Sabbat Energies

I'm still running-off-at-the-mind over Beltane, dates for Pagan High Days, and ideas about 'what and who) rituals are for'. I'm going to try to limit this post to most of the 'dates for High Days' issue

Unintended Consequences of My Ritual Date Setting
There is at least one unintended consequence of using local conditions as the basis for neoPagan High Day rituals. It will affect the amount of energy/unity on this plane for that ritual.

[Oh, Gods, this might expand to a discussion of raising energy vs tapping energy, too. Let us all hope I don't run-off-at-the-mind THAT much!]

Ever spend a season to a year making sure that you are deep in meditation at the EXACT TIME that the moon goes full and dark? Some of my friends and I have, and we've uniformly been able to tell the exact time of the shift in energies. The same ort of enery is available for the solar quarters (with quirks thrown in due to northern vs southern hemisphere issues). Astrological and astronomical based energies are strong and time-specific. OTOH, even with their strength they still are shaped by where you are on the earth - thus the strong Equinox energy is going to manifest totally differently north and south of the equator.

I'm not convinced that the astrological or astronomical energies are available for the cross quarters at all - I think that those high days work on a different power-grid.

But doing things based on local conditions means that the group mind and intent is lower due to just plain lower numbers of humans doing ritual and lighting up 'intention beacons' in the Other Worlds. If EVERY NeoPagan did their Samhain ritual the same night, at the same time, that would be some kick-ass energy. But we neopagans are a contentuous and squabbling lot, and we do most group celebrations at a time and date that is most convenient for most members of our groups - and most folks in the southern hemisphere are going to celebrate Beltane at that time. So at the VERY least Samhain gets celebrated over a 24 hour period - and really, it gets celebrated by small groups over a two-week period. That two week period is WITHOUT most neopagans celebrating it based on local conditions!

The Other Worlds don't have linear time as we do, so I'm not sure of the level of impact on THAT side. Ideally we're tapping into energy from the ancestors for our High Days and that energy has left huge trails on the Other Sides, so once there maybe we just travel down the well-worn way.

That said, I'm in a Wiccan tradition where at least one of our Elders (Ivo Dominguez, Jr) times rituals very carefully in accordance to astrological movements. When the coven I am in was having it's formal creation ritual we had an 8 minute window of opportunity to start the ritual in, between ... I THINK it was the end of a Mercury Retro and ... something else. I'd have to look it all up in the journal for that year, and I'm not doing that right now. But since we were manifesting something on THIS plane that was new to ALL the plane, and we were only the 5th or 6th coven in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, we weren't treading a very well-worn path. In cases like that trying to tie more things together, from all sources, is a Good Thing.

Buzzing on....
Okay, I AM going to go on a bit on Beltane and this Southern/Northern hemisphere thing. IF we decide dates of things by the calendar, AND we stay earth-focused, then the fact that it's Samhain in one hemisphere when it's Beltane in the other is enough to convince me that Beltane is 'another new year' day, AND that the veils MUST be thin then, too. I just can't see spiritual veils being thin ONLY in ONE hemisphere.

So, would Beltane be a good time to scry and see what we've planted will bring? Dunno! What say ye?

Catch you later!


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