Last night was what is most likely my last ritual with Jan and John’s open circle for quite some time. I have, I think, grown out of my need for those rituals, but that doesn”t mean I don’t enjoy them occasionally. Yesterday celebrated the time of second harvest, with a ritual designed to tell the story of John Barleycorn.
Before last night I only knew this as an English folk song, but it seems that there’s also a rather long poem about it, based on an earlier myth. I have no idea which way round the song and the poem came. Still, ultimately they tell of three men who for some reason decided they were going to kill John Barleycorn, who represents the barley, but ended up producing beer instead.
I’m sure most people reading this would be quite happy with that outcome.
The circle was an unusual one — and also fairly crowded with a final count of twenty-five attendees. John took the wise move of casting and consecrating the circle before we all entered it. Once we entered, the quarters were called in an unusual order to reflect the themes of the ritual to come. While we would usually start with air in the east, then proceed to fire in the south, water in the west and earth in the north, last night the first quarter was west, then east, then south, then north. All were called by the same person, which is also somewhat unusual. Still, it appears to have worked well enough.
Some people had pre-determined parts in the ritual, playing the parts required in the story. The rest of us gathered holding a large brown sheet, which represented the field, as, in succession, the seed was sown (I still have grass seed stuck to my robes), the rain fell (from a water sprayer), the barley grew (everyone was given a few stalks of ready-to-harvest barley), the barley was cut (each stalk in turn touched with the scythe and allowed to fall), gathered with a pitchfork (each in turn is poked with a finger — happily, no real pitchforks), threshed (the infamous scourge makes its appearance, no it doesn’t actually hurt), malted (incense carried around the circle), ground (stone touched to each person’s head), and brewed.
The last involved dipping the ears from our barley stalks into the chalice, which was supposed to contain beer but evidently the preparations went awry somewhere so that all there was to put in it was mead. Nobody objected to this though; we all like mead.
We then did what’s known in some books as the ’spiral dance’ around the circle, raising energy. It doesn’t work particularly well in that group — to do that sort of thing effectively you need a group of people who are confident in what they’re doing and don’t need to be given instructions every minute or so. Still, without this sort of circle, people wouldn’t learn what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place, but I can’t help thinking that this would have been infinitely more effective done by a well-prepared coven.
It’s always fun though.
After we returned to our usual circle — alternating male and female around the edge of the sacred space as far as possible given the people attending — we remembered those who had passed on since the dawn of the year at Imbolc, and invoked their names. I was surprised how powerful that was, and how many people had lost one or more loved ones during the last six months.
Then we proceeded to the usual ritual of cakes and wine, except using the mead into which our barley had earlier been dipped. I believe I mentioned the format of this in an earlier post about a ritual, but I’ll mention it again as it’s quite simple.
On the altar throughout the ritual is a plate of cakes and a chalice of wine, mead, grape juice or something of that sort — usually red wine. When the appropriate time comes, the High Priest and High Priestess take the plate of cakes and bless them, then each offer the other a piece with the invocation ‘May you never hunger’. The plate is passed deosil (clockwise) around the circle from person to person. Each accepts a piece of cake from the previous person, and then offers a piece to the next person with the same invocation.
Once the plate is being passed around, the High Priest and High Priestess bless the wine (or mead, as it was last night, or whatever it actually is), then each offer the other a sip from the chalice with the invocation ‘May you never thirst’. This is then passed around the circle deosil in the same manner as the cakes.
Once everyone has eaten some cake and sipped from the chalice, the remaining food and drink are usually offered to the God and Goddess as a libation.
With the cakes and mead done, it was time to finish the ritual. It sounds short, but it wasn’t! This is the concise version, leaving out the mistakes, invocations, full narrative and numerous incidents of playful banter.
I must commend the skill of Rohan, who played the harp at the edge of the circle throughout the entire ritual and was fantastic. Well done.
Now I want to learn to play the harp.
