Midsummer Rite for the Fae

I was just looking around at some old rituals and came across this one that I thought I would share.  It’s a fun little rit, but some of the parts are borrowed from Shakespeare and elsewhere and can be quite long and not easily memorized.  There is nothing more energy-killing in a ritual than having someone simply stare at a scrap of paper and monotonously read out the lines.  So, I recommend that those with longer parts should at least read them several times in advance so that they know the lines well enough to be able to put on a show while reading them out.

The ritual requires a couple of props.  You need a fairy, Puck, and Mab.  When our grove performed this at the Summer Solstice in 2015, our members made beautiful Puck and Mab puppets; the puppets gave the ritual that much more fun and energy.  You also need a bed of some sort on your altar for Puck and Mab to retire to; we used a lambskin blanket.

Ritual

1. Initiating the Rite & Purification:

The group gathers outside the circle. Two torches stand in the path to the circle.

Druid #1: Let us with gladness sound the drum
To honour the magical ones we come!
Light the fires to guide the way
and purify our bodies here today!

Ritual Drama for Rhiannon

I just love ritual dramas. Without over much effort, I find that they are capable of raising great energy to honour our Gods and Goddesses. The key is to keep them simple — no more than 3 or 4 parts, keep the dialogue to a minimum so that people don’t need to memorize too much, and stick to the main elements of the myth; having a good narrative flow means that actors don’t need to know every word… as long as they know the story and their part in it, they can ad-lib freely and the story still unfolds as it should. I have found that having a narrator role helps a lot to describe scenes that are difficult to act, and to fill in details such as time and locations changes.

Our Grove performed this at Samhain this year, but it could be suitable for any High Day. We had only two props; a foam toy sword, and a large futon cover that worked well as Pwyll’s bag. Wooden hobby horses would have been nice but we got along find without them.

Rhiannon and Pwyll

Roles

Narrator
Pwyll
Knight
Gwawl
Rhiannon

Status Update

As some of you will already know, I have left ADF.  Part of the reason for my leaving has to do with my last post here but there are other reasons which are just as important to me.

However despite leaving ADF, I am continuing to pursue my Druidry and will likely continue to post the occasional essay on things that interest me and which I hope will be of interest to others.