Alban Heruin/Signs and portents

Shadowfoot and I decided to celebrate Midsummers tonight, rather than last night or this morning. We should have celebrated it last night, to be most appropriate, but sometimes you make a change to allow for other occurrences. Similarly, it would have been nice if we could have been out of doors in a physical grove, but the most appropriate place we could have used is a fair distance away (45 minutes by driving), and the deer flies would have been much too happy to see us if we had gone there.

Someone wrote in their own notes about Midsummers that they had been gifted with the presence of a Great Blue Heron flying overhead. We were gifted with the presence of my cat, Peredur Mawr, who wanted to participate. First, he lay down to the North of our working space as we were working in the East. Then, he moved to lie down in the East while we were working in the South. Then he moved to the South and just sat there as we worked in the West and North. All would have been well, but he decided that he needed to investigate the white altar cloth, and hooked his claw in the fabric. I moved quickly to help free him, but he panicked and attempted to run away. Since he weighs 18+ pounds, he almost succeeded in taking everything off the altar in the course of his retreat. Thankfully, his claw came free before that happened.

For most the rest of the time of our working, he had the front half of his body wedged under a piece of furniture in the North of our workspace...

It has been some time since I have celebrated the turning of the seasons in this fashion. When we took up the practice again at Alban Eiler, there were steps and practices that seemed new and unfamiliar, but at the same time there were things that were familiar, like being welcomed home. In earlier years, we celebrated in one of the Wiccan traditions, and there are certainly similarities with the traditions and practices of the druid revival of AODA.

The opening of the four corners/compass points, the central altar, the four elements. These are common points. But on the altar were 2 candles, for male and female, while we use 3 candles now for the three types of Awen, the three rays of light, the three stones of the earth, the three rowan staves.

Then, there were more people with us. Now, we are currently two working together.

There are things to remember, things to learn, and things to create. We progress (but not in the sense of "modern progress").