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

IV Creating Circles & Ceremonies
Foreword: Always Coming Home…
By LaSara WakeRobin Firefox
In the early days of my existence, the land, the seasons, and my family’s ties with them
held sway. We lived, as Oberon writes in his preface, “the semi-mythical lives of our ancient
Pagan tribal forebears.” Not all of it was easy, not all of it was idyllic. There is little romance
to the Earth sometimes, and days of back-breaking work just to get food on the table and
nights of not enough dry firewood have their cost.
The warmly-lighted moments that find purchase in the folds of memory are evenings
telling “The Stories” by candle and kerosene lamp. The first solid memory I have of Oberon
was from such an evening.
In those days, in the life that had been chosen by my parents, and by Oberon and Morning
Glory, Anodea Judith, and many other latter-day “pioneers,” a visit to another’s home meant a
two-hour hike and often a two-day stayover. Roads were not roads; they were logging tracks
that were impassable for sometimes months at a time. Many of us had cars that were not always
working, and even the best of what any of us could afford was not built for the terrain.
My family had the distinction of being at the end of one such not-a-road, with a waterway
that was somewhere between creek and river. When it was in its river phase, we were landlocked.
The only way in or out was overland hiking to the one bridge that crossed the river.
On one such pilgrimage that Oberon and Morning Glory made to our home, I recall all of
us—Morning Glory, Oberon, my parents, three siblings, and myself—sitting very cozily in the
Cook House, the central element of our homestead, around the beautiful, antique round table
that served as our dinning set. Though I was only four or five at the time, I still remember the fire
burning warmly in the cooking stove and the soft quality of the natural candle and kerosene
light. I remember the stories and songs, and Oberon washing the dishes after the large and
hearty supper my family had prepared for our visitors.
Visitors were a rare treat, and these visitors were a god/dess-send after weeks of isolation.
That was three decades ago. Through the years roads were improved, bridges installed,
dynasties rose and fell. Many of the people who had chosen this rustic life grew tired of it,
went back to work for “The Man,” put their kids in private or public schools, and moved
back toward the middle ground, the middle class, the middle road.
A few people held onto their dreams, even through all the transformations—the births
and deaths, the love affairs and heartbreaks, the break-ups and breakdowns.
As I grow older I recognize more and more that the path of the visionary is not a path
that is easy. Walking a path outside the circumscribed, circumspect “way things are” is not
something that is often greeted with fame and fortune, as much as we might want to look for
examples of the rare occasions where it is. There are a few strong souls who feel the call of
the wild, the call of the heart, the call of the Goddess, the call of God. There are even fewer
willing ones who hear the call and are willing to answer.
My forebears were not some mythical Pagan tribe; they were an actual tribe of spirit and
soul who made magick with the bare land, made dreams real, made vision an integrated part
of our cultural definition.
I am a product of tribe, of community. I was born to the land, fostered by forest spirits, faeries,
and phantoms. I was let to run free in the wild lands of my youth, where we were in relationship
with each element of it. My forebears eschewed the notion of domination, and found new
frameworks upon which to build a co-creative relationship with the land, with entities beyond the
physical, and in ideal moments of communion, with one another. Out on the edges of the dominator
culture, we were building a new way of being with the Earth.
Ritual helped us to create and honor these bonds. Learning to listen to the land, the plants,
each other, and with our hearts was what I was raised believing to be the natural way of things.
My memories are laced through with nights spent around the balefire under the moon and stars,