Scared Space: The Creation of the Circle

Damn being sick! I’m so behind on everything! This blog, the element photos, my business work, rituals, planning… you name it and I’m behind on it! Grr! But at least I am starting to feel better. And probably wont get sick for the rest of the summer- fingers crossed. We missed Full moon ritual due to most of us not feeling well, but before that I had been planning an outdoor ritual. And the planning got me thinking about creating sacred space with a family coven.

So I’d like to discuss a few topics related to creating the circle for sacred space. The first is the size of the circle and the second is in the actual physical creation of the circle. All of this of course in the context of having children present and participating within the ritual!

Size is a big consideration- when you have children! My circle when practising by myself can be only a foot in diameter but as I added more and more children the size I needed for a circle grew exponentially! When doing current rituals down in our library, sacred space encompasses the entire room. We are talking about a circle that has to be at least 15 feet in diameter. That is a huge circle for 4 tiny people! We are planing on taking our rituals outside now that the weather has warmed up and dried out significantly where we live. This has got me wondering were we should be doing our rituals, and this decision will have to take into account how much room we will need. I am hoping that by being outdoors the girls can be even more involved in the ritual, and perhaps they will need less space when outside… but I’m thinking that I might be wrong about that! I’m planning on trying a ritual down on the grass in the backyard, as I feel like a ritual up on the second story deck just wont be grounding enough for all the energy they have! But doing ritual outside without walls leads to my next problem/observation.

Circle boundaries! Inside the walls of the room we practice in stand as the boundaries, roughly, of our circle. When I practice alone I just don’t move around much or  used my four element candles as reference points. This is not going to be enough for my children. While they wont need full physical boundaries we will need to use some kind of physical marker to show my kids where they need to respect the edge of the circle. I would think anything would do, but for my girls in particular I’m going to get them to help me decide what will work best for our family coven. It will be easier to remember and respect if they are involved in the planning. I want to suggest things like flowers, shells, stones, and other natural objects; but also special stuffed animals, or scarves and cloth in ritual related colours and symbols. I want this to be an opportunity to creatively explore the meaning behind objects, colours, symbols, and our rituals.

I am looking forward to sharing with you what happens at our next ritual and how we will solve the size and boundary issues of our outside sacred space. I would love to know what you do with your children or covens, and any thoughts and suggestions you have.

May the young summer Goddess dance with you, and bring warmth and childish joy to you and yours.

Blessed be!

Paganism, Ritual, and Other People’s Children

Meer Meet!
I recently had a new, and slightly uncomfortable, experience: Topaz asked if a friend of hers could spend the night. Ordinarily, not a problem on a non-school night. It turned out that this night was a Full moon and we had a ritual planned. While her friend knows that we are pagan, and has attended a couple of our sabbat festivals, she’s never been involved in a ritual. I do not believe you should be doing rituals with other peoples children with out parental permission, just like you shouldn’t take other people’s kids to church with out their parents knowing. I explained this to my child, saying that her friend could not attend the ritual with out her parents permission. My daughter said I could just call and talk to her friends parents. Now, while I do have a moderately friendly acquaintance with Topaz’s friends parents, who I am sure are aware of the fact we are, at the very least, not christian (their daughter has been to a summer solstice, lughnahsadh, and fall equinox celebrations here), I am pretty sure asking them if their daughter can participate in a full moon ritual with us over the phone might not end well. I’d much rather ask, and be able to explain, in person. So while I will not be doing so this time, it is looking like I will have to go talk to Topaz’z friend’s parents about out faith, and to find out if they will be comfortable with their daughter joining us in our form of worship.

This of course has me thinking about two things:
1) How much are we sharing about our chosen path with those around us? Is it too much? Not enough? When should we be sharing?
2) As well, as this serves as a reminder to me, of why we celebrate the way we do (esbats are small, intimate, and family orientated; while we celebrate sabbats hugely, inviting friends and family).

In response to my first point, I want to mention that my older 2 children attend pubic school and my youngest goes to the college daycare. We are open about our spiritual path, in that Topaz and Lily wear pentacle necklaces to school, and we talk to their teachers and the daycare staff about our major sabbat celebrations: Winter Solstice, Ostara, Summer Solstice, Samhain (thought everybody knows this one as halloween and celebrates in much the same manner we do!) and some times Beltaine. We are very open and tell people we are pagan and when they ask, we explain that it is a nature based religion and we celebrate the traditional season changes. We’re not as open about full moon and new moon celebrations, and keep spell work to ourselves of course. For the most part we are pretty good at judging who will be open to hearing about our spiritual path and who wont be. We haven’t had any really nasty experiences (for which I am very grateful) but have had a few negative reactions, here and there. And of course the “don’t tell my parents, you freak them out enough as it is”. I really loved that one! It’s not like I’m scary or weird looking (haven’t died my hair strange colours in over 2 years!) or that I act that much differently than any other ‘normal’ person, for the most part. I just walk my talk, and live what I believe. Some people just have a hard time when they meet others that are different. I could give you the sociological reasoning behind this, but that would be off on a tangent! So I’ll just say, you, as a parent, have to raise your children to be open minded and understanding, to put forth into this world the changes we would like to see, and to help them to know when to be open and when to be careful and walk away. It’s a difficult path that we journey on, but take heart in the fact that others walk before you, and belive that some day this world will be an amazing place!

When you feel alone, remember I’m some where just up ahead of you, sending back down the path love and strength and courage. And the Goddess is alway there to hold your hand when things get tough, just reach out your hand…
Blessed Be!

Full Moon-Just not the Same With the Kids….

Merry Meet!
November’s full moon is upon us, and finally our family coven has managed to be organized enough to celebrate and do our ritual on the night of the full moon. I am finding I have mixed feelings abut celebrating rituals with my children. I started out as a young pagan with a small baby, who was always asleep by the time I was going to do ritual. It was lovely to have that whole hour of self and goddess interactions which always left me feeling rejuvenated and energized. I loved it! But…

Now I practice with all three of my children because they are all old enough to be learning and practicing. I enjoy the rituals very much, especially when they are well behaved and not bouncing off the floors (I was not blessed with this tonight!). But it is very different and I find I spend a lot more time trying to help the kids stay focused and safe within the circle (you know, open fire and all!), than I do communing with my goddess. I am not feeling the same joy and euphoria when I’m done as I did so long ago. I will admit that my kids are not fully to blame on this front. I have been practicing for a long time now, and it’s not as shiny and new and exciting as it used to be. But I still feel like I am missing out on something important.

So what is an awesome witchy mommy to do….?
Blessed be!

Some Thing About Good Intentions…

Merry meet!
I know there is a phrase out there about good intentions going awry. This always does seem to happen to me. I always mean to keep up my blogging and do so on a regular basis, but can never seem to manage to stick to it. Life gets busy and I get forgetful. Oh well, maybe it’s time to set an alarm on my phone so I can at least remember to try!

So we have had a full moon, a new moon, and a Sabbat since my first post. Whew we’ve been busy here! I’ll start with the October Full moon. We did ritual as a family, my daughters and I. And had a very good time. We didn’t manage to make cookies like we had planned (the recipe is included on the recipe page), but we did make home made apple juice from the apples off the tree in our yard. It was yummy! We all made our goddess wishes and drew our divination cards for the next month. I am still working on finding a deck or other medium that suits our whole family. And I’m starting to think it might be time to consider designing my own family coven deck. If I do, it wont be till winter break starts, so perhaps there will be a post on this in the future. We also read a modified Charge of the Goddess, that I wrote for the kids about 6 months ago. I will try to remember to include it on a new page, incase anyone would like to use it. The girls did well at staying focused and in control of their bodies and behaviour inside the circle, and their books of shadow are coming along. I cast the circle this month, I think next month will be Topaz’s turn. All in all, it was a very successful, and enjoyable, ritual. I hope we can continue to celebrate the full moons together every month.

New moon was a bit more crazy, last month. It was on a Wednesday, which is one of my long days at school. We have named our October new moon pumpkin moon (I will post on this another time!), so we had planned to carve our pumpkins that day. Well that didn’t work out, as I forgot to buy pumpkins and my youngest went to her dads place for her sleepover. We didn’t end up getting to it till Saturday. I should mention that we celebrate our new moons in a very child like fashion, as we are honouring the young goddess. The children and I discuss and come up with activities to do that tie into that months moon name. One new moon we went outside and played hula-hoop in the rain! I used to do a whole serious ritual when I practiced on my own, and with my previous adult coven; now, as a family child-centred coven, new moons are low key and fun at our house.

Samhain! That was a mixed bag for us this year. We dress up in costumes and trick or treat, a well as decorat our house and hand out candy. We don’t do ritual, as we are usually out pretty late (2 hours this year, and quite frozen by the end!), unless Samhain happens to fall on a weekend, which it did not this year. We had a great time, and I tried to talk to the kids about our ancestors and those that have crossed over the veil; I’ll try harder next year! We also have a graveyard close to our place, so next year I’d like to do something in there, if I can manage it. Unfortunately, we also had a child come down with croup. Its ok, she’s doing fine. And was going to go out trick or treating, so we got her all dressed up, and about 5 minutes before we left she coughed so hard she threw up all over her costume. Needless to say she stayed home! Poor thing.

Here is our family, plus a friend who came out with us (who is hiding behind me!). Topaz Primrose went as a witch (I know, I know! But she looked good!) Lily MagickRose was a bat, Kiya Jelly Belly was Tinkerbell(esk!) And I went as a bear. I was tempted to dress up the dogs but thought that might be a bit much. But will probably do it next year anyway! We had lovely weather. No rain, tiny breeze, so it wasn’t wet and cold. Yay! And we got lots of treats, and played no tricks! (That reminds me of a time when I was really young and a lady told us we had to sing a song if we wanted our treats!)

Hope your moons and halloween were fun, and that I’ve given you a few more ideas. Always welcome to comments and questions!
May you always embrace your inner child and celebrate life in joyful abandon.
Blessed Be!