens
heart opens
hands open to receive

Birth mama
birth goddess

she’s finding her way
she’s finding her way…

Categories: art, birth, blessings, poems, sculpture, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Celebration of a Maiden

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Molly

Hope before her

love behind her

empowerment around her

she is strong

she knows her own power

she is blessed.

You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet on this blog lately. There are a couple of reasons for my quietness. One, is that I’ve found that after the conclusion of my year in the woods, I need to re-evaluate my relationship to this blog—what is its purpose now? How much time do I spend on it? How much time to I spend on other projects? (several of which this blog directly contributed to birthing!) How do I focus the energy of my life? I also need to really DO what I’ve said I’m going to do: use my writing energy to focus on completing my thesis project, meaning thesis is first, rather than what I do with leftover time (and blog moves to the “leftover” time slot). And, finally, my reduced writing in this virtual space is because my husband and I have been very hard at work on our new, shared project: Brigid’s Grove! This site will be an “umbrella” to embrace all of our projects, particularly our shared endeavor of pewter-casting and jewelry-making. Brigid’s Grove will officially launch on February first and we’re working on some launch products for our etsy shop as well as a special site launch discount code AND a fun and useful freebie, which will be a collection of my ritual “recipes” (outlines for ceremonies, not food recipes!). You can sign up for our newsletter now and you will then get the ritual kit on our launch day. As I work on preparing this ritual kit, I remembered something that has been languishing in my drafts folder since the springtime when we held a maiden ceremony for a friend’s daughter during one of our women’s circle gatherings. I made her a braided cord of initiation and shared a photo and brief description of it in this past post. It was an initiation cord in four colors for the Maiden to step over as a symbolic threshold into womanhood.

On that spring day, I took the cord to the woods with me and this is what I said:

Celebration of a Young Maiden

With the earth, trees, wind, and sky as my witnesses, I bless this cord of initiation for her. May it remind her of how she is interwoven with her ancestors, her own unique gifts, with the blood of her mothers, with the spirits of the women who surround her. She is so blessed. May she draw up great strength from the earth. May she engage in deep relationship with the world around her, including the animals and the plants, other women, men. May she know that she is loved. May she know that she is needed and may she know that her voice counts. May her eyes be blessed with clear vision, may her mind be blessed with clear thought. May her heart be open, may her hands be open, may her creative center be abundant, and may her legs carry her strongly on her own true path.

Let this cord remind her that she is so blessed, let it remind her that she is so loved, let it remind her that she is connected. Blessings of natural places and wild spaces, blessings of women and small girls, blessings of real life…

Categories: blessings, community, friends, liturgy, nature, prayers, priestess, readings, retreat, ritual, spirituality, womanspirit, women, women's circle, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Offering…

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Molly

Breathing in, singing out
Birth of new we bring about
Singing out, breathing in
Live the dream, let change begin.

–Jane Meredith

I’ve been reading one of my new books, Rituals of Celebration by Jane Meredith. It is really, really good. I have a lot of books about ritual planning and there is something beautifully, qualitatively different about this one. I think it is the stories with which she opens each section of the book (which is organized around a seasonal wheel of the year type of pagan calendar). She includes these beautifully evocative, very sensory and complete descriptions of rituals and their impact on participants/priestesses. I’ve felt tears come to my eyes multiple times as I read and for things I wouldn’t necessarily have expected—like the description of her son at thirteen challenging another man for the role of the God in their Beltane ritual. Her writing really touches something deep and brings her group’s rituals to life vibrantly. As I read the book, especially in combination with planning a ritual for our winter women’s retreat this weekend, I’ve noticed some insecurity come up (again!) about my own skills as a ritualist because I do not offer the type of elaborate pageant/performance type rituals that the author of this book offers. However, as I’ve been working on my Amazing Year workbook, I’ve also been thinking about a little sculpture that I bought to resell/give as a gift. She’s titled “Offering,” though to me she looks like she is about both receiving and giving. This afternoon, I decided that maybe she wants to stay with me for a while on my Amazing Year altar space-intention space and I’ve been thinking: what am I offering? I posted my thoughts to my Priestess Path group and asked, how about you? What are you offering right now?

We have a lot of snow here and the temperatures have been below zero. Since my official year of my woodspriestess experiment is over, even though I have no plans to stop going to the woods, I’ve given myself permission not to go right now in the freezing, freezing cold and deep snow. However, with two days of not going, I’m recognizing what feels like a literal sense of being ungrounded. I’m also noticing I have a sense of confusion about what to do with this blog now that I’ve finished my year in the woods. I started the blog before I started my experiment, but then it’s identity (and my own) became very deeply entwined with my time in the woods and the “woodspriestess” that they named me…

Categories: blessings, chants, priestess, ritual, sculpture, women's circle, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Molly

On New Year’s Eve even though I had a horrendous migraine and family due to come over for a party, I took some time in the early afternoon to go down to the woods for a review of the past year of my Woodspriestess experiment. It felt really important to me to spend some good time looking over the past year and what I’ve learned in and from the woods. I ended up recording 15 minutes worth of reflections and I’ll come back to them later—I think they will come in handy for the conclusion of my thesis/book project. (One of my reflections was that this year was a complete thesis project and it just needs to be shaped and refined into an integrated document now.) After recording, I decided to try out an exercise I’d read about the night before in In the Shadow of the Shaman. It was essentially about going to a special spot in nature and walking no more than 12 paces in each of the four directions. At the twelfth step, or when felt called to stop, you are supposed to look down and find a gift. This felt like a very fitting ritual to conclude my year in the woods and so I did it. And, at the twelfth step in each direction, I did, in fact, find something waiting for me. To the East I found a piece of a hornet’s nest (I also see this as a helpful reminder from the woods to take a much closer look at the hollow tree nearby, because I think I was being told that it is harboring something stingy!). To the South I found two acorns joined at the caps. To the West I found a mossy piece of fallen branch. To the North, I found a small square rock. I laid them out on the stone to look at as a whole…And I picked up a message that felt like the closing thoughts for me from the land itself in terms of this year-long project. The message was this:

things change and decay and pass away (the branch), new things grow (the acorns), sometimes the world is sharp and stings you and it hurts (the hornet’s nest), but it is possible to discern clear edges and find a solid core (the rock)

This afternoon my husband and I worked on the New Year Intention candles that we’d started as part of the simple New Year’s Eve ritual we did with our family last night. These were my idea to be a combination of a vision board and an altar candle, with each lighting of the candle throughout the year serving as a reaffirmation of our intentions for 2014. I had a wonderful time creating mine and it felt like just the right project. We then lit the candles and spent some time on the Biz section of the Amazing Year workbook and it had a really incredible time of synchronicity and clarity about the direction in which we will be going in the year ahead.

Happy New Year!