​Demeter is the daughter of the titans Kronos and Rhea, and sister to the Olympian deities. The name Demeter comes from de, which is a derivative of the Cretan word dêai, meaning barley, and the word meter which means mother.  De could also come from the Greek word da which means earth. Whichever etymology you choose to believe, it means the same thing. Demeter is the earth mother. In the Roman pantheon, she is called Ceres, which gives us the word cereal. She is the goddess of grain and barley. Demeter’s influence was not limited to just grain, but extended to vegetation and fruits in general, and thus fertility. Women, especially, revere Demeter for her attributes of health, birth, and marriage. Demeter taught mankind about agriculture. Through agriculture, cities were created. With cities came law and order. Because of this, she was also thought to be a goddess of justice. 

​As a mother goddess, Demeter is usually depicted as a mature woman with a chaplet of corn bearing a cornucopia and a torch. Her festivals take place during the harvest season and the first corn was always given to her as an offering. Her symbol is the bright red poppy, which commonly grows among the wheat fields. To ensure the fertility of the crops, pigs were often sacrificed to the goddess. Animals that are sacred to Demeter are pigs, serpents or geckos, and bees.

​Perhaps the most well-known story surrounding Demeter is the abduction of Persephone by Hades. In short, Hades, the God of the Underworld, fell in love with Persephone, Demeter’s daughter. Demeter was so heartbroken with grief that she would not allow the earth to bear fruit until she was reunited with her daughter. Fearing that mankind would starve to death, Zeus intervened and told Hades to return Persephone to her mother. However, while in the Underworld, Persephone ate some pomegranate seeds and was bound to spend a third of the year below the earth as Queen of the Underworld and wife to Hades. This myth corresponds to the cycle of the seasons and helps to explain why the earth is barren during the winter months while Persephone resides in the underworld. When Persephone returns to the world and to her mother, she brings the spring and fruitfulness of the earth with her. 

​Persephone and Demeter are often referred to as one in the same goddess. Persephone would be the maiden form of the earth goddess, Demeter herself would be the mother aspect, and often, Hecate is considered to be the crone aspect of this triple goddess form. This idea of the goddess undergoing a change in herself to correlate with the seasons is one of the Eleusinian Mysteries so often associated with Demeter. The Eleusinian Mysteries are some of the oldest and most famous of the secret rites of ancient Greece. Initiates into the Mysteries would reenact the loss of Persephone to the Underworld, Demeter’s search for her daughter, and finally the ascent of Persephone back to the world. Through this reenactment of symbolic death and rebirth, the initiates would learn that all life springs forth from the generations that came before. 

​During these modern times, we certainly aren’t going to sacrifice a pig to honor the goddess. Most of us probably don’t have a corn harvest either. If you would like to make an offering to Demeter during her harvest season, you could make corn muffins and share them with the goddess. You could also bake cookies in the shape of any of her sacred animals and share them with friends and family, and of course, the goddess. You could gather some of the best looking fall vegetables you can find and make a nice barley and vegetable stew. Have some friends over and share your stew with the goddess. Leave a seat at the head of the table for her to enjoy the stew with you. The best ways to commune with the gods and to make offerings is just to share your time and effort with them. After all, Demeter is the mother goddess. Don’t you want to spend time with your mother? 

Throughout high school I volunteered on a regular basis at our local senior center. I will always distinctly remember two people; a woman who would tell me the same stories over and over as we looked through her albums, and a sharp-witted man who was a retired fire fighter and proud Freemason. For a while I aspired to be a geriatric nurse, until I experienced the heartache that comes when they pass on. Seeing lonely seniors whose children never visited them was a hard lesson to learn about how our Western culture commonly discards parents.

After my own Mother passed, my Father remarried a Chinese woman and she educated me about how Eastern culture puts so much emphasis on caring for parents it is now the law in China! 

Beyond the daily care of our aging parents, how can we do better as a culture to celebrate our elderly? Here are a few ideas:

As the saying goes, “Age before beauty,” proper etiquette dictates that the eldest female is given priority in these circumstances:

Consider this, if you believe in the concept of reincarnation, then we are possibly the older souls who came after them and we are caring for them now as our spiritual children from past lives. Even if you extend compassion and kindness to an unrelated elder, you never know when your souls may cross paths again in future lifetimes.

Wine is relatively easy to make in today's world, but it hasn't always been so. Sometime in the far distant past, fermentation was a happy seasonal happenstance. The natural yeast on grapes brought about fermentation of the juice into wine and then into vinegar (if it wasn't drank first). This mysterious process, believed to be through divine intervention, was considered a gift from the Gods. Drinking this divinely intoxicating beverage allowed the drinker to take in divine energy. Thus, wine became an integral sacrament in religious rites, and still is today.

​I like the story of the origins of wine told about a King of Persia. He really loved grapes and wanted to eat them all year. His servants carefully stored grapes in jars so the king could eat them any time. One jar had grapes that seeped juice and started to ferment. When opened the odor and appearance of the fermented contents caused the jar to be marked poison. One of the kings wives had chronic nervous headaches and decided to kill herself by drinking the poisoned juice. She fell asleep, but when she woke she felt refreshed and had no headache. She finished off the jar of wine! She evidently had such a good time that the king ordered more of the grape juice “poison” to be made. He declared it to be sacred medicine. As improbable as this story sounds ( I'd have had a hangover, lol), grapes preserved as raisins would make a nice sweet wine.

​At some point in time the wild grape vines were domesticated and planted in vineyards; the grapes were fermented and stored in clay jars, and tree resins were added to prevent the must from turning to vinegar. Archaeologists believe this came about during the Neolithic period around 8500-4000 BC. They have found evidence that resinated wine (wine with wood resin), was being produced during this period (ca 5400-5000 BC) in fairly large amounts at Hajji Firuz Tepe, in the northern mountains of Iran. It was during this period that the growth of agriculture (particularly wheat and barley) and the invention of pottery made permanent settlements possible. These innovations were necessary for a sustainable year round food source and storage. They were also necessary for processing and storing wines. Egyptologists discovered 700 jars of resinated wine in the tomb of Scorpion I, one of the first Egyptian rulers (around 3150 BC). The development of narrow necked jars that could be sealed, were key to the storage and shipping of wine. By 3000 BC, the Nile Delta had transplanted vineyards and developed a thriving wine trade. The jars were inscribed with the year of the pharaoh’s reign, the vineyard location, the vintner’s name and the quality of the wine (good to very very good).

​Autumn Equinox is a time to “Eat, drink, and be merry,” to share and give thanks for the bounty of the harvest. Giving offerings and libations to God and Goddess is a ritual at least as old as agriculture and brewing. Every culture has one or more deities to whom they pay homage for the gift of brewing. One of the oldest is Nin-Kasi of Sumer, She was the brewer for the gods, who taught humans the art of brewing beer as well. Osiris, Egyptian God of the Dead was originally a god of vegetation and fertility. He taught the Egyptian people how to grow wheat and barley and of course the cultivation of grapevines. The main drink of Egyptians and Sumerians was beer which was brewed from bread and malted grain. Tenemet ,the Egyptian Goddess, originally associated with bread making, became Goddess of Beer and aids Osiris in his brewing. More famous for drinking and frivolity is the Greek God, Dionysus.He brings joy and divine ecstasy, and is also a vegetation, and fertility God. He is also known as Bacchus, the Roman God of wine and festivals. So eat, drink, and be merry in honor of the God and Goddess. Share your harvest, bread and wine with them in thanks for their bounty!

Activities you might like to try:

• You might want to try your hand at making wine at this time of year when grapes and berries are plentiful. Apples are also plentiful and the juice can be spiced or fermented for a hard cider.
• Make bread from scratch! You can purchase wheat or barley and grind them into flour yourself. You can find recipes for bread, wine and more on Pinterest; the library is also a great resource.

If the first week in August is unusually warm,
the coming Winter will be snowy and long.

For every fog in August,
There will be a snowfall in Winter.

The name of the month of July was changed from it’s original Quintilus via the Roman senate in 44BC to honor Julius Caesar after his brutal and untimely death. Similarily, the month of Sextilis was changed to honor Augustus, hence the name for the month of August.

For those that know a little Latin, the terms Quintilis and Sextilis actually mean Five and Six, respectively. The Roman calendar, before Julius Caesar, only had ten months with the sixty days of winter, where there was no work in the fields, unaccounted for. The year began in March (Martius, "named after Mars, the Roman god of war, who was also regarded as a guardian of agriculture” and ended in December (decem, meaning ten). This original calendar was “determined by the cycles of the moon and the seasons of the agricultural year.” We get the name “calendar” from ‘kalends’: the first of the month which occurred on the New Moon. The ‘ides’, or mid-month, were the full moons.

Read more about how our modern calendar came into being.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/calendar/romancalendar.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html
https://www.livescience.com/45650-calendar-history.html
 
The Romans also gave us the names of the days of the week and anyone who has any romance language experience can see this. The names of the week are based on the Sun, Moon and the names of the five planets known to the Romans. While Saturday, Sunday, and Monday made it through to today’s modern English, the Anglo-Saxons replaced the other four with the names of their gods.

Send us a message and we'll send you a few questions to start. Then, we'll make arrangements for a full interview, possibly two. Once the interview has been completed and discussed among the elders and you are accepted, your start date will be in a couple of weeks. 
http://www.innercirclesanctuary.com/1st-degree-classes.html

If it has been a while since you've had classes with us, ​please contact us and we can assess where to go from there.
http://www.innercirclesanctuary.com/2nd-degree-classes.html

If you would like to attend a sabbat event, please send an inquiry and we will pair you with a current member to be your sponsor. 

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​​When you look at your modern calendar, the Estival solstice is labeled as the beginning of Summer, so why do we call it Midsummer?  

If we were to actually begin the seasons with the cross-quarter days of

Imbolg, the very beginning of spring,
Bealtaine, the very beginning of Summer.
Lughnasadh, the very beginning of the Autumn harvesting season, and
Samhain, the early beginning of Winter

then it's easy to see why the Summer Solstice is known as "Midsummer". (and why Yule is oft called "Midwinter".)

Litha is a name often heard bandied about as another name for the Summer Solstice. Litha first came into use as a result of research by Aiden Kelly from a treatise called 'The Reckoning of Time' (De temporum ratione) written by a Northumbrian monk, Bede in 725 AD. The scholarly Bede described a variety of ancient calendars, including the Anglo-Saxon calendar that named the month of June (se Ærra Liþa, early Litha month) and July, (Æfterra Liþa, later Litha month). "It may have helped that it had been appropriated, as “Lithe,” for the Midsummer festival in the hobbits’ calendar in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien 1966)." Aiden Kelly also brought the names of Mabon and Ostara into the neopagan vernacular so that all the sabbats could have traditional names.

​Celebrations of the Summer solstice occurs in history around the world, much like that of all the quarter days.

• "In ancient China, the summer solstice was observed by a ceremony to celebrate the Earth, femininity, and the “yin” forces."
• "In ancient Gaul, the Midsummer celebration was called Feast of Epona.
• "Some Native American tribes held ritual dances to honor the Sun.
• "For the Greeks, it would, according to some calendars, mark the start of the new year and the month-long countdown toward the Olympics.
• "For the Romans, the solstice was the occasion for another unique exception to everyday life: on the first day of the festival of Vestalia, married women could, for one day only, enter the temples of the vestal virgins to make offerings to Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home.
• "Mayas and Aztecs used the day as a marker by which to build many of their central structures, so that the buildings would align perfectly with the shadows of the two solstices, summer and winter.
• "In Jewish tradition, it’s known as Tekufat Tammuz, the solstice of the month Tammuz.
• "Eastern Europe celebrates the solstice with Kupala, a Slavic holiday with pagan roots. Named for the Slavic goddess Kupala, it was originally conceived as a fertility rite.
• "Throughout Austria (and especially in the mountains of the Wilder Kaiser region of Tyrol), fires dot the countryside to celebrate the solstice."

​Quoted from The Scientific American

Ra - Horus - Apollo - Helios - 
Freyr - Huitzilopochtli - Lugh - Hvar Khshaita - 
Inti - Liza - Mithras - Sol Invictus - 
Surya - Tonatiuh  - Utu (Shamash)

As we say goodbye to the month of May, the month named for the Goddess Maia, the time of the fullness of Spring in the northern hemisphere, we begin to enter the season of Summer. The days have been getting warmer and warmer and the nights shorter and shorter.

Pearls
Pearls were believed to be the tears of mythical creatures like the mermaid and nymphs; the treasures of dragons; and tears from the moon herself. Highly associated with the moon, pearls are considered feminine associated with nurturing, healing, happiness, innocence, honesty and integrity. They can be used in magic for relationships and commitments or can be worn to heighten intuition and imagination.

Alexandrite
By the magic of science, Alexandrite is a color changing gem. In daylight it is a bluish-mossy green color and under lamplight it flashes a warm raspberry color. Alexandrite is believed to help bring a sense of calm and a peaceful state of mind to the wearer. It can attract joy, prosperity, good luck for gamblers, and boosts creativity and magnetism.

Moonstone
Ancient Romans considered the moonstone to be the solidified light of the moon herself. Wear to attune yourself to the natural rhythms of the moon, to attract true love, to enhance fertility, to settle disagreements in a relationship, and to arouse passions. Moonstone is also said to bring wonderful dreams at night.

Rose
Roses have been in gardens for over 5000 years. It is said that the foam that dripped from the freshly born Aphrodite as she emerged from the sea turned into white roses and when she mourned over the body of Adonis, her tears turned the white roses red. Roses are highly prized for all love magic. Roses bring peace, love, and are empowering to the spirit.

Honeysuckle
Since ancient time honeysuckle has been burned for prosperity within the home. It is also used in love magic and to induce dreams of love and passion. With its ability to cling to walls, honeysuckle is also known as ‘love bind’ and is symbolic of devotion.

Gemini
If someone is born before June 20th, their zodiac sign is Gemini. Traits for the Gemini are adventurous, have a love of variety, are charming, sociable, and quick-witted although, on occasion they can be talkative or bitingly sarcastic. Gemini’s are very independent yet can sometime throw caution to the wind. They are intelligent, adaptable, and confident yet can be unemotional, devious, and tend to take their own path.

​Cancer
If someone is born on or after June 21, they are a Cancer. Traits for Cancers include loving, loyal, and intuitive yet can be overemotional, clingy, and overly sensitive. They are self-motivated, natural leaders, and practical yet can side on controlling, bossy, or pessimistic. Cancers love helping others although can have a hard time trusting others. They love feeling secure but can tend to overreach on occasion. Cancers really enjoy the people they care about but aren’t fond of change.

In years past, when we were an open and public Temple, we held introduction classes before the start of a new class. There was a sign-up sheet hanging on the perfumed walls of the Bell, Book, and Candle and people would list their names and phone numbers when they felt it was time to check out a genuine witchcraft class. The week before an open night, actual phone calls were made to invite the sign up sheet to join us. Anyone who signed up was invited to come, sit, and learn about who we were and how we did things. 

On Saturday, June 10 from 6pm to 9pm, we return to our roots. 

If you are curious about who we are and how we operate OR if you are interested in petitioning to join our Wicca group and classes;
Come Join Us. 

Subjects we will cover:
The history of Inner Circle Sanctuary
How ICS has evolved over the years
What is Wicca
What we teach
The magical name
The magical tools needed to start classes
Our textbooks
How to become a member/student
What we offer as a group
What we expect from a member/student
What to expect if you are accepted as a member/student

And as an added bonus, we will demonstrate our basic ritual ring.

http://www.innercirclesanctuary.com/updates-and-info/inner-circle-sanctuary-intro
https://www.facebook.com/events/1807419629475587/