Oak Grove Tribe's Twelfth Night
Hail to the Toast
It's no surprises to anyone here I really love holy things, whether they are mine or not. I traveled extensively to Catholic cathedrals, Buddhist temples and any number art sculptures in Korea, watched ceremonies and learned things, searching out the divine in the universe. So when a couple of friends invited me to their path's "most important ritual at the end of the year" back in August I was needless to say giddy and nervous and so ready.
It's been a very long five month wait but worth it. In the meantime I've gotten closer to the first two people who invited me, watched another couple, with one of their members in another of my groups, drift in and join up. I got to know the house in question, and the host and hostess at different events for completely different things.
My plans for this past weekend, what with Mini-Christmas, were needless to say a little busy and stressful at times, but nothing bar nothing kept me from being excited about Twelfth Night coming. Or about making sure to keep my oath made on Mother Night and fulfilling my promise to meditated over my last year through my Tarot Month cards.
Night of the event arrives and we're late, but not too late. Not late enough we don't get to catch up with everyone while the evening meal is still being cooked. Hope and I brought peppermint bark, because she'd been promised the making of a batch with me, and I brought a side of stir fry mixed vegetables, and I know My Girl brought something...I carried a bag at one point, but I've forgotten.
Before dinner we all gathered in a huge, if sporadically grouped, circle around the dining room. We broke bread together off of loaf to symbolize our lives all together. Which lead to laughter when the matriarch and hostess said she'd never seen me eat bread before and she'd never make me her bread-free pizza again. And I threw the bread at the table at the threat, causing everyone to keep laughing.
But I picked it back up and ate my tiny piece of the communal loaf. Then a plate of food with a little of everything on it was passed about and we were asked to give thanks or praise or words of any kind, or it could just be silent. Then it was taken the ritual room and left on the altar for the ancestors.
Last around went a plate of bones and this was supposed to be the oath you made with the universe. Which could be out loud or it could be said in silence either way. It was your pact with the universe, to be made however you wanted it.
I knew what mine would be long before it reached me, but I was very surprised by some of the ones I listened to.
"I oath myself to Love, and the hearts of all people, for another year."
Dinner table time completely warmed my heart. Usually when we head over dinner time is when people separate. The bar across the kitchen, some on the couches, and some at the table. But this time we managed to grab other chairs and fit every single person around the wooden table and it felt so cozy. And being able to see all their faces made my heart so happy.
After dinner there was clean-up and a small break before we moved into the ritual. They said it was going to be both low-key and longer than Mother Night but that was the only things I had in mind for for-knowledge. I, also, opted to do their binding spell at the last minute. With yarn the matriarch of the group had spun during the two events.
It ended up a little twisted, but the effort was for everyone standing in a circle to in different weaving patterns hand it to each other person in the group and say to them, "I bind my year to yours," which is the whole purpose of the ritual going on. Everything is connected and it makes you aware from the beginning.
Of each person's face. Each person’s words. Each promise.
At the end we walked it to a wall where it was pushed in with five thumb tacks, and it was left up to be a reminder of the promises made for the coming full year. (But after the weekend was over it was reshaped, and now it's on the ten pegs and they each have runes hanging from them! I can't wait to get a picture of this soon!)
We sat down and Sombule started, which was promised to be a far more intensive one that the one at Mother Night. And boy was it. The first round like last time was a toast to a God or a Virtue.
For all those who were new, and because we had no cheat sheets, I poked Raven and asked if he'd give a run down on all the Gods and Noble Virtues. Which was amazing to listen to for a good fifteen-twenty minutes. And then we started going around. At Mother Night we said only the name, what they did and toasted it.
This time we said their name/the virtue and then we explain why we had chosen it. I knew was going to choose the same one again, Eir, their Goddess and Handmaiden of Healing, but it wasn't until we'd gotten through three or four people talking that I knew why I had chosen her this time and how big, how different this one was.
2010 has been all about healing for me. Coming home and learning and letting people in, and healing out the bad of last year, but also taking stock of everything in me, keeping what I wanted, who I wanted to be and tossing out the garbage finally, healing out so much baggage from so much of my life.
It was about healing itself, in getting my Master Reiki finally. And the fact I worked on three people (two sitting in that house, and one a city away) by the time I was talking about it. It was about the fact my decision to step on RCG council had so little to do with notoriety and so much to do with wanting to do service for other women the way this group had so helped and healed me.
The second round was to toast a Hero or Ancestor.
I was literally blown away when the second person in the circle announced they were hailing me as their Hero and went into grand detail about why. I vaguely remember mostly how the floor didn't exist anymore, and the way Hope's fingers landed very lightly at the nape of my neck, without demanding any of my attention to move to her but, as though she understood completely where my head would go.
So much humility and so much love, and it brings tears to my eyes even now.
I hailed my Gramma who counts as both life-long Hero and Ancestor, matriarch of my family, and the one person who will always be radiant in my eyes. Older than dirt, and cooler than God, as I said when I was far too little. I talked about how I saw her as a child and how I've always felt about her, my whole life.
And how Hope coming in my life, set in line the dominoes that even saw me meeting up with my Gramma this year for the first time in almost three years. How even though I only saw her for the better part of an hour and half the child and the adult in me still agreed. My first and best Hero, the person I will continue to grow up and be.
The third round was Oaths, Boasts and Others. There were a lot of all of them, but I was pretty sure what I was doing from the first week of the Wild Hunt, while during the Twelve Days of Christmas. I made an oath to work on leading, and teaching.
I was challenged for how and talked about trying to move closer to this Reiki class I've been asked to help co-teach (which My Girl made a hilarious comment about being ready already) and about why want to put in for being RCG Secretary at the first Council Meeting in the middle of this month and so much facilitation.
I was given the consequence, if uncompleted in challenging myself and reaching my goals, that I make a piece of art work for everyone in the room that was individual. And jokes about writing them all beautiful Twilight fanfic aside, that made everyone groan and laugh, I nodded that I understood and accepted.
And then I swore my oath again on the (....thing I've forgotten the name of).
This is what happens when its someone else's path and you're totally so either immersed in the ritual or distracted by events circling you and it, around you, that you forget to bring your notebook to take the notes for your write-up. There was a sizable break after the first three rounds, for about twenty minutes before we came back together.
For the next few rounds we read poetry and stories, sharing our works and the works of those we love with all those we'd tied out hearts and days and next to. I read The Invitation by Oriah Mountaindreamer, which mesmerized everyone, and Catechism for the Witch's Child by J. L. Stanley.
After that there was sleeping, because it was late and Twelfth Night had taken us to three-thirty in the morning. Morning was just as fun as dinner the night before. I helped the matriarch of the group make biscuits, while waiting on eggs and bacon and being glad to help. Discussing how we might restructure events in the future to help her and her husband during these events.
The morning was a huge reshaping of so much that none of us had predicted happening. It exploded with a cloud of awesome. We all came to the conclusion we needed an e-mail list. And to reshape weekends to fits funds. And the girls Spring Fest camp together was all on. And we were going to have an intensive Runes class starting this coming Sunday.
All of the above which Hope was invited to be part of. On her own merit.
The same as how she was invited to Twelfth Night after the last event she'd come to.
I kind shyly watch this with so much joy. She's very new to all of this and I don't try to push, stunt or influence her in way that she doesn't come and ask me for my thoughts or advice or rambling on. I want her to dive deep into the universe and find her bliss, her thing, no matter what it is, even if it completely opposite of mine.
She is the center of my heart and I want her to find deep completion and satisfaction in whatever it is she finds. But getting to watch people who are not me (who did not ask my opinion and never will need my permission) ask her if she'd join their web groups because they consider her family and inviting her to join their classes if she wants them.
Especially in the wake of all else going on. That she managed to hold her own, and engage people for what she wanted, to take and give and get extended these things regardless of whether she'd decided to say yes or no in the future, in her own and at her own pace.
God. I was beaming into my mimosa trying not to look like a search light. That this forming family, who so deeply loves me and considers me one of their own and surrounds to protect me in terrible situations, accepts her, as she is, and wants her to stay with them doing things, as she is, without it being related to me, is glorious. It makes me so proud and so happy, and crazy light. And it's a wonder I managed to keep eating my food calmly.
Which is where we are for now. Aside from, maybe I could hint that I have started changing my altar up more, as I mentioned before. There's a whole section devoted the Runes Class I'll be taking twice a month with Oak Grove now. Runes cards and rune stones and rune dice, all ready, clearing and charging.
(My class books are on their way to me! And I'm getting a set of wooden runes, later this year some time, because the Host offered to make me some after seeing how entranced and respectful I was with someone's set the night before, oh my.)
Their path is not the same as mine -- I've known the very name and soul of my bliss since before I can recall -- but these people very, very much so are my family. And so much of this weekend. Their words, their arms, their compassion touched me irrevocably.