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Note: If you haven't read the previous installments, you can find them here:

The Vegan Pagan: Introduction
The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the First
The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the Second
The Vegan Pagan: Your Health
The Vegan Pagan: The Case Against Animal Sacrifice
The Vegan Pagan: Climate Change and Food Equity

I saw those words on a bumper sticker this morning and they made me cry. Why? Because in the last year, who I wanted to be got overshadowed by who other people needed me to be. Things that were important to me, like working with my tarot cards, writing my books, articles and blogs, knitting my sweaters, and playing with my clay got shoved to the back burner while I performed duties that others needed of me. My New Year's resolution was to find myself again, and by gods, I'm going to do just that. 

Within the next few weeks I'm returning to a project that I started nearly three years ago. I make pottery masks, and I have always wanted to do a series on the tarot. I think embarking on the whole deck may be a bit ambitious--at least at the start--but I do think I can execute the creation of the majors, all embodied in a 'green man' type of wall-hanging. It feels good to have a vision, and a goal, again. 

“So, what's your coven like?”

Seeing the expression on my face—a group that's been around for 35 years takes a deal of telling—she laughs and adds, “In the nutshell.”

I think.

“Well, we don't really have a Book of Shadows,” I begin.

“You don't?” she says, surprised.

Many years ago, from some long forgotten source, I read that the goddess Hecate's sacred festival was celebrated on January 31. Although I have never been able to find the source or corroborate this information (Stewart and Janet Farrar's classic “The Witches' Goddess” mentions August 13 for her annual festival as well as the night of the Full moon), I have celebrated this feast every year, in preparation for Imbolc and as an entry into the coldest (but not darkest) part of the Winter.

My experience of Hecate is as a seasonal Goddess. I sense her presence in October, as the frost bitten garden finally dies back, as the light deepens into honey and amber, in the first tantalizing days of Hallowstide, the first days of the thinning Veil. She is present in the Descent, and in the Underworld, and in the solemn, silent movements of our beloved dead. She is present in the rapidly darkening year, and she helps to midwife in the promise of the sacred Child, reborn as the Sun at the Winter Solstice.

For the 8 Sabbats that are a part of the Pagans Down Under blog project, I've decided to share my fledgling '8 Spoked Wheel' system as I work through them properly for the first time myself in my own practice. This is a work in progress that follows a practice for a number of years that did follow the traditional neo-pagan sabbats but after serious reflection I've decided to give an adjusted practice a go that reflects a system I have created that suits.

I don't imagine this could be directly adopted by anyone else and see it as a personal weaving of my own creation. This series of festivals incorporates colour magic and is adapted to suit my local climate and so we begin with Red and an observation I have termed The Reflection. The energy of this thrums throughout late January and early February and could be shifted to suit astrological or lunar correspondences. For this year that would suit the 3rd of February, when a Full Moon in Leo is experienced. The Full Moon in this sign lends a shining, fabulous quality to the season.

Let me ask you a question: How do you feel when you're sitting by a crackling fire? Whether it's a campfire under a starry sky or a fireplace in a book-lined living room, the feelings are the same. Warmth. Comfort. Well-being. Wonder and awe as you stare into the shifting, roaring orange flame, watching it snake around the wood and snap embers into the air. It almost feels...sacred.

People who lived before us -- and not all that long before us -- felt the same sense of reverence. Fire lit and warmed their homes, and served as the focus of family life. Fire was so important and inspirational that they gave it a name and an identity -- Vesta, beloved goddess of the home, hearth and domestic life. Symbolized by a flame, she lived in the household fire.