Ritual of Celebration

On Monday the 10th the Neo-Pagan Alliance met for our last celebration for the school year. We have had a successful first semester as a club. I feel so blessed that I have met new peers that I can practic with and grow with. Just the other day Caitlin and I made mojo bags. An idea I first heard about on Mrs. B's blog. That is another post to come.
Anyway, when we decided to do the ritual we talked about it being a celebratory ritual, but it ended up being that plus a little of a end of the school year closure.
I was in charge of the invocation of the goddesss and Mark came up with the idea of drumming and setting intentions for the next school year. Also, he thought it would be a good idea to write down some negative things from the year we would like to be release from out life and then burn those. And to balance that out, we also had to write down as many (if not more) good things about the year. I agreed with Mark and thought that this definitely was a good idea. We decided that if you wanted to wirte down and burn the good things you could as well and if you also wanted to set an intention on the paper you could.
The best part for me was writing the invocation. I honestly had never written an invocation before and was really nervous about it. One of my major struggles on my path is believing that I know what to do. Being a Catholic was easy. I just had to recite the prayers, kneel when others did, and go take the wafer. With Wicca, there isn't any rules. Well, I mean restrictions on what and why I do something. Harm none and it seems like the goddess will guide you.
When starting the process of writing I needed a goddess that fit the ritual. So I went to my favorite website of The Order of Our Lady of Salt to find a goddess. And as I was looking through the goddesses I saw one that instantly caught my eye. Nortia jumped out at me as I was researching goddesses and had to read into her further, She is a an Etruscan triple goddess and is thought to be one of the main goddesses of the ancients. She had a temple at one of the huge cities at the time and people came from all around to visit her temple. At her temple followers hammered nails into the wooden door frame for her to fix their lives and bring good fortune in the coming year.
For our ritual, the year we were asking Nortia to bless and fix was the academic year ( didn't want to end the real year earlier than necessary as Madrone put it). The writing of the invocation was actually a really nice process. I learned a lot about me and about working with a goddess. I am very glad that when I called Madrone to tell her that I wanted her to look over it, she told me to not worry and that it would be fine. I knew she would say something like that, but I still had to call her.
The day of the ritual came and I was so excited to meet and get merry. We made it a potluck so we could ground, have some good conversation and then head into ritual. The day was nice and it was a little windy but we were waiting for the sun to go down and for the wind to calm so we could have a fire.
The food was delicious.
I made asparagus, broccoli , and potatos cooked in the oven with lovely spices. It ended up tasting great and Bobby made sweet potato curry and it was the biggest hit . The food led to great conversation just as I had hoped it would and then we went out to set up the ritual.
We started the ritual off by walking down towards the fire. Amber met us at the end of the stairs and she saged us before we walked into the circle.
After everyone was saged and down we called the directions, cast the cirlce and then led into my invocation. When I let Madrone read the invocation she looked at me and said wouldn't it be nice to hammer some nails into wood. I had wanted to do that but didn't have a hammer or any nails, so it was nice to have confirmation that my idea was good. We took three nails to be hammered into a piece of wood. Before I read the invocation I told the group a little about Nortia and then explained that as we hammered in the nails that we should think about what we would like patched up from the academic year. As I read the invocation I felt a sense of power. I felt like I had made a huge leap on my personal spiritual path.
After we did the invocation and everyone hammered the nails, we through the piece of wood into the fire.
Then we wrote on paper the bad things from the past school year on the paper and when participants were ready they through the paper into the fire. After the bad we put the good down and some of us set intention for the next year to come. After that we started drumming.
The drumming was great. Madrone brought out her drum Radiance and Amber and I had a session on her and it was greatttttt. Dancing, drumming, and getting lost in the music was AMAZING. We let the fire start to die down and we all gathered around Radiance. We started to sing songs around her and the sound of our voices blending together was magical. Madrone offered a song, I did, Mark sang an Icelandic song, and Bobby sang a Thai song. It was beautiful to hear the different languages and I learned that Caitlin has a wonderful voice.
Overall the night was truely a wonderful end to the academic year and a great start to the summer!!
More entries to come about the garden and mojo bags.
Below I will post the invocation and Goodbye for Nortia!
Blessed Be!



Invocation of Nortia
Nortia, Goddess of Fortune and Fate,
be with us on this special date.
As we close the chapter of our school year,
bring your message loud and clear.
Help to mend the breaks and tears,
And bring us good fortune this coming school year.
As in old we slam the nail,
Bring the Fortune without fail.
Nortia, Nortia, NORTIA.
Be with us now!
Hail and Welcome!

Farewell for Nortia
The nail is sealed,
Our year is healed.
Nortia, you brought your fortune,
We feel the wheels in motion.
Thank you for your guidance.
Go if you must, stay if you will.
Hail and Farewell!