Individual Practice Pt. 3

 In our last post regarding personal practice, we examined creating a personal weekly practice via weekly rituals.  In this post, we would like to delve a little deeper and create a monthly personal practice.

This idea builds upon the last two posts we have made.  We are building upon the foundations of the previous posts because that allows what we have become used to to give us a platform for new growth.  In this practice you will be making formal offerings to the Sacred Three; the ancestors, the Sidhe (and land spirits), and the gods, only now, it will be all of them in one ceremony.  As before, we suggest coming up with a way to easily remember your once a month ritual.  Typically we look to following the moon cycle as a way to make sure that at least once a month we do this larger form of offering.  We tend to do ours on the full moon, but anything you can reasonably remember is perfect.

As for the format, we suggest building on what you are doing weekly.  It will make things a bit more formal because you will be not only opening the ritual itself, but give a formal greetings to each of the Sacred Three individually.  Typically, we do it thusly:
 

• Opening the rite: Since we do our rite at the full moon we have incorporated as a opening, the moon prayers from the Carmina Gadelica into this portion of the ritual.  We use three candles, one for each of the Sacred Three, lighting the candles is symbolic of lighting a sacred fire, it is a sign of welcoming the beings and a way to make offerings to them.
• Offering Section: In this section of the ritual, we make offerings to each of the Sacred Three in turn.  In our rite, we begin by making an offering to the ancestors, then moving to the Sidhe, and then finally the gods.  We usually make similar offerings to what we do weekly, but depending on personal gnosis this could change for this particular rite.
• Divination Section: We use this section as a way of hearing what the Sacred Three have to tell us.  Whether you utilize tarot, runes, or Ogham, we feel that having a conversation with those we honor is important.
• Blessing/Libation: in this section we dedicate as glass/horn/chalice of a beverage to let the Sacred Three bless us.  Sacred Reciprocity is the cornerstone of our practice and gift calls for gift.  We invite these beings to come into the vessel and bless the beverage we have within it.  Then, in communion with these beings we drink that blessing.
•  Ending: The closing of ritual should be a reverse of the opening, with a prayer of thanksgiving to the powers that you have offered to.  Extinguish you candles but let the incense fully burn, just remember to practice fire safety.

As in your weekly practice, this format can be tweaked to your own way of doing things.  It is important to make this sort of ritualized offering your own.  This is a personal interaction between you and the Sacred Three.  This ensures that your  monthly practice means something deeply to you.   

So there we go, using this and the previous posts, you have the tools needed to begin your own personal practice.  As has been stated several times in these posts, feel free to tweak any of these ideas to make them your own.  It is important to personalize these rites to give them power within your like.  

In some of the next posts, we will discuss how to involve your family members in these practices, as well as going to publicly Druid-led rites.

 

 ***Burning candles and incense can pose fire and health hazards. To stay safe, keep candles and burning incense away from flammable materials, never leave them unattended, and ensure they are placed on stable, heat-resistant surfaces.***

 

Individual Practice Pt. 2

 In our last post regarding personal practice, we examined creating a personal daily practice via daily prayers.  In this post, we would like to delve a little deeper and create a weekly personal practice.

To begin with, we would suggest seeing this as an extension of you daily work, just with a little added complexity.  In this practice you will be making formal offerings to the Sacred Three; the ancestors, the Sidhe (and land spirits), and the gods.  Each of them in turn with their own offering on a specific day of the week.  We suggest to give yourself a easy to remember schedule for these offering times.  We have utilized a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule to great effect, but any set schedule that you can keep to is what is important.  

As stated earlier, each of the days you chose will be dedicated to a specific group, ancestors one day, Sidhe (fae folk) another, and the gods another.  These days of offering will be times that you make a formal offering to those you venerate.  It is also a time to commune with those beings and reflect on the changes they have brought to your practice.  It can be highly personal time for you.

Next we suggest a format that you can remember easily.  It doesn't need to start out as elaborate and complicated.  In fact it can be quite simple.  The set up we have used to great effect is to have an offering bowl to receive libations an incense burner, and a candle as the tools and a memorized beginning, middle and ending for the ritual itself.  Below is a set of suggestions, feel free to change them to suit your own practice:

• Beginning:  The Opening of this can be as simple as saying a prayer while lighting your candle.  We usually open our ceremony with a prayer to the beings that we are venerating that day.  Lighting the candle is symbolic of lighting a sacred fire, it is a sign of welcoming the beings and a way to make offerings to them.
• Middle: This is the meat of the ritual.  This is where you make offerings to the powers that you are venerating in the ritual.  We usually make a libation offering to beings we worship, ale for our ancestors, dairy for the Sidhe, and whisky for the gods.  These are just suggestions, let your intuition lead you on what to offer in libation.  Over time, the beings you offer to will let you know their desires of libations. We also make an offering of incense to these beings as well.   As before, the choice of incense is up to your intuition and in time the beings offered to will let you know what the like.

• Ending: The closing of ritual should be a reverse of the opening, with a prayer of thanksgiving to the powers that you have offered to.  Extinguish you candle but let the incense fully burn, just remember to practice fire safety.

This format can be tweaked to your own way of doing things.  It is important to make this sort of ritualized offering your own.  This is a personal interaction between you and the powers.  This ensures that your weekly practice means something deeply to you.   

Lastly, there will be days you have that you just can't do your practice.  Something may come up, or you may be ill,  or you just can't summon the energy to do it.  We implore you, DO NOT WORRY when this happens.  It doesn't make you a terrible pagan.  It doesn't mean that you have to begin all over again.  You are human, you are fallible.  It is okay, the Sacred Three WILL UNDERSTAND.  Just do your best and center your practice around your life the best way that you can.  Remember, this is about right relationship and not about being the best.  Even the gods have off days.  Take it a step at a time and you will be doing great.

***Burning candles and incense can pose fire and health hazards. To stay safe, keep candles and burning incense away from flammable materials, never leave them unattended, and ensure they are placed on stable, heat-resistant surfaces.***

  

Vocational Druidry

 Recently a friend made a post on social media asking about what sort of title you would classify yourself in when it comes to being a magical practitioner.  A part of my response was that I view myself as a "vocational Druid" instead of a spiritual one.  While many of the people reading my post may have understood what I meant, I thought I would write this blog post to help educate those who may not know what I mean by it.

Let me begin by stating that ALL forms of Druidry are valid to those practicing them.  In fact, Sylvan Celtic Fellowship was originally envisioned to be a place where Druids from all walks could come together to learn from one another.  But it is particularly important to us that we state that, even though we as a group look at being a Druid a certain way, that does not mean we feel that other forms of Druidry are somehow wrong.

When looking at the history of the Druids from Celtic times to the modern day we can see marked differences in what it means to be a Druid in different eras.  Druid author, Isaac Bonewits broke it down into classifications of  "Paleo", "Meso", and "Neo" Druidisms...   The Paleo-druids being the original Druids that served the Celtic peoples as the scholarly elite of the tribes.  This class withing the social structure contained the knowledge and genealogies of the peoples who spoke the Celtic languages.  

The Meso-druids were those of the Celtic Romantic Revival period.  They patterned Druidry after romantic notions of the time, such as sun-worship.  Much of the Druidry that comes from this period was also crafted in the image of the Barddas by Iolo Morganwg, a known forger.  Much of this style of Druidry still exists in the modern world and is based in the idea of the Druids being a magical sect, similar to witches (and wizards) in popular imagination of modern society.  They hold to the Eight-spoked wheel of the year and are usually an initiatory tradition.

Then there are the Neo-druids, whose origins date back to the 1960s founding of the RDNA at Carlton college.  These organizations are more scholarship based, and hold to having religious ceremonies for their Druid congregants for the wheel of the year.  They may or may not be initiatory based.  Many of these organizations are based here in the United States.

 

Sylvan Celtic Fellowship tends to view Druids as a vocation instead of a spiritual or magical order.  We definitely feel that training and initiation are important to becoming a Druid, but to us, it  is not a spirituality or magical tradition on its own.  Like the Paleo-druids of old, we work for the people.  We carry the keys to our traditions, spiritual, magical, and societal.  We teach, we hold coming of age ceremonies, we actualize the wheel of the year, and we serve our people in the capacities of counselors.  So to us, we view being a Druid, as our jobs to the people we serve and our community.  We serve the people, the land, and the gods.

Domhnall Irvine 
Chancellor SCF

Individual Practice pt. 1

 We have examined the idea of modern tribalism before in this blog.  But groups are made up of individuals and it is the individuals that we would like to address in this blog.

Often times, we see in books and in real world organizations, the push for group practice.  Whether this comes from the Witchcraft coven idea or other sources, it isn't what we know of how people always function when it comes to spirituality.  Many times true spiritual interaction is private to the person.  The most moving moments in a person's spiritual life often happen when they are alone.  This is not to say that group practice is in any way wrong, but more on that later.

So, how does the person new to Celtic polytheism start to cultivate their own individual personal practice?  Well we look to the past and the here and now.  We look to surviving practices among the living Celtic cultures and we seek to adapt them in a non-colonizing way.  Personally, I would begin by choosing one of the living cultures that resonates with you and look to their ways.  Get to know the culture in a personal way, learn the language, meet the people and make connections to them.  Show respect for their living culture and ways.  For me, it was looking to my Gaelic roots and immersing myself in Scottish and Irish history and folklore.

To begin to build one's practice it is easy to find material in the Carmina Gadelica.  The book contains prayers for almost any and every occasion in daily life.  The material in the book is mostly Christianized but the prayers come from much older and more pagan traditions.  Also modern pagan authors have attempted to paganize the prayers from the book.  Morgan Daimler's "By Land, Sea, and Sky" is a great resource for this.  I began building my personal practice around a series of daily prayers from the Carmina Gadelica.  I chose to do prayers at specific times of day and at meals.  I begin my day with a prayer upon waking, and a hearth enlivening prayer, then at midday, I do a prayer to the Sun, in the evening, I make a prayer to the Moon, and before bed, I do a smooring prayer for my hearth, and a shielding prayer before sleep.  I have been doing these long enough now that I have them memorized for the most part.  These daily actions help me feel connected to my deities, ancestors, and the spirit beings around me.

So, for me, I think beginning small and making these little prayers daily is your best place to start.  Once you get going, it is really easy to maintain.  You don't need any tools or special space or even to make offerings when you do this.  Just go about your day and take a few seconds to say these prayers, whether aloud or to yourself.  You can even do them while at work at your job.  I started with writing them down on my phone and reading them, aloud when I could, but silently when I had to.  Over time, the prayers become memorized and you can say them without having to read along.  Once memorized, you can really make a deep connection emotionally to the beings you honor.  

This is part one of a four part series on Individual Practice for a Celtic Polytheist.  Many of the concepts here are from a Gaelic point of view, but please understand that if you follow a Welsh, Breton, or Gaulish path, the idea is still sound.  We reccommend translating the prayer of the Carmina Gadelica into these other languages OR construct your OWN prayers in those languages.  We will touch on other aspects of individual practice in other installments.

Resources:

- "Celtic Flame" by Aedh Rua, iUniverse Books 2008.  This book includes practical information on building a personal practice for the individual.  The author uses prayers from the Carmina Gadelica in this work to great effect.

- "By Land, Sea, and Sky" by Morgan Daimler 2011.  A fantastic resource for any Celtic pagan/polytheist out there.  Morgan is well versed in Irish folklore and has done their research on the Carmina Gadelica.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

- "An Introduction to Gaelic Polytheism" by Marissa Hegarty 2022.  A very in-depth and well annotated book on the subject.  The author is well versed in their field and it shows.  Marissa uses her knowledge to help the beginner craft their own walk within Gaelic polytheism, including building a daily practice with prayers from the Carmina Gadelica.

-  Gaol Naofa  This website is a great resource for Gaelic polytheism and it has sections for daily prayers taken from the Carmina Gadelica.

We're back!

 It has been a LONG while since we last made a post here.  Life has carried the members of SCF to different places and has caused our physical presence to be diminished.  However, we intend to keep an online presence alive for as long as possible.  That includes trying to revive this blog.  While we may not always have time to make a post in a regular manner, we WILL do out best to not go YEARS this time.