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Tag: performing ritual

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Published on 1 Comment on Irony-free Circle
A red stop sign with "defacing stop signs" spray painted under "stop".
Scheinwerfermann / CC BY-SA

"In Defense of Seriousness":

I think it's that religious experience for me is ABOUT connecting with the serious and solemn. it's about the both literal and figurative gravity of the world on which we live; it's about grappling with things that are so much bigger (and so much smaller) then I am. I invoke religious awe as a tool for experiencing the parts of my life that are beyond my direct experience - it's how I step outside myself and see that, far from being the center of the universe, I am a fragment of happenstance. For me it's a tool to center and ground myself in a society that is perfectly happy to allow each of us to become as vapid and narcissistic as we please.

Winter Mute - Atheopaganism Facebook group

This is an excerpt from a lovely bit of writing about how and why a certain kind of ritual - solemn as opposed to ecstatic or fanciful - works for the writer. I appreciate the sentiment; I get discouraged when a serious ritual is disrupted by laughter. Sometimes I see ritual as a delicate soap bubble that is gradually inflated by each component of the ritual and can be popped by anything going wrong. Most rituals are a little heartier than that, though, thank goodness, and can withstand some stumbles and fumbles.

I love serious rituals. I also love ecstatic rituals, fanciful rituals, silly rituals, and experimental rituals. In ritual, I am seeking connection, defined broadly. If I connect to the great power of the universe, to a tiny plant, to a concept, or to the other people in the Circle, it has worked for me. But there is one thing that can pop the bubble of any ritual for me: irony.

Irony here is not the literary device - which probably also doesn't belong in ritual either - but the attitude:

One reason that irony is so confusing is that the word also refers to a certain perspective or style: one that is detached, aloof and seemingly world-weary. This affectation is often referred to as the "ironic attitude" and has come to be associated with adolescents or young adults.

Roger J Kreuz - What makes something ironic?

There's no space in any of my Circles for any of that. In fact, I think ritual demands a deliberate turning away from irony and a reaching for attachment, intimacy, and awe. For a good ritual, it isn't enough to simply not be cynical; all the participants must put effort into being trusting... suddenly the phrase "in perfect love and perfect trust" rings more true to me. Perhaps it isn't about loving and trusting everyone in the Circle perfectly, but about approaching the ritual with the kind of effort required to sustain love and trust.

I was a teenager in the 90s. I am tucked between the slackers who couldn't be bothered to care about anything and the hipsters who only care ironically. At the all-ages dance events, I would dance until I was overheated and exhausted. I was often asked if I was on drugs.

Life in postindustrial democracies came to seem listless and without flavor; loneliness and a kind of bland sadness were all one could expect of the new world order. At the end of history, irony transformed from an instrument of revolution to a symptom of the impossibility of revolution.

Lee Konstantinou - We had to get beyond irony

Maybe we need some cynicism in the world. "OK Boomer" is a response to real problems; maybe irony is becoming revolutionary again. I just want to leave it outside of my rituals. And I want its trappings gone too: I want people's voices to reflect that they care, not sound like they are going through the motions. I want people's motions to be expressive and their participation to be full, not self-conscious.

I want to invite participants to practice faith like it is exercise: practice being trusting and open. We can support each other in that work, and together we can practice being loving and connected. We don't always have to be solemn, but we do have to be sincere.

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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.

Published on Leave a comment on The contraction of a ritual
An altar covered in a red altar cloth, black and white photos, tealight candles, and s bottle of creme de cassis.

I tend to write rituals slowly. I think about it a lot first, contemplating themes and possible activities. There's a lot of research too, often with a lot of false starts... I still have a lot of notes about lichen from an Imbolc ritual that ended up going in a completely different direction.

When the ritual starts to come together in my head, I open a copy of the most recent standard ritual format and start filling in the opening and closing first: the customization of the quarter calls and invocations. The actual writing of the centre section is relatively quick after that, but still can take a couple of hours and several re-writes. Then I make any cue cards and special tools, email the participants a copy of the ritual and any background information, read over my parts a few times, and then finally set up the physical space. By the time we are assigning roles and doing our territory and consent acknowledgments, I have probably spent between ten and twenty hours working on the ritual.

When the actual ritual is going on, I don't always get to immerse myself in the experience because I am leading the activity, monitoring the energy, reading the meditation, but that's fine because I've already spent ten or more hours engaged with the material. The problem is that when I am doing the ritual for participants, they haven't spent all that time. Even if they read the ritual before arriving (always optional) and follow my research links, they are less invested. Even if there's preparation homework, it is still less than what I've done -- as it should be. All of that is to say that I do the ritual in my mind a bunch of times, so when the performance comes, it seems very short.

The bigger problem is that the ritual is short. It is short and it is fast. Since it is the x-th repeat for me, I tend to flow through the plan like it is a rehearsed business presentation. I have to force myself to let the ritual breath and to give the participants enough time to get into it.

Even with that effort, the ritual contracts in physical experience from where it is in my mind. I can live with that; I think it is a common experience of artists that the end result can't quite live up to the inspiration. However, I have to stay aware of the physically performed ritual as it is actually happening and keep it separate from the one in my imagination. I am trying to speak a bit slower -- I tend to talk fast during anything that resembles public speaking -- and I'm learning to count out silences during meditations. But I also need to just stay more present with the ritual and with the participants... it is a tough lesson to learn for someone who lives so much in her head.

Published on Leave a comment on The problem of getting sh*t done


Cartoon person with a broom yelling "Let's cleanse this space!".
Art from Hyperbole and a Half.

I used to work for a small business. It was a really small business; the kind where the owner and I shared a walk-in closet as an office and we didn't have to make reservations for the company Christmas party. I was there for ten years, doing what needed to be done all day, every day. There wasn't a lot of theorizing - there wasn't time for theories. There wasn't a lot of philosophizing - there wasn't time for philosophy. There was shit to do.

I have moved into the non-profit world now. I am in operations - practical, day-to-day stuff - but some days it feels like it is all meetings anyway. And so many of the meetings don't seem to achieve anything: meetings about the wording of our mission statement, meetings about activities we don't have the capacity to do, and meetings about meetings. I despair as the minutes tick by while people theorize and philosophize and day dream... I just want to get back to my to-do list. I have shit to do.

My spiritual family tends to the practical too. We had to improvise ritual space the other day, and we busted that out: quick division of the roles such that everything was evenly divided and no one had to awkwardly skip around the circle to call a second quarter, and we were soon underway. We all spoke clearly, got our lines mostly right, and cued each other as needed. Not quite clockwork, but we got through the sacred space set-up efficiently as a team. And then we got to a certain point and were gearing up to get to the next task on the ritual checklist when one person said "we should take a moment".

Oh. right. A ritual is more than a list of tasks to complete.

The "get shit done" approach serves me well at work, where the task list is:

Buy forks.
Follow up on overdue invoices.
Fix the printer.
Buy more forks.
Issue membership contracts.
Order coffee.
Pay invoices.
Buy even more forks.1

But while the kind of experience that happens in Circle is crafted through a checklist of tasks, it isn't the checklist.2 The steps are not there for their own sake; they are the means by which we reach the state where we can connect beyond ourselves to deities, to community, to spirit, to grace... and if we lose sight of that, we risk creating empty containers instead of sacred space. Sometimes, getting shit done requires focusing on something bigger than getting shit done.

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Published on 1 Comment on Responsible to the centres


The main lodge and fire pit at a Pagan gathering This past weekend, I went to my 18th Gathering for Life on Earth. There were rituals, and swimming, and workshops, and feasting, but best of all, there were juicy conversations. One of my favourite people to talk to every year is a brilliant woman who runs a local Pagan choir and who does a sung devotional ritual every year. She is so thoughtful in how she approaches ritual, and how she sets a tone and guides without controlling... her rituals inspire me on several levels.

Naturally, she leads devotional rituals because she is a polytheist, which I am not. This year, we touched on this briefly in our meandering theological discussion, and I mentioned the four centres of Paganism theory. Though we agreed that people may be centred in multiple areas or may slip between them, she did identify primarily as deity-centred and I as community-centred. We discussed how non-deity-centred public ritual leaders should be cognizant of not offending those for whom the gods and spirits are literal. It isn't that hard, and seems mostly common sense: don't invoke gods if you don't know at least a little about them, lest you offend them; don't invoke gods together who are enemies; don't call on spirits unless the literal energy is what is desired. Basically, it seemed all good practices to me anyway: avoiding cognitive dissonance amongst knowledgeable or conscientious non-believers, not offending believers, and not making a fool of yourself by parading your ignorance around the circle.

A good ritual leader wants everyone to get something out of their ritual. That's a challenge in a public or semi-public setting where people could be from any of the centres, and be any of the kinds of deism as well1. Making a ritual that works for everyone is a big challenge, but it isn't a bad start to figure out what responsibility you have as a leader to each of the four centres. Here are just some ideas to get us all started; feel free to add more in the comments:

To the deity-centre, you have the responsibility to use respectful language and actions towards the gods and spirits, as discussed above.

To the nature-centre, you have the responsibility to be conscience in your choice of materials and tools, avoiding plastics and waste and being aware of the kind of offerings being made and their impact on the plants and animals. You would also want to be aware of the actual environment of your ritual (and not, for example, turning your back on a lake in order to invoke Water in the West), know your science if you are going to be using natural concepts (and not, for example, calling on a non-local bird as your spirit in the East), and being careful in your language around grounding (really, stop dumping all your negative energy into the earth) and elevating or privileging people over nature.

To the inner-centre2, you have the responsibility to not preach or lecture, and not to imply that lack of belief in external, literal gods makes someone a bad Pagan, or that lack of faith will drive one mad. It is also important that your ritual have a coherent theme and that the components make psychological sense in how they come together and build towards something. I think this is also the centre that would most want to know what words mean when chanting or invoking in another language, since intent is so important to many inner-centred traditions. Providing context and translation would be crucial to their comfort and involvement.

To the community-centre, you have the responsibility to offer opportunities for people to participate together; to offer opportunities and activities that someone could not experience on their own. From the comfort of our homes, we can watch videos of liturgy being recited, we can listen to recordings of talented singers, we can mediate and pray - what we want from group ritual is that which we can't get any other way. Being asked to merely witness is usually not sufficient for this centre, except where community witnessing is the whole point, as in a handfasting.

Following these guidelines won't guarantee that everyone will grok or even enjoy your ritual, but it does mean that people won't be put off or jolted out of the experience you are trying to create by something that offends their fundamental beliefs. If you want to offer rituals to the Pagan community, especially in public or semi-public settings like festivals or Pagan Pride events, it is important to recognize that you are responsible to the whole community, not just the centres you are most familiar with. A public ritual is about more than your own practice, or even presenting your tradition to a larger audience; it is about engaging your community - your whole community - in something spiritual, religious, and meaningful.

I suspect some people will fear that in trying to please everyone, you will end up with a mess of compromises that pleases no one, but I think that reading over the points above makes it pretty clear that it is possible to make a ritual that fills at least the basic needs of all the centres without losing meaning or purpose. It is a great gift to the community to offer a ritual, but only if it is offered with respect and love for everyone.

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 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.

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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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