Maytide Rite

Narrative Outline

START | curiosity for knowledge

1. She is curious about the world outside the village
2. She is scolded for her unorthodoxt
3. In her wanderings at the woodlands edge, she meets a person or persons from the otherworlds
4. Her strangeness increases until one day, she encounters the Landweird and is transformed, disappearing from the human world
5. She is found, seemingly asleep, and unable to be woken

END | ecstasy in the green

Skills of the Season

Build ritual readiness

• Say yes to every experience; say no to every restriction
• Build trance techniques which bring on ecstasy.
• Strengthen relationships with the good neighbours and the things of the forest
• Practice playtime in the woods
• Stretch & limber up daily so the body is ready for dance
• Go out to dance
• Practice Mindfulness of Otherworlds, looking out for fairy-woods and forbidden doors under the mounds
• Meditate on the barriers to bliss in your life, repression, and chains that must be broken
• Mindfulness of Undergrowth (go out picking Himalayan Balsam)
• Making contact with local fae
• whimsical folk crafts, like magic for lovers
• read fairy tales
• Walk among the woodlands
• Read up on see the reading list.
• Write myths and make art
• Disconnect through refusal of responsibilities - as far as is possible - returning to a childlike state of wonder, possibility, and rejecting duties of the everyday
• Do you have any particular connections to the story this year or things you need
• Connect to your younger self and your memories (if it's nice to do so)
• Go about daydreaming in the sun
• Meditate on delight. Cultivate wild desire for what she offers and her blessings.

Powers

Power: the Changeling as the Maiden

Approach with seduction, release, love, return to childhood, willingness to join the dance

Accompanied by fairy-creatures - goblins, rabbits, birds, Froud-processions

Create the right atmosphere with:

• May flowers
• Little birds
• Music & dancing
• Fairy-crafts and wonderful things
• Love
• Pleasurable things

Particular Aspects

• Maid Marian
• Queen of the May
• Fairytale Princess

You in the Rite

Role: a dancer

(ecstatic, released, fully open, reckless)

Attend the rite in the persona of the Changeling, or as yourself but within her story, or an accompanying reveller

Wearing and carrying something fun and thrilling to dance in.

Location

Setting: the wildwood

(tangled, undergrowth, a moonlawn, frightening, beautiful, flowers, trees, sounds of creatures)

Do the ritual in a clearing in the woods at night if at all possible

If you are at home, create the right atmosphere with:

• darkness
• Morris-like tangled flowers
• thorn-trees
• forest sounds
• lawn of flowers

Things to Prepare

• Fairy-crafts and wonderful things
• something fun and thrilling to dance in
• mp3 player (charged)
• Dancing music
• Spare phone charger
• headphones
• some symbol to be her & later bury - flowers perhaps?

Decorations if at home

Timeline

Things to do ahead of time

• Check calendar for correct timing: towards the end of May, but before Oak Apple Day, clear night sky
• Write up a full ritual script
• Collect the ritual objects
• Visit the ritual site on a walk this week to scope out the location
• Find a 'sleeping place' for the lady to rest over the summertide
• Prepare an overnight bag
• Pick a recipe
• Prepare a recipe
• Divination to check acceptability of plans
• Ritual readiness through offlineness the day before

Prepare the space

• Walk through the forest. Cultivate wonder. State that you are seeking and ready. Call and response.
• Decorate with things pleasing to the powers and appropriate to the rite
• Open the space

During

Go to an isolated place, get strange, call on the spirits, kiss the,world goodbye and dance till you drop. Sleep.

• Call in Fairy-creatures - goblins, rabbits, birds, Froud-processions
• Call in the Power: Beg to be taken with her. Present yourself ready to be tempted. Follow her into the woods and into the dark.
• Ritually empower a symbol of her
• Dance until you drop

Things to do afterwards

• Sleep out if you can
• ritual return through offlineness
• like snow white laid to rest in the woodland, make her a sleeping-place - somewhere you can later return to

Reading

• Domain: Landishpath
  • Journey: the Fields
  • Commonplace: Village & Outside
• The Changeling
  • Introduction
  • Images
  • Reading
  • Commonplace
  • Prayers & Readings
  • Mixtape
• The Good folk
  • The Good Folk
  • Commonplace
  • Reading List: Folklore
• sounds
  • MyNoise: Spring Walk