Coven of the Raven Litha Ritual 2008

By Administrator

For those who are interested…. This is the text of the ritual the Ravens preformed at the open gathering.

Thank you all for coming out and helping us celebrate today.
Hey its summer!  Being asked to prepare the ritual for today gave me some time earlier this week to reflect on what summer is to me.  If spring is a time for renewal and new life, then summer; is most certainly a time for those things to flourish and grow.  All of nature is about her business making things green and healthy for us to enjoy.  The most prominent feature of summer, the thing we all love about the season is the sun.

With its gift of heat and light it is no wonder that the sun has been worshiped as a deity by hundreds cultures with many different myths and just as many different names. It can be argued that the sun was our first deity to be worshiped.  Without his emergence in the east every morning we could not survive.

• The Sumerians called him Shamash.  Shamash was tortured to bring light to humanity.
• The Egyptians called him Aten during their short lived monotheistic period.
• The Persians called him Mithras. He was worshipped in Mithraea, artificially constructed caves that represented his birth-cave. The ceiling looked like the starry sky and at the sides benches where placed for the ritual meals.
• The Romans called him Sol. and pretty much stole all their imagery and believes from the Greeks.
• The Greeks called him Helios - Each morning at dawn he rises from the ocean in the east and rides in his chariot, pulled by four horses through the sky, to descend at night in the west. He was represented as a youth with a halo, standing in a chariot, occasionally with a billowing robe. In early Christian art, Christ is sometimes represented as Helios, so not only the Roman pagans but the Roman Christians were borrowing from the Greeks. In all fairness they also called him Apollo so maybe they had enough sun gods to spread around.

Those are just the highlights, when I started to research this I found a website with over 100 names on it of sun gods and goddesses.

For thousands of years our ancestors have gathered together on this day.  Their purpose was to acknowledge the summer solstice.  On this day the sun blesses us with his presence for the longest time of the year.  If that isn’t a reason to celebrate I’m not sure what is.  We are pagans we celebrate everything.

So let us dance and raise us up some energy.  We are going to do a spiral dance to the tune of “You are my sunshine”  When singing think about the energy you want to channel and how you will choose to use it.  My son asked me to buy some Sunny Delight a little while ago, when I asked him why we needed sunny D he said and I quote “Because it’s made from the power of the sun”  How can I deny that, we went to the store and picked some up the next day. It is a season for growth and prosperity, use the power of the sun as your personal tool to guide your own growth and prosperity.

Cricket leads
Spiral Dance

We all sing - You are my sunshine
You are my sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away

By -Governor Jimmy Davis of Louisiana

Bring the circle back to a close.
Now that we are all full of the power of the sun lets talk about another aspect of Litha.  Fire, yes fire has been the means of celebrating mid-summer by countless societies.  And why not, it has the gift of light and the gift of heat.  Kind of like a mini earthbound sun right at our disposal.  Usually huge fires are set in honor of this occasion.  Today we are going to concentrate on the mini sun idea.  We are handing out your own personal mini sun.  When you get one I would like you to look at the flame, reflect on the things you would like to flourish.  Take the light in your heart and make those things happen.  When your done please extinguish your sun (blow it out).  You can keep your sun, bury your sun, or add it to the larger fire of the pit.

end announcements - food - donations

Close circle.