23/5/06

Infuriatingly, Blogger has decided that this is a spam blog and has locked me out, so I will save this as a draft and hope that they will EVENTUALLY unlock me! Nelle, how are you finding your new blog platform? I may have to think about migration.

ANYWAY….

Lola and I went with the rest of our family to a handfasting ceremony on Sunday. For those who have no idea what a handfasting is, look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handfasting
http://www.handfasting.info/

It was an incredibly beautiful ceremony. For someone like me, it may in fact be the ideal choice when I eventually ‘tie the knot’ (an expression originating in handfasting). Town Halls are soulless, and churches mean little to me. Something like this is all about nature, all about the earth and our connection to her and to each other…..it’s very powerful.

Since handfasting ceremonies differ, I’m going to describe the one we attended. If this is boring, skip to the end because Lola and I contributed to the day in a very cool way, which I’ll write about at the end. Anyway, here’s what happened (I won’t bore you with the preliminary ‘waiting round for the rain to stop’ business, lol!)

The ceremony was held in the 9-acre (!!!) garden of a house owned by friends of the couple. There was a beautiful well-kept garden section, behind which was a big woodlandy chunk, in which the ceremony was held.

Once everyone was ready to begin and the weather eased up, the men and women were separated. The women went up to the house to meet the bride, and the men went to the ceremonial area with the groom. Once there, we were taught a song to sing as we walked before the bride to the ceremonial area. Lola happily banged at a drum she’d been given, and I sang at the top of my lungs as we walked down, with my 3rd sister shushing me for singing too loud, lol!

The bride followed the noisy crowd of female guests in a beautiful red dress, with a garland of leaves and flowers on her head. The red dress made a particular impression on me. Not only did it suit her black skin wonderfully, it reminded me that we were not attending a patriarchal virginal-woman wedding. She was dressed in the colour of blood, the colour of life, the colour long associated with female strength and weakness. The colour of womanhood. It brought Ayla and the Earth Children to my mind, as well as, of course, the Red Tent.

As we walked through the woods singing and drumming, I felt like I should have had a flaming torch in my hand. As we neared the ceremonial area, a small clearing, we could hear the men’s voices lifted in the same song. We reached the area, and saw that the men were walking in a circle around the ceremonial space. This was formed of four 7ft arches facing the four directions, which had been made by long wooden poles which were planted into the ground at one end and crossed each other at the other end, like this:

*damn blogger won't let me put the pic in, but you get the idea!*

Each pole was decorated from end to end with vines, leaves and flowers. At each arch was a representation of one of the four elements – a rose quartz stone for Earth, a bowl of water for Water, a lighted incense stick planted in the ground for Fire. For Air, a feather was tied to the top of the arch where the poles joined.

In front of the Earth arch was the stump of a tree, which had been covered by a cloth. On this altar were two small candles, a larger candle and a glass. A bottle of red wine rested against the altar. I later learned that the two candles on the altar represented the two of them, and the larger candle represented their union.


As we came into the clearing, the men continued to march in a circle around the ceremonial area, singing the song. We joined them, filtering into their circle, making it larger. The officiator (I may not call her Priestess as she does not claim that title) stood before the Earth arch and behind the altar. When the circle stopped, I was lucky to be standing just to her left behind the arch, so I could see both the bride and groom’s faces.

The groom stood just outside the ceremonial space, to the left of the officiator, behind the Air arch. The bride stood on the other side of the space, to the right of the officiator, behind the Water arch. I’m not going to repeat the whole ceremony here, but it was more or less like this: http://www.handfasting.info/hand4.html

After that bit of the ceremony, we all lined up in two lines facing each other and made an arch of our arms for the happy couple to walk through. The last part of the ceremony was jumping the fire. Which means exactly what it says – holding hands, they jumped over a fire! My mum got a great action shot, lol! And then we ate and drank in a very atmospheric construction (basically an outdoor stage with a tent draped over it), which reminded me of those Viking halls you see in films – low ceilinged, dark, bedecked inside with garlands of anything that grows! There was also a yurt, of all things! It was the real thing, except it had a wooden door instead of flaps, and it was all tricked out inside with cushions and low divan-style seating. Very Turkish, and you had to take your shoes off before going in. Several of the attendees had brought musical instruments, so while we ate we listened to drums, a fiddle, a flute, a dulcimer etc.

There was also a small fire, around which everyone clustered as the sun was dipping and it was starting to get cold. At this point the bride indicated to Lola and I that it was time for us to do our bit, so we went into the yurt and came out after about 10mins - in full bellydancing gear!! Unfortunately the CD player couldn’t read our CD, so we ended up jamming with the musicians – we danced to their playing and they played to our dancing. It was incredible. There we were, in an unrehearsed, exuberant dance around a campfire in the middle of a woodland.

After we’d danced around for a while, we pulled up some (un)willing volunteers and taught them some basic moves. I was really impressed with Lola at this point, and the way she worked the crowd. Everyone was howling with laughter because we had 2 guys up as well as the officiator and my 2nd sister, and watching men try to do these extremely feminine moves is just hysterical, lol! All the volunteers were great sports, clowning around and really getting into it. Finally we were exhausted, and left the ‘stage’ (a patch of slightly less muddy grass) to tremendous applause and cheers.

Overall, an amazing day!