Circle Round

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 26, 2014

This is the time of year when some earth-based traditions teach that the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thin. We are also celebrating the 30th anniversary of the First UU Women’s Spirituality Group!

Sun and Seasons

How did people know the seasons were changing? What told them? What were the markers? They told stories to help remember what the sun was doing, what the moon was doing. Maiden, mother, crone. The divine was female because they saw the moms having babies. The moms would be young and narrow, then they would grow round and full. Then they get older, and their daughters are the young moms. Stories about the sun are that he is born as a child in the winter. Dark nights are long, and his time in the sky is short during the winter. He is weak. Then he gets stronger and stronger in the summer, then weaker in the fall. That takes a year.

Aunt Ruth

My father thought that my aunt Ruth was a bad influence on me. It was true. She was an M.D. that means the doctor the kind of doctor she was was a psychiatrist she had been a very famous psychiatrist at one time, and had been the doctor for a poet named Sylvia Plath. When she was older the fact that she had not healed Sylvia Plath was very hard for her to remember. My at-risk called herself a witch and she taught me to read cards called Tarot cards and to read the palms of people and I taught myself a lot after that.

Spells and wishes

One thing I learned was how to figure out what I wanted and whether it was helpful to the planet for me to go after it. In the women’s spirituality tradition, one of the things that’s important to remember is the Rule of Threes. What that means is that whatever you wish would happen to someone else will come back to you three times as strong as it went to them. So you really only want to wish people the things that are good for them in their lives!

I’m going to teach you a spell, which is like a wish or a prayer, only you are using your intention to make something happen in the world.

Elements

The ancients in some cultures felt that the whole earth was made of combinations of four elements: earth, air, water, fire. Other cultures thought that wood and metal were elements too, but for today’s spell we’re just calling on earth, air, water and fire.

Rule of Three. Harm No One

Do you have something you really want in mind? Something you would like to make happen? Are you willing for it to come back to you three times as strong? If you want your little sister to stop bothering you, and you say a spell about it, you might find yourself stopped from bothering other people too. You don’t want to get hurt at all, so you keep in mind never ever to hurt anyone else.

Moon phases

Now, you can say it any time you like, but you might want to find a phase of the moon that works with your spell. The moon is one of the things the ancient people noticed. It got small, then big and round, then small again. They told stories about it. Maybe it was like a female human, or a female animal, that’s one size normally, but then gets a baby inside and grows large and round. Then she gives birth to the baby and gets back to normal size. We say the moon “waxes” when it’s getting bigger, and “wanes.” When it’s getting smaller. Some people said the moon was like a woman who is a young slip of a thing, then she gets big as if she had a baby inside, and she becomes a mother, then she shrinks again, like an old old woman, called a “crone,” They said this was the triple face of the goddess, maiden, mother crone.

They say that the best time to wish for something to get more is when the moon is waxing. The best time to wish for something to get less is when it’s waning, How can you tell? Let’s hold up both our hands. If the moon looks like your Left ( hand, it’s Leaving. If it looks like your Right ) hand, it’s Returning.

Now, you have your heart’s desire, you wish, you have the phase of the moon right. You call the elements, and you keep in mind that there is a big rule that you aren’t going to hurt anyone.

The other thing to keep in mind about spells is that you don’t always know if what you want is the best for everyone. You might wish for a good pair of roller skates, but then you find out you are moving to the beach and what you really are going to need is a surfboard! So somewhere in the spell you always say “I want this, or something better/something higher. We say “higher” in this spell because it rhymes with “fire,” and, while spells don’t always have to rhyme, it’s more fun when they do.

Earth and water, air and fire
What I wish or something higher.
If it will not hurt someone
What I wish, let it be done!

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Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.