The December APA meeting/class/ritual on December 5th was a small gathering as they are usually, this busy time of year. Sadly the Yule gathering for the Witchlings’ Circle on December 7th was not well attended either, though the Holly King, (Thomas ‘Pendragon’ Brice) entertained the children that were able to come.
The eGroup has been busy as usual this month, and we have shared many Yuletide traditions with each other. The egroup now has 100 members, and of course we have around 50 members who join us in person, but cannot join the online group. So our group has grown a lot in the last year.
In 2001 we will be having our monthly meetings/class/rituals on the 2nd Wednesday of every month, at 6 PM at the Mysts of Avalon store on Merrimon Ave. here in Asheville. Also in 2001 we will be starting a new PR-charity drive. We will be collecting coins all year long to go towards the buying of Pagan books to donate to the public library system Yuletide next year. Our 2000 PR-charity drive of canned food for Manna Food Bank was very successful. We ended up donating nearly 300 pounds of food to them, over the course of the year.
Lady Birch(Beth) Langley has left the group this month, as she has recently converted religions. She continues to be a close personal friend of mine, and I hope she might return to our faith and the APA in the future.
Lioness Beth, the Hickory leading Priestess, and Shannon LaHue, my local assistant leading Priestess continue to help me run the APA machine, which is quite an operation now. And of course we get a lot of help from other APA ‘elders’.
The Appalachian Pagan Alliance was again featured in the Circle Network magazine’s Lady Liberty report, for our Religious freedom and Diversity tolerance work. And I was again interviewed on Kiss Country radio station on December 11th.
1 gallon apple cider
2 cups pineapple juice
2 cups tea
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups orange juice
(In a cheese cloth sack) 1 T whole cloves
1 T whole allspice
2 sticks cinnamon
Cook in a crock-pot or in a large pot on the stove on low.
Let it simmer very slowly for 4 to 6 hours. You can add water if it evaporates too much.
Serves 20.
PROSPERITY CHARM COIN COOKIES
(NOT FOR EATING!!) Use as a charm (By Scott Cunningham)
4 T. ground cloves
4 T. ground cinnamon
4 T. round nutmeg
4 T. ground ginger
A few drops of cinnamon oil
A few drops clove oil
A few drops nutmeg oil
2 T ground gum arabic
4 T water
Combine the spices. Add the oils to them and mix well. Empower. Add the gum arabic to the water and mix thoroughly. Let it sit till it had absorbed the water. Add the ground, empowered spices to the gum/water mixture and blend well with your fingers. This should produce a stiff, dough-like mixture. If the mixture is too mushy, add a bit more of the ground spices.
With your hands, form into flat, one-inch circular shapes. Using a sharp knife, trace a pentagram onto each flat circle. Let sit in a warm place out of the Sun to dry. When dried to a rock hard consistency, carry in the pocket or purse to attract money. Or, place on the altar between two green, flaming candles that have been anointed with patchouli or cinnamon oil. If you wish, make a larger pentacle of the spices and ring with green candles to speed money your way. After four weeks, bury the pentacle in the earth with thanks and use a new one.
December 10th: Roman Lux Mundi (‘the light of the world’) celebration of Lady Liberty
December 17th: Roman Bona Saturnalia festival, one of the winter celebrations modern Christmas was based upon.
December 21st: Yule Winter Solstice European Winter festival of the longest night of the year. Another of the origins of the Christmas season. Most Christian traditions are actually older Yuletide traditions, including Yule Logs, decorated Yule trees, gift giving, and the singing of carols etc, etc. Yule is the holiday of the Winter God, The Holly King.
December 24th: The first day of Beth’s month. The Celtic Birch tree(Beth) month begins.
“There ought to be limits to freedom” George W. Bush (from the Dallas Morning News, May 22, 1999)
“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning” Catherine Aird
