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Drinking Cider on a Steeleye Span Night

I have been writing like a maniac and have much writing ahead of me tonight and tomorrow.  But tonight I have kissed the final sunset of July good-bye, I have facilitated a Full Moon ritual at Mother Grove Goddess Temple and I am now listening to Steeleye Span.

Lured thither by a search for John Barleycorn, I have settled onto "Now We are Six" and am drinking hard cider from last season's harvest.  I have considered my options for the evening--finishing two pieces that are due tomorrow, washing the dishes, tidying up and printing tomorrow's ceremony for our public ritual or drinking cider and singing Steeleye Span.

"Bachelor's Hall" now--one of my favorite's as a wild college lass.

I searched out lyrics for "The Wife of Usher's Well" earlier this week for one of the pieces due tomorrow and that may have been a kind of foreshadowing of tonight.

Tonight, we honored both Selu and Tailtiu, those great and giving Mothers.  We called Them in and told Their stories (some of them) and loved Them up.

These hinges in the year are powerful in my world and in my practice. I want to learn all I can from the experience of these energies, these tales and see how this informs the time that is my time.

Instead, I am drinking cider from the trees in the garden and simply...being. Because sometimes the world and the times require us to be merely present, and attentive, and alive.

May it be so for you on this holyday weekend, however you celebrate it.  Let the breads of Lammas rise! May the creative and generous spark of Lughnasadh fill you! And may the end of July and the beginning of August remind you that the Wheel turns and the Ancestors are waiting.

 

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H. Byron Ballard is a ritualist, teacher, speaker and writer. She has taught at Sacred Space Conference, Pagan Unity Festival, Southeast Her essays are featured in several anthologies, including “Birthed from Scorched Hearts“ (Fulcrum Press), “Christmas Presence“ (Catawba Press), “Women’s Voices in Magic” (Megalithica Books), “Into the Great Below” and “Skalded Apples” (both from Asphodel Press.) Her book Staubs and Ditchwater: an Introduction to Hillfolks Hoodoo (Silver Rings Press) debuted in June 2012. Byron is currently at work on Earth Works: Eight Ceremonies for a Changing Planet. Contact her at info@myvillagewitch.com,

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