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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.

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Published on Leave a comment on Metaphor failure


Two trees with intertwined roots

The problem with metaphor in ritual is that it won't work for everyone. During grounding meditations involving visualizing roots reaching deep into the center of the earth, someone (me) might be distracted by imagining roots meeting red-hot magma. During rituals using a fall harvest theme, someone (me) might be distracted thinking about how nature is planting, not harvesting.

I've disguised more than one poorly thought-out concept with metaphor, so I understand the urge. They are also tempting to deploy as a substitute for true understanding of the ritual theme, or when deeper knowledge is hard to convey in the ritual context. Metaphors are best used cautiously and only when really necessary.

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Published on 1 Comment on Designing awe


A two foot waterfall into a small natural pool, surrounded by lush greenery.There are moments of incredible natural awe that some of us are lucky enough to experience. I'm collecting those moments, and I hold to my heart a double rainbow, the view from 3000 feet as I rise on a thermal in my paraglider, the first sight of a gorgeous tropical waterfall after a long hike, the midnight sun, and the full eclipse. Those moments, and others, inspired awe in me.

Sometimes these moments are hard-earned and sometimes they are freely given by the world if you happen to be at the right place at the right time. But they are, by their nature, fleeting moments. They are awe inspiring partially because they are sudden and rare. Awe is reverence and respect mixed with fear or wonder.

Yesterday I went walking around gorgeous gardens in the September sun. I listened to Songs of the Northern Tribes to block out the sound of other visitors and admired the beauty of the green, of the pond and tiny waterfall, of the light playing with the leaves. It was really the first time since my injury in March that I've been able to wander alone. I felt serenity, but not awe.

In a good ritual, there may be the moment when a chant peaks and everyone is united as one and feels the energy flowing through the group... and there's awe there too. Not everyone will get to see the view at 3000 feet or luck into seeing a double rainbow, but we can create opportunities for awe in our rituals. Start by making sure there are ways for everyone to meaningfully, deeply participate. Continue by making sure there's an energy raising. And make room for wonder; don't treat your ritual like a to-do list.

No matter what you do, sometimes your participants won't achieve awe, because it's an emotional state that also depends on what they find worthy of reverence. And sometimes they will experience awe in your rituals while you don't, and you end up offering the full ritual experience as a gift from outside of it. But sometimes magic will happen.

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Published on 2 Comments on Our big questions – part 3: ritual structure 2.0


mythumbnailHaving decided that we wanted a ritual structure of our own and that we wanted to use our own words instead of those of other traditions as much as possible, my spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, set out to revamp how we do what we do.

We started out on our email list. We set up an email thread for each part of the ritual: cleansing the space and welcoming participants, casting and cutting the circle, grounding, calling and thanking the elements/quarters, invoking and thanking deity, and blessing the food and drink. Everyone who wanted to contributed to each thread with their own writing from past rituals or new pieces of writing designed just for this. There was some discussion and variations suggested, but for the most part, writing was simply posted without comment in preparation for our in-person discussion night.

Just before the discussion night, I copied and pasted the ideas from each thread into a single document, sorted by ritual component and stripped of author's names. When we gathered together, we each had a copy of this document and a pen. We also came equipped with some understanding of each others beliefs from our previous discussion nights, a history of working together (some of us have been circling together for over 16 years), and an openness and lack of ego.

This could have been a very difficult process without that last part. I take pride in my rituals and I usually like my own writing; I assume this is the same for most people who write group rituals. Unless you believe that you are channeling the ritual directly from the divine, it is your work and by presenting to a group in a religious context, you are saying that it is worthy of being part of their spirituality. You have to believe that you have something to offer in order to put on a ritual. If even one person had come into our discussion night wanting to push their words on the group, it probably would have been a much less productive and satisfying evening, but everyone came in with open minds. Though I had sometimes forgotten who the author of each piece was, in the cases where I did remember, it was never the author who spoke up that that was their favourite; someone else always had to speak for it.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts at scheduling, not everyone was able to make it to the discussion. Luckily, the people who write the most rituals for the Collective were all able to attend, and it was agreed that nothing would be set in stone; whatever we came up with would be subject to everyone's approval and that feedback and re-writing was expected as we used the structure in upcoming rituals.

We did each ritual component separately, working through the ritual in order. First, one person would read all of the pieces of writing for that section out loud. Then we would gradually eliminate some of the options as being too specific to the ritual they were originally written for, too difficult to recite smoothly or too long for our purpose, or not quite matching the beliefs of the group. This was done very gently, with lots of "I love this, but..." and I know my feelings weren't hurt when my words got struck off some lists very early. When we were left with fewer options, we dissected them and what we liked about each one, then started combining bits from each in different combinations until we found something that was both pleasing to our ears and to our spirits. Sometimes the end result was almost exactly one of the original pieces of writing, sometimes it was a combination of multiple pieces, and sometimes we almost ended up writing something entirely new together. We spent a lot of time reading the drafts out loud over and over again, teasing out how a single word added or eliminated changed the rhythm or the meaning.

In the course of discussing opening procedures for rituals, we did stumble upon an odd little thing: not all of us agreed about the purpose of something we'd been doing as part of our rituals for years! When writing the original Silver Spiral ritual structure, Teresa and I had incorporated a meditation taken from a different tradition. We'd been guests in that tradition's rituals a couple of times and enjoyed the meditation. In discussing what to replace it with, we discovered that Teresa thought of the meditation as a personal grounding exercise to encourage each individual to be completely present, while I had always thought of it as a uniting meditation meant to bring everyone's energy and states of mind together. It was a revelation to find out that the meditation we'd been doing together for probably a decade or more meant such different things to each of us and yet worked for both of us anyway. A quick poll of the rest of the group found that the group was split about 50/50. As a group, we wrote a short meditation that incorporated elements of both, but with an emphasis on the individual grounding aspect because our re-written circle casting already had a number of uniting elements.

By the end of the evening, we had a working draft: Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.0. We used it in several rituals and after each one, we checked in with each other about how it was working. There were several weaknesses that we could only see once the structure was being used. For example, our circle cutting procedure was too short and felt perfunctory in version 2.0, and then was too long and drawn out in version 2.1. Our 2.2 version might be just right, but it will need to be tried at least one more time before we know for sure. As well, we have decided that we want to include a more formal procedure for our offerings to deity during our food and drink portion of the ritual. This is an interesting development, actually, because we had no such procedure in ritual structure 1.0; offerings were made somewhat casually after everything had been passed around and some of whatever was left was set aside or was simply left in the goblet or dish to be taken outside after. But during the trial runs of 2.0 and 2.1, the idea of a dedicated offering bowl and a planned way of making offerings was suggested and seemed to be universally agreed to; it seems like an idea whose time has come for us. I added an offering to our 2014 Imbolc ritual, which was the first to use ritual structure 2.2, and now we will discuss and refine that.

The process of developing a ritual structure that is satisfying to everyone has highlighted the things we all have in common (though individually we may all call different powers at the quarters at different times, we all agree on the elements as one good option) and the places where we diverge (the order in which the elements are thanked: same as when calling or reversed?). Sometimes seeking consensus means watering down everything to the lowest common denominator, so I was watching for that tendency going into the discussion night, but I don't feel that that's what happened. Those of us who prefer more elaborate calls and invocations definitely had to compromise some in the spirit of making everything adaptable to a variety of ritual themes and easy to remember, but I feel that we did keep things flexible enough to allow for precision in calling when desired. In the end, we built a suitable container for more challenging ritual content; a way to gracefully get into the same mental and spiritual space together and to deliberately bring ourselves back out. It was what we were seeking when we kicked off this process with some questions about what we believe.

I doubt we'll ever be done and have a final and forever ritual structure. In fact, I hope we keep evolving it to meet the needs of new members and our future selves. I expect there will be Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.4 and 2.5... and maybe 3.0 one day. And maybe "our big questions" parts 4 through 10 or more; there's always more to discuss and learn about each other and ourselves.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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 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.

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Published on 2 Comments on The beauty and tragedy of a beating heart


It is raining again in Vancouver. Cherry blossoms are being washed down the streets, and the temperature is back to autumn. This is quite the change from the gorgeous sunshine and early summer weather that so recently blessed us; I think we all have a kind of spiritual whiplash from the back-and-forth.

Despite the cold and wet, this weekend's projects include writing the Beltane ritual for my spiritual family. This is one of the things I struggle with as a ritual writer who wants to connect my rituals to what is happening with the season: I have to write the ritual in advance, without really knowing what the season is going to be when it is performed. It is working out this time, though, as the ritual I have in mind is about the heart.

A couple of years ago, I was training at the gym with a very athletic friend of mine. He gave me a lot of fantastic advice, but I remember one conversation in particular. We were discussing why it is important to do frequent cardio and he said:

"You only get so many heart beats. If your heart beats slower, they will last longer."

There's a joke about that, of course. A well-meaning seeker asks a monk: "What exercise should I do to live longer?" The monk responds: "Your heart is only good for so many beats, and then it will wear out! Speeding up your heart won't make you live longer; that's like saying you can make your car last longer by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap!"

Though exercise does temporarily increase your heart rate, doing it regularly decreases your resting heart rate, resulting in a net savings in heart beats. Which goes to show that you shouldn't take health advice from jokes... or monks.

Anyway, my friend's comment stuck in my head, and I've been contemplating a heart-themed ritual ever since.

I am fascinated by the connection between heart beats and life. I like the seeming paradox: make your heart beat faster in order to make it beat slower. And there's a beautiful tension there: our beating hearts keep us alive while counting down to our deaths. So much of the language of a full life is about the heart - her heart felt like it was going to burst, his heart grew three sizes that day, she took that to heart, he took heart in that - while each beat is closer to our last. To me, that tension feels like the same tension we have with Beltane and Samhain - Sabbats that are directly opposite on the wheel of the year. One is a celebration of love and life that includes death and the other is a celebration of the dead and the ancestors that embraces life.

On this rainy day that feels like autumn, I am trying to write a Beltane ritual that honours the miracle of our hearts: the real, physical importance, and the metaphorical truths. To that end, here are some random heart facts that get mine racing with inspiration:

The natural length of a lifetime for birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles seems to be about 1 billion heartbeats. Modern humans seem to get about 3 billion. (1 Billion Heartbeats – The length of a lifetime)

A mouse's heart beats about 500 times a minute and an elephant's about 28 times. A mouse lives about 4 years and an elephant about 70. (Size Matters: The Hidden Mathematics of Life)

The heart is the first organ to form in utero. The embryonic heart looks the same across nearly all species, including frogs and fish and mice and elephants: a pulsating tube. In humans, that tube will eventually loop to form the four-chambered heart we are most familiar with. (What is a beating embryonic heart?)

The heart symbol evolved from the ivy leaf portrayed by prehistoric potters. “This botanic symbol found in ancient Greek and Roman art ... represented both physical and, above all, eternal love, withstanding death. ... During the Middle Ages and early modern times, when medicine had a scholastic character, this symbol was used even by anatomists to portray the heart.” (Heart Symbol & Heart Burial: A Cultural History of the Human Heart)

The ritual is still taking shape in my head, but I think there's a two-parter in the works – one ritual for Beltane and one for Samhain – both playing on the tension between life and death.

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

Published on Leave a comment on Unconventional and public


mythumbnailIn the previous post (Spirit of Generosity and Generosity of Spirit), I discussed what both ritual leader and participant have to bring to a public ritual in order for it to be successful. Here, I’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to write and lead a successful, unconventional public Pagan ritual. Some of this will apply to a standard Wiccan-style public ritual, and will certainly apply to non-Wiccan public rituals, but I am most interested in the presentation of experimental Pagan rituals.

Give advance notice.

Whenever possible, tell your participants a little bit about what to expect before you start. If there's an email or message board post about your event, include a note about what tradition or religion you are from, maybe with a link to a website with some basic information. If your ritual isn't from an established and recognized tradition, you may just want to note that you will be leading an unconventional ritual.

Face it: your potential participants are mostly Wiccans or Wiccan-influenced. Even those who don't identify as Wiccan will probably have a basic understanding of that ritual structure. By all means, conduct your ritual according to your own tradition - as un-Wiccan-like as it might be - but if you assume knowledge of Wicca when choosing what to explain and what not to explain, you will be able to pick your talking points with more accuracy.

If your ritual includes anything that could be controversial - political magic, nudity, mind altering substances, blood magic, sex magic - you absolutely must let people know before you start, and preferably before they arrive. You would think this would go without saying, but I have been in a circle where there was an undisclosed skyclad requirement, and one where participants were asked to make a voluntary blood sacrifice, and I know how upset some of the participants were in both cases. By the way, both rituals were led by elders of the community.

Even with advanced notification and FAQ links, there may be some things you'll want to explain to the group. If you can work the explanations into the ritual in a way that feels smooth and unforced, that is best, but sometimes it just can't be done. Rather than doing the "professor thing" of lecturing while walking back and forth or around and around during the ritual, just get everyone gathered up and give the most basic explanation possible of what's going to happen. I highly recommend writing this in advance and reading it off the paper if you have to; you want to be as concise as possible, explaining only what you absolutely have to as clearly as you can. Winging it will often lead to extraneous points obfuscating the important parts.

Show, don't tell.

The participants will be looking to you to model what is expected of them. Rather than explain that in your tradition, you call the element of spirit while all looking up, just do it. Make sure anyone else who is running the ritual with you knows what to do, or tell a few people in advance, but then just let it happen. A few people may bow their heads instead, in keeping with their own tradition, but most will follow your lead.

Do a walk and talk.

Have you ever noticed how TV shows deal with long exposition? When something absolutely has to be explained and cannot be shown, a show will often have the characters on the move, walking and talking down a hall or a street. Or the talking will be split between several characters, instead of a monologue. This helps the audience stay engaged. Similarly, in a ritual, instead of having your priest or priestess drone out all explanations and directions while standing in the centre or at the altar, split it up between several people and move it around. I like having each of the quarter callers take a piece of the explanation in turn, so the participants’ attention ends up flowing around the circle.

Commit to the performance.

You will quickly lose the attention of your participants if you mumble. If you are doing a very unconventional ritual, it is especially important that everyone be able to see and hear what's going on at every stage. Ideally, your participants have come to your ritual with open minds and generous spirits, but you will quickly use up their good will if they can't hear you.

I believe in practicing ahead of time. Even if you don't require memorization, everyone who is helping you put on the ritual should be familiar with what's going to happen and should know their cues. Make sure everyone reads or recites their lines out loud a few times before starting so they have a good flow to the words. For bigger and more elaborate rituals, do the ritual with a smaller group in advance - a dress rehearsal of sorts.

Make it work.

A public ritual is an act of generosity and compromise. Sometimes, something that works in your small group ritual setting will not work in a public or very large ritual. For example, in my circle, we all bring our own goblets for sharing drink, but asking 300 people to remember to bring their own goblets is impractical. Be prepared to modify how you do things to make the best ritual experience for everyone.

There are some common things to look out for when modifying or writing a ritual for a large group. We will talk about these more in a future post, but, as an example, look for long pauses where nothing happens for the majority of participants. Food and drink sharing is a place where this happens a lot; as the one goblet is being passed around, everyone else stands and waits. Consider using several goblets and/or adding a chant to break that up. Look at your ritual with the eye of a director putting on a play. You cannot provide a spiritual experience to a group if your performance basics aren't met, so I definitely recommend compromising on your religion's usual traditions in order to better serve the group.

Serve the ritual.

Some things cannot, and should not, be compromised. Even though they might be controversial or less than optimal for performing, if something is fundamental to the ritual, than do it. Just use this rule thoughtfully; plenty of things we do in rituals aren't fundamental and can be modified, they just usually aren't. As you write or edit every part of the ritual, ask yourself: "How will this perform? Will it be clearly heard, seen, and understood? Is there a spiritual or religious reason why this has to be done this way?"

In small groups, some things we always do because they are religiously important (for example, we may always call the Goddess before the God for religious reasons), and some things we always do because the routine - the ritual of it - helps get the group into the right mindset because of the repetition (for example, calling each quarter from the edge of the circle, facing outwards, may be just how things are done in your tradition). The latter things can be changed; your large diverse group does not have the repetition to call on, so it is more important to serve the needs of the group than to follow the exact requirements of your usual ritual structure. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the two, though. Try asking yourself: "What belief does this action serve?" If you don't have an answer, you may be able to compromise on that part of the ritual.

There is an art to putting on public rituals, and it can take practice. I recommend attending as many public and semi-public rituals for as many different Pagan traditions as possible and see what works and what doesn't for you, and what does and doesn't for the other participants. Then, practice with smaller groups - your coven, grove, or other usual group with some guests - before going to big groups of strangers. But at some point, if you want to conduct public rituals, you will just have to take the plunge and do it.

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Published on 1 Comment on What every ritual needs


Stuff Picture

When I was still fairly new to running public rituals - back in the early days of the university Pagan students' association I founded - a more experienced priestess shared with me the three things she had found were essential to successful group rituals:

1. Give participants something to do.

2. Give participants something to take home.

3. ... Unfortunately, I don't remember what the third item was.

I don't disagree with her points, though I have learned that point #2 shouldn't be taken too literally. Giving the participant something to take home could mean a thought, a feeling, or some inspiration. If you get a physical object from every group ritual, you can quickly accumulate a large number of mementos. I have a Rubbermaid bin full of things like in the picture at the top. People who attended my early public rituals ended up with Fimo acorns, dream scrolls, semi-precious stones, ribbons braided for Beltane, and more. I'm sure every bit and piece is still deeply treasured to this day by every one of those people.

I have now run a fair number of group rituals, for both small groups that are well acquainted with each other and for large groups that include strangers. I'm still working on improving my ritual design, but here are the four rules I currently use when writing something new:

Create a clear theme.

A ritual should start with a strong intent and the whole ritual should support and reinforce that intent. I treat it a bit like writing an essay: I start with a thesis statement. The opening - the cleansing, quarter calls, deity invocations, and introductory speech - serves to introduce the topic. The closing - food and drink, deity devocations, and quarter dismissals - wrap the topic back up. In between, the centre - the power raising and any other activities - should all be in service to the theme, almost creating a story or argument in support of it. The centre portion should be complete in itself; like with an essay, the introduction and conclusion restate the thesis but do not add new facts.

Engage the senses.

First, address the basics and make sure everyone in the Circle will be able to hear and see every part of the ritual. Then, make sure what they are hearing and seeing is interesting and relevant. Add the sense of smell through incense (if allergies and the environment will allow), oils, plants, or dried herbs; the sense of taste through the food and drink; and the sense of touch through holding hands, doing a craft, or engaging in movement.

Build to something.

Just as a good story needs a climax, a good ritual needs an energy raising. Your theme tells you where the energy is going, but the ritual structure you choose should support building that energy gradually, through the peaks and valleys of the entire opening process, into a single peak, then help you ground that energy, like the denouement of a novel.

Give participants something to do.

Pagan rituals do seem to work best when everyone participates. Participation can be chanting, dancing, repeating lines, meditating, reading parts, or even just focusing all on the same thing. It seems to work best when people are engaged on both the mental and physical levels.

If I follow these rules, I find most people come away from the ritual with something, though it is rarely something that has to be stored.



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