Litha Ritual

To prepare the self:

Bathe as usual and anoint with oil of an appropriate scent for the season. Wear fire-safe clothes in colors of blue, green, yellow, white, red, maize yellow, or tan. Wear magickal jewelry and flowers or a hair wreath made of plants of the season.

To prepare the circle:

Sweep. ¤ Lay out cord. ¤ Position altar with red or love/summer-oriented cloth. ¤ Position God and Goddess candles. ¤ Position other God and Goddess representations. ¤ Add Earth bowl and salt at north. ¤ Add incense burner and incense. ¤ Add candleholder and blue, green, yellow, white, red, maize yellow, or tan candle at south. ¤ Add goblet and water at west. ¤ Put pentacle at north. ¤ Put wand at east. ¤ Put athame at south. ¤ Put chalice at west. ¤ Add bolline to south. ¤ Add matches to south. ¤ Add match holder to north. ¤ Add wet napkins to west. ¤ Add bell to west. ¤ Add libation bowl to north. ¤ Add any decorations for the season. ¤ Have inspiring material to read, instruments to play merry songs, or pagan poetry to honor the gods. ¤ Have a traditional anointing oil or favorite essential oil to use in a rededication. ¤ Have a single green candle in a holder behind the cauldron on the altar. ¤ Have materials for red and yellow feather wreaths to be woven together with ivy. ¤ Have cloth, stuffing, sachet material, and some lavender and mugwort to make a dream pillow. ¤ Have materials for wish tree and the budding tree from Beltane at the left of the altar, and blessing oil or other honoring oil. ¤ Put an apple on a plate on the right of the altar, and have handy ale or almond milk. ¤ Have yarn ready for finger-knitting. ¤ Complete with feasting foods of the season.

Begin ritual:

Cast the circle. Sit inside and focus, and invoke the God and Goddess.

Meditation (to seasonal music if desired):

The longest day is here; the shortest night of the year. The God and Goddess are the most powerful that they will be this year; they are a mature and married couple, the wedding of the God and Goddess. She is pregnant and He is strong to provide for Her. Fertility until harvest is important, but protecting what we already have sprouting is the most important. We give thanks for the granting of our wishes and for our health; after today, the waning year begins. To keep our strength, we harness the strongest powers of the year to hold our lives together. We celebrate our work and our play, together.¹

Note: Some prefer to see the God in two aspects rather than one continuous one: The Oak King and the Holly King. The Oak King is the king of the waxing year and the Holly King is the king of the waning year. At Litha, the Holly King takes over, as the days grow longer. The Oak King “dies” and sleeps in the Goddess’s womb until Winter Solstice (Yule). You can change your meditation and ritual to fit this if you prefer to view the year this way. In any case the God and Goddess are now married, whether you choose to see Her marrying the same God that impregnated Her at Beltane or if you choose to see it as the new Holly King. Couples in the Old Ways often didn’t get married until after they had a baby on the way, incidentally; it was necessary for farming couples to have children to help work the farm, and if a woman and man couldn’t prove themselves fertile before making a promise to stay together, it would not be a blessed marriage. That is why the Goddess is impregnated at Beltane but not actually married until a season later.

Opening Honor:

Open the ritual with a song, dance, or chant. This is designed to get the attention of the faeries and elementals that may be playing around this time of year, and to gain their blessings. Suggested is the song “Oak and Ash and Thorn,” or any other traditional Midsummer song.² Greet the presences you may have attracted with your frolicking and offer them a special platter or bowl of food from your feast. Set it inside the circle and put it outside after the ritual is over. Ask them to join you in another piece of art, perhaps, such as the faerie-oriented poem “Stolen Child” by Yeats (or the musical version of this poem by Loreena McKennitt); this can also be played on the recorder or other wind instrument without too much trouble. The point is that you invite nature in and then have fun with it, as you were meant to.

Now is a good time for dedication or rededication rites. If you have never done a ritual before or you have decided to dedicate yourself to a Pagan path, this is a good spot in the year to make your proclamation; if you have been a long time on your path, now is a good time to reinforce your steps. Take anointing oil and draw runes or symbols on your body. The rune THURISAZ is good for aid in meditation and self-discipline; rune RAIDO is good to reconnect; rune EIHWAZ is good to ease the transition if this is a new way of life, and to bring about change; rune PERTH is to aid in divination and magick and enhance psychic abilities; rune BERKANA can help make a fresh start. You may also use pentagrams, pentacles, ankhs, or any inspiring symbol from any culture; the point is what it means to you.³

Take the green candle behind the cauldron to symbolize the God in His prime. Carve a rune on it to symbolize lasting relationships, such as the rune GEBO, and then place the candle in the cauldron to symbolize His joining with the Goddess. Pour a glass of a chosen toasting beverage and lift it to the candle as if toasting. Think about married or seriously dating couples you know, and ask for the blessings of their union, to match that of the God and Goddess. If you are involved with someone and wish to stay together, ask for Their blessing also, ask that Their happiness combine with yours. Drink to this and pour a libation. Then give the gift of a shell, some dried herbs in a sachet, or a summer flower bouquet, to congratulate Their wedding. Put out the green candle.

Litha Activities:⁴

Wish Tree can be worked on now. Add open, bloomed flowers to the tree and anoint the branches or buds with blessing oil or other anointing oil; meditate on each wish as you do so and think about what wishes have come true.

The red and yellow feather wreath can now be wrapped with ivy and drawn together. You can place it on your altar in appreciation of the God and Goddess and Their wedding.

Make a dream pillow from cloth, stuffing, and lavender and mugwort sachets. Hand-sew three sides of the cloth inside out, and sew most of the fourth up before you turn it right-side-out. Then stuff with stuffing and sachets of lavender and mugwort, which will enhance prophetic dreaming. Then sew up the remaining hole with stitches as small as possible, and sleep on it that night. Choose a fabric for your dream pillow that is blue or watery, as that is the element of divination and sleep.⁵ If you’ve already made a dream pillow in a previous year, you can re-dedicate it to its art by rubbing it with hibiscus petals and sprinkling it with water, and asking for the Lady of Water’s blessings.

You may remove red and white ribbons from the corn dolly and place a bouquet, shells, or other wedding symbols on her.

Ritual Core:

“Dance, Lady, Dance” is a traditional chant for this time of year. Use this piece or any chant, or simply drum rhythms, to attune yourself with the God and Goddess in Their union.⁶

Enact the Great Rite, which can be done in solitary circles by using the athame and the chalice as male and female symbols. Slowly lower the athame into the chalice and then bless the union by drinking a toast of ale and pouring a libation.⁷

BANISH THE BELTANE SEASON AND INVOKE THE LITHA SEASON with banishing and invoking pentagrams. Ring the bell and say “it is done” or “so mote it be.”

Follow-up:

Greet the new season with a toast and pour a libation. Now celebrate the deities’ union with a feast. Begin the feast by cutting the apple, separating the stem from the bottom, to see the five seeds inside arranged in a pentagram. Eat one bite from both sides, acknowledging your acceptance of both sides of life: Light and dark, male and female, life and death. Put the remainder of the apple in the libation bowl.⁸ Now begin the feast. Make sure to share everything you’ve eaten with the libation bowl.

Finger-knit and tie your rope to the previous years’ ever-growing rope. Meditate on the meaning of this weaving to symbolize the journey. Think about previous Lithas you might have celebrated, and what has transpired in your life since you finger-knitted for Beltane.

Closing:

Thank the God and Goddess for coming and put out their candles with a pinch or a snuffer, and thank all elementals, then earth and close the circle. Put anything that was given in the cauldron into the libation bowl also, excluding the candle and its holder. When the circle is broken, the first thing you should do is go outside and bury the contents of the libation bowl, then commence cleaning up. Document anything important in your Book of Shadows. Change any decorations around your house that you have to reflect the new season.

Alternatives and Additions:

If you wish, you may leave goodies out for the little people, animals, or whatever you choose. You may dedicate this food to them before the ritual’s core.

This Sabbat is conducive to magickal workings having to do with spells for all magic, love spells, healing spells, prosperity spells. If magick is to be done, do it right before the feast.

If dancing, singing, or any other personal or individual merriment is scheduled, it can be done either after the feast and the core of the ritual, OR it can be done after the circle is broken.

Footnotes:

1--Groups can alternate speaking lines of this as a chant, and use “we” instead of “I.”
2--In a group, the High Priestess or High Priest can sing the verses and the coven join in in the chorus, or each alternate verses and sing together on the chorus. Or music or dance can simply be given a free-for-all in the circle; it is up to the members.
3--In groups, the High Priest or High Priestess may host a dedication for someone new, or reaffirm everyone’s dedication to the coven by making promises and whatnot. A full initiation should most likely have its own ritual and its own day of celebration; the ritual’s main purpose should be to induct, not as a sideline to a Sabbat.
4--With groups, it may be preferable to do these activities outside circle, or in such a way that the High Priest and Priestess lead and allow everyone else to contribute in a small way, so that it does not take up the entire ritual.
5--Pillows may be mostly made ahead of time for group situations and ceremoniously filled with mugwort and lavender, then sewed up by hand. This will cut down on time. Or it can simply be a gift between partners or a gift from the High Priest or High Priestess to new coveners.
6--This is often done in coven situations with a woman (the High Priestess, or another woman), dancing to the beat of the coveners’ chanting. It can be found in the Farrars’ A Witches’ Bible and in the section of inspiring pieces in this book. The myth of the Oak King and Holly King is re-enacted here, and the Oak King and Holly King may fight over the Goddess, play-fighting with sticks, until the Holly King of the waning year wins and claims the Goddess as His lover.
7--The Great Rite historically involves ritual sex. If working partners are also sexual partners and would like to celebrate this holiday with sexual intercourse, that would be appropriate, but might not be exactly convenient in a circle. In a coven situation or a group situation where sex is not appropriate or desired, it is good to have a male and a female (or one sex role-playing) join the chalice and the athame while holding hands. In some cases a sword plunging into a cauldron is a larger visual symbol for large groups of the figurative coupling.
8--Working partners should each take a bite of the apple and then switch; in coven situations, just pass each piece around to make sure everyone gets a bite.