This photo shows an altar set up next to the CPC information booth at the first Maryland Faerie Festival on Saturday, May 21, 2005. Thoron and Myth Woodling set up and operated the CPC booth. Items on the altar are (from left to right): bottle of grape juice, image of Aradia, clear, shell-shaped bowl containing spring water, white flowers, half a lemon, dried fig, shortbread cookie, matches, two wheat crackers, red wheat seeds, blue corn kernels, white stone, spiral, faerie bell, lavendar candle, and three stones from site. The yellow rectangle on the left is a caution sticker on the actual table.
Photo taken by Snooks Family Photography
Friday, May 20, 2005, was a cold, rain-soaked day--not the best weather for the very first year of an outdoor event. On Friday evening, since there was nothing we could do about the weather, I invoked Aradia, asking her to come to the event and bring good weather.
Oh Aradia, Regina Fata, daughter of the Goddess, Diana, you, with whom the Fatas and stregas, and other faery-folk, met beneath the Walnut Tree in Old Benevento, meet with us Saturn's Day, after dawn, May 21 at the MD Faerie Festival in Upper Marlboro, MD that we may celebrate and make merry and play with the faeries. Come, and bring fair weather, I ask you!The central statue is Sacred Source's Aradia image. At her feet are a shortbread cookie, a fig, and a lemon. Faeries from the British Isles are said to be fond of shortbread. As it is my belief we have multicultural faeries due to our multicultural culture and multicultural flora and fauna all stirred up in a multicultural American melting pot. I honored her as a Regina Fata, or queen of the faeries, with something for the Celtic faeries. Figs were a sweet treat in ancient Italy and lemons are sacred to both Diana and Aradia. There are also four stones on the altar, picked up from the site and later returned to the site. These relate to the local spirits of the land. Blue corn is sacred to Native American land spirits. Wheat grains were offered in various Roman religious rituals. The wheat crackers and the red wheat and blue corn, along with the lemon, fig and shortbread were sprinkled around the site at the end of the event. The county park at which we held the event does not allow wine, so I substituted a bottle of grape juice, which was later poured out as a libation. White flowers are sacred to the moon. Lavendar is associated with faerie folk. Interestingly it is also sacred to Hecate, who in turn is associated with Diana and Aradia.
This was set up as a thank offering altar rather than an altar for a specific Wiccan ritual. Hence it is not set up with all four elements and all the appropriate Wiccan tools.
Wiccan Offering for Aradia
Farrar Alexandrian Invocation of Aradia
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