Chapter 8

Ritual over, the throng discussed Mina on the way to retrieve drums, snacks, chairs and percussion. Blocks, whistles, triangles, frogs, gourds, shakers and rattles. The best Samhain Ever! Never had they felt so close to departed loved ones.

Never had the full meaning of the falling Towers been revealed. The shattered dregs of thousands of people caught by a false religion of hate marched past ... the pirates in with them wondering where the promised seventy two virgins had disappeared to. Lied to by false prophets! Perhaps to be reincarnated as hogs.

Some saw visions of the beloved dead. Peaceful happy shades gladly waiting for the next adventure.

Others saw the end result of lives spent in gossip. Gibbets hung with twisting figures, trying to speak but weights hung from lying tongues prevented it. They too were in line for the next adventure. Will they hold their tongues?

Figures missing heads, but holding on to the Goddess, burnt and battered ancestors, murdered by the religions of man and greed.

The fire was lit, the blessings given, the dead released to be sought next year.

Eight spokes of the turning wheel of life til next time.

Yule - 21st December: the longest night and shortest day of the wheel. Light a candle from the last rays of the sun and keep it lit to rekindle the sun.

Imbolc - 2nd February: The celebration the awakening of the land and the growing power of the Sun.

Spring Equinox - 21st March: Ostara Goddess of fertility. The mythical Easter. The resurrection and rabbits laying colored eggs.

Beltane - 30th April: Summer's first full bloom and maypole dances, the Sacred Marriage of Goddess and God. There are more pagan children conceived on Beltane than any other festival of the year!

Midsummer - 21st June: a time of plenty and celebration.

Lughnasadh - 1st August (Loo-nassa): Lammas, harvest, celebrating the fruits of the mystery of Nature.

Autumn Equinox - 21 September: this rite honors old age and the approach of Winter.

The coming year ... the future Rituals. What will they hold? Who will return as a shade? Who will return to Dance?

There's dancers and there's dancers, and then there's Mina.

Wilhelmina Sutherland, freed from her fathers oppression, loosed from The Reverend Reed and recovered, finally, from the ass reaming of the century ... Twentieth Century ... this was the Twenty First ... danced with the joy and abandonment of the five year old child she had so struggled to recall.

Impeded by, first, the hat, then the upstanding collar, she slowly stripped out of the robe and impediments. The Athame was too heavy and too sharp, the rope belt restricted her hips, the square toed and buckled Puritan shoes too heavy and stiff, the pentagram too floppy.

There was a clothes horse, of sorts. A straw stuffed scarecrow intended for the bonfire was rescued by a perspiring Mina and dressed in the Ritual paraphernalia as she needed. It was cute. She had to remove the head to drive the support stake into the ground. She used a hefty log for the fire as a hammer. Standing on a bigger, fatter log and balanced by helping hands, she whacked that stake for all she was worth.