Yule:

• Red flowers berries,
• Green foliage,
• Silver type foliage
• White flowers

 

Imbolc

• White flowers,
•  orange flowers,
•  red flowers,
•  any spring flowers

 

Ostara

• Yellow flowers
•  Any spring flowers

 

     Brltaine

•   Green foliage
•   Primrose
• Daisy
• Elder Flowers

 

 

Summer Solstice. Litha

• pink flowers
• purple flowers.golden
• yellow flowers
• deep red flowers
• white flowers,

    Lughnasadh

• Red floers
• Corn stalks
• Holly leave, berries branches
• Green leaves & foliage
• Brown foliage

    Mabon

•  Red flowers
• Yellow flowers
• Brown foliage
• Pine cones
• Red poppies
•  Oak leaves

 

    Samhain

•  Oak leaves
•  Sage
• Orange coloured flowers

 

 

 

Ritual

Rituals of Scattering Flowers

& Communicating with Spirits Through Lanterns

Hong Kong Daoist ritual

 

 

 

The Ritual for Communicating with Spirits ‘Through the Lanterns of the Five Directions’ is fairly simple in content.

 

It includes

·       putting up the lanterns,

·       Invoking the Sages,

·       Memorializing,

·       Petitioning,

·       Communicating with Spirits by means of Hymns,

·       the Five Hells of the east, the south, the west, the north and the centre, Praying,

·       leading the souls of the dead out of the Gate of Hell.

 

The Flower-Scattering Ritual must display the five offerings of

·       incense,

·       flowers,

·       lanterns,

·       water,

·       fruits,

 

as well as plates containing

·       flowers,

·       rice,

·       nine ancient coins on the table for the performance of the ritual.

 

The Ritual Master and the Group Leader of the servants sit at the table, chanting the scriptures, scattering flowers and coins, and casting rice from start to finish.

 

The scriptures of this ritual include long librettos of "

·       hymns to the incense for rebirth", "

·       hymns to the Supreme Oneness ",

·       "Four Odes to Flowers",

·       "everything is over",

·       "sighing with feeling about life",

·       "sighing with feeling about the four seasons",

·       "scattering the exotic flowers",

·       "untying the knot of sin",

 

whose words are very graceful. For example, "Four Odes to Flowers" has such sentences as "Don't you see that in good time, the flowers are in blossom on branches, but having suffered from wind and rain, they fall to the ground pitifully, and the sightseers in every place sigh with regret?"

 

The hymn "Everything is over" says, "For whom do you labour mentally and physically? Your parents, wife and children will pass away in the twinkle of an eye. Even if you could obtain wealth and rank, your hair would become grey then. Everything is over when one is dead."

 

In "sigh with feelings about life", there are sentences, saying, "The physical body is really nothingness, just like the red flower that has withered. The dead souls talk in dreams, regretting that they could not have a second life."

 

 Also, in "sighing with feelings about the four seasons", some sentences say, "In autumn, chrysanthemums are in golden blossom, the wind spreads the fragrance, the veranda is full of moonlight. Who will send me off by drinking in the three bleak paths? This makes me feel all the more lonely and desolate."

 

Moreover, sentences in "scattering the exotic flowers" say, "Scattering a new chrysanthemum, the girl is in a fine moment with a worried frown. The butterflies fly below the flowers one after another, but they don't care about the girl amidst flowers and in the moonlight."

 

"Untying the knot of sin" is the core of the whole ritual, in which there are words saying, "Untie the knot of sin so as to get rid of the sins of the dead souls. The rancour of the present and previous lives shall be dispelled entirely by reciting this scripture."

 

The main idea of the Rituals of Scattering Flowers and Communicating with Spirits through Lanterns is to sigh about the impermanence and suffering of life and the separation of death.

 

This ritual publicizes the philosophy that "Human life is like flowers, which live and die, blossom and wither in rain and wind. Once the spring breeze ceases, life and death are nothing but emptiness." Since the ritual employs popular and graceful words and a musical style that Daoist priests love to see and hear, it has always maintained its attraction and artistic appeal to the Daoist priests in Guangdong and Hong Kong over a long period of time.

. http://eng.taoism.org.hk/religious-activities-rituals/rituals/pg4-6-4.htm