Little Druid on the Prairie

Sometimes the universe just hits you with a clue-by-four. I’ll save that for another day, but suffice to say that I’m about to get a lot busier with my spiritual practice.

As a check in, my current practice includes:

• Full COoR ritual once a week (usually Tuesday nights, sometimes Fridays too), which includes divination
• “Crowdsourced” Full Moon rituals with my grove
• Weekly study meetings with my grove
• Daily practice even if it’s just 3 minutes at my altar to light some incense
• Regular offerings to the Gatekeeper, Earthmother, my three primary deities (Ingwe Frea, Frige, Hela), and to my house spirits
• High day rituals with my grove (which I write and coordinate)

Which is honestly a pretty full slate of ritual practices, now that I look at it. I’ve come a long way in the last almost three months, and it’s kind of startling to think that I’ve been rebuilding this fast (and at the same time it feels almost painfully slow).

If I can keep up this level of enthusiasm and motivation, I will be thrilled, but I do know that some of what is coming will be a slog. But that’s okay.

On the celebratory front, this weekend is Lammas! This is my favorite high day, I think, which is funny as there’s been a number of posts around the pagan blogosphere about how Lammas is one of the “forgotten” high days. I guess because I’ve never associated it with Lugh at all, and instead celebrate the first harvest, and the sacrifice of that harvest, it’s always been a different thing for me.

My very first Lammas celebration included my having to “make a sacrifice” – both monetary (the destruction of something of monetary value – in that case, a silver mercury dime) and metaphysical – as part of the coven I was working with, and I have kept to that practice every year, using the harvest season as a time of “giving up” something. I know what I need to give up this year, but it will be challenging. But if that’s not what spiritual disciplines are for, I don’t know what would be. I will be keeping this “sacrifice” from Lammas through Samhain.

There is a lot of UPG floating around about how Freyr (Ingwe Frea) is the lord of the first harvest, the golden grain god who is cut down as a sacrifice. While I don’t know what I think about that as UPG, the general idea of him being at his height – and then cut down – at this time of year appeals to me. The story of John Barleycorn is old – possibly all the way back to Anglo-Saxon paganism and the myth surrounding Beowa (Barley, with some association with Frey). And so it is with both joy and sorrow that I see the first harvest, the sacrifice of the grain, which then blesses and feeds us throughout the year.

My personal celebration of this high day is similar to the one the Anglo-Saxons would have done. I bake a loaf (in my celiac-disease-having state, a loaf of cornbread), bless it, and sacrifice it to the earth at the four corners of my home as protection throughout the coming winter. Since I live in an apartment now, that means depositing cornbread outside, but my neighbors already think I’m odd.

So as we move into August, let’s remember the sacrifice of the grain, of John Barleycorn, and perhaps consider making a sacrifice of our own, to ensure a good harvest and the continuation of our communities.

This week’s divination is as follows:

• Ior – the eel (or beaver) – flexibility/adaptability
• Rad – the journey – a journey or path, something that might seem easy from the outside but is a challenge to do
• Gyfu – the gift – reciprocity, hospitality (and the rune I have consistently drawn regarding my path to the priesthood)

I know that, on some level, rune drawing is random – I’m pulling random symbols out of a bag. But sometimes they speak so strongly.

Be flexible, adapt to your situation and to those around you; you’re on a long journey to priesthood, but this is the journey you need to take.