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Tag: ritual theory

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 2 Comments on Our big questions – part 5: Hacking our religion

A cat with a pen and a noteboook I don't care what you believe so much as how you behave and what you do; my Paganism is one of orthopraxy. My rituals are not based on beliefs but on what works to create feelings of connection and meaningful spiritual experiences for participants. I consider rituals to be spiritual art. I'm mostly OK with how pretentious that sounds.

My spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, is a happily motley crew of mixed Pagan beliefs and personal practices. Some of us have training in a variety of traditions and some are entirely self-trained. Our little Collective is almost 17 years old now, and some of had been practicing together for a couple of years before that. We've missed very few Sabbats in all those years, so we've probably done more than 125 rituals together as Silver Spiral1. We've got a huge archive of rituals in our memories (and, luckily, on our shared Google Drive).

We have talked belief before and found some common ground, but it is practice that brings us together. We want to practice better, connect more, and reach for deeper and more meaningful experiences together. To that end, we have always been a group that likes to play with the usual rules. We deconstruct, reconstruct, hack, and experiment, so some of those 125-ish rituals have been successful and some have been flops. But up until now, we have each been left to do our own analysis of what has worked and what wasn't (I've done some of my analysis on this blog). In the spirit of open source religion, we got together to hack our religion.

Here's how we did it: everyone chose a favourite ritual and answered a set of questions about it in advance:

1. Without looking at the full script, what do you remember most about the ritual? What stood out in terms of activities, senses, words, etc.?

2. Thinking of what stood out, how did it make you feel during the ritual? Why?

3. If you have the whole ritual script, were there things in there that you had forgotten about? How did they contribute to the ritual, or how did they interfere?

4. What made the ritual as a whole successful for you? Consider theme, environment/atmosphere, activities, pacing, leadership, etc. Also consider the influence of your preferences for certain times of year or holidays.

5. What other activities or rituals have felt similar to you (whether from Silver Spiral rituals or elsewhere)?

One afternoon, we gathered around a kitchen table with laptops and tablets and our answers on a shared Google doc. Technology is a wonderful thing - one member participated via Skype so she didn't share her cold, and we could all assist with taking notes - but there is something magical about face-to-face (besides the snacks, though we do have truly great snacks). In less than 3 hours, we accomplished more than we could have in weeks of email discussion.

We had a plan and a process going into the discussion: a person would talk a bit about their chosen ritual and their answers to the questions, then we discussed it as a group. Our only stated rule was to focus on the positive: talk about what works for you rather than what doesn't. Unspoken, but known from our past discussions, was to own your own opinions, to not assume agreement, to approach with curiosity, and to be kind and respectful.

Despite these understandings, there could have been hurt feelings and offended beliefs. Online and with strangers, this topic would have had a good chance of deteriorating into name calling, but our discussion was productive all the way through. A member pointed out that this might be partially because we came together as a group because we liked each other and then we built a practice around that, rather than being pushed together by shared beliefs. So it is right there in our origins: orthopraxy over orthodoxy and practice over faith.

That's me in the circle
That's me at the altar
Hacking my religion...

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0
Our big questions – part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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Published on 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.

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Published on 3 Comments on Our big questions – part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

Cherry blossoms in full bloom on a rainy day

I listen to a lot of storytelling podcasts, so I'm afraid I don't remember where I heard the story, but someone was talking about a horribly embarrassing situation and how one young person responded: "Awkward." The storyteller, an older man, expressed admiration for a generation for whom the major value scale is graceful versus awkward, instead of appropriate versus inappropriate or right versus wrong1.

When you are trying something new, there is often a period during which things don't work well. Whether it is that your limbs won't seem to do the right things while doing a new exercise or sport, or whether it is running into your partner repeatedly while trying to make dinner together for the first time, or whether it is circling with a new ritual group, there will be missed cues, confusion, and overall awkwardness. You will lack smoothness, flow, grace. And that's normal when something is new.

When it comes to a ritual group or structure, I am wondering when to drop something that isn't fitting in as smoothly as you might want. Right now, there a couple of places where Silver Spiral has to pause to consult each other about the order of things in our new ritual structure, such as: ground, cast, then quarters; or cast, quarters, then ground? And sometimes the grounding meditation gets skipped accidentally. As I see it, we have a choice to drop that part of our new structure, revise that part in some way to try to make it easier to remember, or push the group to memorize it. Which one we go with may demand on how much awkwardness we're willing to tolerate, or even welcome.

There's freedom in a ritual structure you know so well that you don't have to continuously think about what comes next. It allows you to be present in each moment instead of second guessing your next move. It allows everyone to do their part gracefully and contribute equally. However, one of the theories about the usefulness of ritual is that it engages and focuses our conscious mind, allowing our sub-conscious to do the magic, so if the ritual is so rote that we can do it without thought, our conscious can be distracted by other things and we are no longer fully in the ritual. I have said some of the same prayer or bits of liturgy so often that I can get to the end and only then realize that I've said the whole thing without a bit of thought or intention.

Though we may want to cultivate the grace that comes with a familiar structure well-run, there's also value in a bit of awkwardness. Putting moments into our ritual structure that require concentration or thought seems like it could help us not just run through it mindlessly; it prevents us from ever having it down pat. Maybe we need things to stay just a little awkward, a little challenging to remember, just to keep us fully engaged.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0

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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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