Week 42: Seventh High Day Recap

Yule:

​For the Winter Equinox, I led a Yule ritual with Columbia Grove on December 16th 2016, honoring the Norse culture and their deities. This was one of the first rituals I have had a heavy hand in writing and preforming and I learned quite a lot from the experience. The ritual incorporated a few extra themes outside the core order of ADF ritual, and that made the ritual itself pretty long but the guests didn't seem to mind. I had made a paper maché boar for Freya for our guests to write down oaths to for the new year and this was paraded around in place of a real boar offering. There was a Yule log presented that everyone was able to write down their wishes for the new year on strips of paper and these were also paraded around. This ritual told the story of Odin as outlined in the Poetic Edda and called upon the 9 Nordic realms. A theme I really enjoyed was that we had our Grove members each represent one of the 9 virtues of ADF and share them with the public. I personally really enjoyed having the virtues as part of the ritual as they are crucial to my personal practice. 

We had over 40 guests attending this ritual and it was a really high energy environment. I couldn't stop smiling the entire time and although I didn't feel any new strong spiritual pull during this public rite, I had a lot of fun.