Forest Moon

 FOREST MOON GROVE HOLIDAY MESSAGE

 Just a reminder, Forest Moon Yule party is this Friday the 16th at 400PM come and have fun. The Yule Ritual is Wednesday morning the 21st at Hillcrest Park, starts at 6AM and we'll go to Denny's for breakfast afterwards. The 31st is our New Years party out at the farm which will start at 4PM and go until midnight with fireworks. Our next Forest Moon coffee will be January 8 at Whidbey coffee at 1200 as usual and Tribe for the kids will be January 15. We hope you all are having a safe and enjoyable Holiday Season. Eric, Ashley, and Cheyanne

Greetings and Happy Holidays, we here at Forest Moon HQ hope you had a safe and fun Thanksgiving and a very safe Black Friday with all the crazies. We had a great Turkey Day and stayed home for Black Friday as you all know I don’t deal with people lol. Most of you love hearing about the farm so the run down we had a great crop and despite the corn being blown over we still got some ears off it, we had 13 pumpkins and zuchinni out our ears. Dad is getting 2 Hereford steers so we will have meat next year and I’m expanding 20 more Black Australorpe chickens. Cheyanne had an awesome 1^st Birthday and is a joy in our life every day. She will be an awesome little Pagan farm girl and a future leader of Forest Moon. Our next baby is due January 25^th and  we will have a welcoming party after the birth in lieu of a baby shower.  The next year of Forest Moon we will always be moving forward, we will be moving our HQ out of the ghetto we are in and into a house hopefully with property, we have a realtor here in Mount Vernon that contacted us through Facebook that we will be meeting and see what she can do to help us out. The Sanctuary/Eco-Village will be focused on around 2015 so we have more foundation to focus on legally as I hope to have that as 100 acres or more. Currently there is Moon Shire in Bellingham that is working on getting off the ground and you can check them out at www.moonshire.org .

   First event is this Sunday, the Mount Vernon Christmas parade at 5PM running through downtown Mount Vernon, we will have the van and a walking crew of kids going through the parade passing out candy and cards etc for a local presence, if you want to take part come by the apartment Sunday morning at 10AM and help decorate, then we will be lined up at 330PM on the revetment downtown for the start. Forest Moon coffee is Dec 3 at Whidbey coffee as usual at 1200PM in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, WA. Forest Moon Tribe our kids group is always open to anyone as usual for those adults starting out on the Pagan path as well. The next Tribe is Dec 10 200PM at Stanford Drive in Mount Vernon, the topic is the history and traditions of Yule and construction of our Yule Ritual. Dec 16^th is our Forest Moon Grove Yule party starting at 400PM-10PM it will be a potluck and will be held here at the apartment on Stanford Drive as well. If your working late come after work as that is why we are going until 10. The Yule Ritual will be on the 21^st it is a Wednesday I realize so come if you can it will be at Hillcrest Park starting at 6AM as we will be out until sunrise at 7:16 and afterwards we will go out to breakfast at Denny’s. December 31^st we will have the Forest Moon New Years’s celebration with snacks and year tarot readings out at our farm in South Mount Vernon, it will go from 4PM until midnight concluding with a large firework show. We will count down each hour from 6PM until midnight with a mortar until that final hour with a finale. Come expecting fun and bring your list of expectations for 2012. For 2012 we plan on attending the Faerie Con West in Seattle February 10-12 and going down as a group. It will feature many Faerie artists and a concert with our friends of Green Fay an awesome band we have come to know and love. We will also be feauturing them at our Pagan Harvest first weekend of October in 2012 along many of our other friends vending and speaking stay tuned for more details later on In the year. We do need your help financing many of our projects if you wish to contribute our paypal is forestmoongrove@accountant.com and we are always looking for coats, blankets, boots and shoes, and small appliances for our homeless closet which is in demand now as this is the co0ld season and we have many homeless in the area. You can find Forest Moon at www.forestmoon.spruz.com and facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=524912412#!/pages/Forest-Moon-Grove/134048249940279 Information is also always posted on our Yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/forestmoongrove/?yguid=156472064

   Again, we hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season and we hope to see some of you at our events. Stay tuned in January for our main 2012 schedule as I get it done. Many Blessings.

                                                                         Eric, Ashley, and Toddler Cheyanne

OK emergency Forest Moon meeting Wednesday 6PM to discuss the Mount Vernon Christmas parade details call for directions it will be at our apartment on Stanford Drive 360-848-8515 the parade is next Sunday through downtown Mount Vernon.

Greetings, I hope everyone is staying warm as the temperatures are dropping drastically. In Mount Vernon once the temperatures reach 25 degrees there is an emergency shelter that opens up called “The Oasis” on Riverside Drive, just an FYI. We will be participating in a Homeless Veterans Stand-down in Sedro Woolley at the American Legion on Ferry Street Nov 11 (Veterans Day) We are still in need of blankets, coats, wintery clothes and remember we also take small appliances such as hot plates, kitchen items, anything needed when someone first starts out. Thanksgiving we will be taking some meals to some of the homeless we know as well. We will be visiting all the storage units in the Valley to see if they have clothes they wish to donate from abandoned units. We had 5 more local folks show up to coffee today (Nov 5) and we gladly welcome them on board, the bigger the Pagan community the stronger we are. Sunday is our Paranormal discussion and we will be discussing house cleansing and smudging. We do meet every Sunday night at 7PM at an apartment here on Stanford Drive in Mount Vernon just call for directions 360-420-7438. Saturday the 12^th is Forest Moon Tribe our kids group but this is open to anyone as it is good for any beginner just starting out on their path. The topic will be Ritual design and Altar layout in preparation for our Yule Ritual in December. December 10^th is the December Tribe starting at 200PM as it always does. December Tribe topic will be Yule history and ritual.  Next Pagan coffee is Dec 3 at Cascade Mall Whidbey coffee at 1200. November 27^th is the Mount Vernon Christmas parade I’ll put out the set-up and route information as soon as I get it and I would like to see as much participation as possible and need some decoration ideas. Then the Sedro Woolley Christmas parade is Dec 4 and we may roll through that one as well.

Dec 21 we will have our Yule Ritual it is a Wednesday morning 6AM at Hillcrest Park we’ll go to breakfast at Denny’s immediately following.  December 17^th is our Yule Party starting at 4PM here at the apartment, again call for directions. New Years Eve we will have a New Years party out at the farm in South Mount Vernon come expecting fun, food, and discussion of next year’s events planning as well.

                                                                                Eric, Ashley, and Baby Cheyanne

Forest Moon paypal for monetary donations can be sent to

 https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=KAK2SSL8LMTEU

For those that need to  know where to find Forest Moon we are at

www.forestmoon.spruz.com and our yahoo group is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/forestmoongrove/ we are also found on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=524912412#!/pages/Forest-Moon-Grove/134048249940279

Greetings, this update is including several new folks that joined our email list and groups from Pagan Pride events and several new that joined the Spruz site, yahoo group and facebook page so I’m going over new dates and new stuff going on in our various projects we take on. I’ve broken them down by project starting with our Troop support. Forest Moon Grove is a legal non-profit Pagan Church in Northern WA State specifically Mount Vernon (Skagit County) and recognized by WA State. We will be 501c3 through the IRS eventually and are in the process of raising the 400$ needed to file.  We are Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce members and have various connections within the community businesses. We will be interviewed by the Skagit Valley Herald September 20^th on Forest Moon projects and Paganism in general which may open some doors as we will see. We have also done interviews on Pagan Podcasts in the past and they are available for listening too.

Forest Moon Troop support

We still have our group in Afghanistan although our group leader has been on leave as he has a new one coming into his family. For our Troops we always look for donations of Pagan books, stones, herbs, music, ritual items, candles, mortar and pestles, tarot decks and rune stones, scrying mirrors, and drinking horns. We also offer DFGL (Distinguished Faith Group Leaders) status for those groups that don’t have a leader as the Military does not have a Pagan/Wiccan Chaplain in the Army so DFGL’s are an important asset for all Military Pagan groups and are required by Military Regulation for any group. We offer advice for VA issues as we also have contacts within the VA for issues Veterans face, I was in the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Lewis and still have many connections for issues facing our Wounded Warriors. I also maintain a library of all Military regulations and keep them updated to assist any Pagan Soldier with problems faced by the Military as being a Pagan in the Military can be trying at times.  November 5 will be our first formal Pagan Troop packaging day and we will have our kids group making Yule cards and decorating boxes etc.

Forest Moon Community Support

Monthly coffee meetings. We meet once a month at 1200 at the Whidbey Coffee in the Cascade Mall in Burlington, WA. Our current schedule is8 October, Nov 5, and Dec 3. Topics range and we have a business meeting then as well. Also, October 29^th we will have a Halloween party here at the HQ complete with a history lesson on Halloween as well as Samhain, dunking for apples and plenty of food and candy for the kids, and Tarot reading s for the Witches New Year. It will start at 2PM.

We run a homeless closet in Skagit County and maintain storage units with warm clothes, blankets, coats, shoes and boots, job interview style clothes, and small appliances. With the cold approaching we keep an eye on our homeless situation here and take warm plates of food to some of them on occasion. As there is no immediate emergency shelter here unless temperatures reach 25 degrees we also look for tents. We also accept donations of these items as well. We attend homeless connection days the county runs and pass out these items and we are on the referral list for our local Community Action.  We also have a heavy focus on homeless Veterans as there are many out there and attend Veteran Stand-down days as they come with the last one being January 29 of 2011.

Pagan Harvest is our Community Education and is similar in nature to Pagan Pride days. We have many vendors, workshops, concerts, and cultural events. It will always be the first weekend of October and is 2 days, Saturday and Sunday. We have an Elders table and have our guests sit and h ave a q and a session for the visitors. We will always be looking for vendors and guests for workshops. 2012 event will be Oct 6-7 with Oberon Zell, Phaedra Bonewits, Kerr Cuhulain, DJ Conway, and Kristin Madden coming as guest speakers with music by Green Fay and Bards of the Koad. More will follow as it is always in continual  changes over the next year but we will always be asking for vendors.

We also have a sponsoring Law firm, Lustick Law, located downtown Mount Vernon that is there for our needs and to assist our members when needed, they also have connections in some other states.

Forest Moon Tribe

We always look at our children as our future and Pagans are no different in that they will keep our Traditions alive. The Tribe focuses on ages 5-18 and is set on a syllabus we made which can be requested by anyone and emailed out. Tribe will always start at 2PM and the current schedule is Oct. 15, Nov 12, and Dec 10, held at Melissa’s house, our Tribe coordinator. Address can be requested via email or give us a call. October will be Orientation and overview, parental forms will be filled out then and the kids will fill out a questionnaire. November will be Pagan Ethics and the Rules of Witchcraft. December will be the history and traditions of Yule and a basic Yule ritual lay-out. The new schedule will be sent out just prior to Jan 1 as we have a New Year party New Years Eve as well.

Pagan Paranormal Group

As Pagan’s we have a closer connection with spirits and other entities so this group is a different approach then your typical group. We meet on specific  Sunday nights at 7PM also at Melissa’s house. The schedule is September 25, October 16, November 6, and December 11. Again, September will be an orientation and group overview, October is the beginning of basic tools, November will be investigative paperwork, and December will be Yule ghost stories. Areas we will cover include:

Entity Identification and removal (if necessary)

House cleansings and Blessings

Possessions

Poltergheist Activity

EVP (Electrical Voice Phenomena)

UFO Sighting and Alien Abduction

Cryptozoology

Minor Conspiracy with relation to Paranormal events

Unexplained Phenomena classified as other or unknown.

We will also take new members.

Open Rituals

Interest has been shown in public rituals for the Sabbats and we are available to conduct celebrations although we generally celebrate in our home.  Everyone on our board is Ordained as well and available for Handfastings, Handpartings, Passings-Over, Wiccanings and any other rituals needed. We offer ordainment through Forest Moon for all interested as we offer classes and don’t pass it out without knowledge.

Future Events and Plans

We do have plans of being in the Mount Vernon, WA Christmas Parade so anyone who wishes to be involved with decoration ideas or walking with us let us know.  It will go through downtown Mount Vernon November 27^th more to follow as I get details closer to November.

We have kicked around the idea of a Faerie Faire held in the Springtime, these are ideas we have that can’t happen unless we have interest shown so let us know if these are things you would love to see. We will also be attending the Witches Ball Oct 22 in Tacoma and when inquiring about a Yule Ball no one seems to know where to find one in WA State so we may be looking into getting one going as well in the next couple years. Lastly, Forest Moon will be starting up a Sanctuary here in the Skagit Valley which will, in essence, be a Pagan Eco-village for Pagans to live on. It will as many acres as we can acquire, will be off the grid as in have its own power source be it solar, wind, or hydro. We will have a community building named Valhalla with a grand room, kitchen and several class rooms for large events we may have. Originally the plan was also to have a lake or pond in the West, a fire pit in the South, an open-air stage for concerts in the East, and Valhalla would be on the North side. These are all  ideas we have that one day will come to happen.

In closing I will post our HQ postal address as well as our new pay-pal address as some have been inquiring about monetary donations. Our goal for the  next year is to have our own Forest Moon building and Pagan Harvest will go on the first weekend of October 2012. The plan for 5 years will be our Sanctuary.

For those that need to  know where to find Forest Moon we are at

www.forestmoon.spruz.com and our yahoo group is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/forestmoongrove/ we are also found on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=524912412#!/pages/Forest-Moon-Grove/134048249940279

and finally, for those that have been inquiring Forest Moon accepts monetary donations for our projects via paypal at forestmoongrove@accountant.com

Blessings.
Eric, Ashley, and Baby Cheyanne