Kekri Preparations

This is my Kekri altar with decorations
in 2011.

Moi!

It's time for me to start preparing for Kekri. Kekri is an old Finnish pagan celebration, which is quite similar to Samhain, Dia de los Muertos and many other celebrations around the world celebrated in the start of November. For ancient Finns Kekri was the celebration of harvest, and therefore also the celebration of a new year. One of it's traditions was to invite the spirits of the dead family members to join the celebration.

Finnish neo-pagans celebrate Kekri nowadays in the start of November, more precisely from the 1st to 3rd of November. To me it's one of the most important celebrations among Juhannus (Midsummer) and Joulu (or Yule).

As an Eclectic Pagan I don't follow any certain tradition purely. My Kekri celebration is centered around two things: 1) my altar and 2) a Kekri dinner with my family. (My mother is a Pagan too. The others are Christians and Atheists, but they still follow the long tradition of Kekri - but without the clearly pagan sides obviously.)

I traditionally start preparing my altar already about a week before Kekri. I clean it (both, physically and spiritually) and decorate it. And when the Kekri days finally arrive, I meditate, make a ritual and sacrifice for my gods and goddesses. [No, I don't kill humans nor other animals as a sacrifice. That's a very inaccurate stereotype about Pagans created by popular culture. :P]

One important and fun part of the tradition for me is the decoration of my altar. I enjoy doing lots of different kinds of handicraft, and every year I want to do something different and fun. This year I'll most probably make my altar very colorful. Colorfulness to me symbolizes happiness, adventures, learning and the joy of life. One just can't embrace those things too much. ^^ But otherwise the decorations and rituals are something I'm just starting to plan more precisely. I have no clearer ideas yet.

What comes to the rituals, they're something I won't publish in this blog. I have a principle that I keep the most important parts and details of my personal spirituality within myself. I can talk about them with certain people, but it's just as personal to me as - for example - details of one's sex life would be for someone else. You don't share those things to all of the world. ;)

The Main Ingredients on a Path of Inner Growth

[This writing is connected to my latest post C is for Consciousness.]

The main ingredients you need on every path of inner growth:

1. Have patience towards yourself. No inner change happens in one night. Most of them take years. Also have patience towards those around you who might find your inner change too slow and don't understand that those things won't happen at the same second you decide you want to change. Decision is only the first step, and actually the easiest one. But nobody else can decide your rhythm but yourself. Rush can even ruin it all.
2. Be honest to yourself. Even with the things you didn't want or like to admit about yourself. Nobody said it was supposed to be easy or fun. It never is. Until the good result comes - and it's always worth the struggle!
3. Love yourself. Most of personal problems come from some sort of hole in self esteem, which comes from inability to sincerely love yourself. And we talk about the caring kind of love that a mother would feel towards her child, or a best friend towards her best friend. Not "oh I'm so pretty with my red hair"-superficial love.
4. Accept failure. There comes times when you take many steps backwards. But the failure is permanent only if you give up. Accept the steps backward, breathe, eat an ice cream, and continue again towards your goal.