Phoenix designed and led the ritual. She does very loose circles because her path doesn't actually draw boundaries for circle. I really do prefer clear defined boundaries but feel it is important for her to have the opportunity to do it her way too. The ritual was built around the songs she has written and she did a ritual outline and song teaching session before the ritual. I thought it went great. Some of the work felt very blissful.
At the appropriate part in the ritual, participants came up individually and spoke of what we were trying to rid ourselves of. I found this particularly difficult this time as one of the things I was throwing into the fire was performance anxiety and fear of being judged. Each time I thought that I would move towards the fire I held back unable to say it. Eventually I did manage to say something related to it and threw it into the fire. For some reason we were doing things deosil rather than widdershins at this point though and it took more effort to remember that I was ridding myself of these things and not bringing them into my life.
Afterwards there was a break and people went off into the night to do whatever they were doing and some ate and began to ground out. After awhile I sent someone to retrieve the group that had wondered off because we had not yet danced about the fire, or jumped the fire, something we always do. I don't think the break was a good idea as the energy really grounded. It also split the feel of the community being together and isolated me from the group for various reasons I won't go into here. Finally people came back and I had the opportunity to dance around the fire. One of my nestmates drummed and drummed and I was able to trance dance, staring into the fire, feeling the drum beat. What joy! My knees and legs began to hurt but I was able to dance through it with only a slight decrease in my trance. It was good. Later some of us went into the hot tub and that did wonders for my knees.
Phoenix had said that she was going to come and sing us awake but had gotten so cold that she didn't want to get people up and back out to do the Maypole early in the morning so we didn't do it at dawn much to the joy of several people. I wasn't one of them since I had been awake at dawn anyway.
We had a lovely Maypole dance. Two of the participants stripped and danced naked, even though there was a very cold wind. Afterwards I took a woman out to show her my Dearinth and ended up walking the Goddess section with her and a couple of nestmates. That was good too.
Copyright © 2001 Kyril Oakwind