This is part of our four Order-Wide rituals for healing the earth. Please see this page for details about the ceremonies as a whole, frequently asked questions, and how to participate.
This page offers an abbreviated version of the ceremony. A full script of the ceremony is available to download here.
Feel free to add yourself to our ritual map or discuss the rituals on our Forums or AODA Discord (Earth Rituals).
The Telluric Waterway Blessing at the Fall Equinox
The purpose of this ceremony is to provide healing, blessing, and protection to the waterways and bodies of water upon which our planet depends. It uses a two-part ritual: the first is using a modified Sphere of Protection that is placed on a stone. The second part of the ritual involves leaving the stone at the waterway as a blessing.
For this ceremony, you need to gather one or more small stones that can be taken with you to a local waterway. To select your stones and waterway, use your intuition and connect with the land. Find a stone that is willing to receive the blessing (you can sense this intuitively or can do a simple divination). We recommend using local stones as these are directly returned to nature, either gathered from the waterway or the surrounding landscape. You will also need to select a waterway in order to receive the blessing. If you know what watershed you live in, you might wish to do your first ceremony for the watershed you live in. If you are in the US, you can learn more about your watershed through the United States Geological Survey Site. Canadian Members can visit here.
The ritual itself can be done in advance at your home, and then the stone is taken to the waterway and offered there. You can also perform the stone blessing at the waterway itself if it is private and the weather is appropriate.
You can bless one or more than one stone, leaving the stones at one waterway, along a waterway, or at multiple waterways in your region. If you are blessing more than one stone, you will want to trace the symbol on each of the stones as you perform the Sphere of Protection on them.
The Ceremony, Part I: Blessing the Stone
In preparation for the Stone Ceremony, place the stone(s) upon your altar and decorate your altar as you see fit. Have spring water, snowmelt, or water from the waterway itself available in a small bowl.
Open up a Sacred Grove using AODA’s Solitary Grove Ritual.
Using the AODA’s Sphere of Protection ceremony, perform the Sphere of Protection with the stone (or group of stones) as the center of your Sphere of Protection. For example, for the east, you would move to the eastern side of your altar. Dip your finger in the bowl of water, and draw the symbol of the east on the stone with the water, then speak aloud and visualize the energy of the air. Do this for each of the elements in the sphere of protection. At this time of balance in the year, the Telluric energy is quite powerful, take extra time drawing the telluric current into the stone–feel the golden-green energy from the heart of the earth overflowing in the stone, making it radiant. To complete the Sphere of Protection, hold the stone in your hands, and feel the energies of the sphere coalescing in the stone, contained within the stone.
Sit in meditation for a time once you are finished seeing if any additional insights or messages from the living earth arise. Perform any other work you choose to perform. If you are at the waterway, picking up any litter that you can easily reach is an excellent choice for a physical action that will ground the blessing. Close the grove (if you opened it) and give thanks to the living earth.
Part II: Offering to the Waterway
Take your stone to the waterway where you intend to offer the blessing. Offer the stone, with your own words or an appropriate poem.
Using your intuition, decide if the stone will be placed in the water or next to the water. The placement is important: A stone placed in the water will allow the blessing to flow downstream, while the stone placed next to the water will continue to bless the waterway in that particular spot.
You can offer this prayer:
Equinox waters, flow now
From the deepest sacred springs
Hear the beats of our hearts
Share your love and life.
Let the Telluric current rise
Through ancient rock and stone.
Let that blessing flow
Upon river current and ocean wave
Blessing the lands
And all who live upon them.
Do any other work you are led to do. Meditate on the experience of placing the stone and thank the waterway.
After the ceremony, we suggest that you also do something to bring the energies of the blessing to the waterways directly, as an offering to the waterway. This allows you to balance both physical and metaphysical work. This might be picking up trash along your waterway, participating in waterway monitoring, reducing your use of water in your home, or other such activities.
