Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

Tonight, EHQ is hosting the Mabon ritual for Wild Hare Protogrove. This is a public ritual, so if you are local and have an interest in ADF-style ritual, you're welcome to attend.

Autumn Equinox is a sort of odd holiday for me, particularly in this context, because there really isn't a lot of historical background for things that were directly related to the holiday. That's fine when I'm working on my own or with Gaia Community, because if there's something that I don't have any trouble doing, it's making things up, but Wild Hare is a little different. So, in this ritual, we're sort of celebrating the lack of context, as well as working the other end of some work we've done earlier in the year.

See, ADF works within an Indo-European cosmology, and makes a lot of offerings and agreements with various gods, spirits, ancestors and whatnot. All of which is good times. In the Spring, we did a ritual that was about connecting with Proto-Indo-European powers, which was also good times. So now, in the Fall, we're working the other end of the timeline. See, some of us have noticed that we don't exactly live in Europe anymore, and we've got generations of ancestors who didn't, either, but we sort of think that they might have brought some IE religious concepts over on the boats with them. Maybe. So in tonight's ritual, we're making a connection with the gods they built or contacted or found when they got here. We hope that this, too will be good times.

If this sounds fun/interesting/useful to you, we hope you'll join us. EHQ, 7 p.m. gathering, 7:30 ritual. ADF ritual style includes a place for people to make offerings to just about anybody, so if you have a deity or power you'd like to make an offering to, please bring your offering with you. Offerings do not have to be 'things'. :)

Also this weekend, I:
- Went to Friday Night Supper Club at Tropical Palms, which had excellent food and wretchedly terrible service. The company was good, though.
- Got in a decent-sized shipment of new jewelry-making stuff, which only increases my need to do a show soon.
- Did the co-created ritual thing at Gaia Community. These are rituals built by the people in attendance, and are often awful. In this one, we did a living tarot spread, which was nifty, and on the whole, it was not such a bad ritual.
- Spent a lot of time playing the Neverwinter Nights expansions. I finished the original game shortly after buying it the first time, but hadn't played these yet. One day I am hoping to transition to the playing of relatively newer video games, but I spend so little time gaming that I've got two or three really old ones to finish before I can do that.
- Went with triadruid and saffronhare to clean up Crestview Park for Wild Hare's community service day. We picked up a lot of trash, which was expected, and got a weird benediction including Kurt Vonnegut quotes and the phrase "you guys are the white blood cells of the planet" from a random homeless guy in the park, which was not so much expected. We took this as a good omen.
- Took agrnmn's computer apart to put in some cannibalized parts, only to relearn that parts cannibalized from Dells and other prebuilt systems do not necessarily fit into standard machines. Bastards.
- Got technology envy. agrnmn is getting a new laptop. I want one. Or at least I want an upgrade to my desktop. (I actually don't know what I would do with a laptop if I had one. I'm just being magpie-like.)

Items accomplished over the weekend:
* Booked room for Texas trip this weekend.
* Made 8-9 new jewelry pieces on Saturday, between "waiting for triadruid to get home and kittenpants to get up from napping" time, "craft and movie" time at capriciouslass' place, and "waiting for agrnmn to get back from picking up saffronhare at the airport" time. I like most of these pieces, which probably means they'll never sell, but hey. Every once in a while, I should get to make pieces I like.
* Managed Wild Hare's Beltane rite on Friday.
* Washed laundry.

... Yeah, that's about it. But this weekend, we get to go to Dallas, which is pretty exciting because it's not Kansas City, and teach EiR, which is pretty exciting because EiR is fun, and do the Sunday service at PVUUC, which is pretty exciting because that means that kittenpants and I will have then shared a pulpit with Randy Milholland, of Something Positive fame. (They have also had a lot of other folks come in to do their service, but he strikes me as the least likely, so therefore will represent the genre.)

We will try to focus on that, and not think about the fact that before we can road-trip, I have to do a job fair on Thursday. Blech.

I just got done with 5 or so hours of making itty bitty tiny hairbrushes and mirrors, and then making itty bitty tiny clay roses to go on them. For this, I get paid. Unreal.

In other news, the Parade of Beltane continues. Tonight triadruid and I lead the WH Beltane, and then, Sunday, we finish off the extravaganza with Gaia Community's Beltane. There are advantages to knowing a lot of pagans and being involved in a lot of groups, but also, there are so many Sabbats to manage. And, really, Autumn Equinox, you can skip some, but Beltane? By the gods, no, you will go to every available Beltane. Why? Because, as rio_luna would have it, Beltane is the dumb blonde of the Sabbats, but she's also the best dancer, and the one most likely to go home with you afterwards.

In other other news, people who say things to me like "I know very little about you -- tell me something about yourself that I don't know" deserve what they get. Particularly if they follow it up with "Tell me something unusual, not run-of-the-mill." I mean, really. This is your warning shot.

Apparently, saffronhare will be out of town on the date set for the Wild Hare Beltane. That means that I'm doing the priesty bits all by my onesies. And that means you can more or less loook forward to it being all Welsh and whatnot. You know why? Because I want to get to say "Agorer y pyrth!", that's why. "Wele'r tân cysygredig" is fun, too.

Of course, there's always the possibility that someone will volunteer to help lead the rite. That would reduce the chance of Welsh by 50%, according to my calculations. (motivate, motivate, motivate)
:)

I had William Gibson dreams last night. Man, I hate that guy. Mostly I hate him for building such interesting cities, and making such dull things happen in them. I hate him for misusing the aesthetic. And I hate him for Johnny Mnemonic. (Rollins was cool in the movie, though. Gibson can eff up a lot of things, but nobody can make Rollins look bad.) But anyway.

Somehow, it was election day today. In my brain, elections happen in April. I'm a little confused as to when I am. I voted anyway. If it should turn out that these were not real elections, and the real elections are the first Tuesday in April, like always, I suppose I'll vote again next week.

Druid book club was lightly attended last night (Peter B. Ellis' "The Druids"), but still a wretched amount of fun. (At one point, saffronhare said, "You know, I read this book, but I was not as critical as you guys. It's good to be in a room with people who are smarter than me." agrnmn told her we weren't smarter, we were just bigger dicks. Saff concurred, or was at least willing to allow that we were more likely to wave our dicks around.) Any book club meeting in which a fair amount of time is spent parodying the author is a good use of my time, I think. Also, I learned where Transalpine Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul were. Note to authors: if you are going to talk about countries that do not currently exist, it is okay to include a map. Nobody will confuse you with Tolkien. And we uneducated bastards will thank you for it. KTHXBYE.

( The Good )

( The Surprising )

( The Not So Much With The Good )

( The Exciting (but not in the happy fun way) )

So, how was your weekend?

It's a rich and varied pageant out there, folks. I know this because I consistently find myself sitting down to write an entry and trying to choose one or two out of the eleventy-billion things that I've been involved in or thinking about lately, so that there can be a nice, tight focused entry that is reasonably true, entertaining, and perhaps even point-inclusive. It's a standard I try for, but don't always (often?) meet.

Sometimes, the best I can do is a list of highlight moments. Today is one of those days.
( How I spent my <s>summer vacation</s> weekend: )

I spent some quality time on the ADF website last night, doing some work on tonight's Wild Hare Samhain ritual (I am not a member, but triadruid is, and was kind enough to let me use his login to poke about), and discovered that they've got audio files of a very musical-sounding fellow speaking useful ritual words in Welsh. So I learned some of them, what fun! (No, really. Seriously. Welsh = fun sounds in my mouth.)

So I was thinking to myself that I should learn to speak Welsh. I mean, it's exactly the sort of skill that I can get excited about having: It'd be fun to practice, I could pretend that it's religiously motivated, and it would be almost completely useless in day to day existence. What could be better than that?

Wild Hare's Lammas went off within reasonable expectations of well last night. I only flubbed one word (which was a pretty important word, but still, only one word), and the omens were pretty good. I didn't make my oath from Beltane and had to give up another pair of earrings, which makes me completely out of silver earrings, and these were my favorite. Oh well, that will teach me to let my mouth write checks my ass can't cash, I suppose. The deities invoked were all of the Norse persuasion, which was exciting, as I rarely deal with those powers, but apparently some of the ones I was calling showed up despite the fact that they don't owe me anything. I suppose that means now I owe them something. Anyway, nice rain that wasn't at all in the forecast occurred, and we got a lovely rainbow. Quoth kittenpants, "Well, you called Thor and Heimdall. What did you expect? I mean, Heimdall's only really got two signs, and the rainbow's the good one." So that's all right.

Then, we proceded to eat seventeen tons of bread with honey butter and pub cheese. If you ever get a chance to try kittenpants' braided herb bread, you should count yourself a lucky mortal indeed.

But most importantly, agrnmn and druidevo picked me up by the ankles and hung me for a minute, which was enough to straighten out my hips. I feel much better today, so massive thank you to those guys. It's good to have tall friends. Not only can they pick you up and dangle you, they also can see what's on the top shelf!

And then, because 8elements tagged me, ( Five things that make me feel enthusiastic about life: )