Spring Equinox Ritual

From a letter posted by Fox on the ADF-DISCUSS mailing list:

Each year our celebration centers around two themes: honoring the Nature Spirits and seed blessing.

The seed blessing portion involves charging and blessing of two different sets of seeds. We make up little cloth packets filled with seeds and tied with a ribbons. Each participant takes one and concentrates on their intentions of what they will plant and grow in this coming season. The packets contain native wildflower mixes and we ask the folks to plant them at home as a magical act and tend to them through the summer as they tend to their intentions, thus using sympathetic magic to strengthen their effort (and establishing better contacts with their natural surroundings as a side benefit).

The other set of seeds is our store of wheat seeds. These seeds were brought by me from the Butser Ancient Farm in England over the last few years. They are the variety of wheat that our ancestors grew (but safe for this continent because the variety and its modern descendants has been planted all around the world). We are in the middle of a project to reconnect our folk with the agricultural themes and cycles that are so central to our spiritual life, to make them tangible and relevant. Over the next few years, as a tiny part of a much larger project, we will be establishing a sacred wheat field where members will take part in sowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, grinding and finally baking the bread that we will use in our rites.

We also will have a dance involving all participants to the chant "Dancing the Summer In" to will the cold winds away and a retelling of the creation myth of our Mother Goddess.

Fox

The Consecration of the Seed

by Fox, Spring. Equinox 1996

I will go out to sow the seed,
In the name of her who gives it growth;
I will turn my face into the wind,
And throw a proper handful high.

The grain that falls on barren rock,
Shall find no soil in which to grow,
But all that falls to Ana's breast,
The dew shall make it to be full.

The Holy Day; the day auspicious;
The gentle morning dew will welcome,
Every seed that has lain sleeping,
Since the cold of winter's coming.

Every seed will take root in good earth;
Blessed by sun; golden bright;
Shoots will come forth with the dew,
To breathe life from soft summer winds.

I will come round with my step,
Rightwise round as turns the sun;
In the name of the ancestors and kindreds all,
In the name of the father, blessed Lugh.

Gentle Ana; Shining Lugh,
Be giving growth and kindly substance,
To every swelling stem and shoot,
Until the time of harvest gladness.

'Round to Lughnasadh; day beneficent;
I will put my sickle round about,
The root of corn as is our custom;
I will lift the first cut quickly.

I will put it three turns round,
My head, saying my rune the while;
My back to the wind of the north;
My face to the fair sun of power.

I shall throw the handful far from me;
And close my two eyes twice;
Should it fall to Earth in one bunch,
Our stacks will be productive and lasting.

No specter will come with bad times,
To ask a palm bannock from us;
And when rough storms come with frowns;
No stint nor hardship shall be on us.

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