Day ClassCurrent moon phase Friday, 21-Nov-2008 09:41:07 CST
The Church
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Ozark Avalon is a congregational church of Wicca. Our members are artists, college students, law enforcement officers, doctors, single mothers, office workers, carpenters, mental health professionals, social workers, professors, electricians, nurses, computer programmers, secretaries -- in short, a cross-section of the US mid-west. The congregation is very family-oriented, with approximately 30% children of all ages.
We offer regular worship services on the Saturday nearest each full moon, and weekend retreats for Wheel of the Year holidays. Our mission is to provide access to nature, a safe place for outdoor worship in an earth-centered, earth honoring spiritual context, to promote community among persons with these beliefs and practices, and to further environmentalism and appreciation for nature spirits and the earth.
Located on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, Ozark Avalon also stewards a 150 acre nature preserve. Groves, woods, meadows, a three-acre lake for swimming, an established sweat lodge site, hiking trails, and many natural shrines are found here. We are open year round and offer level camping, hot showers, and limited indoor facilities. All persons interested in nature worship are invited. The spirits of nature are respected and land management is done from a spiritual and magical perspective.
Our area of focus is Shamanic Wicca. We work with the spirits of nature through a variety of traditional earth centered religious and magical systems. We draw most heavily from northern hemisphere cultures located in similar terrains and traditions becase plant and animal life, seasons, and terrain tend to be similar. Wicca, Native American, Faerie, and Norse practices woven with classical energy work underpin our ritual construction. We follow the Wiccan rede, an’ it harm none, do what thou will, and celebrate the sacred holidays of the Wiccan solar year. Earth-tending and healing are an integral part of our worship of the Goddess and God. We experience nature as a manifestation of Deity, and nature spirits as real and present in our lives.
Our primary activities are earth healing and tending, with a deep respect for ourselves as powerful forces in the natural world. Our tools tend to be nature objects, with the directly gathered and handcrafted items being most valued. Deep ecology, bio-regionalism, Jungian psychology, the Gaia Hypothesis and energy physics are sources of the philosophical development of our concepts of deity and magic.
Ozark Avalon is a church incorporated in the state of Missouri, and maintains a 501(c)(3) tax-exemption letter from the US IRS (EIN 43-1839058). For more information on Ozark Avalon, please contact us.
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