Category: Mabon

Lammastide and Gratitude

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., Blame Sannion, Lammas, Mabon, Thanksgiving1 Comment

Hello Friends,

So we are betwixt and between the Calendrical and the  Astronomical Lammas right now.   Most traditionally a time of coming together with friends and family and community.   Now I realize that Mabon is the time when I as a Witch am supposed to be thinking of Giving Thanks… but Gratitude is on my mind right now.

It is only slightly less than a year since the Big Guy broke up with me.  It is also a little less than a year since I cast the most fervent prayer/spell I have ever cast.

At the time I decided, sometime in the first couple of months, that I we feeling a LOT of grief and that the thing I needed most was time.  So I gave myself a year.

In that year I have grieved, faced a number of challenges, worked, prayed and done a lot of reading and thinking.  I have had touching messages from friends I have met face to face and friends I (currently) know only through the Internet.  I have had laughter and made new friends face to face and begun finding the pieces and parts of myself that I left behind in the move to Florida and that were knocked out of me when the Big Guy dumped me.

I take a moment to breathe in life force, and to exhale gratitude into my connection with all life.

Everything can be a lesson, every moment can make us wiser and stronger and happier and healthier… if we put in the work and are open to the inspriation.  I have so much more to learn in this particular lifetime, but I feel like the last year has helped me put together puzzle pieces of a number of my life’s lessons so far, and taught me strange and new things.  So this Lammas-tide I find myself Grateful, and looking forward to Mabon and to the Secular Thanksgiving Holidays even as I make my offerings of incense and libations to the Holy Powers in the regular rhythms of my life.

Blessed Be,

Pax / Geoffrey

My Florida Sabbats : Mabon

On By PaxIn Cross-roads, Mabon, My Florida SabbatsLeave a comment

(Part of a regular series on Pax’s interaction with the Wheel of the Year and the changes wrought upon it by being in a subtropical landscape…)

The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone, and with it we in Florida have the return of Open Window weather.  We can shut off the air-conditioners and throw open our windows and the doors to our screened in porches and patios and revel in errant breezes and evening temperatures in the 60’s and the healing coolness of Autumn and Winter!

I have been caught up this Summer in a rat race of work and fiddling around on the Internet and otherwise not going beyond the surface of things.  Part of this has been what was once my usual pattern of Winter Hibernation… only instead of buckling down to get through the cold dark Winter, I now find myself buckling down and narrowing my focus to get through the Heat and Humidity of an oppressive new Summer.

I’ve said it before but its true, it is SO strange to find myself looking forward to the Cooling breath of Winter!

~~~

So Mabon… I didn’t Circle.  I aknowledged the Holy Day in my heart and in the last few days have taken some ritual baths… and renewed my meditations and energetic practices.  Tonight I shall be offering some incense and libations to the Lord and Lady and unto Hecate and Dionysus as well.

For me, at least,  Mabon is about renewal.

~~~~

The Autumnal Equinox and my new life…

On By PaxIn Chrysalis, Dionysus, Hecate, MabonLeave a comment

So Deborah Lipp over at Property of a Lady has a good post about the Autumnal Equinox’s place or role in Wicca and reminds us that this was also when the Greater Mysteries of Eleusinia were performed in the Greece of the Ancients…

As I wrote to her, I’m in kind of a transitional place about the Autumnal Equinox myself. In Alaska it was easy… the Equinox is a very visible and powerful turn of the wheel the 12hour by 12 hour borderline between the Light and Dark halves of the year. Its next to impossible not to become more contemplative and turn inward with the temperature dropping and the hours of night beginning to outnumber those of the day.

Heck living up there makes you really question the idea of the Equinoxes and Solstices as “lesser” Sabbats! (as some sources call them)

Now, in Florida (for my 2nd year), its just sort of there…

I have yet to really relate to it as the Pagan Thanksgiving that some folks like to cite it as. This despite having helped with and even hosted/coordinated Pagan Pride events in the past. I think next year I shall do something grand… A large family style dinner with friends and fellow Pagans. A cornucopia, the scents of a great big family meal, a hint of incense, Autumnal colors, and most of all, friends and family, toasting with wine and juices those things we are most thankful for at this turning of the wheel.

Wine… funny that… in the last couple of weeks so many coincidences have lead me to surrender myself to Dionysus and to Hekate. Randomly surfing to sites with Hellenic Recon and Ceremonial Magick related info to them both. Finding my Wines class text book and opening it to the page of Enology’s origins in Ancient Greece.

It feels that I have found a piece of what I’ve been seeking recently in a God and Goddess of the ancient days… a little intimidating that they both held court over Mysteries in surrendering myself to them I am wading into infinitely deep waters and on some level I know I will have to swim through powerful currents.

I have been reading Their prayers and praises, Their myths and stories, the words of those also dedicate to Them. The Boisterous Lord and the Light Bearing Lady. I have been seeking understanding of Them by studying and researching Their symbols. The Dagger and the Thyrsos, Wine and Cross-Roads, Black Dogs and Wild Cats.

The cross roads… as a former life-long Alaskan THAT seems appropriate on the Equinox. As I take my first steps on a new road within my journey I wish each of you well in yours. May Her Torches light your way, May his Drums help lighten your step.

Peace,
Pax

Wavering between "Eek!" & "Wow!" and the cross-roads moments

On By PaxIn Cross-roads, Mabon, Pagan Ponderings1 Comment

Or as an acquaintance of mine once put it “This s*** is REAL!” experiences.

I am thinking of the limnal moments, cross-roads on the journey. I have been blessed by a few of them in my 17 years on the Witches path. Some of them are dramatic…

Casting Circle in the rec room at my folks house, naked in the Circle, praying for guidance from the Goddess about how to help a mentally-ill acquaintance of mine. Hearing Her voice saying the words…

“Love him”

…and turning in every direction at once freaked out at having heard a voice and knocking over the Chalice and moving so fast that the South candle went out!

The Morrigan answering my call at a literal cross-roads and accepting my prayer for Her protection of another; and then (as I now believe) Hecate’s guiding me home as I stood there wavering between the “eek!” and the “wow!”…

Suddenly and intimately and intensely understanding why the Afro-Caribbean religions use the term Cheval or Horse for those whom their Gods choose to speak and act through in the aftermath of invoking the Horned God. The sensation of rising up inside, and to the back of, my skull as He took control of my mouth and body.

“EEK!…Wow!…. oh, hey what is He saying anyways?”

These limnal moments that touch and transform us… perhaps “Eek! & Wow!” isn’t entirely the right way to express these moments. I mean sure, sometimes they are dramatically memorable moments… but there are other subtler doorway or cross-roads moments on the journey of our lives…
Walking along the busy street on the edge of the curb thinking to myself that I could go back to the side-walk or walk out into traffic and be done with it… then thinking to myself “I’ll have to deal with this same stuff next lifetime until I deal with it…” and returning to the sidewalk…
Uttering a simple prayer to Apollo and Dionysus before auditioning for a spot in the Renaiscence fair cast… and feelling a confidence about the audition… and finding myself happier just doing the audition whatever the outcome…
The drinking and guy-silliness of the campouts from the Men’s club I was in in Alaska… and the sudden burst of Liberation …shucking off my clothes to join some of the others in a dance around the fire… streaking the campground and fording the glacially cold stream the club was camping beside… (for those keeping track this is one of those moments where I think Dionysus was in the background waiting for me to recognize Him and His inspiration and touch on my life)
There are so many cross-roads moments in our lives. Let us honor them. Let us embrace the moments of change and transformation. What are your cross-roads moments? Have you chosen a path or let yourself be hearded along one?