Vinalia Rustica 2013

(Not my photo. Looked like this, though!)

The wildflowers waved sunnily at us from their shaded paths as we carefully picked our way into the woods.

Vinalia Rustica has been one of my favorite of all the Aphrodite festivals for the last several years -- made spacial in large part because I had a shrine that I helped tend on a special piece of land. I've shared those photos (and my love for that place) here over the course of those years. Politics and pain have collided, though, in such a way that I doubt I'll ever that land again in the waking world, and I have left Aphrodite's Shrine there in her own care -- trusting that others will step forward to tend Her.

I had honestly forgotten that today was Vinalia Rustica. I don't have a shrine or a temple to tend for her right now, and it's a sore spot for me. I'm remedying that absence as soon as I am able, and I have plans for a glorious temple in her honor.

So, I wasn't thinking about that when I went with my coven sisters to a place that is about to become special to us. It is a wild place, a free place. It is a place where Indiana limestone and brown-eyed Susans speak clearly. A place where Artemis runs and Pan dances. It is a place where Aphrodite laughs, and her voice echoes off the cliffside!Sirens sing there, along the banks of the cool, deep stream.

There is no temple but the cliff. No shrine but the rocks and groves of walnut and sycamore trees. No offerings but the wildflowers.

And it is PERFECT!

It was the perfect place to honor Aphrodite, and it was the perfect way (in wildness and freedom and celebration with my sisters).