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Litha & Flower Crowns
by Sam
Litha is the celebration of the Summer Solstice, a midsummer festival, often referred to as Mid-Summer’s Day. This is the day where the planet is tilted to give us the most hours of sunlight, before the darkness returns. It is a harvest festival, but unlike most harvest festivals, the bounty at Litha is slightly smaller. Consisting mostly of bright flowers and some early crops. This is the perfect time to slow down, and bask in the sun now that we are in the slower time between the planting and harvesting seasons.
Often in hiding, sprites, fairies and elves have been known to make appearances during Litha celebrations. Many believe that this is because the veil between the natural worlds and spiritual worlds thin on Litha. At times when the veil is thin, unwanted spirits also have the potential to cross over. As a way to protect themselves from unwanted spirits, people would often craft crowns or garlands adorned with flowers and crops to wear, and decorate their homes during the celebrations. Flowers that represent the Sun, brightness and positivity were used to honor the harvest and represent the light as we head into darker months.
This year as a coven, we gathered and made floral crowns together. Using a variety of flowers and each adding our own individual flair. Check out our rituals section of this Newsletter and learn how you can create a protective crown to wear at your next celebration!
References:
Flower Crown Activity
by Suzie
To celebrate Litha this year the coven got together and made flower crowns. This is something we have all wanted to do and Litha was the perfect time to finally do it.
This time of the year, so many flowers are in bloom so depending on your preference, you can use fresh or fake flowers. Fresh flowers obviously have a limited time use so we opted for fake flowers so we could keep and use our crowns in the future.
The main flowers we used were sunflowers, roses, and lilacs. We have attached a printable with the meanings to each of these flowers here in the newsletter if you’d like to know more about the significance to each flower.
Before making our flower crowns we also decided to include the ritual of casting a circle around our work space. This ritual came from the book we are reading in our book club called The Witch’s Book of Self-Care by Arin Murphy-Hiscock. Casting a circle is a good way to protect your space from negative energy. To learn more about how to join our book club please visit our Patreon.
For Safety: This craft includes small parts and the end product (if used by children) should be used under supervision.
What you’ll need:
Wire
Wire cutters
Flowers (real or fake)
Ribbon (multiple colors)
Scissors
Floral tape
Step One
Create your headband base
Measure and cut your wire to be two times the length of your head from ear to ear.
Bend the wire in half and twist into small circular sections. Tuck the ends of the wire into the last circular section. This will be covered with floral tape later to avoid snagging.
Step Two:
Add the Flowers
Choose a variety of flowers and greenery you want to use for your crown. Cut the stems so you have individual flowers to work with. (not bundles)
Distribute the flowers around the crown as you please using floral tape to secure the stems to the wire as you go.
I recommend starting with your larger flowers to ensure they are placed on your head where you'd like, then fill in the other smaller flowers between to help accent them.
Once you are happy with the placement of your flowers, use the floral tape to do one final wrapping to help secure everything in place and cover any rough edges from the wires or the flowers. (including the end mentioned earlier)
Step Three:
The Ribbon
Measure and cut the ribbon you have chosen to be one times the length of your head from ear to ear. Tie the ribbon onto the end of one side of your crown leaving half the length as slack to use for tying later.
Step Four:
Play
Wrap the crown around your head and use the ribbon slack to string through the other end of your crown and tie both ends of your crown together. Wear your crown around your house or to any special events you’d like (doesn’t have to be for Litha)
If you use fake flowers you can wear your crown to other celebrations throughout the year.
Hope you all have a happy Litha!
Blessed be!
Shadow Work Prompt: Protection
By Marilyn
Many in pagan/witch circles discuss the importance of protection, whether physical, emotional or spiritual. What are some things that you do to help protect yourself in these different areas (i.e. spiritual, emotional, physical). Are there any areas of protection you have been neglecting? If there are, why do you think you might have been neglecting these areas and how might you move forward with more attention to protection areas that you have neglected? Further, are there any “protective” practices that we put in place that are not really protective as much as catalysts for bringing about more problems (for example, perhaps you have been avoiding an important conversation with a family member to keep the peace, but deep down you know that avoiding the problem now is a temporary solution and might make the problem larger down the line)? What steps or actions can you take to avoid the backlash or possible outgrowth of these issues that you have been avoiding in favor of the more immediate mental/emotional protection that dealing with the situation head on might incite?
Join our Book Club (via Patreon)
We have started a Book club with our Patrons (via Patreon). All levels of access will have some degree of access to book club posts.
We will be reading through Arin Murphy-Hiscock’s The Witch’s Book of Self-Care and discussing, performing, and elaborating on issues and practices detailed in the work.
Check out our Patreon to join in! Access starts at the lowest tier ($3).
As always, we thank you so much for your support and hope you will continue to join us as we move forward with our podcast(s) and expand into new horizons.
Southern Hemisphere Shoutout
To our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, we wish you a Blessed Yule. You can check out our Yule Newsletter (which we released for the Northern Hemisphere celebration of Yule) for shadow work prompts, activities, and more!
CALENDAR
June 21 Summer Solstice (Litha)
June 24 Midsummer Celebration (Germany)
Midwest Coven Cast Presents Weekend Reads Season 3, Episode 6
June 28 NEW MOON (9:52pm CST)
June 29 Midwest Coven Cast Season 3, Episode 7
July 8 Midwest Coven Cast Presents Weekend Reads Season 3, Episode 7
July 13 FULL BUCK MOON (1:37pm CST)
Midwest Coven Cast Season 3, Episode 8
July 22 Midwest Coven Cast Presents Weekend Reads Season 3, Episode 8
July 27 Midwest Coven Cast Season 3, Episode 9
July 28 NEW MOON (12:54pm CST)
August 1 Lughnasadh