Calendar of the Sun
4 Thrimilchimonath

Ilmarinen’s Day

Colors: Red and black
Element: Fire
Altar: Upon cloth of red and black set an iron anvil, a hammer, a box of intricate making within which are many golden stars, and eight red candles.
Offerings: Make something.
Daily Meal: Food that is cunningly wrought to look like something it is not.

Invocation to Ilmarinen

O great smith of the northern snows,
Swift of sleigh and skilled of hand,
You who wrought the sampo,
That which given forth inexhaustible wealth,
Guide our hands in that which we create!
Let us be flowing wells
Of the creative force,
And let us make manifest that which we need.
Teach us also, O great smith of the northern snows,
Those lessons that you learned
To your pain and chagrin:
That love cannot be truly bought with gold,
Or with the most wondrous of possessions.
That affections so bribed will not last.
That slavery brought on unwilling
For the need for affluence and wealth
Will someday be a knife in the back
Of the most comfortable bed.
That you cannot build love
Out of silver and gold.
That you cannot recreate the power
Of the sun and the moon
No matter what your skill.
That in the end, power lies not in the hand
But in the heart, and the heartfelt word.
Teach us, Ilmarinen,
Smith of the northern snows,
That we may share the lessons
That have bent your neck these many years.

(All approach the altar, and each strikes the anvil with the hammer nine times.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]