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Author: Mud and Magic

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Published on 3 Comments on Our big questions – part 1

mythumbnailAt the Gathering for Life on Earth 2012, Robyn, Richard, and I ended up having a number of wonderful conversations with various members of the Pagan community and amongst ourselves, leading us towards the notion that it was time for our spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, to have some more conversations about beliefs and spiritual needs. We'd had these conversations before, but the discussions had been informal, had not always included all members, and had not been happening recently, which meant that we didn't always know where everyone's spiritual evolution was taking them. We also had more relatively new members at the time, which meant that we were definitely due for a planned and organized sit-down.

The Silver Spiral Collective has always been a work in progress. We formed in 1998 because we were all Pagans of a similar age, in similar life stages, with similar enough beliefs to enjoy circling together. After forming a group, we gradually created rules about our rituals (must include a power raising, no junk food for the sacred feast, etc.), which evolved into an optional ritual structure, and is still changing to this day into a new ritual structure that has been created out of where we are now as individuals and a group.

We started this round by gathering questions from all the members. Everyone was invited to contribute their questions in advance to the email list we're all on. With fewer than a dozen members and some questions that overlapped significantly, this resulted in a good number of questions covering a lot of areas, but not an overwhelming number. I took all the questions, re-organize them into an order that made thematic sense, then re-posted the list to everyone at least a week before the event so everyone could prepare their answers in whatever way felt comfortable to them. Some of us came to the discussion nights with answers that were virtually essays, some came with notes, and some just spoke from the heart in the moment, but I think everyone found it useful to know what the questions were in advance.

The second thing we considered was how to make sure everyone spoke on every topic. We have some introverts and some extroverts in our group, so it is easy for some to sit back and not contribute while others dominate the conversation. We decided to go with "an authoritarian imposition of rules to ensure the democratic distribution of the conversation" (a paraphrase of Robyn's great turn of phrase). We started each round with one person reading the question out, then we went clockwise around the circle, each answering the question without interruption. We didn't allow for questions or discussions between answers, but simply allowed each person their own monologue. We ended up not having to set time limits on individual's answers, as everyone was very careful to keep their answers on track and not allow themselves to ramble, but a timer was an option we were holding in reserve. At the end of each round, we had a period of open discussion to ask each other for more information and to compare and contrast our opinions. When that conversation would start to get off topic or would simply lose steam, the person who answered first on the previous round would read the next question and the person to their left would answer first, and so on.

Here are the questions from our first discussion night that gave us the most interesting and thought-provoking answers, in my opinion:

On the colour triangle described in the article Pagan Deism: Three Views, where do you place yourself?

What is an essential part of ritual for you (like what has to be included for it to feel right)?

Do you practice religious/spiritual things in your own time?

What does the creation of sacred space look like for you?

What is a successful Silver Spiral ritual for you (what do you want to get out of our group's rituals)?

How do you feel about our current level of "ritual standardization"?

I highly recommend that everyone read the "Pagan Deism" article before a discussion like this. The answers to that first question were particular enlightening for us, as we discovered that most of us had some "yellow" component to our individual beliefs, and many thought they were the only one.

Following the discussion night, I felt closer to my fellow members of Silver Spiral and felt like I could design better rituals and could share deeper spiritual experiences with the group. Not too much later, we scheduled a second conversation, as we all came up with even more questions for each other. Later posts will cover the subsequent questions and the evolution of our ritual format.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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Published on 2 Comments on How wild are we?

mythumbnailmythumbnailThis post contains sexual imagery and coarse language, but I didn't write those parts; they are from some award-winning poetry.

I was lucky enough to see Sarah de Leeuw at the Writers Fest this year. I chose the event on impulse, not having read any of the works by the authors on the panel, and was surprised and delighted by the intellectual, thought-provoking conversation on women's sexuality that occurred, mostly stemming from Sarah's breadth and depth of knowledge. After, Robyn (of the Pagan Ritual Hack Space workshop) and I talked the whole way home about feminism, geography, bondage, bodies in nature and bodies in urban environments, sex metaphors, and whatever else came into our heads.

We both bought copies of Geographies of a Lover and I read it in a single sitting on Saturday morning. I will definitely have to read it several more times to even get a sense of everything that's packed in the book, but in broad strokes, it is big: flowing, stream-of-conscious poetry full of icebergs and giant trees and mountains. There are urban geographies too, but they are limited in scope: "... i am concentrating on nothing else, not the city sounds of heels on cobblestones or the smell of chocolates and cigarettes or the snow starting to fall again, i am on my knees my cunt wet, wrist sore ..." (page 38)

Contrast that with: "... as you fuck me from behind the speed of glacier retreats escalating with climate change a rapid withdrawal up valleys toward the comparative coolness of mountain tops soon there may be nothing left of the ice bodies and it feels as though a knotted leash of pumping blood connects my cunt to the pulse in my neck ..." (page 20-21)

Most of the book is more similar to the latter quote. There are connections being drawn here between female sexuality and nature in all its power. As in much of Paganism, this work finds a mirror-image, writ large, of us in nature. Both say that we are animals, we are of nature, and perhaps that there is wildness in us yet, despite our steel and plastic surroundings.

My cat, Zoey, thinks she's a wild animal too. When she hears the crows outside, she runs to the window and gets her hunter look on: alert stillness, but for her twitching tail, and pricked ears. That the birds are almost bigger than her tiny 7-pounds of fluff and eyeball, and that she has proven herself incapable of hunting even a little house mouse, and that she is terrified of outside and can only scream at the door when accidentally shut out of the house does not seem to factor into her reaction.

I like honouring that we are dependent on nature, and women's sexuality has too often been dismissed entirely or reduced to metaphors about roses or orchids. However, I also like the idea of honouring who and what we actually are now; that we're urbanized, that we're domesticated. I think it would be interesting to explore urban sexual metaphors. Maybe we even need cyber sexual metaphors as we become more and more cyborgnetic in our interactions with technology.

A different kind of sexuality might be suggested by urban and cyber metaphors. Natural metaphors lend themselves well to animalistic, out-of-control passions, but not to other kinds of sexual expressions: elaborate role playing, bondage, fantasy, the complexities of sex in a long-term relationship; all manner of sex that is as much in the mind as it is in the body. We need room for all, especially when discussing women's sexuality, as to not reduce us to only one thing. Perhaps we also need to add these things to our Pagan spirituality, as to keep our religion grounded in the time and place where we actually are. As Pagans, we know that the metaphors we choose to use are important; that's the basis of magic.

A poetry book entitled "Geographies of a Neo-Pagan" would have to include physical geography, but also human geography: social and cultural, and probably the newer discipline of cyber-geography. And maybe a geography of the invisible and imaginary. If such a thing doesn't already exist, we would have to invent it, as we work in in-between places.

What matters to us - beyond metaphors - are our physical and our social surroundings. Someone else will have to write the poetry of Pagan geography and the poetry of urban sexuality, as poetry isn't my art form. It is perhaps because my main creative outlet right now is writing rituals, but as soon as I am inspired, I want to direct that energy into a ritual... when all you have is a hammer, you know. Maybe a ritual where natural images are paired with urban metaphors: grounding into bedrock and into cement; north as earth/mountains and as the foundations of homes; east as air/wind and as the sounds of the city; etc. Because, let's face it, as much as we might want to hunt the crows, most of us are house cats.

Published on Leave a comment on Mushrooms for Mabon?

Large mushroom growing in gravel

There seem to be mushrooms popping up all around me right now. The photo above is of a mushroom growing in my front yard. There are several other patches of different mushrooms on my walk to work, my work is selling two different kinds of mushrooms next week, and my in-box contains an invitation to a wild mushroom meal. Finally, today, I came across the mushroom photography of Bryan Beard and decided that perhaps something's trying to tell me something. I've got my oyster mushroom growing kit set up again and I've been reading weird facts and stories about mushrooms all evening.

There are, of course, stories of mushroom rings associated with fairies, and in medieval Ireland, mushrooms were thought to be umbrellas for leprechauns. Ancient Egyptians thought that mushrooms grew by magic, due to their sudden appearances overnight. Egyptian pharaohs reserved mushrooms exclusively for the royal tables because of the fungi's association with immortality. Ancient Romans called mushrooms "food of the Gods", and other cultures thought that mushrooms had powers that could give people super-human strength, help them find lost objects, and lead their souls to the Gods.

Moving away from mythology and ancient history, I really enjoyed this blog post: What mushrooms have taught me about the meaning of life. I especially liked his thesis statement:

I would like to share three things that I have learned about the meaning of life from thinking about these extraordinary sex organs and the microbes that produce them. This mycological inquiry has revealed the following: (i) life on land would collapse without the activities of mushrooms; (ii) we owe our existence to mushrooms; and (iii) there is (probably) no God. The logic is spotless.

I'm not as atheistic as the author, but I am always intrigued by the ways things we don't see or appreciate are so necessary for life as we know it. Fungi.com points out that without the external digestion and recycling powers of fungi, turning dead plants into rich soil, the Earth would be buried in several feet of debris. Mycelium, the body of the fungus which lives in the soil or in wood, are the ultimate recyclers:

Due to it's ability to decompose organic matter, and recycle it back into the ecosystem to further enhance life around it, mycelium may very well prove to one of the most significant organisms that graces the planet earth. ... Some of the enzymes produced by mycelial colonies are powerful at breaking down long chains of hydrocarbons. The colony is so efficient at secreting these enzymes and breaking down the hydrocarbons that soil contaminated with them and other toxic oils can be restored in a matter of months. ... When these hydrocarbons have been broken down, the fungus produces lovely blooms of mushrooms and the surrounding environment is nourished, alive and thriving.

Fungi were among the first organisms to colonize land about a billion years ago, long before plants came about. Miracle Mushrooms adds:

Mushrooms are not plants. They are fungi. Fungi are as uniquely different from plants as plants are from animals. In fact, fungi and animals are now in the same super-kingdom, Opisthokonta . More than 600 million years ago we shared a common ancestry.

We're related to mushrooms... the idea gives me goosebumps.

Speaking of goosebumps, A World of Words blog offers, along with beautiful pictures, this intriguing thought:

... what if God is Mushroom? Now, of course we all know that since God is too big for just one country, just one religion, just one planet, this all-encompassing energy of boundless and unconditional love and truth is also too big for just one species. But I like the idea of these beautiful, primordial and little-understood forest creatures as manifestations or metaphors for something as large and omnipresent as divine inspiration.

Mushroom expert (mycologist) Paul Stamets may be a scientist, but there's something about fungi that inspires spiritual thought:

See, this is the thing about mushrooms: It's not luck. There's something else going on here. We've been guided. But this is what happens.

Domestic mushrooms - white button, cremini, portabello, cultivated oyster - are available all year around, but fall is when the wild mushrooms can be found in our damp forests. September is even National Mushroom month in the United States. Mabon could very well be a mushroom harvest celebration just based on the timing. Add in that Mabon is an equinox - a time between seasons, between light and dark times of the year - then fungi seem very appropriate. They are both above and below the ground; they are between plants and animals, being truly neither; and the fungi family includes yeasts, used in baking bread, which is more traditionally associated with Mabon and the harvest.

Stamets also says that western society is pervaded by "mycophobia": an irrational fear of fungi. He traces this fear back to England, where mushrooms are often associated with decay and decomposition. This feels like another opening for Pagans as we try to reclaim the dark, the breaking down, as part of the wheel of the year and the cycle of life. Fungi take what is corrupt and, through their mysterious underground processes, they turn it into fertility again. They break down the dead and make space for life.

Oh, and one last awesome mushroom fact: The world's largest living organism is believed to be an Armillaria ostoyae fungi living in Oregon, occupying 2,384 acres. It is estimated to be 2,400 years old, based on its current growth rate, but it could be as old as 8,650 years.

Edited to add: The Mabon ritual I created from these ideas is now available on the website: Mabon: Mushrooms.

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Published on 1 Comment on Hittin’ it

mythumbnailI was in an exercise class today - a pre-choreographed class known as Pound - and it struck me that a well-run exercise class is a lot like a well-run ritual.

I'm a big Pound fan, so I've been attending up to three times a week since it launched at my gym back in March. Though I am generally very uncoordinated, I'm now pretty familiar with the moves and the different routines. Today, I was in my preferred spot at the front left and to my right was a Pound instructor who was just attending the class. The person behind me was also a frequent participant, so no matter which way I turned, everyone I saw was in time with the music. The Pound workout uses lightly weighted drumsticks, so there's a rhythm aspect to it, so even if you can't see the others, you can hear if their hits and strikes are in time or not. Today, we were on. Everyone was at least a little experienced and the teacher was confident and energetic. There was a great energy in the room, like in a good Circle.

In both an exercise class and a ritual, the leader can do a lot to set the tone of the event, but they must also read their participants' moods and adapt accordingly. It's important to give enough explanation, especially if there are less experienced people present, but not too much or the flow will get bogged down.

After contemplating the energy generated in a great synchronized workout, especially one with drumming built into it, and seeing dance performances similar to this one and this one as part of a show we saw in Maui, I've started contemplating how to bring this into a ritual. I'm thinking rhythm sticks and very simple choreography. Something more than a drumming circle, but less than an exercise class. I think the physicality would be very interesting, especially if people can be connected by hitting their sticks against each other's. I'll post if I come up with something.

Published on Leave a comment on One sows while another reaps

Branches of ripe plums

Yesterday, a member of my Circle ran a sweet little Lammas ritual on the theme of "as you sow, so you shall reap". That got me thinking about Pagans, the wheel of the year, and its relationship to nature.

One of the wheel of the year stories we can tell through Pagan rituals is of planting and harvesting: we plant in the spring, the crops grow through the summer, we harvest in the fall, and then everything rests in the winter. Many rituals will draw connections between these literal agricultural cycles and metaphorical growth: starting new projects, nurturing their growth, reaping the results, and then resting to allow for new inspiration.

What is striking me as interesting right now, though, is that the human version of this story is almost exactly opposite nature's version.

The human version is based on agriculture and food. It is based on what we have done for ten thousand years to feed ourselves. Nature's version is even older, though. In nature's version, Lammas and Mabon are not the harvests, but the plantings.

All the luscious fruit and golden grains coming our way over the next couple of months are full of the seeds of the next generation. Imagine a wild apple tree, outside of a tidy orchard. Birds and animals eat the apples and distribute the seeds in their droppings, thus creating the next generation of apple trees. The tree is planting; the tree is creating new life and celebrating fertility; it is in its Beltane, not its Lammas.

Those seeds will not grow much immediately; they will rest in the earth, biding their time over the winter hibernation. When spring comes, the tree reaps her reward - seeds spread and the future of apple trees secured - in the spring. Nature harvests not for consumption, but for the next generation. Spring time is the tree's Lammas, not its Beltane.

I work in organic food. Every year, it is the same: we get some warm and sunny weather in May or June, and people start asking me where the local food is. They want to know why we've still got tomatoes and nectarines and strawberries from California during the summer; shouldn't we have BC products? So every year I have to educate people about the growing seasons: the local fruits and veggies are still on the trees and in the ground in May and June. That sunny weather that means summer to people is just the start of their growing season. Locally, the best harvests aren't until August and September, and sometimes later if we have a long, wet, dark spring. So I think that honouring our agricultural wheel of the year is very valuable, as it connects us to our own bodies and needs and reminds us to what extent we are still dependent on nature.

But if we consider nature to be sacred and beautiful in and of itself, not just in how it is useful to us as people, then maybe we will want to honour this contradiction between the agricultural cycle and nature's cycle. I don't know what this would look like yet, but I think it could be an interesting theme to play with. I do know we are sometimes so far away from our food, but maybe we are even further away from the wild.

Published on Leave a comment on Giving a way out

mythumbnailIt has come up in conversation a couple of times recently: How do you leave a ritual?
 
If you are a parent with a small child who needs you in the other room...
 
If you are a parent wearing an infant who wakes fussy mid-ritual...
 
If you suddenly feel ill...
 
If you have a physical or psychological condition that require you to leave...
 
If you are uncomfortable with something that is happening in the Circle...
 
There are a lot of reasons someone may want to leave the ritual space, but there are also reasons they may feel they have to stay anyway. For example, they may just not know what the procedure is for leaving and don't want to risk doing the wrong thing, or they may not want to go against the perceived authority of the person leading the ritual, especially if that person is a community elder. They may not want to speak up or interrupt because they don't want to draw extra attention to themselves or they fear they'll be seen as a troublemaker. In the conversations I've had, a lot of Pagans I know have stayed in a ritual situation where they were uncomfortable due to, basically, indirect peer pressure.
 
In our covens, groves, and spiritual families, this is fairly easy to resolve by all agreeing to a standard procedure for how one exits a ritual before it is over. This might include an agreement on whether or not someone has to say something before exiting or can just leave, a procedure for cutting oneself out of the Circle or how to get the Circle caster to do so, and whether or not someone can return to the ritual and how to do so.
 
In a public ritual or a private one with guests, especially if it may be someone's first group experience, adding an "out" to our pre-ritual spiel seems obvious, yet I don't think I've ever heard it included. In fact, even just hours after having a conversation about this, I forgot to include it in my explanation before the Beltane ritual at the Gathering. I'm determined not to forget again, so here's a draft of the speech I'm considering; I hope by writing it out, it'll be easier to remember:
 
If you need to or want to leave the ritual at any time, for any reason, please know that you are free to do so. We are all our own Priests and Priestesses; you do not need permission to leave. Every Circle is different, but in this Circle, you can cut yourself in and out. Simply stand near the boundary and visualize an opening - making a cutting gesture may help with the visualization. After exiting, please visualize the opening closing again behind you. If you wish to return to the Circle, simply reverse the procedure.
 
Unfortunately, the people who may most need to give such a speech may never do so, but if most people who lead public rituals make a point of always giving an out to all participants, maybe the word will get around that you never have to stay. Let's empower each other, protect each other, and, at the same time, make our rituals more friendly to parents, to new Pagans, and to those with other challenges that may limit their participation otherwise.

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Published on 4 Comments on Contributing to and sharing in the bounty

Quinoa Salad

Being suddenly back to reading Pagan media after several years of being less involved means finding all kinds of interesting blogs and websites all at once. I will add links to my favourites at some point, but here's an online project I stumbled across just in time: The Pagan Values Event 2013. This is the 5th annual blog event collecting posts, podcasts, etc., about Pagan values, and it runs for the month of June. I've arranged to follow the daily summary posts and I look forward to seeing what such a diverse community has to say.

It got me thinking about my own values. My first instinct was to just list all the good things I could think of, in no particular order, but that's ducking the question. I want to identify some of my central values as a Pagan. If being lied to pisses you off the most, you value honesty. If your pet peeve is line jumpers, you probably value fairness. If you invest a lot of time and energy into thinking about your word choices as it related to marginalized people, your highest value might be social justice. So I asked myself what gets me riled up, what concerns me, and what do I put my time and energy towards...

As with so many things, it all comes down to food.

It is one of those incidents that still kind of bugs me to this day. Many years ago, I was going to a potluck with a group of about a dozen Pagan women. I knew one of the woman was gluten-free, which was a new concept to me, but I made my favourite rice dish and happily brought it along. The woman who could not have any wheat brought... donuts. She brought a dozen donuts, which she couldn't eat, and then complained when she couldn't eat anyone else's food either because it all clearly contained gluten or, like mine, contained ingredients that may contain gluten. See, I didn't know to check my soy sauce for gluten, so she couldn't eat my lovely rice dish. It annoyed me that I failed her, but it annoyed me even more that she didn't even bring something she could eat.

It bugs me because I value self-reliance.

When my spiritual family gathers to share a meal, it is never a simple matter. Our small group's issues include: one vegetarian, one vegan, two people who can't have cow dairy, one person who can't have beans, someone who is hypoglycemic (high protein needs), someone who has blood-sugar issues, and multiple allergies, some potentially fatal, including nuts, peanuts, strawberries, dijon, eggplant, and tumeric. We've also had members with temporary issues with gluten and garlic. We have individual food preferences as well. Planning a meal that everyone can eat and enjoy is complicated. However, we do it on a regular basis, sometimes by semi-organized potluck and sometimes by all pitching in to cook a meal together. We do it because working together and eating together is important to us. We do it because feeding each other is a part of taking care of each other.

We do it because we value community.

As a faith, we value spiritual self-reliance and encourage people to find their own paths, define their own beliefs, and to be their own priests and priestesses. In Joyce and River Higginbotham's Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions, they identify "Seven Principles of Paganism" among American Pagans, which include three statements of personal responsibility: for the beliefs we choose, for our actions and spiritual development, and for forming our own relationship with divinity.

As a faith, we also value community. We invest a lot of time, energy, and sometimes money in everything from Facebook pages to covens and groves to organizations that create one-day local events like Pagan Pride Day and big conventions like PantheaCon. We can also spend a considerable amount of our time and energy on the politics of our communities - on the in-fighting and personality conflicts and gossip - which we wouldn't bother with if we didn't get enough out of our communities to be worth the costs.

In some ways, self-reliance and community seem to be opposing values, but I think that in Paganism, we want to create communities that aren't based on need, but on sharing. Instead of coming to a group in order to passively receive religious teachings, we come to a group so we can all learn and we can all teach. We are self-reliant, so we can take care of our own spiritual needs, but we can enrich our practices and deepen our understandings when we come together with other people. Like with a good potluck, we all bring something valuable to the table and we all share in the bounty together.

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Published on 1 Comment on Analyzing the flow

Kitchen Witch Altar At the Gathering's hack space discussion group, someone asked the group about what they thought was the minimum requirement for a fulfilling ritual. One participant immediately spoke up with the word "flow". She feels that a ritual is working when the energy is flowing well. I completely agree with her, but I still feel challenged by how to consistently create that flow in a ritual.

A couple of hours after the discussion group, I found out that, due to some scheduling or communications issues, the skyclad (naked) ritual scheduled for that night had been cancelled. That saddened me, as the Gathering has always had at least one skyclad ritual, and it is many people's first chance to experience that. Someone offered me the time slot, if I wanted to pull something together. I decided to take the opportunity to try again with the Beltane: The Heart ritual that I had done for my regular working group a couple of weeks ago. I had been talking to members of my community earlier that day about that very ritual, and how I hadn't felt like it quite worked. It had looked good on paper, but it lacked flow. They gave me some great feedback, I did a quick re-write on my partner's tablet, and I ran the ritual again that night. This time, it worked.

The first time I ran this ritual, I had several things working in my favour: I had all my pretty altar decorations and ritual tools, I was running the ritual for a group that's familiar with my style and works well together, and I was well prepared. Yet, it felt rushed and the energy didn't flow.

Normally, I prepare my larger group rituals far in advance, and I have lists and tools and decorations and typed scripts and I sometimes even hold rehearsals. This time, I had two members of my group who had done the ritual before, a script on a tablet, some hastily written cue cards, a couple of strings of Christmas lights as lighting and decoration (no candles allowed in the camp's cabins), and ritual tools and food (sliced apples) and drink (water) scavenged from the camp's kitchen and laid out on a scarf on the floor for an altar. I knew that a lot of people had heard that the skyclad was cancelled, so I wasn't expecting many people to show up, but about two dozen came, many of whom I didn't really know and who had never circled together.

I think the biggest change I made was that, at the suggestion of my friends, we added a drummer to control the energy raising. A major issue with the first time we did this ritual was that the energy didn't have time to build properly. The rhythm never established and settled, and it felt rushed. The flow wasn't there, even in this group that knows each other really well and works together regularly. In the second version, the drummer kept the rhythm slower until it was clear that everyone was in beat together, and then the volume increased first as people began slapping the floor and/or their legs harder, then it began to speed up more naturally, feeling like a reflection of our increased heart rates from the exertion of hitting the floor over and over. After the ritual, my drummer and I were unsure of which one of us had been leading the speeding up of the rhythm, as it felt organic.

There were some changes I had to make because of the circumstances of the second ritual. For example, no candles and no incense (camp rules and allergies in the group) meant a simplified space cleansing, which I don't think had any effect either way on the group, maybe partially because we were a little more prepped for ritual, being in sacred space all weekend. But other changes made out of the circumstances improved the ritual further. First, the space we had for the second ritual was much larger than my living room and allowed for enough space for everyone to sit comfortably and both touch each others hands during the meditation and have room to drum and even move some during the power raising. Second, putting the altar right on the floor - because we didn't have a suitable table - meant that there were no visual blocks when everyone was sitting on the ground. In the first version, a full-sized altar in the centre of the circle blocked some people's views of each other, and I think that disrupted the energy flow as well.

Another victim of circumstance was my pre-ritual explanation. I get nervous talking in front of a group, and feeling a bit under-prepared meant that I did not explain to the second group exactly what I had in mind for how the power raising would go. I think this turned out to be a great thing for the ritual. When I ran the first version, I gave my group such a detailed description that I think it became part of the analytical, practical side of the brain. I think everyone was a bit self-conscious, trying to remember what was supposed to happen, and we were all thinking too much, trying to follow the instructions. In the second ritual, my much briefer explanation did not get into people's heads the same way. Instead, I just modeled the behaviour I had been imagining, and people followed along (or didn't) as they felt inclined. It let people go with their instincts, go with the energy of the group, and it felt much more natural... and it turned out much closer to what I had hoped for than the original, over-described attempt had been.

I can't say for sure what effect the fact that it was done skyclad had on the second ritual. It was an obvious difference between the two rituals, and there is a different feeling to a group when the members are maybe all feeling a little daring or a little vulnerable because they are all naked. Someone described the second ritual as "sensual", which definitely was not the case with the first ritual, and maybe the nudity, non-sexual though it was, had something to do with that. It may have been helped along by a small, but important, change in some of the words used. Before the second ritual, I changed every place where I had written "tears" to "sweat" (four changes altogether). There is a distinctly different feeling to "Lord of the wild and passionate heart, we call to You from our bodies. By flesh and breath and love and tears, we call to You..." versus "Lord of the wild and passionate heart, we call to You from our bodies. By flesh and breath and love and sweat, we call to You..." I think I will have to run some more rituals twice - once clothed and once skyclad - to see if any of the improved energy and flow can be attributed to the nudity. Those who circle with me regularly be warned: there may be skyclad ritual invitations forthcoming.

I won't say that the second ritual worked for everyone who was there, as whether or not a ritual works is subjective. However, I know it worked for at least some of us, and the energy in that circle was much more powerful than in the first one. I hope I can apply the lessons learned by contrasting the two experiences of this ritual to improve the flow at future rituals.

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Published on 5 Comments on Pagan Ritual Hack Space

mythumbnailA workshop facilitated by Melissa and Robyn at the Gathering for Life on Earth 2013. These are our original notes; not everything ended up being used at the workshop since group discussions took up much of the time.

Workshop Description: "Pagan Ritual Hack Space": A hacker builds, rebuilds, modifies, and seeks to make things better or add more features. A hack space is for sharing and experimenting and collaborating. Bring your incomplete rituals, your vague ideas for rituals, your tricky ritual problems, and your clever solutions, and let's work together!

Introduction (Melissa)

A hacker is a person who enjoys exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. It includes building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating anything, either to make it better or faster or to give it added features or to make it do something it was never intended to do. (Source: Wikipedia: Hacker (hobbyist))

Generally, hackerspaces are open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things. Since we’re working with ideas rather than physical objects, our hackerspace requirements are the materials of brainstorming and collaborative writing. (Source: Wikipedia: Hackerspace)

The idea of hacking rituals isn't new or unique. It is related, for example, to the "open-source religion" movement. "Open source" can be defined as the idea that when you're trying to design or improve something, a meritocracy of ideas will trump a hierarchical system, and the more contributors, the better the results. Open-source religion or open-source spirituality attempts to employ open-source methods in the creation of belief systems through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among the believers themselves. They emphasize participation, self-determination, decentralization, and evolution. (Source: Open-source religion)

We're going to talk about two kinds of ritual hacking: practical hacking to make rituals fit the practical needs of a group and political hacking to bring social justice themes to a ritual. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive concerns; you may need to make practical changes to a ritual in order to address a social justice concern.

Defining Ritual (Robyn)

It may be worth taking a moment to talk about our working definition of ritual. Of course we are all coming from diverse traditions with potentially different or even opposing practices attached. We want to be cognizant of this and emphasize that when we speak about ritual we speak about all manners of ritual for spiritual purposes. Of course brushing one’s teeth in the morning may be a ritual in the sense that it is a repetitive action that we do habitually, but not all of us go into that kind of activity with spiritual intent (if you do, fabulous). What we are therefore talking about here is the idea of ritual as a routine coupled with spiritual intent. This could be as simple as a blessing said before a meal or as elaborate as a public ritual in a very specific tradition – as long as there is a routine (e.g., when we get together to practice, the way we go about setting our space, the words we use) and spiritual intent (e.g., to connect with deities, to heal, to ask for guidance), then it is the kind of ritual we are talking about. Though the example we will use comes from the Wiccan tradition, it is only that – an example.

Creative Commons (Melissa)

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

Their free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved".

Creative Commons licenses work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.

Our options for anyone wanting to use our ideas and work from today, especially if wanting to publish them to a website, email list, or blog:

Allow modifications: Yes, No, or Yes with Credit
Allow commercial uses: Yes or No
Jurisdiction: Canada or International
Name to credit?

Practical Hacking (Melissa)

Sometimes we need to modify our usual ritual structure to accommodate the needs of one or more members, to suit a less-than-ideal space, to take advantage of skills within your group, or to have the ritual run more smoothly when you have a larger group than usual or guests who aren't as familiar with rituals.

Before changing something in a ritual, you may want to evaluate if doing it the usual way serves a religious or spiritual purpose. I ask myself: "What belief does this action serve?" If it serves a belief that's important to my religious beliefs, I don't change that part of the ritual. If the part of the ritual doesn't serve a specific belief, serves a belief that I am willing to compromise, or, best yet, serves an idea that I don't want to support, I am willing to hack that part of the ritual.

Some examples of practical ritual hacking I've done or seen:

With a group of more than 150 people, we did the drink blessing on a pitcher, than divided the blessed drink amongst multiple goblets that were passed. Though I thought this was an obvious thing to do, I had a very experienced community elder come up to me after and compliment me on the creative move.

Another group, also doing a large ritual, had the person calling the quarter standing at the opposite quarter, facing their quarter across the circle of people. I don't know if this serves a spiritual purpose as well, but it is great for making sure the quarter call can be heard in a very large ritual.

Within our smaller group, one of the challenges we've faced is having a member who is immune-compromised, along with several members who have frequent exposure to germs (a nurse, a teacher, a couple of parents). In order to minimize the risk to our member who catches everything, we are changing how we share drink so we all use our own goblets. We're still working on the logistic issues of passing a pitcher while holding a goblet, etc.

Hacking doesn't have to be just about solving a problem, though. We can also hack rituals to take advantage of the skills of our group members. For example, a group that is heavy on talented singers may choose to use songs to do the circle casting, the quarter calls, the invocations, and more.

Questions related to practical hacking:

Have you ever had a challenging space as the only choice in which to hold your ritual? How did you adapt your ritual to suit the space? Did it work?

Have you ever changed a solitary ritual in to a group ritual, or vice versa? Or have you changed a small group ritual to a large one? What did you change? What else could you or should you have changed?

What skills in your group or community have you taken advantage of? What skills could you take advantage of?

Has any member of your group or community faced a physical or other limitation or challenge that affected how they could do rituals? What did you do to adapt?

What challenge is your group or community currently facing or anticipating facing soon that you haven’t solved yet?

Hacking for Social Justice (Robyn)

I'm sure many of us have been in a position where we start to reflect on why we are doing the things we are doing. Sometimes the answer is simple: we do this particular thing because it is tradition, and that answer may be satisfying enough to stop our query. However, sometimes it isn't enough to simply chalk something up to tradition. So, we may turn to research and try to discover from where that tradition came, who started it and why. If we have a group to turn to, we may inquire with our elders or talk amongst our community and try and discover how people are interpreting this particular tradition. Again, our inquiry may lead us to some sense of satisfaction.

There are some people, however, that may have had experiences of a different kind. Some of us have been part of a ritual in which we began not only to question the way certain aspects were being carried out, but also to feel uncomfortable. It can happen that we feel a certain tradition or way of doing things is offensive or disconcerting, or even unsafe. In these scenarios, I would suggest that questions do indeed need to be asked, and sometimes the only thing that will bring us the satisfaction we are seeking is change, or a break from said tradition.

I have often had these moments of questioning during rituals and I like to think that this is because I think critically about the world around me and I try to live in a way in which my practices out in the world, spiritual or otherwise, coincide with my personal values, ethics and morals. This approach means that writing a ritual often takes an awful lot of thought and a painfully long time as I try to ensure that my writing promotes my primarily feminist values. I question the hetero-normative and patriarchal assumptions that underpin many forms of ritual across many traditions, and there are some practices that I just can't feel good about allowing into my repertoire.

A great example of this was expressed through an on-line blog that Melissa sent my way. A woman was attending a Pagan Pride event in Denver wherein a circle was cast in the middle of a public park. This woman had been invited to circle, but there were many in the park that were not invited and she recognized as the ritual went on how the act of casting a circle had in fact created an exclusive space. If you were in the circle, you were 'in' and if you weren't in the circle you were 'out'. Though she had always considered the circle an inclusive space, she was now very uncomfortable standing in a space that had the by-product of 'othering' those outside of the space. This experience led her to question the appropriateness of casting a circle in a public space, and she looked to the online community for ideas on how to create a radically inclusive way of doing ritual in public.
(Source: I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride)

Melissa and I practice as part of a collective and we as a group are in the midst of questioning our traditions and rewriting them to fit our collective sense of what is good and just, as well as what is practical, within a ritual space.

Questions related to hacking for social justice:

What aspects of your traditions have you played with or modified for political or ethical reasons? How did others perceive those changes?

In a tradition that is based on very set ritual elements or wording, what may be the safest way to go about questioning or changing elements that are problematic?

Have you ever considered ritual as a political act? Is it? Should it be?

Hacking in Action:

We found public domain Beltane ritual online and pulled out a section for the group to discuss and hack collaboratively. We didn't get to this part at all in the workshop, but here's the ritual piece we'd chosen:

The Coven, except for the High Priestess and High Priest, arrange themselves around the perimeter of the circle, man and woman alternately as far as possible, facing the centre. The High Priestess and High Priest stand facing each other in the centre of the circle, she with her back to the altar, he with his back to the South.

The High Priest kneels before the High Priestess and gives her the Five Fold Kiss (both feet, both knees, womb, both breasts, and the lips, starting with the right of each pair). He says, as he does this:

Blessed be thy feet that have brought thee in these ways.
Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar.
Blessed be thy womb, without which we would not be.
Blessed be thy breasts, formed in beauty.
Blessed be thy lips, that shall utter the Sacred Names.

For the kiss on the lips, they embrace, length to length, with their feet touching each others. When he reaches the womb, she spreads her arms wide, and the same after the kiss on the lips. The High Priestess then lays herself down, face upwards, with her arms and legs outstretched to form the Pentagram.

The High Priest fetches the veil and spreads it over the High Priestess's body, covering her from breasts to knees. He then kneels facing her, with his knees between her feet.

The High Priest calls a woman witch by name, to bring his athame from the altar. The woman does so and stands with the athame in her hands, about a yard to the West of the High Priestess's hips and facing her.

The High Priest calls a male witch by name, to bring the chalice of wine from the altar. He does so and stands with the chalice in his hands, about a yard to the East of the High Priestess's hips and facing her.

The High Priest delivers the invocation:

Assist me to erect the ancient altar, at which in days past all worshiped; the altar of all things. For in old time, Woman was the altar. Thus was the altar made and placed, and the sacred place was the point within the center of the Circle. As we have of old been taught that the point within the center is the origin of all things, therefore should we adore it; therefore whom we adore we also invoke.

O Circle of Stars, whereof our father is but the younger brother, marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space, before whom time is ashamed, the mind bewildered, and the understanding dark, not unto thee may we attain unless thine image be love.

Therefore by seed and stem, root and bud, and leaf and flower and fruit do we invoke thee, O Queen of Space, O Jewel of Light, continuous one of the heavens; let it be ever thus.

That men speak not of thee as One, but as None; and let them not speak of thee at all, since thou art continuous. For thou art the point within the Circle, which we adore; the point of life, without which we would not be.

And in this way truly are erected the holy twin pillars; in beauty and strength were they erected to the wonder and glory of all men.

The High Priest removes the veil from the High Priestess' body, and hands it to the woman witch, from whom he takes his athame. The High Priestess rises and kneels facing the High Priest, and takes the chalice from the man witch. (Note that both of these handings over are done without the customary ritual kiss.)

The High Priest continues the invocation:

Altar of mysteries manifold,
The sacred Circle's secret point
Thus do I sign thee as of old,
With kisses of my lips anoint.

The High Priest kisses the High Priestess on the lips, and continues:

Open for me the secret way,
The pathway of intelligence,
Beyond the gates of night and day,
Beyond the bounds of time and sense.
Behold the mystery aright
The five true points of fellowship.

The High Priestess holds up the chalice, and the High Priest lowers the point of his athame into the wine. Both use both of their hands for this. The High Priest continues:

All life is your own,
All fruits of the Earth
Are fruits of your womb,
Your union, your dance.

Lady and Lord,
We thank you for blessings and abundance.
Join with us,
Feast with us,
Enjoy with us!
Blessed Be.

Draw the Invoking Pentacle of Earth in the air above the plate with the athame:

Here where Lance and Grail unite,
And feet, and knees, and breast, and lip.

The High Priest hands his athame to the woman witch and then places both his hands round those of the High Priestess as she holds the chalice. He kisses her, and she sips the wine; she kisses him, and he sips the wine. Both of them keep their hands round the chalice while they do this.

The High Priest then takes the chalice from the High Priestess, and they both rise to their feet.

The High Priest hands the chalice to a woman witch with a kiss, and she sips. She gives it to a man with a kiss. The chalice is passed around the Coven, man to woman, with a kiss each time, until the entire Coven has sipped the wine. The chalice can be refilled and any one can drink from it without repeating the ritual once the chalice has gone around once.

The woman lays down her athame and passes the cakes to the man with a kiss, he passes them back with a kiss and they are passed around the Coven the same way the wine was. Be sure to save some of the wine and some cake for an offering to the Earth and the Little Folk. After the meeting, leave the offering outside of the house if working indoors, or behind in the woods or field, when you leave if you are working outdoors.

Creative Commons Licence
Pagan Ritual Hack Space by GFLOE Pagan Hack Space 2013 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Published on Leave a comment on Weather magic is a bad idea

Isobars
Isobars screenshot from San Francisco State University Meteorological Program website.

I will admit to being a magic skeptic. I believe that we do have the ability to change ourselves using magic, but I am doubtful about our ability to change the physical realm. I think weather magic is a waste of time: no harm, but no benefit either. That said, people who do weather magic believe in their ability to create change, so I'm going to meet them where they are at and assume they can impact the weather... and ask them to please not do so.

I'm not a meteorologist, but I've got an amateur interest in weather and weather systems. I watch isobar maps and FD charts. If you don't know what those are, you really have no business messing with the weather. And if you do know what they are, you probably already know better than to try.

Weather isn't something that just happens where you are. All weather is connected, and a weather worker does not know - cannot know - what impact their working will have on a neighbouring area or on the long term forecast in their own place.

It is raining in Vancouver right now because there is a low pressure zone sitting over our city. Lows like to settle in and linger, and they bring in clouds that press up against our beautiful mountains and drizzle on us for weeks on end. In contrast, simplifying greatly, high pressure zones push out clouds and result in sunny days. High and low pressures are not created here; we tend to get our weather from the north-west of us, and it moves over us and on to other areas. To create a sunny day here and now, one would need to pull a high pressure zone from somewhere else. If one could force a high front to rush towards us at great speed - to get a sunny weekend, for example - then low pressure zones would be spinning in to fill the gap, and high zones to fill those gaps, resulting in dramatic weather changes potentially all over the continent, and maybe beyond.

Do that over and over, and have different magic workers in different areas all pushing different weather systems around in all different directions, and who knows what will happen. It strikes me as an awful experiment, like finding out what harm burning large amounts of fossil fuels does by creating holes in the ozone layer. Pagans of all people should know how little we still know about nature and how we affect her. We should know that our personal desires are not justification for causing widespread problems: "an it harm none". We cannot be so selfish or short-sighted as to think that we can do something here and have no impact elsewhere; that's not how nature works in general, and it certainly isn't how weather works. We should know that everything is connected.

There may be circumstances under which dangerous weather magic might be worth the risk. If an area is undergoing flooding, drought, forest fires, or hurricanes, maybe a case can be made for magical intervention (though I would still argue that we may make things worse and not better; well-meaning interference could result in a game of magical weather wack-a-mole). However, a sunny weekend for our pleasure and convenience is not reason enough to mess with something so complicated.

We've got a weekend Pagan camping trip coming up this weekend, and I know it will be more fun if it is sunny out. We're lucky that our camp has cabins; no one will have to deal with a wet tent. I am still hoping that the high just to the north-west of us moves down in time, opening up the possibility of frolicking and circling in the sunshine, and maybe even to do a bit of swimming, but I think it would be unethical to try to do anything to urge it on.

I also wonder why Pagans, at least of the nature-worshiping type, would want to mess with the weather. If we want to honour Mother Earth, if we want to stay in touch with the seasons and with nature, than we have to accept some rain and cold, even when it is inconvenient. If you want a climate-controlled temple, there are plenty of religions who provide that; please don't adjust the thermostat in your local forest.

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