Lady Riona's 'Craft Site

I am a solitary eclectic witch. I follow no tradition, and I work alone.

Sabbats

I celebrate nine sabbats. I added the Twelfth Night, when He gets His name and His tools, to my list. This falls twelve days after the Winter Solstice.

The other eight sabbats (with my personal prefrence in bold) are:

Witches New Year or Samhain or Halloween :October 31:  A celebration and rememberace of those who have gone on before us. A time to remember the passing of loved ones and a time in which the veil between this world and that of spirits is thin.

Yule or Winter Solstice :December 21: A celebration of the God's Rebirth and the rebirth of the sun. This is the shortest day of the year and the longest night.

Candlemas or The Festival of Lights: Feburary 1 or 2: An announcement of spring, where a young girl goes from home to home welcoming the coming of spring.

Ostara or Spring Equinox :March 21: The actual start of spring. Day and Night are equal here.

Beltane :May 1: The Return of  Fertility

Litha or Summer Solstice :June 21: Longest day, shortest night.

Lughnasda :August 2: The start of the harvest season

Mabon or Fall Equinox :September 21: . Balanced Day and Night again.

The Esbats

Either the full or new moon celebrations.

I have gotten out of the habit of celebrating the New Moon. I really should get back into it. For a while it became habitual, but then I got caught up with work, school, and just life in general. So I guess its back to the basics for a while.

My Pantheon

I work with the Greek Pantheon. My ishta deva (or personal diety) is Hecate, the Goddess of Magick, the Ebony Moon, Witches, and Crossroads. She is a Trivia Goddes, meaning She has three faces : Maiden, Mother, and Crone. She can come in any of the three forms. She is not paired up to a specific god.
 Due to how diverse my pantheon is I often find myself studying weeks in advance before any sabbat. I do this to make certain that I know enough about the rituals that were performed on those dates in the past, which often means rewriting any of the previous year's pieces- refining some sections, replanning the altar set up, or even rewording my invocations to the Gods. Everything has to be to my current prefrences. Needless to say, by now  I have several to choose from.

Where I usually work

I work indoors, using a small altar (see tools section for an explination of this, along with the other tools that I list). Each ritual often takes up to an hour, if it is a Sabbat, fifteen minutes if it is an Esbat. I have a small asortment of ritual jewelry, which often ends up in my regular every day wear, and this now includes my pentacle and rarely attracts any notice. Well, ok the pentacle ring, earings and pendant do attractsome attention if worn all together without any other jewelry, but that is rarely the case.

Because of the fact that I wear ritual jewelry in my everyday wardrobe, I run the risk of becoming ill if some one were to touch it. My jewelry always goes through a cleansing and consecration ritual, which tunes the piece to my wishes and to me. I then charge the piece with positive energy. No one else is allowed to touch any of my ritual jewelry without my permission. My husband will also abide by this rule.

The reasons for this is that, during the summer of 2003, I was wearing a consecrated owl pendant, and a woman came up to me and litterally picked the pendant up off my chest to get a closer look at it. Within minutes I was ill due to an energy imbalance. I had to strip the pendant of all energies, and reconsecrate it. I really hate feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.This is the reason I do not allow anyone to touch my jewelry without my permission, and why I always ask before I touch anyone else's.