Calendar of the Moon
26 Beth/Poseideion
Haloa
Color: Brown
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon a cloth of brown place bowls of grain gathered during the summer months, along
with a clay basin of melted snow, melted hail, or rainwater, a bowl of warmed earth, incense, a
threshing flail, and cakes shaped as phalluses and pudendae.
Offerings: Grain, planted in honor of the ancestors. This is also a good day for pruning trees.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian, with cooked grain porridge.
Haloa Invocation
Hail, Day of the Threshing Floor,
When we gather to give thanks for what was cut.
We give thanks for all that was gathered at the harvest,
For it sustains us now.
We give thanks for the toil of our bodies,
For it kept them healthy,
And it kept our nourishment honest.
We give thanks that we are allowed
To watch the cycle of the year,
From seed to plant to flour
And back to seed again.
We give thanks for the sacrifice of John Barleycorn,
That he may come again and again.
Though we beat him cruelly today
And break his bones to flour,
So we will someday endure the same blows
At the hands of Death,
And may we be mourned with such feeling.
Weep for him!
(All cry out together. A cloth is spread on the floor, and most of the grain is poured out, and
each beats it with a flail to break away the hulls. With each blow, all cry out. Then each comes
forward and plants some of the untouched grain in the soil, and it is then watered with the
rainwater, the rest of which is poured as a libation. All sing as the cloth is carried out as a group
to a place where the grain can be winnowed without mess.)
Song: John Barleycorn
[Pagan Book of Hours]