Orchardcraft

What do I want out of my practice?

I think it’s easiest to answer with an example.

What I want out of my practice is best reflected by the day I had yesterday. Some pagan friends and I went to an orchard to pick apples and can them afterwards. Before beginning our little harvest of delicious, delicious apples, I offered a small prayer and several offerings to the spirits of the orchard and land, acknowledging the harm done, and my oath that day to be a good visitor (as one cannot be a guest if one is not invited) and take no more than what I can use, and then gave an offering to Abélion (Abellio), a god I am hoping to build a relationship with in the future. My friends called to their own respective gods and goddesses and gave their offerings, and then we had a beautiful day looking for apples, blessed throughout by several positive auguries.

Later that night, my partner (who is not a pagan) asked to use my hearth shrine to make a petition of a goddess, and I walked him through it.

That’s what I want my practice to be. Inviting, warm, and literally rooted despite my lack of access to the earth (as I live in an apartment in a very densely urban part of my city). Mixed with a generous helping of that amazing kitchen magic (that extraordinary alchemy of canning apples) and gardening, as I am honestly happiest when I’m interacting with trees. Connected to my mundane actions without feeling heavy or ritualized beyond necessity. Accommodating of my friends’ and kin’s individual beliefs, but without becoming too vague or indistinct.

So it seems that I’m looking for:

• a delicate equilibrium between formalism and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants impulsivity;
• cosmological perspectives which rhyme with my own inner animistic tendencies but also fit within my own political and social instincts (compassion, reciprocity, responsibility, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, reparations, etc.);
• a relationship with spirits and the nonhuman, named and unnamed, that is built on the same principles that guide me in my interactions with humans (compassion, reciprocity, responsibility, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, reparations, etc.);
• a relationship with the spirits that might have interacted and guided my European ancestors, going all the way back to pre-Christian Europe;
• healing from the spiritual and emotional abuse and trauma caused by growing up in a deeply Catholic family, in a relentlessly Catholic environment, in a profoundly cruel world that runs on the principles of white supremacy, patriarchy, compulsory heterosexuality and cissexism, ecological destruction, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and war;
• a practice that works as well when I am “alone” as with the friends who might not have the same world-views and practices that I do, in other words, a practice that is hospitable and open.

Without even getting into the nitty gritty of the ins and outs of a practice, I am really glad I sat down tonight to write the above list. I think it can be really easy to get lost in research and in what others are doing. But as the orchardcraft yesterday demonstrated–especially considering how nervous I was about having my friends listening to my appeal to the spirits–I can do this, I’m already doing this, so let’s make sure that I have a clear picture in my mind of what I want my practice to look like, so that the rest can more easily follow.

PS: I’ve (finally) been updating my reading list!