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

XII Creating Circles & Ceremonies
But this material was so important, and the contributions
so wonderful, that I felt it worthwhile to
go to this much trouble just to make it available.
Unfortunately, as we found ourselves having to move
several times, the effort of copying and binding each
edition soon became too overwhelming to keep up,
and I had to let it lapse after running off maybe a
couple hundred copies. Regardless, materials were
collected for two more volumes. Book II was to
comprise a collection of actual rituals for Esbats,
Rites of Passage, Nest meetings, magickal workings,
blessings, etc., and Book III was to cover the
Wheel of the Year. However, conflicts within the
Church at that time precluded further publication,
and the entire project was shelved.
But each copy of HOME Cooking has been a
treasure to those who managed to get them, and I
still get requests from those who haven’t. So at the
International New Age Trade Show (INATS) in June of 2005, I showed my dog-eared copy
of HOME Cooking Book I to my Publishers at New Page Books. With the phenomenal
success of my first book, Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard (2004), and a second Companion
volume on the way, they immediately snapped up the proposal for publishing the entire
three-volume set of HOME Cooking materials as a single book, to be re-titled: Creating
Circles & Ceremonies: Rituals for All Seasons & Reasons.
So as soon as Companion for the Apprentice Wizard was off to the printer, I fired off an
e-mail to all the folks who had contributed to the original HOME Cooking, explaining the
new project, and asking their permission to include their materials. That was about 100
people. However, some of those who received my post thought it would be helpful to forward
it on to various lists of Pagan writers, and soon we were deluged with wonderful
submissions from some of the most creative minds of the magickal community! All of us felt
honored to have some our own inspired poetry, spells, invocations, chants, workings, and
rituals, etc., become a permanent part of the liturgy of the fastest-growing religious movement
in the English-speaking world. This is like getting your songs into the hymnal of your
church! And after all, that’s why we create such works in the first place…so that others will
use them to enhance our collective magick in healing and awakening Gaia.
Hence this present compilation, while including most of the original HOME Cooking
materials, has expanded to include significant contributions from throughout the worldwide
Neo-Pagan community—and beyond, as you will find here ritual resources from other ceremonial
traditions as well. Some of these pieces entered our rituals and collections anonymously;
we decided to include some that have been important parts of our liturgy, even if we
couldn’t determine where they came from. Every effort has been made to locate and contact
authors and copyright holders, but for any omissions that can be properly attributed, we
would appreciate being informed for corrections and credits in future printings.
In this new manifestation, we go beyond the original premise of focusing just on decades
of accumulated rituals developed in the Church of All Worlds, to produce a general
“kit” with mix-’n’-match components for creating rituals and ceremonies for every conceivable
purpose. We intend this book to be both a tribute to our amazing magickal community,
and a quintessential resource for any ritualist, of any magickal Tradition or Path, be they
Pagans, New Agers, Unitarians, Solitaries, Wiccans, Gaians, and other spiritual folk.
We hope you will find it a treasure trove to enrich your ceremonies, and your life!
And if you want to learn more about CAW and Annwfn, go to: www.CAW.org.