The place of meeting is decorated with ash boughs, apples, blackberries, grapes and grain sheaves. The coveners should ride to the place of ritual on riding poles or hobbyhorses. Before the rite poems are read and songs are sung of sacrifice, of love betrayed, of parting and death. Any music and dancing should be slow and solemn. Games, wrestling, fencing and foot races are traditional. The maiden crowns the winner.
The priestess casts the Great Circle. She stands before the north arms outstretched and invokes:
Priestess: O Goddess, friend and sister to women, wife and mother to men, thou who art all woman, be among us as we learn the ancient sacred to thee. She lowers her arms and rejoins priest.
Priest: Throughout this world and others, and the many strange and the beautiful worlds of watersprites, nymphs and woodsprites creatures of earth and fire, in our many lives and the lives of others, in the great power of knowledge and in the magic of countless centuries of time it is known that all things are cyclic. Kingdoms rise and fall and others rise from them. Land come from the sea and to the sea return after aeons the mountains rise and sink into the waves and rise again in ages later. In all this the story remains the same, holding within it the greatest of truths and the greatest of magic.'
The coven reflects on this.
Priest: The legends of this festival are clear: Isis, Osiris and Set; Iduna, Bragi and Loki; Blodeuwedd, Lugh and Gronw and others. As it is with the year’s season it is with all things.
Priestess: Now does the Goddess turn away her face from the latest-born king of the golden cap, bright handsome and laughing, who dies today, and smiles instead her gaze upon his somber brother, the silent, hard and clever king of the night.
Priest: As season follows season as snow follows summer the change is made, for darkness must inevitably follow light.
Priestess: As the lady Ishtar did seal the doom of high Tammuz so also does she of the flowers require the life of the smiling king wherefore from his blood do red flowers grow as his mortal soul journeys beyond.
Priest: In time and in the midst of winter he will return and incarnate once again in his deep love of the Lady and decree fate on his brother. As day follows night this must come to pass. All things rise and fall and only the goddess remains the same.
Now is the rite of calling down the moon
Cakes and wine.
The Great Circle is closed.