EarthLove Fellowship, a Grove of FoDLA will be hosting a ritual to honor the Autumn Equinox on Saturday, Sept. 25th, 2010 at 6:00 pm at El Dorado Park, in Scottsdale, AZ at the Northeast Ramada.

From 101, take McDowell to 77th St and go north to just before Oak Street. The ramada is to the west.

Autumn Equinox is a time of balance, a time when the wheel of the year turns from the light half of the year toward the dark half of the year. We come together to honor Nuada, the great well-loved chieftain who lost his arm in battle, which was replaced with a silver arm. Great healers restored his arm, so this is also a time of healing.

Autumn is the time of the harvest, when the seeds of the now-ripened fruits fall to the ground, laying dormant until the spring.

We come together to honor the harvest, and this time of balance and healing.

We will also have a special time of meditation in honor of those recently departed, including Isaac Bonewits and Michael Crowley.

Join us if you can, and bring potluck to share.

This time is open to the pagan-friendly public.

Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits, founder and Archdruid Emeritus of of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, one of North America's leading experts on ancient and modern Druidism, Witchcraft, magic and the occult, and the rapidly growing Earth Religions movement, died today after a short struggle with cancer.

Mr. Bonewits first came into the public eye when he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Magic and Thaumaturgy (1970). During his tenure there, Mr. Bonewits worked with many renowned professors including Nobel Prize Laureate Owen Chamberlain. The work he did for that degree became his first book, Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic (1971).

In 1983, he founded and became the first Archdruid of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF) an international fellowship devoted to creating a public tradition of Neopagan Druidry. In 1995, he retired from a leadership role due to complications from eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. ADF has grown to become the best-known Neopagan Druid group based in North America. At his death, Mr. Bonewits held the title of ArchDruid Emeritus.

During his forty years as a Neopagan priest, scholar, teacher, bard, and polytheologian, Isaac Bonewits coined much of the vocabulary and articulated many of the issues that have shaped the rapidly growing Neopagan movement in the United States and Canada.

Mr. Bonewits was internationally known as a speaker who educated, enlightened and entertained two generations of modern Goddess worshippers, nature mystics, and followers of other minority belief systems, as well as explained these movements to journalists, law enforcement officers, college students, and academic researchers.

His personal papers will become part of the American Religions Collection at the Library of University of California at Santa Barbara.

One of his most influential contributions was the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (the "ABCDEF"), developed in 1979 as a response to the Jim Jones People's Temple tragedy. It has been translated into many languages and used around the world to evaluate how dangerous or harmless an organization might be. It was the first such scale to use theories of mental health and personal growth to judge rather than theological or ideological standards.

His other books include Authentic Thaumaturgy (1979, 1998), The Pagan Man (2005), Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca (2006), Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism (2006), Neopagan Rites (2007), and Real Energy (2007), which was co-authored with his wife, Phaedra, as well as numerous articles, reviews and essays. As a singer-songwriter, he released two albums, Be Pagan Once Again (1988), and Avalon is Rising (1992).

He is survived by his wife, Phaedra, his son from a previous marriage, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits of Bardonia NY, his mother Jeannette, his brothers Michael and Richard, and sisters Simone Arris and Melissa Banbury.


And from The Wild Hunt: http://wildhunt.org/blog/2010/08/isaac-bonewits-1949-2010.html

EarthLove Fellowship will hold our Lughnasadh/Lammas ritual on Saturday, August 7th at 7:00 pm in El Dorado Park in Scottsdale. We will be at or near the Northeast Ramada, which is just south of Oak Street on 77th Street.

We will be celebrating the god, Lugh, and the first harvest. Come and renew your pact with the land.

Our rituals are always open to the pagan-friendly public.

For further information and/or other questions, please feel free to call me at 602-722-2562.

My coaching interview with Karen Langston:

So that I will always remember:

This was one of those stories that I just felt I had to pass on..... yes, because of the kindness exhibited, but moreso for people who would ever resort to the sort of "trick" they were about to play. Does it ever serve to do something like that?

You Just Never Know
Author Unknown

Bill worked in a factory on a production line, he was a big, awkward, homely guy. He dressed oddly with ill-fitting clothes. There were several fellow workers who thought it smart to make fun of him.

One day one fellow worker noticed a small tear in his shirt and gave it a small rip. Another worker in the factory added his bit, and before long there was quite a ribbon of cloth dangling. Bill went on about his work and as he passed too near a moving belt the shirt strip was sucked into the machinery. In a split second the sleeve and Bill was in trouble. Alarms were sounded, switches pulled, and trouble was avoided.

The foreman then summoned all the workers and related this story:
( Read more... )

THINK, BE KIND ALWAYS...YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WHAT SOMEONE IS FACING IN THEIR LIVES!

Aw, this is just too good not to share:

Beware of bread!

- More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
- Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households
score below average on standardized tests.
- In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home,
the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates
were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as
typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations
- More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of
eating bread.
- Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that
as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The
average North American eats more bread than that in one month!
- Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence
of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.
- Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and
given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
- Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder"
items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
- Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more
than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body
being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy,
gooey bread-pudding person.
- Newborn babies can choke on bread.
- Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 240 degrees Celsius! That
kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
- Most bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant
scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

Happy Beltane!

EarthLove Fellowship is celebrating this joyous time at El Dorado Park in Scottsdale on May 1st at 6:00 pm. We will be meeting at or near the Northeast Ramada, on 77th St just south of Oak Street.

Join us as we frolic at this, the first of the summer festivals, the midpoint when spring turns towards summer. After ritual, we will join together in Fellowship over potluck.

Bealtaine:

Ah, glorious May

You have blessed us again

with blossoms and blooms

and the morning song of meadowlarks

Once again, the sun kisses the earth

and bounty springs forth


We bedeck ourselves in flowers

and tie ribbons onto trees

as we dance the dance of old

betwixt the bright fires.


Bright blessings,

Linda

I had a hair appointment with my hairdresser in Cordes Junction today. How I came to have a hairdresser almost a hundred miles away is another story, not really relevant to this one.

I was thinking I would leave around 10 am for my 11:30 appointment, but for some reason, I didn't. I left about 10-15 minutes later. As I was getting into my car, I thought, "I should put coolant in the radiator. It's been running hot lately." But I didn't because I was running late. And off I went.

I was on the 101, not quite at the I-17 exit, when I saw one of those highway signs saying there was an accident on I-17, 8 miles up the road, and that the highway was closed. Well, I didn't know any other way to go to Cordes Junction, so I continued onto I-17, hoping there would be a detour.

Well, the traffic was backing up not even 4 miles after I got on, and it wasn't long before my engine started running hot. Gosh, I was wishing I had listened to myself and put the coolant in. I called my hairdresser and left a message that I was running late due to an accident on I-17. After awhile, I realized I had to get off the road, so I took the next exit, having no idea where it led. Apparently I wasn't the only one. Lots of other folks took it too, including a gang of about 15 motorcyclists, who surrounded me for awhile. By that time, I was putting my car in neutral every chance I got, and revving the engine to keep it from overheating.

At the intersection, the motorcyclists took a U-turn and headed back toward Phoenix. I just kept following the road in the general direction of where I thought I needed to be, hitting stop-and-go traffic all along for almost an hour. Finally, I saw a place to pull over to add the coolant, but it was in the sun, and so I went a little further and took a turn so I could park under a tree. I put in the rest of that bottle of coolant, thinking to myself, I should have done this sooner. And now that I have, the traffic will probably clear up.

I had to laugh when I got back into the traffic and within about 200 feet, the traffic dissipated.

I was sitting at a red light, and noticed a tree by the intersection that had been decorated with bandanas, and there were crosses, and gifts all around it. I realized I was at the intersection of the big motorcycle accident from two weeks ago, which I had also been thinking about when those motorcyclists were around me in the traffic. I found myself welling up with tears for those lives so needlessly lost. My heart goes out to their families and friends, and I said a silent prayer for those still riding.

So there I was at Carefree Highway and within a few minutes, I was on the I-17, no traffic at all, and no sign of an accident. Somehow I had bypassed it all.

My hairdresser called me back, and he told me that the accident was a large produce truck that had caught on fire and hit a car. There was at least one fatality. As I was driving, I realized that if I had left at 10 am as I had planned, it might have been ME that the truck had hit!

In that moment, in spite of all of the challenges, I was so grateful that I was alive and safe.

It changed my whole day.

The rest of the day was actually very good. My hair came out great. I did my son, Sean's taxes as I worked at Comic Zone. A sale of some property finally funded today. I went to my usual Thursday night personal growth meeting. And through it all, like a steady drumbeat, is this gratitude, reminding me that I am here to enjoy it all.

Life is precious, every moment to be treasured. One never knows when it will be gone. Embrace your life, your loved ones, yourself, and live like you mean it. Appreciate everything. And be grateful for those minor detours and challenges. Good chance there is a gift in there somewhere, just for you. A gift to remind you of what's really important.