Full Moon (Long Nights Moon) – some thoughts on ritual work.

It feels like Snow Moon came early. We had heavy snow on the 20th and it’s kept up, off and on, all week. In spite of that, it doesn’t technically begin for another two weeks. Roughly.
 
I spent this morning writing porn – which turned out to be “Leather Woo” in nature – and, thus, I’ve wound up thinking about full moon rituals and what makes them matter.
 
So what makes them matter? I don’t think it’s mearly a way of marking time – although that’s part of it. Rituals – even tiny rituals – are a way of setting time aside to recognize the holy, to think about something that isn’t basic day-to-day getting by (the endless round of to-do lists) but that goes deeper, or more slowly, than the usual frenetic pace of life.
 
Maybe that’s why I avoid them. I used to do regular yoga – and then I stopped. For a slew of good reasons, sure, but I didn’t pick it up again when I was able to. Am I afraid of quieting my “what next, what next, what next” distracted mind? (Yeah, probably). I think ritual – or my tendency to slack off around ritual – is similar in this way.
 
I feel silly and awkward doing ritual.
I know that’s practically heresy (or something) to say it on a Pagan blog, but I do. I prefer to do it when I’m on my own because, as Mama Fortuna says, you look really, really stupid doing magic. And/or ritual. Seriously. When it comes to talking to my gods? Not a problem. I do that all the time. But when it comes to doing offerings, spells, or other ritual work… I don’t actually want anyone to see me doing it.
Which is awkward, at the best of times.
But I still need to do it. To light up the altars (which reminds me, I really, REALLY, need to make more beeswax candles – I figure I go through close to 700 beeswax tealights every year. That’s slightly more than 56 dozen so…), to insence the house, to greet my gods and my ancestors in ways that are at least slightly more than in-passing.
 
Maybe that means lighting incense on a different altar every week. Or making sure my boiling water offerings happen with some small degree of regularity and, ideally, frequency.
 
Enough to take the time, slow the mind, pay attention to the People (and the people) who really matter. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.