So, I'm a bit late posting this, but there is good reason. I cannot share that reason right now, but I assure you, it was important.

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Blessed Hestia, Lady of the hearth, enter this home, you are welcome here.

So began an intense time of meditation, dancing, and singing that culminated in my sense of love for the Gods being once more heightened beyond my expectations. It begins with music. The subtle and beautiful voice of Deva Premal which washes over you like an ocean wave but leaves you unhurt yet feeling all together moved.

It is followed by a closing of the eyes, a subtle movement of the hands, and the smell of incense. It is at these moments, when you are starting to flow with the music, your heartbeat, and the wild undulations of your living mind. You try to focus it all, but then you realize that this is not the moment to do that. This is the time to let go, to allow your nature, your wildness, your very animal nature full reign over you.

Emotions rise and settle down with wild abandon. Names, faces, memories of pain and joy all come to the fore and then subside once more, and then, as if from nowhere, you feel them.

You can't be sure, these are Gods, after all, and they are everywhere, but they are also here, with you. They have not come, they were always here, but you, YOU have moved to them. You have opened yourself up to them and have awakened yourself to their power, and it is frightening.

Here now is the time to take control. Here now, when you can feel them, is the time to settle your heart, your mind, your soul so that you can appreciate them. So you can make yourself acceptable to them you must not be some wild beast, but present to them your human face.

You must seek him out, the one you wish to honor, worship, love, and with that, I felt him.

He radiates all he is. It is a powerful feeling, knowing his very divinity flows from hi like light does from the sun, but you also know that it is working both ways. Your humanity radiates from you, and the all seeing god of the sun sees you, all of you, and there is no hiding from him.

I thank him, and offer my blessing to him who is now growing in power in the North, and who will bring forth the light and heat that will usher in the Springtime.

Kala 'Iliouyenna.

In the general world today is Christmas. People are running around with smiles on their faces and when I go to work I will be faced with cheapskates who will leave me a bunch of pamphlets about Jesus instead of a tip.

So my resolution for the day is to smile and try to come up with a really nice way of saying, "What, didn't Jesus teach generosity?"

But this morning I woke to a feeling of, well, nothingness. I felt neither good nor bad, neither here nor there. And so when I lit the altar candles and made my morning offerings to the Gods and, in honor of Heliogenna, lit three pieces of floral incense for Helios in my East window to bring in the sunrise, I asked for his guidance, his light, and his warmth.

My theme for this penultimate day of Heliogenna will have to be gratitude, and hope that Helios guides me well and that I am able to hear his guidance.

The fires are burning again. My home is once again filled with the delightful smells of incense, and the altar is once again filled with the spirit of the Gods. To the East is burning his offering, Helios Lord of the rising Sun, her offering, Eos of the rosy fingers, and her offering, Selene of the setting full moon.

The air is cold, and I stand there nude before them as I seek to feel them all around me. I can feel it, like the energy of a new birth or the excitement of a burgeoning love, it gives me strength and fills me with a sense of pride and completion.

I have purchased a few gifts, a capitulation to our cultural tradition of gift exchange at this time of year, and I have chosen them carefully to say thank you to those who have made my life worth living this year.

A fellow traveller wrote to tell me and others about her particular celebration. I encourage anyone who has also followed along with us to tell me about it. I'm sure we would love to read about it.

Thanks Cara!
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I detailed the Heliogenna festival that I celebrated during the Solstice. I held a 3 day celebration. My write up isn't that coherent or stunning and I don't write out all of the rituals, etc. But it is what I did and I can say that I will be doing this every year! What a wonderful festival, full of meaning. I'm posting it on here (mostly) because I was able to get a small group together for this celebration and also because I was able to add to my Helios altar.

Day 1 - Sunset
http://snowcalla.livejournal.com/239542.html

Day 2- Night...the Plan
http://snowcalla.livejournal.com/239854.html

Day 2 - Night - What actually happened.
http://snowcalla.livejournal.com/240350.html

Day 3 - Sunrise
http://snowcalla.livejournal.com/240871.html

The flow of this festival - with the time of year - was dead on. Loved it! I made some changes to it, but most of it has been stolen right from Hector. Next year I would do it as a 2 day festival...with Sunset being celebrated on the day before the Solstice, Night during the actual night, and Sunrise the next morning. They are called that, why not celebrate them during their name-sakes? Also...I thought Hekate and Hermes fit in well during Night since that is the Solstice and a time of transition, not really an end. And I honored the Protogonoi during the sunrise as that is about beginnings, hope and rebirth - it seemed to make more sense to me to honor them then.

Anyway...hope you don't mind me sharing this.

Blessed Lord and Lady of the Underworld, hear me as I pray.
Allow me the strength to face you.
I come with no song to woo you to my ways.
I come with no offerings to convince you to aid me.
I come with no desires in need of your addressing.

I come instead with a humble heart.
I come instead with a will to survive.
I come instead with a desire to know you.

Blessed Lord and Lady of the darkness, hear me as I pray.
Allow me the will to not fear you.
I come with no fruit to appease you.
I come with no drink to quench your thirst.
I come with no blood to spill for you.

I come instead with a steely resolve.
I come instead with curiosity.
I come instead with dreams of a future I fear.

Blessed Lord and Lady of the Dead, hear me as I pray.
Allow me the strength to love as you love.
I come not to plead for it.
I come not to bargain for it.
I come not to persuade you of it.

I come instead to inform you.
I come instead to delay you.
I come instead to say that I will live.

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Aside from this prayer, which I write in their honor, I am spending today, from sunrise to sunset, in silence. I will hear the words around me. I will learn and be pleased by them. But I shall not speak or fight against what I hear and see around me this day. I will et it all come to me and see in it all the will of the Gods as I seek to awake tomorrow for Sunrise with a new heart, a new resolve, and a new will for the coming year.

Once again, the altars are cold, the solstice has come, and the the world of the dead, if there be such a world, is much like our own at this time. If there is any light, it is little, and in the gloom there is grey and black and a million shades of grey.

So, I have decided to make this my "Grey Day."

What does this mean?

Well, first, I have decided to meditate on a couple of concepts. What ifs, if you will. What if I had not found the Gods? What if I feared the Gods rather than felt them to be our guardians, or the guardians of life? Etc.

Now, I have also decided to examine my ambivalence, and my stubbornness about my ambivalence. It is something that would probably bore you to death, ambivalence can do that, so I won't bore you with the details, but I can give you n idea of what I mean. How many people in your world do you feel ambivalent about? How do those very people affect the way you see others and the world around you? Why do you feel ambivalent about them? What is it about me that causes me to so often be ambivalent or, sometimes, cold about the world around me? Am I a spectator or a participant in my own life?

Why did I come to this conclusion as a thing to focus on today? Easy, Yesterday I tried to focus my thoughts on the underworld Gods, the Chthonic, and the transitory. Today I will try to focus my thoughts on the transitory Gods, Gods like Hekate and Hermes. While in "Night" I will not be lighting any candles or burning any incense, so my worship of these beings will have to come in the form of meditation rather than through my normal Praxis, but in meditating on their transitory natures, I hope to also come to understand my own transitory nature. I hope to come to understand my own place on the grey spectrum between life and death.

My altars lie cold today. There is no incense burning, no candles have been lit, and my sunrise prayers are not going to happen during "Night". The Gods of the Earth and the Underworld are on my mind today, and as usual when contemplating such things, death, destruction, and chaos come to mind.

I am buying a a small container of milk today, and at sunset tonight out by the river, I will pour it into the earth as an offering to Mother Gaea, dark Persephone, and Hades, Lord of Riches. Powers the bridge the gap, such as Hermes and Hekate I leave for tomorrow, when the Solstice arrives and that pivotal point is reached when Autumn becomes Winter and, though Winter seems bleakly ahead of us, the hope of a longer day and warmer times to come come easily to mind.

The altar candle is lit, the smoke of offering rises into the air, and in the eastern window as the sun rises Lord Helios is called upon.

Today, on the third day of Heliogenna I am focusing on what I can do and what I have done to make the world a little better, to help a friend, or to take stock in how I may have failed in these things in the last year.

Turning it all inside out, I am going to focus my attentions on projecting from within that which I want the world to be. From kindness and sharing to strength.

In turn I will take some time today to do an invocation of all the Gods I worship and call upon them to give me the strength to not get lost in selfishness.

Come Zeus!
Come Hera!

Lord and Lady of Olympus.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Apollo!
Come Athena!

Lord and Lady of Civilization.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Poseidon!
Come Demeter!

Lord and Lady of Plenty.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Hermes!
Come Aphrodite!

Lord and Lady of Beauty.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Hephaestos!
Come Hestia!

Lord and Lady of Fire.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Ares!
Come Artemis!

Lord and Lady of Instinct.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Helios!
Come Selene!

Lord and Lady of Celestial Light.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Hades!
Come Persephone!

Lord and Lady of Death.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

Come Dionysos!
Come Hekate!


Lord and Lady of Ecstasies.
Enter my home, my heart, my life!
You are welcome here.

So the night is here, the sun has gone, and during my work day I was taken over by a feeling that is rather rare for me, positivity. I was all over the place. Happy, welcoming, and full of energy. It's amazing what a good start to the day can do. When the lighting of the incense for Helios and the Hyperionides with an eye toward the good things in life is the start, what can go wrong?

I am writing down some stuff on a piece of easy to burn tissue paper and offering up come morning. Among the things I have to be grateful for are:

Family: It is hard to explain to you what my family is like. They nearly drove me insane, and by nearly I mean I was well on my way to the loony bin when I got away from them, but underneath all the craziness there is a group of people with hearts of gold who will do almost anything for me should I but ask it.

Friends: I am not the friendliest person in the world, but when I make a friend I am loyal and generous and kind. I like to hold on to friends for a long time, and so it is that I have to give thanks. But most of all I have to give thanks for the return of one of my best friends in the entire cosmos. She has recently returned to town to stay, and it has made me very happy to reconnect with her again. Few people know me like she does, and it makes me happy to know that at least one person in the world does.

Work: Oh, gods, I so hate my job sometimes. The idiocy of management, the constant turmoil of it, the greed and pessimism that is a constant of this kind of work, it could make Gandhi declare himself a hater. The Buddha himself could not take it. But in the end, I havenever had a job quite like this. The people I work with are, in general, quite nice to be around. There is a feeling that if we cannot rely on the management, we can rely on each other, and that is a feeling worth holding on to.

Home: I live rather modestly. But I really like my home. Everyone who enters it says they feel warm here, at home, welcome. I have never quite gotten that, since I am kinda cold and ornery, but the presence of Hestia is there and it makes for a feeling that everyone can feel.

Love: OK, I am not the best at love. I am the first to admit that, but I think I am falling in love, and it feels great.

and finally...

Snow: It's pretty.

I made a small effort this morning while listening to the History of Howard Stern on Sirius and was reminded not of the death of the past, but of the good things. The laughter, the dances, the liquor, the smiles and all the hot sex that have made things good in life. I was reminded of the people I have loved who are still very much a part of my life and those who are not have reminded me of the joys they brought to me rather than the sadness of their loss.

I chose today as a day of gratitude, and have thanked the Gods for those people who have made me feel special and happy this last year. From work friends to close personal friends to the man who is currently making my life good, if sometimes a bit exasperating.

Blessed Gods above.
Blessed Gods below.
Blessed Gods who walk upon the Earth.

I give thanks today for all that you are.
I give thanks today for all that you do.
I give thanks today for all you have given to me.

Blessed Helios; brightly shining.
Blessed Selene; illuminating the night.
Blessed Eos; twilight lady.

I give thanks that I can see it all.
I give thanks that you watch over me.
I give thanks that you walk with me.

Blessed love, bless me with your presence.
Blessed memory, let me never forget.
Blessed death, may you wait a bit longer for me.

So, as I woke this morning I was greeted by my current boyfriend. When he left I made my way to my central altar and lit the Hestia Candle. I then gathered the soapstone incense holder, some water, and my thoughts and made my gestures of cleansing, my prayer inviting the Gods into my home, and then, lit incense from the candle and placed it into the holder. I walked it over to my East facing window, the one with a whole bunch of plants in it, and I put the soapstone holder releasing its scented smoke up to the Sun God.

Blessed Helios.
Lord of the Sun.
All Seeing God of Day.
Watch over us as we work.
Watch over us as we play.
Watch over us as we lead our mortal lives.

Blessed Eos.
Lady of the Dawn.
Rosey armed daughter of Hyperion.
Open the gates of heaven.
Open our hearts to the light.
Open our eyes that we may see.

Bless us ad guide us.
Guard us from evil.
Let our thoughts turn to the past that we may learn.
Let our thoughts turn to the past that we may remember.
Let our thoughts turn to the past that we may enjoy.

Blessed may you be.

With this prayer I turned my mind to the past year, and further into my own past, and in so doing was greeted with the smiles of children, the laughter of sisters, the warmth and coldness of a mother, and the long lost love that was taken from this world too young.

I intended it to be a day of remembering friends, but having lost some to death, it turned into a day to remember with some sadness what could have been, and my heart broke to think on it.

I accompanied my day, before and after work, with the music of Deva Premal, and especially her Moola Mantra CD.

I think I may have to call this one "Day of Tears"

So, this year I am not going to have a lot of time to do anything elaborate, not that I am one for great elaborate festival activities, but I am planning to keep it simple.

I am prepping by buying candles, incense, and a couple of offerings that I hope will be pleasing to the Gods. Because I am currently also working on my inner self with Apollo, I am also going to be paying special attention to the Apollonian, which includes health, music, art, civility, civic action, etc. I have a sword that I am using as a symbol of the masculine, and a basket that I am going to use as symbol for the feminine. An urn i which to burn incense that will represent the Chthonic, and the smoke if the incense to represent the Ouranic or Heavenly. My fireplace is the core of these meditations and worship, but because of the Heliocentric nature of this festival, I also intend to make offerings to the sun at sunrise at my large east facing window which also has a large number of plants sitting at it, enjoying the life giving light of the sun.

So, this year will not be consistent with last year, the festival can be fairly freeform, after all, but the general tone of sunset as a time of rememberance and commemoration and a celebration of the past, Night as a celebration or commemoration of the Chthonic, and Sunrise as a time of looking forward and hope should be mantained no matter what I end up doing.