SisterSpirit Ritual
December 1995 - The Festival of Lights

The Festival of Lights is a celebration of as many Wintertide holidays as we can find women to make altars for and tell us about. We started out with this ritual in 1985, so this marked both our 11th annual Wintertide celebration and our 10th anniversary.

This year, we celebrated Santa Lucia's Day, Advent, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Chanukah, Yule, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. We believe that the return of the Light is something universal, not something unique to one faith alone. Most holidays at this time of year revolve around Light, involving a miracle, a birth, or a return. We put all these celebrations within a Goddess circle, and we celebrated with women from each of these paths, honoring all our ancestors and finding the common ground. Harmony can't exist without a blend of different voices, and if one voice dominates, harmony is compromised. Our Festival of Lights honored us all like a prism making a rainbow of a single ray of white light.

Anyone who has participated in at least one of our rituals can help plan them. There are certain parts of ritual we include in every circle we hold, but we leave room for spontaneity, too. We usually have 20 - 35 women at our monthly circles. The Festival of Lights had 56 participants, so structure was a little more important for this celebration than it usually is. In description for future rituals, the form will not be quite as detailed as this one. But the planning really worked well for this large group and for a ritual of this length, much longer than our usual ones. The altars were beautiful, the singing inspired, and the spiral dance very merry. Here's the play-by-play:

>We had rented a community center to hold our ritual in. The space was a gym, and we set up on a basketball court. We put folding chairs into a circle, and we all remained outside this circle of chairs until the ritual began. The planners had already set up a central altar on a circular card table, covered with a holiday tablecloth and filled with candles and greenery. A large space had been left clear to hold the Santa Lucia wreath. Individual altars had been set up at the edge of the circle for each holiday we were celebrating, all on low boxes, and all with candles yet unlit. Under the table were finger foods we planned to share in the feast. Our coordinator and founder stepped to the opening in the circle of chairs. She began speaking about our 10-year history and about the Festivals of Light we'd done before. We all quieted down and listened to her. Introductions like this are a perfect opportunity for centering, and we all took this chance to focus ourselves for the mystery we'd experience within the circle.

When she had finished, a woman in a red kilt began playing beautiful Scottish folk songs on a highland bagpipe. The piper entered the circle first, followed by our founder, and we all fell into the procession behind her. We walked slowly around the whole circle, and this action cast the circle as we went. This is our usual circle casting custom, although we don't usually have a bagpipe! We like everyone to be involved in our rituals, and casting the circle together is a beautiful way to start this.

Four women had already been designated as the direction callers. We never script these. Each woman called upon qualities of the directions that suited her, from a characteristic, such as clarity, to the spirits or guardians, to a Goddess. We always begin with the East, in our tradition, but that's about all that's set about how we invoke. A lot of spontaneity comes into play with these. When each woman finished her invocation, she said a phrase that we all repeated after her. "Be here now. " " Blessed be. " " Come into our circle." It just depends on what feels right to the woman who's invoking.

Everyone sat down. The room was darkened. One woman stepped to the edge of the circle and began singing a song, "Light and Returning" (written by Charlie Murphy). She was answered by another woman singing from the hall, who opened the door and stepped into the darkened room. As the song ended, another woman, wearing the Santa Lucia crown on her head, a wreath with lighted candles, walked slowly into the room and entered the circle. When she reached the central altar, she took the crown from her head and set it down. Then, she raised up her arms and invoked Lucia as Goddess in our circle.

We were supposed to sing a song after this, but it got overlooked, somehow, and we wound up singing it at the end of the ritual. You have to keep open to the unexpected in ritual, and don't worry too much about sticking to the plan. In ritual, the intent, the energy, the connection is everything, and the plan is just a tool for getting there. This kind of thing happens to us all the time, so we just went with the flow and didn't sweat it.

Advent is best known as a Christian holiday of waiting and expectation. We talked about the hope we anticipated. A song was sung, and the candles were lit.

This celebration was led by a nun. She told the story of the appearance of the Lady to a Native man during the early years of Spanish colonization of Mexico. The Virgin appeared to this man, Juan Diego, on the site of ancient worship of an Aztec Goddess. Many see Guadalupe and this Goddess as one and the same. She told Juan Diego to have the Bishop build a temple to Her on this site. The Bishop would not believe Juan Diego, so the Lady gave him a miracle that even the Church couldn't ignore: on a barren hillside, in winter, Juan Diego found blooming roses. He carried these to the Bishop in his cloak. When the roses fell upon the Bishop's desk, he knew it for the miracle it was. The cloak had been impressed with the image of the Lady.

We sang a traditional Mexican song to Guadalupe, "Las Apariciones Guadalupanas. "

A woman of Jewish heritage explained the miracle of the lights. A Jewish town was under siege. The temple is always supposed to have a light lit, but there was only enough oil for one day, and no chance to obtain new oil for at least eight days. Miraculously, the oil lasted until a new supply could be brought in. The nine candles of the Menorah symbolize this miracle, and Chanukah is considered to be a season of miracles of all kinds. We lit all the candles, since we were honoring the entire eight-day holiday this evening.

We sang a song, " In Your Light We See Light. " It was a beautiful, simple melody, and it didn't take us long to learn. By the second verse, we were harmonizing. We sang it though one more time just to enjoy its beautiful sound.

This was our Wiccan altar. Everyone in SisterSpirit is some kind of Goddess follower, and most of us have some background in Wicca or are familiar with it. The woman who sponsored this altar has been a Wiccan priestess for 20 years. She described the altar and spoke an invocation over it. Her voice was powerful and beautiful.

Then we sang a Pagan version of " The Holly and the Ivy", which our founder had written for the first Festival of Lights. It's almost a Pagan song, anyway, so not much needed changing!

We were lucky to have two Christian ministers with us this evening (in addition to our founder, who is both Christian minister and Priestess of the Goddess). One had already spoken about Advent. The other, a visiting minister from out of town, talked about the Christ child, about the hope He brought us, and the Renewal He offered. We sang Silent Night, Holy Night. For a few moments, the peace this song brought into the circle held us captive, and we paused to savor it.

A woman from a circle called Daughters of the Tribe joined SisterSpirit that evening and told us about the African-American tradition of Kwanzaa. It began 30 years ago, and was started by a professor who wanted to engender love of African traditions among Americans of African descent. Kwanzaa means harvest, with an extra "a" added to the end to make it an American word. There are seven principles that Kwanzaa celebrates, from family cohesion to cooperative economics. The celebration begins the day after Christmas, and can be celebrated along with other year-end holidays. We used a menorah to hold the Kwanzaa candles. The central candle was black, and there were red and green candles on either side of the black one. The speaker's 8-year-old daughter lit each candle as she spoke about each principle.

We sang a song written during a women's peace conference in Nigeria, called "When Every Woman in the World. "

We all stood and began singing a song from the second Reclaiming collective tape, "Powerful Song." Our spiral dances tend to be pretty freeform. Some women danced and twirled. Some joined hands and began a spirited snake dance, which was interrupted when two curves bumped into each other and a woman fell. She got up, brushed herself off with a laugh, and we continued dancing. We circled the altar, tighter and tighter. The song grew faster and the drums and rattles increased the tempo. When we were all close in, the movement stopped suddenly, and we all howled and gave voice to the energy we felt.

When the energy had reached its peak, we all sank down to the floor and grounded. Those who were able kneeled and touched the ground. Others just lowered their energy, and we all took a few moments to release and rest.

One woman went to the central altar and said words of blessing over the feast: cookies, tortilla chips, and a loaf of good bread. Women who had brought food began passing them around the circle, holding out the bags and trays, and wishing each woman, "May you never hunger." We chatted, some of us sang carols, and generally enjoyed each other's company.

It costs us to rent the hall and buy supplies for the ritual, so the hat was passed next. We don't require a donation to participate in ritual, but anything given is very much appreciated. We use collections for SisterSpirit activities, so none of it gets wasted.

All good things come to an end. We devoked the holiday altars one by one, and the lights were extinguished in the physical plane but left to burn in the spirit. Last of all came the altar of Santa Lucia, and the Goddess was devoked with Her. The directions were devoked next, in reverse order from their invocations. We sang a final song about the Winter Solstice. And then, sweetly and slowly, the piper led us back out of the circle.

We chanted our traditional opening of the circle, "The circle is open, but unbroken. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again! "

A group hug followed, and then we did our gift exchange. Each woman who wanted to participate in this brought an inexpensive gift, $5 limit, wrapped it, and left it at the entrance to the circle. We each picked up a gift at the end.

Good-byes were said, and many of us headed over to a local 24-hour restaurant for dinner and to continue the camaraderie for a few hours longer.

May the peace of the Goddess be ever in our hearts.