Witches Brew

This month CIPS, the Central Illinois Pagan Society, is marking its first anniversay. At the beginning of October Witches Brew also marked its first year. And while blog entries on Witches Brew have been sporadic (to say the least), CIPS has been growing like Topsy.

Last year at Samhain (Halloween), CIPS celebrated their first sabbat or holiday ritual with a circle of five people. This year on November 1st, people are coming from Bloomington and Chicagoland, from Eureka and Germantown Hills, from Yates City, from Canton and Bartonville and Peoria to celebrate the Witches’ New Year and to feast and remember our ancestors. We are expecting 12-15 children from toddlers to teens.

Usually the little ones just come to have fun. They are getting to know each other now. They eat, they smash a pinata, have a water balloon fight, color, and do simple crafts. Only the middle schoolers participate in the ritual circle–if they chose. This year at Samhain the potluck will be incorporated into the ritual circle and all of the children–and their parents–will get to participate. This is exciting for the group and a little bit scary, I think, for the organizers. We have an energetic bunch of kids.

This has been a year of new adventures for CIPS. Each sabbat now has a community out-reach project. For Samhain we are collecting canned goods for the CityLink Stuff-A-Bus food campaign. And we will be adopting a needy family for Yule.

The email list has 92 members (last time I checked). There is an herb class that meets once a month, and a month Meet & Greet for coffee and conversation. We just published the third issue of our electronic newsletter which comes out roughly every six weeks. We plan to do eight issues a year–one for each sabbat–with articles about the history of each holiday, a recipe, a spell, and a bit of humor.

And we have started a virtual library at Shelfari, an online, social networking site for book-lovers. So far five members of CIPS have listed approximately 300 titles from their personal book collections. Basic Pagan 101 books sit side by side with scholarly books on Celtic and Egyptian history. There are herbals, books on Women’s Spirituality and Native American culture, and collections of myths. There is Pagan fiction. Pagans love books and social networking on the Internet, so this should quickly become a community resource.

Even in this economic turmoil, we celebrate our community and our good fortune and look forward to the new year.