St. Anne’s Day — July 26th
I’ve been trying to incorporate more Québécois traditions in my practice to honor the ancestress that I am closest to, my Granny Lorraine Thibodeau Marlow (originally Marleau), and my Mom’s Grandma (Granny Lorraine’s mother-in-law), Grandma Hazel.
Granny Lorraine’s ancestors were 100% Québécois (I’ve traced her family to St-Maurice) and Grandma Hazel was half Scottish from Ayreshire and half Québécois (her mother’s maiden name was Duame).
I used information from @lesorciercanadien’s post about the Feast Day of St. Anne and did a little ritual at my outdoor altar stone at the creek. I used the suggested offerings of Queen Anne’s lace and chamomile and substituted rose water for roses (in Grandma Hazel’s tea cup) and substituted my Midsummer black cherry cordial for wine (in the piece from Granny Lorraine’s wedding silver). I burned a white candle as well.
Of course there is almost always syncretism in my rituals since I have ancestral lines from all over north and Central Europe. I used my Slavic dolls and a Slavic altar cloth to represent the mothers and grandmothers.
The cloth has images of daughters nested within mothers and of the Goddess giving birth.
This felt very much like a summer time version of my Mother’s Night (Mōdraniht) rituals around the winter solstice.
💬 0 🔁 18 ❤️ 68 · A small personal thing.
Another Slavic element was that the Queen Anne’s lace used as offering was snipped from my Czech style spray decorating my altar that incorporates plants gathered primarily from the Feast of Corpus Christi through Midsummer Night. The Queen Anne’s lace was from Boží tělo, the Feast of Corpus Christi.
I also honored my Moravian babičky by doing a little wax divination with the candle even though it wasn’t beeswax. I always go with my first impression and for some reason I saw a stream of chrysanthemums. Flowers symbolize good fortune, success, happy marriage and chrysanthemums specifically symbolize longevity, fidelity, joy, and optimism. For me they also symbolize the ancestors because they bloom around Dusicky (All Souls) and I have incorporated them into altar cloths that I stitched for use at that time. So perfect for an ancestor ritual. (I did scoop up the wax since i don’t think paraffin is probably great for the environment).
