Greetings Beloveds from the soggy fields of the not-so-wild midwest!
The sweltering days are punctuated by torrential rains that split late tomatoes and wash little toads out into unsuspecting bubbles of grass – I caught one out on the sidewalk the other day, golden-lidded and tornado-dusk green. It leapt up into my hands and used them as a launching pad into the wet bracken fern patch. It’s a hard cusp, the last days of summer before the breaking of autumn. Made harder by this damn hot rock I’m strapped to. And the badgers. I am struggling with myself, exhausted and grim, wrestling with the desire to leave out the world and run to some blasted expanse of empty forgetting – and abandon the Work, which is too hard, too hard, and too much. Dammit.
Ah, but the Mama sends me little telegrams wrapped in the golden eyelids of bejeweled amphibians, and I am grateful for the blessings of toads in the wet, offering me that small shrieking of joy in the heavy morning that stays my restless feet and reminds me of the happy burdens of hard prayer, of making time, of showing up, and being in relationship.
So, ze hot rock hurtles, friends Pagani, towards a starry destination I know not what. In my hurried passage through the wash of space, however, I have snatched a breath of time and carry it in my pocket to fling it at the penultimate meditations on this inquisitional adventure. The knock-down drag-out fabulous roiling practice of Ritual.
Oh yeah, sure. I said I was going to combine Ritual and Gods together in one last post…but then, *cough* I got a little carried away by ritual. Not the first time that’s happened to me, I have to say. So. Ritual it is.
Note that in my answers below I am referring to religious/spiritual ritual. Some may define ritual as any repetitive act we participate in, such as brushing our teeth. For the purposes of this inquiry, however, I’m going to assume that Mahud meant religious Pagan ritual, as in acts that occur in a “time out of time” that are expressly religious, spiritual or magical in nature. It’s a fuzzy term in general, and therefore it may get a little fuzzy as we go on. ‘Course, when you think about it, fuzzy is fun anyway. Like peaches. And Muppets.
What is the most basic form of ritual in your Pagan tradition?
Bread and wine. The singing of prayer and the rise of smoke. The lifting of my hands.
Ritual they way I define it in my practice is a space and time that is set aside in which the participant is radically engaged with all their senses (those spiffy extrasensory ones included), and is promoting Beauty, giving thanks, celebrating the Holy Body, aspiring towards Awareness, and creating/maintaining Sacred Relationship. The details (i.e. the specific movements, words, songs, prayers, sacraments, offerings, altar pieces, etc.) for me are often simple, though they may be complex for others. Some details are repeated each time, which gives me a sense of connection to ancestors, my coven family, continuity, and the blessing of the familiar and the grace of the well-practiced. Other details are improvised based on inspiration, which gives me a sense of creativity, spontaneity, play and the spell of newness. Prayer is a constant, and rituals of offering are frequent.
How do rituals play a part in your form of Paganism?
Rituals are the stuff from which the world is made. As the world is made of stories (I believe this literally, though you’re welcome to take that as a metaphor too), and because the world is made up of a riot of diversity, a veritable orgy of delicious crazy rambling mess, there are a LOT of stories in existence. As I’ve mused previously, some of these stories are life-giving, celebratory, creative, glorious, grateful, juicy, and whole. Others are hateful, cruel, divisive, oppressive, and destruction-dealing. Living in the world, particularly at this moment in our history, is made up of choosing which of these stories to embody. And ritual is the method by which we may say, “yes, these are the stories I choose.” Ritual is the conscious embodiment of story. We affirm, embrace and tell stories in the rituals we enact. I was raised on stories that go deep, stories told to me by civilization and by the media, by my classrooms and my family, and some of these stories have created atrocious wounds that I am only barely aware of, wounds that make it possible for me to live so distanced from the Land that should rest as unconsciously vital in my body as my heart. As I struggle to embrace a worldview of authentic reciprocity and cardiognosis, rituals become the practices that set new stories deep inside my bones and my breath.
Ritual is even more than this, of course. For me, ritual is a fundamental part of the healing of corporate and personal wounds and the deep work of worldview-shifting – yet Ritual has existed before and will exist beyond civilization, in ancient cultures of reciprocal relationship and in future cultures of gratitude and celebration. Rituals will continue past our need for the radical toppling of the genocidal infrastructure of our current paradigm. The work of remembering is forever. Remember how the world was made so we know where we come from. So we can celebrate who we are. So we can be grateful for what we are given and what we create. Remember where we’ve been so we can choose how to be right now. Remember our ancestors so that our Land and our communities are rich and fruitful. So that the spirits and powers will speak to us and tell us delicious secrets. So that the Mama will Know that She is Beautiful through our Art and our Story and our Songs. Ritual to tell. To remember. To know. To exist.
Ritual and story are the human project. Tell, pray, sing, enact. Forever and Ever. Amen.
Can rituals be a guiding influence both inside and outside of the community? Do Rituals have a transformative effect on you as an individual and as a group, and can ritual “break through’ to the otherworld, another realm or reality?
Yes.
Have you ever met anyone, or heard about, anyone become mentally ill by participating in a Ritual? Can ritual be in any other way dangerous?
There are two answers to this question. One takes the question at face value, and answers: No. I have never met or heard about anyone who was generally known to be stable and “sane” before a ritual becoming mentally ill immediately after participating in one where the ritual was the known cause of the break or illness. Now, mental illness may be triggered by a lot of things, so certainly I suppose it might be possible. If one is already unstable and is trying to do ritual despite being fundamentally scared to death of it, then that seems ripe for problems. But again, it’s possible to “become” mentally ill via a number of triggers. As for danger, as in becoming physically, emotionally or spiritually injured, corrupted or killed as a result – I’ve never in my life heard of that either, though some among the Pagani may talk of the dangers of inexperienced newbies diving into intense ceremonial magic without proper training, and I acknowledge both that my experience in that particular area is limited and that the world is far greater and holds more potential than I can ever be aware of. Everything is possible. From my end, however, I have seen little personal evidence that participating in Pagan ritual is any more “dangerous” than participating in communion at church (interpret that as you will…)
Ah, but then the tricky answer….is tricky. Mwaha! Murky waters.
I guess the first question I would ask is: what does mental illness mean? If the person enacts a ritual and then immediately afterwards quits their job and decides to go into business selling driftwood carvings on the beach in the Pacific Northwest, is this mental illness? Or did they just realize that their job was killing them slowly and chose something that made them feel alive instead? I don’t know of this extreme a thing happening to anyone personally of course, but I can imagine that religious/spiritual ritual, as the enactment of holy, sacred, embodied, radical storytelling, may act as a catalyst for the shifting of perceptions, which may lead to radical acts, such as the rejection of a culture of murder and ugliness and the establishment of new understandings of the way the world works. The existing culture may perceive those new choices as awfully eccentric, if not worry that the individual has suffered some kind of break. I don’t have hard and fast answers to that, of course, and I’m not suggesting that all mental illness is just some kind of freedom ride that’s misunderstood by an oppressive paradigm…I know that mental illnesses can be very real – I’m just simultaneously preoccupied with the implications and nuances of a definition of mental illness in a culture I find inherently ill.
Likewise, what is meant by dangerous? Can ritual challenge the participant to push beyond comfort zones? Absolutely. Can ritual challenge the status quo? Sure thang…and should, in my opinion. Can ritual be a catalyst for some totally not-fun-in-any-fucking-way shadow work, where you wrestle with your own stupid demons, flapping around in the metaphorical dirt like a chicken taking a dust bath? I think you know what I’m going to say here (psychic you).
Is ritual dangerous? Is prayer? Annie Dillard, in her glorious, outstanding book Teaching a Stone to Talk, says:
It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
…Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day: “How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite ‘Hear, O Israel.’ When I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life…Perhaps I shall not die this time either, but how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer?”
Powerfully authentic ritual and prayer knocks your hair off your head. That’s all I’m sayin’.
So in that spirit, I wish you danger. The lightning of prayer as it passes shockwaves through your souls. As the hour grows late and the darkness feels with robust confidence all the corners and edges of the world, I lift my hands. As a thin column of smoke twists and trembles on the waves of my breath, so do I tremble before the glory of the World.
Grok Earth. Pray without ceasing.
