Tomorrow's ritual

Unfortunately we've got a little behind on keeping up with the blog, although our information on Facebook has been kept up to date. Anyway, on Sunday July 30th...

Gŵyl Awst Harvest Festival

The days of the first harvest are upon us! Join us as we begin in the celebration of the bounty of the Earth. We will be honoring the Welsh Deity Manawydan fab Llŷr.

As with all our rituals, all kind folk are welcome to attend. There will be a time for the folk to make offerings to their own patrons, ancestors, favored kin, or any other such beings. Please bring offerings that are burnable/biodegradable!

Gather at 11am for a High Noon Ritual! We are trying to keep cool. Potluck to follow, please bring a dish to share that suits your dietary needs.

Lughnasadh / First Harvest

This year we are holding two Lughnasadh celebrations! The first, Friday evening July 29, will be at Jefferson Unitarian Church located at, 14350 West 32nd Ave., Golden, CO 80401. Gather at 6:30 pm, ritual begins at 7:00 pm. Join us as we celebrate and honor Artio, She-Bear Goddess, at Lughnasadh. Artio means “bear” and, like the bear, Artio wakes in the spring and is a goddess of The Harvest, Bears, Wild Animals, The Hunt, Fruits and Grains. 

Our second Lughnasadh, at our usual Overland Pond Park venue in Denver, will be Sunday, July 31st. Gather at 1 pm, ritual starts promptly at 2 pm. This will be an Irish-themed ritual, and the celebrant will be Rev. Debra "Rowen" Grove, our recently ordained Grove Priest. After the ritual, in addition to our usual potluck, there will be Lughnasadh Games!

Looking forward, looking back

A good if warm Lughnasadh. We were able to use the riverside platform again, Mother Platte having gone back to her usual level. After our ritual and feasting, we held a hobby horse race and a paper-scissors-rock tournament, the later complete with Celtic-style pre-bout insults. Proceedings were then brought to a halt by a heavy downpour, which was greeted with rapture and relief. Hail, Thor!

Our next public ritual will be Autumn Equinox, once again held in Overland Pond Park, hopefully on the riverside platform. Join us for one more outdoor day before we go into winter quarters!

Mid-July already!

How time flies! Only yesterday, it seems, we were celebrating Midsummer. Now we're looking forward to Lughnasadh. Join us on Sunday August 2nd to celebrate First Harvest at our usual location in Overland Pond Park on the banks of the Platte. After the ritual we are planning child-friendly Lughnasadh Games!

Feel free to bring any offerings you wish for any of the Gods, Ancestors, and Spirits. (Please limit your offerings to that which is burnable or biodegradable to reduce our impact on the natural environment which we hold ritual in!) Our celebrant on this occasion will be Angela Davenport.

We would love for everyone to bring a single piece of firewood from their home spaces to become part of our fire. After the rite we will have potluck fellowship in the park.! Please bring a dish to share that suits your own taste. We cannot have open glass in the park, so please bring beverages in cans, or expect to use a cup. Please also bring two non-perishable food items to be donated to a local food bank. We will gather starting at 11 am, and the ritual will start promptly at noon.

August Update #1

The last month has been busy for Chokecherry! After performing at the Elizabeth Celtic Festival as 80% of the Front Range Druid Players, we followed this up with several important milestones for our little protogrove ("protogrove", btw, is an ADF term for a small new local group). On August 1 our protogrove application was approved by the organizing committee, making us an official part of ADF, and allowing us to affiliate with Chokecherry through the ADF website. We now have five members who are also paid ADF members - an impressive start for a new group. Three of us, moreover, are already experienced celebrants and liturgists - an almost unheard of situation.

Following our approval, we held our second public High Day ritual at Overland Pond Park - First Harvest, or Lughnasadh. The deities honored this time were our bountiful Mother Earth and the Corn King, also known as John Barleycorn. Seventeen people attended and shared fellowship in ritual and afterwards on a relatively mild Denver summer day.

The last act of our busy month was another performance of "Blodeuwedd, or the Betrayal of Lleu" at the Colorado Scottish Festival, once again sponsored by the Colorado Welsh Society. Some of us will also be at the Long's Peak festival next month in Estes Park - stop by the CWS booth if you'd like to chat or get more information.