In this meeting we shared our experience with the land healing ritual for East Palestine OH and then discussed some logistics for the next meeting. I decided not to record it so that people could share publicly as much or as little as they wished of their ritual. I asked everyone to reply to this thread with a summary of how they experienced the land healing.
We decided on the evening of Tuesday August 29th for the online ritual. I will make a separate thread where we can choose an area to send healing to. We discussed some ideas in the meeting, including agricultural monocropping practices, ocean dead zones from fertilizer run-off, mountain top removal,the open copper mine near Butte, Montana, and Superfund sites generally.
We discussed some ideas for how to do an online working. We could open a grove based on our physical geographic locations, such that the easternmost person on the call invokes Air, the southernmost person invokes Fire, and so forth. We will need to brainstorm more ideas as well.
5 Likes
For my ritual, I had to overcome much more resistance than usual. I felt some fear as well as struggling with physical challenges such as the fire ants in my ritual space. It made it hard to focus. The allies who helped me were Brigid, Deneb Algedi, and my red oak tree who formed the center of my grove and my link to the tree beings of East Palestine. Red oak was the only species I could find who live both in my region and there.
After I called in allies and opened the grove, I felt more settled. I connected with the feeling of the others who were also sending healing and received the image of a braid or rope of energy flowing from us to a land being who was buried deep beneath many layers of human accretion.
I did a fairly standard Sphere of Protection asking for healing for that land and banishing harmful influences from it. I worked with Brigid to send Healing Hands energy healing to the land. I created some (very simple) art starting with a color picture I printed out beforehand of the train derailment. I drew mushrooms all over it while meditating on the telluric current and mycoremediation. I put big green circles around the image. Then I drew sunflowers all over it, which also remediate chemicals, and I put in yellow circles for the solar current. Then I drew red oaks over the whole thing.
This felt very satisfying and like it was effective. I am attaching some images of the process. I felt much more settled afterwards.
6 Likes
The ritual I did happened about two days before the August full moon, inside in our living room. A small altar was set in the center of the room with vessels for each element/direction.
I meditated before this ritual. A few times. After trying to memorize the words for Opening and Closing the Grove, I still felt uncertain about these rituals and asked for guidance about attempting them. Tarot cards and meditation encouraged me to wait with these workings. I cast a SOP and worked within it.
My working was a meditation based on one I’d been taught during a meditation about a year and a half ago. What I concentrate on seems to be based on a Feri meditation. A blue egg, blue essence that first fills my body, and then travels deep into the earth and then up into the heavens. Hard to describe, but I visualized this blue healing energy traveling up into the sky and then saw it carried to East Palestine. I didn’t create this energy. I served as a channel through which Below could travel to Above and then move on the Winds’ Air currents to OH. There was an aspect of this essence that seemed mycorrhizal. The essence traveling to East Palestine included mushroom spores, healing ones. Before doing this working, I asked in meditation if I could open this connection for the ritual and got a very strong sense it was a welcome idea.
The blue seemed to know when to close the channel. It withdrew from the sky back into the egg in my belly, as did the blue from deep in the earth. After the meditation, I thanked all within the SOP for their help. I grounded with a little food and water, followed by making notes in my Druid’s journal.
The deities/energies who support me are Hindu Goddess Durga, Blue Tara and Awen. My gifts to them that day, and every day, are the work I do in our garden and at the Refuge Food Forest.
During the meditation, I got a sense that East Palestine could heal, especially if more humans turned their attention to work like this.
The work felt powerful. I look forward to what will develop when there are a few of us working simultaneously.
5 Likes
I did my ritual on July 23, as part of the GCC’s communion ritual, on the spur of the moment.
In the communion ritual we usually bless the living earth and all who live upon her; the druid community and all who hold nature in reverence; the AODA and all of its members; and all who are present at the ritual. Following that we can direct the blessing toward a person or situation that needs blessing along with a reason for that direction.
I hadn’t planned on doing this when I began the ritual, but when I got to the optional directing of the blessing, I was moved to direct it to the land, water, and sky in the area that was affected by the derailment.
After partaking of the bread that has been imbued with the lunar current, we meditate for a short period. In this meditation I sensed the lunar current spreading from me to the black cherry tree near the grove and from there via the black cherry deva to East Palestine’s black cherry trees, then from them to other trees and the land as a whole.
During the grove closing, when we send the remaining energy into the earth, we usually pour the remaining wine onto the earth below the altar. This time I felt the black cherry near the grove ask for the remaining wine, which I proceeded to pour at the foot of the tree’s trunk.
5 Likes
