An Altar, A Tree And Devotion

Phoenix and I love rituals. I mean, we really love rituals. I’m enchanted by the very act of drawing a temenos line between this moment and that moment. Phoenix has a whole litany of daily rituals including prayer, ablutions and talking with her gods.

Rituals create space for Time itself to stand still or speed up or shift

in some way that doesn’t seem quite congruent with the way the universe usually works on an otherwise ordinary Monday afternoon. There’s a fluidity of speech and movement. The words and actions take on a life of their own as if they themselves are animated for the sole purpose of co-creating this exact moment of ritual and devotion.

We’ve found that effective ritual practices don’t have to be elaborate or on a grand scale. Although, let me just say that we’re both partial to a thrumming mass of Pagan-type folk all gathered together for the expressed purpose of being in consensual ritual practice together.

We’ve had the pleasure to attend and help create the magic for the annual Reclaiming Spiral Dance in San Francisco, for many years now. There’s a variety of rituals from every imaginable Pagan tradition at events like Pantheacon and Many Gods West. We thoroughly enjoy being a little thrown off by rituals that use a different lexicon than “home” tradition; rituals that have their own distinct meter and rhythm.

But the rituals that often affect us the most profoundly are those every day, personal rituals, we might all engage in. Those sacred, devotional moments when we interact with each other or the growing beings in flower pots around our living space or the neighbour’s cat that’s decided to join us in the back yard for coffee every morning or those still moments when a voice on the air calls out your name for some inexplicable reason.

Here’s once such small, humble, delicious ritual that’s been “working” us for several years now…

We live in a pretty standard three bedroom, two bathroom, ranch-style house in Northern California. There’s nothing remarkable

about this 40 year old home until you venture into the back garden. Now, “garden” is a bit of an optimistic turn of phrase because with the drought of past few years and a pretty decent winter this year, what we really have is a collection of patches where some grass lives, some weedy things have grown to almost primordial heights and yet other areas are patchy and dry. However, in the middle of the weeds stands a huge tree. It probably never should have been planted in a back yard. It’s way too big and the roots have poked their way up through the adobe soil, making a lawn pretty much impossible, but here the tree stands. It’s the single dominating feature of the garden.

At the base of this tree there is a small hollow. Over a series of years now, I’ve added some river rocks, a small cauldron, and old candle that’s fashioned into the face of a goddess and bones; found bones from deer and raccoon and rabbits. Phoenix and I have decorated this spot with flowers from initiation rituals and past Beltane rituals and any other time we have flowers in the house.

Most mornings we go outside and clear away the fallen leaves that have gathered. We sweep back the soil so it’s smooth and dark. We sit there in the stillness of the morning and imagine who might visit this Altar To The Wild Places, this Altar To The Tree, this Altar To The Land. Most recently, it feels as if Blodeuedd has settled in here for now. Phoenix and I have spent time with her in the past. She’s lovely. We work with her often and she is most welcome.

That’s it. That’s the entire act of ritual devotion. Visit Altar. Clean space. Sit. Listen.

And this, the most simple of devotional rituals helps us to create the space and the time and the desire to be outside, to be in relationship with this amazing place we call home. To quite literally stop and smell the flowers. This basic, foundational, witch craft 101 ritual, that takes no more than 10 minutes each day, allows for a few moments of deeply, sensuously connecting to Place and silence and slowing down.

Croeso Blodeuedd. Welcome Blodeuedd.

This lovely carving below is of Blodeuwedd and is by Simon O’Rourke. We exchanged emails and he graciously let me use this picture. Check out his website for some truly amazing sculpture of the Welsh gods and this site which features carvings from the Mabinogion