Recently our church as begun to explore different ways to worship via our Esbat and Sabbats. One way that has proven successful has been Esbat the (insert idea here) format. This started out as an experimental idea we jokingly called Esbat the Musical. The church members made suggestions using different songs to represent the elements and invocations and other stuff. Songs like Cash's Ring of Fire, and Seger's Like a Rock. We played just clips of songs rather than the whole things, since folks were on their feet and we didn’t have all night. The result was a roaring success! Folks went into it dubious of the idea, but came away glowing with energy and overflowing with compliments.
A few months later, my sister carried this idea over to Esbat the Movie. She took clips from various films and edited them together with a few words of invocation and premiered it to an eager audience. We laughed, we wept, we gasped, and we loved it. Since then she has done a second version with other films too. We always look forward to Esbat the Movie night.
I followed this series of successes with my own idea, Esbat the Novel. Over a few weeks I diligently picked out segments from a variety of modern novels (roughly 300 words or so) and strung them together to represent the traditional Esbat outline. Just last weekend I was able to read my hard work aloud to a small audience. We had wine and cheese for our cakes and ale, as if it were a real author reading! Again, folks laughed and gasped and cried. Hell, even I had to resort to a backup reader because I got weepy early on.
I decided since some of our members missed the service, I would post it here for not only them to enjoy, but you as well, fine readers. If you are unfamiliar with the idea of an Esbat, don’t fret. I think you will still get much out of this.
Happy reading, and enjoy!
Esbat the Novel
Opening:
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Far
out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral
arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a
distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little
blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive
that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has {
or rather had { a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were
unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this
problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small
green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small
green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of
the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with
digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a
big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said
that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left
the oceans.
And
then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to
a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one
girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what
it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the
world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would
work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly,
however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly
stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This
is not her story.
But it
is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.
It is
also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy {
not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe
occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
Air:
The Adventures
of Peter Pan by James M. Barrie
We now return to the nursery.
"It's all right," John announced, emerging
from his hiding- place. "I say, Peter, can you really fly?"
Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew
around the room, taking the mantelpiece on the way.
"How topping!" said John and
Michael.
"How sweet!" cried Wendy.
"Yes, I'm sweet, oh, I am sweet!"
said Peter, forgetting his manners again.
It looked delightfully easy, and they tried
it first from the floor and then from the beds, but they always went down
instead of up.
"I say, how do you do it?" asked
John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.
"You just think lovely wonderful
thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air."
He showed them again.
"You're so nippy at it," John said,
"couldn't you do it very slowly once?"
Peter did it both slowly and quickly.
"I've got it now, Wendy!" cried John, but soon he found he had not.
Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two
syllables, and Peter did not know A from Z.
Of course Peter had been trifling with them,
for no one can fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as
we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each
of them, with the most superb results.
"Now just wiggle your shoulders this
way," he said, "and let go."
They were all on their beds, and gallant
Michael let go first. He did not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and
immediately he was borne across the room.
"I flewed!" he screamed while still
in mid-air.
John let go and met Wendy near the bathroom.
"Oh, lovely!"
"Oh, ripping!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
They were not nearly so elegant as Peter,
they could not help kicking a little, but their heads were bobbing against the
ceiling, and there is almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a
hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.
Up and down they went, and round and round.
Heavenly was Wendy's word.
Fire:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things
blackened and changed. With the brass
nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon
the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some
amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring
down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet
numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought
of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging
fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm
of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a
marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books
died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling
whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven
back by flame.
He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might
wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to
sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the
dark. It never went away, that. smile, it never ever went away, as long as he
remembered.
Water:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
It was a monstrous big river down there -- sometimes a mile
and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was
most gone we stopped navigating and tied up -- nearly always in the dead water
under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft
with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a
swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom
where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound
anywheres -- perfectly still -- just like the whole world was asleep, only
sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking
away over the water, was a kind of dull line -- that was the woods on t'other
side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then
more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't
black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever
so far away -- trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks -- rafts;
sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so
still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the
water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a
swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you
see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river,
and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other
side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you
can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and
comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on
account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because
they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty
rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and
the song-birds just going it!
Earth:
Lord of the Rings Book One: Fellowship of the Ring, by
J.R.R. Tolkien
They hastened up the last slope, and stood breathless beside
her. They bowed, but with a wave of her arm she bade them look round; and they
looked out from the hill-top over lands under the morning. It was now as clear
and far-seen as it had been veiled and misty when they stood upon the knoll in
the Forest, which could now be seen rising pale and green out of the dark trees
in the West. In that direction the land rose in wooded ridges, green, yellow,
russet under the sun, beyond which lay hidden the valley of the Brandywine. To
the South, over the line of the Withywindle, there was a distant glint like
pale glass where the Brandywine River made a great loop in the lowlands and flowed
away out of the knowledge of the hobbits. Northward beyond the dwindling downs
the land ran away in flats and swellings of grey and green and pale
earth-colours, until it faded into a featureless and shadowy distance. Eastward
the Barrow-downs rose, ridge behind ridge into the morning, and vanished out of
eyesight into a guess: it was no more than a guess of blue and a remote white
glimmer blending with the hem of the sky, but it spoke to them, out of memory
and old tales, of the high and distant mountains. They took a deep draught of
the air, and felt that a skip and a few stout strides would bear them wherever
they wished. It seemed fainthearted to go jogging aside over the crumpled
skirts of the downs towards the Road, when they should be leaping, as lusty as
Tom, over the stepping stones of the hills straight towards the Mountains.
God:
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but
that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still
dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to
strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept
hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that
utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of
incredible color, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the
very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns,
gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly
eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke
into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay
across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only
just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy
limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling
between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the
little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one
moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he
looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
Goddess:
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Except in an entirely secondary manner, Queen Jezebel never
worshipped Baal. Baal was the ancient Semite word for “lord” or
“husband.” The god referred to by the Bible as Baal had divine status primarily
because he was husband to Astarte. It was Astarte whom Jezebel worshipped. Who
was Astarte? She was a goddess; rather, she was the Goddess, the Great
Mother, the Light of the World, the most ancient and widely revered divinity in
human history. Shrines to her date back to the Neolithic Period, and there was
not one Indo-European culture that failed to remove with its kiss the mud from
her sidereal slippers. In comparison, “God,” as we moderns call Yahweh (often
misspelled “Jehovah") was a Yahny-come-lately who would never approach her
enormous popularity. She was the mother of God, as indeed, she was mother of
all. As beloved as she was for her life-giving and nurturing qualities, the
only activities of hers acceptable to the patriarchs, she was mistress over
destruction as well as creation, representing, according to one scholar, “the
abyss that is the source and the end, the ground of all being.”In Jezebel’s
native Phoenicia, the Goddess’s name was Astarte. In Babylon, she was Ishtar;
in India, Kali, in Greece, Demeter (immature aspect: Aphrodite). If Saxon was
your indigenous tongue, you would address her as Ostara; if Nordic, you’d say
Freya; if Egyptian, Isis—or Nut or Hathor or Neith. Oh, the Goddess had many
names, and many roles. She was virgin, bride, mother, prostitute, witch, and
hanging judge, all swirled into one. She had more phases than the moon. She
knew the dark side of the moon like the palm of her hand. She shopped there.
Drawing Down the Moon:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
“I
feel,” Shadow told her, “like I’m in a world with its own sense of logic. Its
own rules. Like when you’re in a dream, and you know there are rules you
mustn’t break, but you don’t know what they are or what they mean. I have no
idea what we’re talking about, or what happened today, or pretty much anything
since I got out of jail. I’m just going along with it, you know?”
“I
know,” she said. She held his hand, with a hand that was icy cold. “You were
given protection once, but you lost it already. You gave it away. You had the
sun in your hand. And that is life itself. All I can give you is much weaker
protection. The daughter, not the father. But all helps. Yes?” Her white hair
blew about her face in the chilly wind, and Shadow knew that it was time to go
back inside.
“Do I
have to fight you? Or play checkers?” he asked.
“You
do not even have to kiss me,” she told him. “Just take the moon.”
“How?”
“Take
the moon.”
“I
don’t understand.”
“Watch,”
said Zorya Polunochnaya. She raised her left hand and held it in front of the moon, so that
her forefinger and thumb seemed to be grasping it. Then, in one smooth
movement, she plucked at it. For a moment, it looked like she had taken the
moon from the sky, but then Shadow saw that the moon shone still, and Zorya Polunochnaya
opened her hand to display a silver Liberty-head dollar resting between finger
and thumb.
“That
was beautifully done,” said Shadow. “I didn’t see you palm it. And I don’t know
how you did that last bit.”
“I did
not palm it,” she said. “I took it. And now I give it to you, to keep safe.
Here. Don’t give this one away.” She placed it in his right hand and closed his
fingers around it. The coin was cold in his hand. Zorya Polunochnaya leaned forward, and
closed his eyes with her fingers, and kissed him, lightly, once upon each
eyelid.
Shadow
awoke on the sofa, fully dressed. A narrow shaft of sunlight streamed in
through the window, making the dust motes dance. He got out of bed, and walked
over to the window. The room seemed much smaller in the daylight. The thing
that had been troubling him since last night came into focus as he looked out
and down and across the street. There was no fire escape outside this window:
no balcony, no rusting metal steps.
Still,
held tight in the palm of his hand, bright and shiny as the day it had been
minted, was a 1922 Liberty-head silver dollar.
Charge of the Goddess:
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
I guess you are
kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular
name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you
are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is
my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is
my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was
wrong—"Sorry for the mistake,"—and
you had to do something else.
That is
my name.
Perhaps it was a game that you played when you were a
child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting
in a chair near the window.
That is
my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is
my name.
Perhaps
you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel
this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is
my name.
Or you heard someone calling from a great distance. Their
voice was almost an echo.
That is my name.
Perhaps
you were lying in bed, almost ready to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a joke unto yourself, a good way to
end the day.
That is
my name.
Or you were eating something good and for a second forgot
what you were
eating, but still went on, knowing it was good.
That is
my name.
Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire tolled like a
bell inside the stove.
That is
my name.
Or you
felt bad when she said that thing to you. She could have told it to someone else: Somebody who was more familiar with her problems.
That is my name.
Perhaps the trout swam in the pool but the river was only
eight inches wide and the moon shone on ideath
and the watermelon fields glowed out of proportion, dark and the moon seemed
to rise from every plant.
That is my name.
Magic Rites:
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett
Esk
obediently went inside and unhooked Granny's hat. It was tall, pointed and, of
course, black.
Granny
turned it over in her hands and regarded it carefully.
"Inside
this hat," she said solemnly, "is one of the secrets of witchcraft.
If you cannot tell me what it is, then I might as well teach you no more, because
once you learn the secret of the hat there is no going back. Tell me what you
know about the hat."
"Can
I hold it?"
"Be
my guest."
Esk
peered inside the hat. There was some wire stiffening to give it a shape, and a
couple of hatpins. That was all. There was nothing particularly strange about
it, except that no one in the
village
had one like it. But that didn't make it magical. Esk bit her lip; she had a
vision of herself being sent home in disgrace.
It
didn't feel strange, and there were no hidden pockets. It was just a typical
witch's hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather
hood.
She
tried to recall the bits of lessons that Granny grudgingly doled out. It isn't
what you know, it's what other people don't know. Magic can be something right
in the wrong place, or something wrong in the right place. It can be—
Granny
always wore it to the village. And
the big black cloak, which certainly wasn't magical, because for most of the
winter it had been a goat blanket and Granny washed it in the spring.
Esk
began to feel the shape of the answer and she didn't like it much. It was like
a lot of Granny's answers. Just a word trick. She just said things you knew all
the time, but in a different way so they sounded important.
"I
think I know," she said at last.
"Out
with it, then."
"It's
in sort of two parts."
"Well?"
"It's
a witch's hat because you wear it. But you're a witch because you
wear
the hat. Um."
"So
-"prompted Granny.
"So
people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you're a
witch
and that's why your magic works?" said Esk.
"That's
right," said Granny. "It's called headology." She tapped her
silver
hair,
which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.
"But
it's not real!" Esk protested. "That's not magic, it's it's -"
"Listen,"
said Granny, "If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it
may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind
make it work for them. Tell 'em it's moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or
something. Mumble over it a bit. It's the same with cursing."
"Cursing?"
said Esk, weakly.
"Aye,
cursing, my girl, and no need to look so shocked! You'll curse, when the need
comes.
When
you're alone, and there's no help to hand, and -"She hesitated and,
uncomfortably aware of Esk's questioning eyes, finished lamely: "- and
people aren't showing respect. Make it loud, make it complicated, make it long,
and make it up if you have to, but it'll work all right. Next day, when they
hit their thumb or they fall off a ladder or their dog drops dead, they'll
remember you. They'll behave better next time."
"But
it still doesn't seem like magic," said Esk, scuffing the dust with her feet.
"I
saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a
day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from
the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get
over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest."
She
patted Esk's hand as nicely as possible. "You're a bit young for
this," she said, "but as you grow older you'll find most people don't
set foot outside their own heads much. You too," she added gnomically.
"I
don't understand."
"I'd be very surprised if
you did." said Granny.
Prayers:
The Green Mile by Stephen King
I got
down on my knees with John and thought there was a funny turnaround brewing
here: after all the prisoners I'd had to help up so they could finish the
journey, this time I was the one who was apt to need a hand. That's the way it
felt, anyway.
"What
should we pray for, boss?" John asked.
"Strength,"
I said without even thinking. I closed my eyes and said, "Lord God of
'Hosts, please help us finish what we've started, and please welcome this man,
John Coffey - like the drink but not spelled the same - into heaven and give
him peace. Please help us to see him off the way he deserves and let nothing go
wrong. Amen." I opened my eyes and looked at Dean and Harry. Both of them
looked a little better. Probably it was having a few moments to catch their
breath. I doubt it was my praying.
I
started to get up, and John caught my arm. He gave me a look that was both
timid and hopeful. "I 'member a prayer someone taught me when I 'us
little", he said. "At least I think I do. Can I say it?"
"You
go right on and do her", Dean said. "Lots of time yet, John ."
John
closed his eyes and frowned with concentration. I expected
now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep, or maybe a garbled version of the Lord's prayer,
but I got neither; I had never heard what he came out with before, and have
never heard it again, not that either the sentiments or expressions were
particularly unusual.
Holding
his hands up in front of his closed eyes, John Coffey said: "Baby Jesus,
meek and mild, pray for me, an orphan child. Be my strength, be my friend, be with me until the end. Amen."
Cakes and ale:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
“There!”
cried Mr. Wonka, dancing up and down and pointing his gold-topped cane at the
great brown river. “It's all chocolate! Every drop of that river is hot melted
chocolate of the finest quality. The very finest quality. There's enough
chocolate in there to fill every bathtub in the entire country! And all the
swimming pools as well! Isn't it terrific? And just look at my pipes! They suck
up the chocolate and carry it away to all the other rooms in the factory where
it is needed! Thousands of gallons an hour, my dear children! Thousands and
thousands of gallons!”
The
children and their parents were too flabbergasted to speak. They were staggered.
They were dumbfounded. They were bewildered and dazzled. They were completely
bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing. They simply stood and stared.
“The
waterfall is most important!” Mr. Wonka went on. “It mixes the chocolate! It
churns it up! It pounds it and beats it! It makes it light and frothy! No other
factory in the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall! But it's the only way to
do it properly! The only way! And do you like my trees?” he cried, pointing
with his stick. “And my lovely bushes? Don't you think they look pretty? I told
you I hated ugliness! And of course they are all eatable! All made of something
different and delicious! And do you like my meadows? Do you like my grass and
my buttercups? The grass you are standing on, my dear little ones, is made of a
new kind of soft, minty sugar that I've just invented! I call it swudge! Try a
blade! Please do! It's delectable!”
Automatically,
everybody bent down and picked one blade of grass — everybody, that is, except
Augustus Gloop, who took a big handful.
And
Violet Beauregarde, before tasting her blade of grass, took the piece of
world-record-breaking chewing-gum out of her mouth and stuck it carefully
behind her ear.
“Isn't
it wonderful!” whispered Charlie. “Hasn't it got a wonderful taste, Grandpa?”
“I
could eat the whole field!” said Grandpa Joe, grinning with delight. “I could
go around on all fours like a cow and eat every blade of grass in the field!”
“Try a buttercup!” cried Mr.
Wonka. “They're even nicer!”
Farewell to the Elements and Lord and Lady:
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
To the glistening eastern sea, I
give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the
Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear
northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of
Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the
stars rain down from the heavens.
Closing:
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
That's
Morgenstern's ending, a 'Lady or the Tiger?'-type effect (this was before 'The
Lady or the Tiger?,' remember). Now, he was a satirist, so he left it that way,
and my father was, I guess I realized too late, a romantic, so he ended it
another way.
Well,
I'm an abridger, so I'm entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it?
Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say
yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of
adventures and more than their share of laughs. But that doesn't mean I think
they had a happy ending either. Because, in my opinion anyway, they squabbled a
lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight
and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to
really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail.
I'm
not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that
love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to
say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than
death, that's all.
The End