Rituals for 2022

I’m starting a ritual series because I want more practice in writing liturgy, and because I have the goal of celebrating new moon, druid moon, and solar holidays this year. I probably won’t write most rituals from scratch. But I will mention when I have been inspired by a ritual script or prayer, or when I have taken directly from a script or prayer

Many if not all of these rituals will incorporate several ADF concepts. You can find good descriptions about them in the Hearth Keeper‘s book. There are beings I will call like the Gatekeeper. I will often mention the symbols of the fire, well, and tree. I will use other common phrases like Shining Ones and Waters of Life.

I will also allow myself the common ADF practice of celebrating these rituals within a two-week timespan, starting one week before and ending one week after the calendrical day of the holiday. I am planning to do all my rituals at the closest weekend day to the actual holiday, and not on the exact day itself.

Also, if you’d like to get access to my rituals as soon as I upload them, consider joining my Patreon and my early-access feed.

The Hearth Keeper’s Way

The Hearth Keeper’s Way is a document written by several ADF clergy – Rev. Jan Avende, Rev. Sara Blackwelder, Rev. Kirk Thomas, and Rev. Lisa Wasilkowsky Malik – for a monthly home hearth practice. The document is free and you can download it here. It is set up as a meal ritual (where you share a meal) for the house spirits. It is also meant to be done when the first light of the new moon can be seen (vs the calendrical new moon that is dark). I have been doing these rituals for about a year now, and I’ve made some changes.

I have changed several of these aspects to fit my own practice. Many evenings, my dinner is a PB&J sandwich at whatever random hour I’m hungry. I struggle to take notice of the lunar cycle, and it has caught me by surprise several times. That is why I am sticking my Hearth Keeper rituals to the calendrical new moon.

I also wanted to include a specific hearth goddess into my rituals and I wanted to focus on the hearth fire (vs the usual ADF fire, well, and tree). My hearth goddess is Frigg and this year I wanted to include one of her 12 Handmaidens for each of these monthly rituals. I plan to incorporate praise prayers from Rev. Maire Durkan’s book Circle of Frith. You can buy it here. And since there is one invocation in the Hearth Keeper’s script that cites Ceisiwr Serith, I’ll link his work here. The Hearth Keeper’s Way document actually encourages folks to change and adapt the scripts as needed, and that is what I have done.

You may be able to find other people’s versions of the Hearth Keeper’s Way on the internet, and I’m sure they will have their own unique style. If I do find any, I will list them here.

Druid Moon Rituals

Druid Moons are a modern type of ritual based on information from Pliny the Elder in Natural History, (chapter 95) where he describes that the Celtic month was based on the lunar cycle. . Again, like with the Hearth Keeper rituals, this is not the first quarter moon exactly, but the moon six days after the moon when it is entirely dark. I am, again, simplifying this to the first quarter moon. These rituals are pretty new to me.

I bought the Crane Breviary from ADF’s Three Cranes Grove for example scripts of Druid Moon rituals. You can buy the ritual book paperback or ebook versions. It’s particularly useful to me because it focuses on Gaulish deities. Many of the Druid Moon scripts incorporate specific workings. I may or may not include these in my own scripts.

I want to be clear that I’m not copying scripts verbatim from this ritual book, or any other ritual book. If I do copy specific invocations, I’ll cite them at the end of the invocation. However, there are many common phrases and ideas in ADF liturgy that get passed around, so I’m not saying everything I write in these scripts are originally mine, either.

I’m not sure if Druid Moons are another ADF-specific concept. But if I see other examples of Druid Moon rituals or scripts online, I will post them here.

High Day Rituals

These would be the common 8 Neopagan High Day rituals. I will likely take inspiration from the Crane Breviary for these, as well as other ADF scripts I see. While I have gone to many ADF High Day rituals, I have not generally scripted my own.

Since I am working toward a cohesive Gallo-Germanic hearth, I am also doing rituals for Heathen deities. I’ll be using ADF scripts as well as inspiration from The Troth’s Book of Blots, which you can buy here. And I’m grateful to have received access to Larrea Tridentata Grove’s ritual scripts. You can find the grove on YouTube as well. This grove has many lovely invocations that I find inspiring and useful.

I may post some public High Day rituals I particularly like here. However, several High Day ritual examples can be found on the member’s portion of the ADF website.

I will update this page as needed to reflect the sources I use, other people’s versions of these types of rituals, etc.