Creating Circles and Ceremonies: Rituals for All ... - reading...

116 Creating Circles & Ceremonies
changed. 3,000 pilgrims have gone forth as prophets, and new tales will be told, new songs
sung, new visions painted, danced, and played. We are coming to a new beginning, and we
have been sanctified together. Great beginnings require great endings of what has been before,
and the Wheel is turning. This eclipse signaled to many of us the closing of the Age of
Pisces (in which sign it occurred), but there must yet be an interval of purification and healing
of the Earth before the book opens again on the Age of Aquarius.
When Shadow mates with Sun.
Be there. You know where.
Addendum: Twenty years later, on August 11, 1999, I led a similar ritual for the total eclipse
of the sun in the ancient stone circle of Boskawen-un in Cornwall, England. Thus was this 20year
ritual cycle completed. Of the 3,000 people who had stood together in Stonehenge II in 1979,
only one other woman also showed up at the concluding rite in 1999.
We suffused the lunar shadow with these intentions to carry across the face of the Earth:
1. We are all one—all children of the same Mother (Gaia), flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood;
2. We want an end to human conflict (especially religious wars!);
3. We want healing and restoration of the Earth;
4. We want a return to the reverence of nature, the seasonal cycles, and the ancient ways,
including the preservation and restoration of sacred sites, temples, stone circles, and groves;
5. We want an awakening of the planetary consciousness of Gaia;
6. We desire the ushering in of a new millennium—the Aquarian Age, with all that signifies.
The next total solar eclipses to pass across the United States will be on August 21, 2017,
and April 8, 2024. Don’t miss them! (For dates and maps of solar eclipses through history, see
the NASA Eclipse home page: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html.)
T he Stonehenge Eclipse Ceremony
(Unless otherwise indicated, all poetry and songs were written by the people who
performed them in this ceremony.)
Procession from the east, Otter carrying
stang with medicine skull (eclipse painted on
in black on red), Selene carrying Venus of
Willendorf replica, Cyndie carrying chalice,
Danaan carrying broadsword, leading a line
of Pagans into the henge. All sing:
We come, we come, with the rising of the sun,
To the East of East where morning lies.
And we bring the sun with us
On the wings of the wind,
Oh rise, my spirit, rise.
(—Frodo Okulam)
The Elements are invoked. A reading from
the Egyptian Book of Apep is recited. Lila
invokes the Moon Goddess:
O moon, O lovely one of a thousand names,
As you approach the moment of meeting
We watch, and wait, and honor you.
As you approach your moment of fullness,
May we realize, male and female,
The power of you,
And the power of the feminine within us.
May your blessing be upon all of us.
Selene Kumin appears as Moon Goddess in
long grey velvet cape, dances while all sing:
She is bountiful, She is beautiful,
She loves her children,
Her daughters and sons.
She won’t forget us,
She speaks within us,
Open your heart, let her come.
(—Susan Arrow)
Tom Williams invokes the Sun God:
We’ve come to the edge of morning,
Cold and lonely, and we wait.
We call the Sun – Oh light of night!
We call the Sun God, bright.
Your face is piercing brightness
And your heart the soul of flame.
We call you Ra and Bellenos,