“OK after much thought and reading responses here and elsewhere, as well as emails, I have made the decision (for now) to have public rituals in a public place (I mean I have 370,000 acres of Forest Service land available for use here) and use the permanent Nemeton I am building on my property for members only rituals and activities. I can certainly see many ways that I am learning in the past 9 months and continue to learn and see new thoughts and ideas, different ways to do things and such bouncing around in my mind on a regular basis. As for the elements and announced public events….I will play it by ear. For the most part I have the mindset that the “show will go on”. I think I need to just take these things as they come and deal with them with my main focus at this point being the completion of the DP. I have started doing final edits on the essays I have written thus far and will put a “*final” at the end so I, and everyone else, will know it is complete. My Environmental Essay is almost finished as well. Thanks you guys for your opinions, ideas and input. Knowing there are voices out there to help organize the chaotic thoughts has helped so very much!”

“Speaking as someone who used to be involved in public ritual, I’d like to offer a few suggestions. First, make sure that you’ve had lots of practice doing group ritual with trusted friends before inviting people you don’t know to your rituals. Secondly, hold public rituals at a neutral site, rather than at your home. There are a lot of unstable people out there. If you want or need to do the rituals on your own property, I suggest doing it by personal invitation only. Put an ad in the paper giving a post office box number so that people can contact you, and meet them for coffee before deciding whether to invite them to ritual. A semi-public ritual approach usually gets better results anyway. My own experience is that a lot of very needy people are attracted to anything that they perceive as being weird or different (such as Druidry) and their behaviour may convince the serious individuals that they don’t want to come back. If you’re determined to hold public rituals, discuss the weather issue with those who you need to be there to help you with the ritual, snd with any other regulars. Don’t worry about the general public, since some will be put off by the slightest bit of inclement weather and others will show up no matter what. Let them make that decision for themselves. It may help to separate the sheep from the Pagan goats.”

“In three years, we have held all of our rituals outside, in rain or shine. Less people come to them, but we have still held them.

Ironically, in three years, even when it was raining just prior to the ritual, it has always stopped for the duration of the ritual. Strange, eh?

I have often thought that we should have a backup plan, but aside from putting up a canopy, we really haven’t had one nor have we needed one.

Of course, it doesn’t snow in Phoenix.”

“If it can’t be moved indoors or waited out then I’ve rescheduled. Call people when possible and go to the site so you can let anyone who makes it know the change of plan.”