Wiccan Offering For Aradia

Before performing this rite, you should be properly prepared and purified with a ritual bath. Walk naked or wrapped in a bathrobe to your shrine. Originally a rite such as this was performed in the open air in a grove. Thus ideally, your shrine would be located outside in a garden or patio enclosed with a high privacy fence. However, it may be performed inside your home.

Fill a drinking horn or cup with wine or juice. Light incense. Bring food.

Your offering to the Gracious Goddess, Aradia, can be a single flower, fruit, a libation of red juice or wine, a piece of bread dipped in salt, a bit of honeycomb, a bough of pine, etc. Approach the shrine and say the following. (You may also ask for a specific boon.)

	HEKAS! HEKAS! ESTE BIBELOI!
	HEKAS! HEKAS! ESTE BIBELOI!
	HEKAS! HEKAS! ESTE BIBELOI!
	HAIL ARADIA! HAIL ARADIA! HAIL ARADIA! HAIL ARADIA!

	To the four quarters, from the Almathean Horn,
	Pour forth thy store of love; I lowly bend
	Before thee, I adore thee to the end,
	With loving offering thy shrine adorned.
	Thy food is to my lip, my prayer upborn
	Upon the rising incense-smoke; then spend
	Thy ancient love, O Mighty One, descend
	To bring me good fortune, lest I am forlorn.
	So mote it be.

Practice this rite daily for one full lunation.


Myth's Notes:

The bulk of this ritual would appear to have been adapted from the Farrar-Alexandrian Invocation of Aradia, but more likely it derived from an earlier Alexandrian or Gardnerian source. It is similar to other materials dated from the 1970's, including a ritual to the God in The Grimoire of Lady Sheba, 1971, 1974, 2001 (pp 46-47). Aidan Kelly, in his Crafting the Art of Magic, provided an earlier version of this invocation to Aradia. (See Aradia the Healer, specifically 1953.)

Interestingly, the ritual is also vaguely reminiscent of offerings at a Roman household Lar shrine.

The opening phrase, HEKAS! HEKAS! ESTE BIBELOI!, is likely Greek. One source translates it as: "Far away be the profane."

There is a simpler Wiccan rite, which may be related to or derived from the ritual above.

With a thorn, prick the symbol of the waxing moon in a short, broad candle of pure beeswax. Light the candle and with eyes fixed upon the flame, concentrate on your wish as you chant:
Gracious Lady Moon
Ever in my sight
Kindly grant the boon
I ask of thee tonight.
Extinguish the flame, but hold the memory of its light in your mind's eye for as long as you can. A way to make your wish come true will reveal itself.
--Elizabeth Pepper, Witches All, A Treasury from Past Editions of the Witches Almanac, 2003 (p. 55)
Apparently this rite was collected from a Book of Shadows from the early twentieth century. The ritual does not mention Aradia specifically, but "Gracious Lady Moon" was a Wiccan epithet for Aradia.

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