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Published on 1 Comment on Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 4: Virtual rituals, continued
An altar glowing with candles as seen on a computer screen.

A socially distanced Beltane was necessary this year. Litha remains a question mark, particularly for my group full of people with health issues.

I was in charge of our Beltane, so I tried to take the lessons learned by Jamie Robyn when she ran our virtual Ostara (her post about what she learned is here). I had a mouse so I didn't have to reach across the altar. I took out our usual group vocal responses. I had everything plugged in.

The other thing I was interested in when writing a virtual Beltane is how virtual rituals could be better than in-person rituals. There are many ways in which they fall short and feel like a poor substitute for the "real thing". One thing I thought of is that with a virtual ritual, you can share your screen and present visual images to each individual in a way that would be hard with everyone sitting in a circle in person. Depending on what virtual meeting space you are using, you can also share audio in a really clear way. I came up with a few ideas:

  • Displaying a labyrinth people could trace with their eyes, fingers, or cursor.
  • Showing appropriate pictures for different parts of the ritual: an ocean for water, a Goddess image when invoking, etc.
  • Playing a pre-recorded meditation.
  • Showing a video.
  • Some sort of online game, puzzle, or challenge that either has to be solved individually or collectively.
  • A virtual altar or shrine, perhaps with candles that can be lit by clicking on them (for example, this "light a candle" website).
  • Virtual backgrounds everyone can use: either a shared one so we can all appear to be in the same location, or each one different depending on that person's role in the ritual.

Some of these ideas require more tech know-how than others. I can't easily build a beautiful virtual altar with candles that each person can light. If we have to continue having virtual rituals, that might be a skill worth acquiring or an expertise worth paying for.

Choose your virtual meeting software based on what you want it to be able to do. As of right now, Google Hangouts and Meet don't have virtual background options, and using your own image with Teams requires a bit of a hack, so if you want everyone to have a custom background, Zoom might be your best bet. Turns out that Google Meet is good for screen sharing, but it doesn't make it possible to spotlight or pin one person without losing the view of everyone else. So when you've chosen what you want to do, seek out the best tool for the job, and make sure you know how to use it.

If you can, with most of these ideas I suggest using two devices as the leader of the ritual: one for screen sharing and one to show yourself in the same way the other participants are being shown. Otherwise, when you turn on the photos or the video, you disappear, and I think in a virtual ritual that it is very important that we be able to see each other's faces. To keep it from echoing and feeding back, one of the two devices has to be both muted and have its volume completely off. In my virtual Beltane ritual, I pointed one device downward at my altar from slightly above and used that device to show the videos. My other device sat across the altar from me and was the one I looked at to see everyone and my script.

Until we can be together in person again, we need to make the best of what we can do. We might as well embrace the challenge and explore the advantages technology can provide.

Links:

Published on Leave a comment on Paganism in the time of coronavirus – part 3: Virtual rituals (guest post)

Lessons from a Ritual in Virtual Space

A guest post by Jamie Robyn

A candle-lit altar as seen on a Google Hangouts screen.

Living through a global pandemic means that we are having to become creative in how we connect with one another. For Pagans, this means we are having to adapt our rituals, rituals that usually depend quite heavily on physical presence. As I was writing and preparing for our small group Ostara ritual, the outside world was changing quickly and drastically. By the time we actually could hold ritual, we were all in quarantine or self-isolation and we needed to come together virtually. Now, with the ritual done and a bit of time to reflect, I am able to share what we learned in taking our ritual experience to virtual space. 

I. The process: writing and preparing

There were many things I had to take into consideration before and while I was writing the ritual itself. Here is a list that may be useful for others to consider:

  • Choosing a platform: 
    • What technology do folks have? 
    • What is everyone's wifi access like?
    • What is everyone’s comfort level with using new technology?
    • What platform will meet everyone’s needs?

We decided to use Google Hangouts as a video chat platform as everyone participating already had Gmail accounts, it was easy to use across devices, and it was pretty reliable overall. We did a test run of the link before the ritual date.

  • Platform education: Make sure you know how to do the following (as applicable to your chosen platform) and know how to help your participants find the options:
    • How to mute all your participants and how they can mute and un-mute themselves.
    • How participants can choose to see only you, or everyone, or whoever is speaking.
    • How participants can blur their background or choose a virtual background.
  • Adapting our typical ritual structure:
    • What tools do we usually use? Which can be omitted/modified/shared virtually and what does each participant need to have on hand? What additional tools will be needed (i.e., a laptop)?
    • What parts of ritual usually require physical touch and how can they be adapted?
    • Who will do what and how will that information be shared?

I went through past rituals to see what adaptations I would need to make to our materials and overall structure. I decided to set up a full altar in my space and make it visible to everyone, so that they could choose to set up a physical altar or not in their spaces. I decided which tools I could simply provide, and which tools each participant would need to have on hand. I decided in advance who would be responsible for each speaking part and wrote that into the script. I shared the final script prior to the ritual so that participants could have a read through if they wanted to, and so that they could either print it or have it open on their devices for reference during the ritual. Tasks that may have been done by one person previously, such as space cleansing or circle casting, seemed to make more sense as collective tasks online. Our territory acknowledgement was adapted to include all of the territories where participants were physically sitting.

  • Deciding on the ritual content:
    • What do people need to work through collectively right now and what may help them to access that work?

This was a big consideration for me, as I wanted to make sure our ritual spoke to the current climate and enabled folks to work through the myriad emotions they were (and are) experiencing. I decided to use the Ostara themes of balance, growth, and hope to guide us through our work.

II. The virtual ritual: lessons learned

  1. Collective speaking or chanting: This did not translate well to virtual space! In future, I would not try to recreate this virtually.
  2. Using singing bowls to mark transitions: This worked surprisingly well in virtual space, with each participant having a bowl on hand to ring as needed. The tones were each different and resonated at different frequencies, which made it a very sonic and melodic experience – quite possibly my favourite part of the whole ritual!
  3. Laptop placement: I had set up the laptop on one side of my large table, facing me. I adjusted the size of the ritual document so that I could read it from farther away. I then set up the altar in front of me so that most of it was visible to the webcam. This made for a lovely virtual ritual space, but eventually put a lot of hot fire between the laptop keyboard and I! In future, I would use a wireless mouse, kept on my side of the altar, to navigate the screen.
  4. Speaking order: Having a consistent speaking order worked really well virtually. Typically, our rituals are much more conversational and we often speak whenever we feel we have something to contribute. Multiple folks speaking at once during video chats makes everything difficult to understand, so deciding an order for responses helped things run smoothly and audibly for everyone. 
  5. Power source: Just as we were wrapping up and saying goodbye, my laptop died. I thought for sure I would have enough battery power to get me through, but video calls drain the battery pretty quick! Next time, I would definitely plug in.

Overall, the experience of coming together in ritual virtually was really good. Seeing faces and laughing together, doing some important spiritual work together, and being in sacred space together in these very uncertain and scary times was both satisfying and necessary. While some Pagans out there may hesitate to explore virtual options during the Covid-19 era, I hope that in sharing our experience and lessons you may feel that it is not only doable, but well worth the effort. Take care and stay safe folks.

A circle of logos: Green Hangouts in the north, purple Teams in the east, orange Go To Meetings in the south, and blue Zoom in the west.

Links: "Paganism in the time of coronavirus" part 1 and part 2.

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Published on 1 Comment on Broken connections, broken glass, broken trust


Shattered glass tumbler with the broken shards of glass lying alongside on a black background.
Shattered glass tumbler by freebie.photography is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

My spine and brain is a frayed electrical cord, short circuiting and sending confused messages to my body. I lose connection to parts of me; sometimes I look at my fingers and toes to make sure they are still there.

Broken connections to broken dishes: mixing bowls and glass measuring cups are the victims of my numb hands. I can no longer tell what's a normal fumble that could have happened to anyone and what's my confused nervous system. Every time I slosh wine, every time I drop my phone, every time I trip over nothing, I wonder.

Broken dishes to broken trust, as I don't know what to expect from my body anymore. Random surges of tingling, random muscle clenching, random weakness and tremors... my body is unpredictable and not in my control.

I have always believed in an embodied Paganism: a religion that doesn't deny the reality of being in possession of a body with needs and senses; a spirituality that acknowledges that we're animals and that we're natural beings; a faith that finds spirit and grace in the world instead of in the afterlife. But that was easier when my body was comfortable to inhabit. It was easier when I could trust my body.

This disease takes a lot from people. I won't let it take my Paganism, but some re-envisioning may be necessary to find perfect trust in my broken body.

Published on Leave a comment on Link roundup: Pagans with chronic illnesses


Ain't no rest for the wicked until we close our eyes for good.
Cage The Elephant - "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked"

Similar to and overlapping with the issue of accessibility is the issue of Pagans dealing with chronic illnesses. This seems like a less explored topic. The Mighty, an amazing site created to empower and connect people facing health challenges and disabilities, has 4 articles when you search "pagan" and only one of those was an author describing themselves as Pagan. There was 1 article for "Wicca". I couldn't count the number of articles that come up when you search "Christian". Given how many Pagans have chronic health conditions, there's definitely room for more exploration of this topic. Here are some people who have started the conversation:

"Physical restrictions due to a chronic condition can make it difficult to feel as if you're connected with the Goddess (or Deity or general energy or nature etc). Conducting rituals indoors because cold weather makes your pain worse, you can feel cut off from the Earth and it's energies. You can feel cut off from other Pagans and the community at large because it's difficult to get out and get to meetings. And because the level of pain you're in is unpredictable, it often means you have to cancel plans at the last minute.

"This can be disheartening. You can end up feeling like you're not a proper Pagan. ...

"Illness isn't something that should steal your faith from you. There are things you can do. As in every other part of your living with a chronic illness, it can mean cutting back on what you do to save your energy."

- "How To Be a Practicing Pagan with a Chronic Illness"; guest contributor Nobby: Staff of Asclepius - Pagans With Disabilities

"Doing something may help you more than doing nothing. If you don't have a practice you can do on your worst days, it can be really easy to get out of the habit of checking in with your spiritual life (and feel even harder to pick up when you do feel better in the future.) Doing small things – especially things you set up in advance and use when you need to – can help a lot."

- "Chronic Illness and Pagan Practice"; Jenett - Seeking: first Pagan steps and tools

"No deity or Wiccan police have come to me and chastised me for not studying or working as much as Person B. If you need to take a few days away, do it! If you can only study 5-10 minutes a day- hey that's 5-10 minutes MORE than you knew before you did that, right? If you can only meditate a couple of minutes, well guess what! That's a couple of quality minutes you just spent to better your mind and body. If you only have time to study by listening to Wiccan audiobooks while you're driving to work or picking the kids up or fixing dinner- do it! That's time that you will spend learning."

- "Chronic Illness and Wicca"; Country Hippie Crossing

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Published on 1 Comment on Adapted and accessible


Chairs set up around an altar.

There's an ideal image of a witches' coven in ritual: A group in matching robes standing around an altar in the moonlight. The altar would be laid with a lovely cloth and be bright with candles with incense smoke curling around simple, beautiful, matching tools. The coven's hands are held high and they are ready to chant and dance and work magic. It's an image seen on many Pagan books and magazines. It's an image I was trying to recreate in the first rituals I did... often to the detriment of the ritual's content and focus.

Over time, I've moved towards focusing on substance over style in my rituals, and the practical needs of my spiritual community has overridden any desire to have our rites look like a magazine cover. Robes went first; we simply didn't have the desire to all get any sort of special clothing. Next to go was the moonlight; rituals, even ones centered around the moon, sometimes had to be in the afternoon or right after work. Incense was given up due to allergies. Most recently, we've given up standing and dancing, at least temporarily. At this year's Lammas ritual, out of the six people who were able to attend, three were unable to stand without pain and one had her tiny baby with her.

Over the course of adapting rituals to the needs of a group with mobility issues, we've learned a few helpful things:

- I've found that both the group energy and the mechanics of the ritual work best if everyone's on the same level: all standing, or all seated in chairs, or all seated on the floor. We try to have chairs that are roughly the same height. If we're sitting on the floor, an altar that is very low or even just a cloth right on the floor is important so people can see each other and what's happening.

- If the ritual is going to include holding hands or passing items, it is important to place the chairs close enough together and to choose an altar small enough to fit in the centre, rather than having an altar that's too big and having people too far apart.

- Getting in and out of a circle of chairs can be awkward, so circle casting is best either done from a stationary position or by walking around the inside of the circle of people if there's enough room. When planning, be aware that chairs take up more room than standing people, so your room will fill up very quickly.

- If possible, encourage people to sit up straight and at the edge of their chair to keep energy and physical attention on the ritual.

- Cross-calling the quarters: The person calling East sits in the West, therefore facing East, and so on. I saw a group use this technique when doing very large outdoor rituals because it made it easier for the whole group to hear, but it is also really effective in a group where people can't easily turn to face the quarter being called.

- Dancing might be out, but a lot of other energy raising techniques work just as well in a seated ritual: drumming and chanting, meditations and visualizations, etc. If more movement seems required, there are lots of options with a bit of creativity: clapping, stomping feet, passing items around, and hand and arm gestures.

At Lammas, we made for a very different looking circle than that Wiccan 101 book cover: jeans and t-shirts, sitting in kitchen chairs in a ring around an altar covered with a sarong and cluttered with a diverse collection of tools and a bottle of cinnamon whiskey. But the magic was undeniable.

Published on Leave a comment on Link roundup: accessible Paganism


Blue and white stick figure actively wheeling a wheelchairAs Paganism matures, we have to address a huge range of accessibility issues for our religion: physical accessibility for Pagans with mobility issues, assistance for Pagan parents, audiobooks for Pagans who are blind, sign language interpreters for deaf Pagans, inclusivity for LGBTQ Pagans, a welcoming atmosphere for Pagans of colour, accommodations for Pagans with allergies, and more. Luckily, we have some smart, helpful, welcoming Pagans talking about those issues already:

"In this case, the unpopular thing is the idea that we – Pagan leaders and ritualists – may need to change how we approach rituals in order to make our rituals more accessible and inclusive. We may even need to re-evaluate some of our dearly-held theological beliefs. If we want the dominant culture to change, to legalize gay marriage, support people with disabilities, eliminate racism... don't we have to do that work first ourselves, within our community?"

- "Ritual: Physical Accessibility, Transgender Inclusion, and more"; Shauna Aura Knight: Pagan Activist

"Given the huge variation between and within lineages in Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, adding a bit more variation to the mix shouldn't be in the slightest bit controversial - but strangely, as soon as you mention including LGBT people, disabled people, and people of colour, it becomes controversial. I wonder why that is?"

- "But what do you actually do?"; Yvonne Aburrow, inclusive Wicca

"If there's any piece in a ritual that's gendered, they're usually for one of the two most common genders. Where do I fit if I'm involved in that ritual but the best descriptor for my gender mode is "the green of the deep woods in shaded places" (and yes, that is a gender mode I experienced very recently, and no, I don't have any better way to describe it). And that's just in ritual; what do I do in social spaces before and after? "Hi, my name is Dee and my pronouns are they and them," isn't necessarily the best icebreaker that doesn't also completely derail the purpose of the gathering (depending on the group, of course)."

- "Gender - What's the Big Idea?"; Dee Shull: The Liminal Waters

"And yet when these sorts of things occur, it gets kinda frustrating, and isolating, and lonely, and sad, and painful, and emotional... because when things like this come up I feel these complex issues do separate me. They kinda split me in half. I know I can go into the Deaf Community and they get it, and they can provide support... but they can't always provide the magick and the healing, and the spiritualness that gets me through days like this. But where can I find that same comparable understanding and support within the Pagan Community? I'm not saying it doesn't exist... but it does seem more challenging to locate it."

- "Mandela’s Fake Interpreter"; Ocean: Deaf Pagan Crossroads

"One of the walls I often crash against in the wider pagan community is the inaccessibility of events and rituals for children who have special needs, from autism spectrum disorders to physical mobility issues, that require accommodation. We are a community that prides itself on inclusivity, and yet I often see a lack of it towards children in general and specifically towards children who have behavioral or physical challenges. The biggest argument against it seems to be that something important will be lost if we change what we are doing to make it easier for children with different needs to attend. I disagree, and I think by making our [open, public] rituals too focused on creating a numinous experience for the adults present we are losing a more genuine feeling of community that should be present in religious worship by open groups.

"What frustrates me is that it doesn't have to be this way – while it does require compromise and reworking it is not impossible to accommodate families that need it. And I will never believe the Gods, ancestors or spirits are offended by the actions or needs of a child who is doing their best in the moment and only wants to be part of a spiritual celebration."

- "Irish-American Witchcraft: Pagan Events and Special Needs Children (or Adults)"; Morgan Daimler: The Agora

"There are also a lot of festivals, rituals and events, whether as small as a coven or large as a regional festival, that aren't very accommodating. And that's a problem.

"You see, we're getting old. As a movement, we are aging. Today Gardner would be over 120, and Alex Sanders would be in his 90's. The youngest of their initiates would be in their 40's to 60's now, and most would be much older.

"The Beatles wanted to know if you'd still love them when they turned 64. I wonder if our community will still be there for us when we're 72 or 86?"

- "Is Paganism Blind To The Disabled?"; Star Foster: Pantheon

"Some people in the Pagan community get it. They design gatherings with flexibility built in. They communicate clearly but inclusively — "We will be doing X" rather than "X kind of people should not apply." They are more interested in providing a positive experience and encouraging their fellow Pagans than in excluding people whose bodies don't meet their preconceived notions. They welcome questions and find ways to work around limits."

- "Welcome vs. Go Away"; Jane Raeburn: "Vulcan's Sister"

"There are also many people with disabilities whose voices are not included in this article. Some are quite isolated and have difficulty attending events at all, and rely almost entirely upon the internet to make contact with people of like mind. The Wild Hunt did reach out to a number of Pagans with disabilities about sharing their perspectives, but one thing that is all too common is that some disabilities — regardless of its other impacts — sap energy and make otherwise simple tasks much more difficult, such as sending an email or typing out a sentence or two in reaction. We would like to acknowledge these unheard voices within our community."

- "Pagans with disabilities face unseen challenges"; Terence P Ward: The Wild Hunt

Published on Leave a comment on Community is messy, but if you catch the spoon in time, maybe less so


A single spoon in a sink In criminology, there's "the broken windows theory". Based on my day job managing a coworking space and my other experiences with shared spaces, I propose a similar theory for coworking and other shared spaces: the Spoon Hypothesis1. If one spoon gets left in the communal kitchen sink, it will take less than half an hour for a pile of silverware, mugs, and plates to accumulate in there too. It could be just as easily called the Abandoned Book Theory (for the library book not re-shelved), the Towel Theory (for the gym towel left strewn about the locker room instead of tossed in the hamper), or the Debris Theory (for how a random corner of a park can seem to collect garbage like a magnet), but the spoon is so emblematic.

Understand that the Spoon Hypothesis isn't about the mess accumulating around the single abandoned spoon - that's just an observation of a very real phenomenon. My theory is that if you can figure out a way to prevent the spoon from being left in the sink to begin with, you can keep the whole kitchen tidier. When people come into a very clean shared space, they are more likely to clean up after themselves. If you can come up with a system to make it easy for people to meet the minimal expectations - to put their spoon in the dishwasher - you won't have to clean up silverware, mugs, plates, or even coffee grounds and food spills. Tackle the small origin problem and the rest will take care of itself (mostly).

Though the Spoon Hypothesis originates in physical problems in shared spaces, it can be extended to other community organizational issues. For example, a podcast I was listening to talked about a problem a group was having with potlucks: people weren't bringing enough of whatever they'd signed up to provide. The solution was to create a simple list of how much people were to bring of any given kind of dish (x cups of salad, y number of veggie trays, etc.). The person said that not only did that solve their potluck problem, but that they noticed that people were more willing to help out in other ways too, like with clean-up after the event. They hypothesized that by drawing attention to one aspect of making an event run smoothly - how much food to provide - it drew attention to other aspects as well, and that giving clear instructions of what was expected of participants in one area freed those people up to think about other ways they could assist. They accidentally stumbled on a spoon problem and solved it effectively.

The problem with the implications of the Spoon Hypothesis is that it isn't always easy to identify the spoon. If the problem is that your coven's members don't seem to take the coven's events seriously - if there's lots of confusion about where and when something is, people are frequently late, members aren't prepared - that's the messy kitchen. There may be individual reasons for some members to have trouble committing, but if the whole group seems to have an issue, there may be a systemic reason or two that can be at least be nipped in the bud. Maybe your group has chosen a communication tool that is inconvenient for the majority of members, maybe events aren't being planned far enough ahead, maybe there's an incomplete understanding of event logistics among the event organizers, or maybe the leadership is disorganized so it means the members don't feel like they have to take things seriously.

Even once identified, solving the spoon problem isn't always easy. To return to the shared kitchen, we've tried to head off the one spoon with signs, with written rules and reminders sent to members, with a kitchen orientation for new members, and with two dishwashers with signs about which one is dirty. The receptionist and I joke that we need a camera that compares the current sink to an image of the sink empty and sets off an alarm when they don't match. My partner and I come up with increasingly elaborate hypothetical robots that would fling abandoned spoons out of the sink or that would follow offenders around making obnoxious noises. Other shared spaces have tried things like a layer of ping pong balls at the bottom of the sink to discourage putting things down, but who wants to clean the ping pong balls after a couple of days of people pouring out their leftover coffee and rinsing their lunch dishes over them? In the end, what has worked best so far is education. I tell members and staff about the first spoon phenomenon all the time, and after, they are more likely to spot the abandoned spoon and move it to the dishwasher, knowing that little favour has an effect out of proportion to the effort.

In the example of the chronically disorganized coven, the solution might be changing communication methods, setting deadline dates in advance for the usual events, creating a standard form for event organizers to fill out to make sure all the details are covered, or having the leader(s) re-prioritize. None of which are necessarily easy, but all will have longer lasting benefits than endless discussions about trying to be on time, dealing with the consequences of people being late, repeatedly lecturing people about living up to their responsibilities, or any other ways of dealing with the down-spoon consequences.

Here's the sneaky part of the Spoon Hypothesis: knowing about it gives you a certain amount of responsibility. When you start to leave something where you know it doesn't belong, there's a little voice that reminds you that other things will accumulate because of it. And when you see a spoon, you won't be able to ignore it.

Community building can be a messy process, full of miscommunications, dirty dishes, unsorted recycling, scheduling conflicts, and problems in both processes and principles. But maybe we can make it a little less messy by staying alert and cleaning up the first spoon.

Published on Leave a comment on Focus, if you please


"Can you just stop?" I want to say, "Stop with the giggling, with the chatting, with the side comments that have nothing to do with why we are here. Focus, damn it!"

Even the best ritual script doesn't always survive contact with the ritual participants. I have had rituals flop due to a weak concept and lack of preparation, but the ones that bug me are the ones that fail, in my perception, due to the participants.

That isn't fair, really; if the participants are distracted and unfocused, it could be that my ritual concept was a poor match for the group, or that I didn't sufficiently prepare my group for the ritual, or that my overall leadership was lacking. But sometimes it seems like one person had a bad day, or consumed too much caffeine, or has low blood sugar, and they pull the focus of everyone.

I admire ritual leaders that can return focus without causing further disruption to the energy (as suddenly yelling "Can you just stop?" would tend to). I went to a lovely sung devotional ritual where a couple of people started talking about something unrelated to the ritual, and the priestess gently sang out into the centre of the circle something like "this is a sacred time for devotional speech only". It shut down the distraction and returned everyone's attention back to the ritual's purpose, and because the priestess didn't address anyone directly, she accomplished this without calling anyone out.

I am still trying to figure out how to intervene and bring a ritual back on track in a way that is comfortable and fits my ritual style. I've found a couple of things that are helpful for prevention, though. I need to know my ritual very well so I can lead it confidently and have the elements flow smoothly; pauses, hesitations, and errors leave time for attention to wander. Using the same ritual structure every time has helped with my smaller group, as the repetition from ritual to ritual gets everyone into the familiar mindset faster and more effectively. And making sure people have eaten is a good idea, so we usually do dinner first and dessert after for grounding.

Sometimes there's nothing to be done. I write the best script I can, prepare myself and the group as well as possible, set the mood and try to keep the energy flowing smoothly, but maybe someone will be "off", or maybe the cat will throw up in the circle, or maybe someone's phone will start ringing... do what you can, then surrender to whatever happens. You can't always fight it - and yelling "stop it!" in circle is probably not conducive to creating the right energy.

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Published on 1 Comment on Talk too much; feel too little


mythumbnailI am an over-thinker. Before all things, I plan, I worry, I prepare, and I plan some more. The day before a big trip, I am unstoppable, chaotically creating order. My partner knows to just stay out of my way; he can't help me, so he might as well let me burn through my anxiety productively.

When I'm preparing to run a ritual, I do tend to over-prepare myself and the participants. I've mentioned before that I have felt that exhaustive explanations of what to do during the ritual can hurt the flow of the energy. I'm also starting to think that my tendency to be exceedingly exact in my planning can interfere with the mystery of ritual.

Group ritual is, in part, theatre, so it does have to be written with a mind to how it will perform. You have to think about where people will stand and walk, what you want them to see and hear, and how you are going to transition the group smoothly from one activity to another. However, group ritual is sacred theatre, so some room has to be left for the magic of what can't be planned. A good ritual gets a group united and in the right state of mind, sets a theme and opens a space to explore it at a deeper level, beyond logic. The process by which that space is created can be analyzed and rehearsed, but then rational thinking has to take a back seat to intuition. It is a challenging balancing act, and one I'm still working on.

Returning to pre-ritual explanations, I have found that too much detail about how everything is supposed to happen works counter to that magic frame of mind. When you've filled everyone's head with cues and stage directions, they stay in their analytical minds and may spend the whole ritual thinking about what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to it, not about why they are doing it.

Explaining too much is my natural inclination, but when I fight that impulse, I sometimes go too far the other way and don't explain enough. In a recent ritual, I had to awkwardly cue each person's line because they had no idea that it was their turn to speak. At one point, I even cued the wrong person, resulting in a combination that made no sense and necessitating taking a mulligan on that section of the ritual. We smoothed it over and still got to a good place, energy-wise, but that is to the credit of Silver Spiral and years of working together. Without enough explanation, especially of an unconventional ritual, your participants may be edgy, trying to guess what is going to be expected of them next.

After the ritual, Robert suggested numbering the cue cards to make the readings go more smoothly, and Richard pointed out that I hadn't given people a lot of time to read over their parts before starting the ritual, so those are great places to start. Then, it is just a matter of analyzing the ritual explanation process until it is no longer analytical in its results...

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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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