Happy Imbolc!

[gallesjrrt]

Just wishing everyone a happy Imbolc. Since our group meets on Sunday nights, we celebrated last night. I ran the ritual, which was taken directly from the Lewellyn Candlemas book - a ritual to honor the Smiths: Brigit in her Smith form, and Wayland. In spite of the cream of potato soup that I made to use instead of ale having too much garlic, and my forgetting the bread for cakes and having to use Keebler crackers instead, it went pretty well.

The thing that caught my attention was the part of the ritual that required us to meditate on some aspect of our lives that we'd like to improve, then think of a symbol to represent that, then to make a talisman using that symbol, and finally drumming up energy to infuse the talismans.

I bought several colors of Fimo polymer clay and we made the talismans - an interesting procedure, and a lot of fun.

I'd be interested in hearing how others celebrate this Sabbat!

[Nightchild]

Hi there. I'm back and I also want to say: Happy Imbolc to all of you.
I can't tell about our ritual since it will only take place tomorrow evening. Nevertheless, I hope you had a great time
And what you did there sounds really great.

[gallesjrrt]

Thanks, Nightchild. It was interesting! And we've now got a plot going - since we had so much fun making the talismans, we're going to explore the possibility of making others, donating them to our local Magik shop and having them sell them, with the proceeds going to support some worthwhile cause - animal shelters, battered women shelters, homeless ... things like that!

Hope your celebration was wonderful!

[Nightchild]

That sounds nice, your idea.

We indeed had a good celebration. Since noone found the time to prepare anything we just had something made up when we met.
We decided to burn the mistletoes that hung by the windows and doors of my friends' house, the ivy her mother had on her altar and the Ring of Fir(?) we used, decorated with 5 white candles on the day of Lucia, when we dressed as Lucia and her followers and visited the neighbours of my friend, brought them cookies and wished them well.
We danced around the fire and sung songs. Afterwards we went back inside where we sat in a circle, had self made cheese and some kind of indian bread and played harp.
I like it outside there. It always feels alive. All those trees around, the stars above... all those around us...
It's really been cool

[gallesjrrt]

Sounds GREAT! One of my dreams is to eventually be able to celebrate the Sabbats outdoors. Some day, it WILL happen!

Anyway, I love the idea of burning the greens, and making your own cheese. Cool!

[Nightchild]

We usually celebrate outside at least when the weather allows us to.
My friend, where we meet, has a house with a garden behind. It's a small town near Berlin and the part of it where she lives is covered by trees. It's a real wood in the town. Her garden is covered with trees as well.
The only bad thing about that is, that we can't have fires in summer, when it's hot and not raining much. Hopefully we'll find another place where to celebrate Litha and Lammas and having fire.

As for the cheese: One of us brought it. I didn't have anything to do with it. Well, except for the eating part. *g* But I was good at that.

Anyway, somehow we're kinda busy at the moment, which means about the last year, maybe one and a half, which usually has us meeting without anyone having anything prepared for the sabbats. So we usually have kinda spontaneous rituals. That's not bad. Some of those are even better than planned ones. I will plan one, as soon as I have the time and sn idea, though. I somehow like it.

And I feel as if I wanted to say something else but if so I forgot about it.