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Repeat Your Rituals
1 August 2019 19:42I'm thinking today about the benefit of repeated rituals.
I've always even bad at planning ritual. I usually end up doing an observance on the day which is totally off the cuff and DIY.
In some ways, this is very powerful. It's intuitive, responds to the energy of the day and where I'm at. In others, it's pants: rites lack structure & momentum, key steps get missed, and by the time ive worked out what im supposed to be doing its too late. It always lacks oomph.
Somewhere in my head is the idea that the Lammas rite (ie) ought to be performed once, and once only. As if, that's your one shot or one moment with the divine, But im not sure where that idea has come from.
And certainly in ceremonial magic, it is very common to repeat and repeat the same rite over and over to enneagram it in your head, to understand it better, and to make its actions so habitual your mind can better complete the work.
So I'm thinking, perhaps, I ought to begin using a new approach. When I do ritual, it feels like sketching - I start with gestures and materials and ideas, and slowly draw them together. In the course of the rite, I understand what I'm doing and why.
I ought to take that first ritual as a starting point. And then, repeat it. Maybe later in the day, maybe later in the tide
(I've already baked into Fencraft the idea that sabbats are energy tides, not days, and therefore some flexibility is permissable: one ought to be responding to the sense of the season over several weeks, not a one and done holiday. This fits my energy pattern better; it's more forgiving if I'm too ill to work on a key day; and it's a more Solar way of working too, the idea that the festival becomes part of your daily life and experience rather the more Lunar approach of it being confined to ritual space, and a single degree of astrologic time)
The first ritual, I wing. I might have some ideas about the season or my own goals, but I speak from the heart and kinda see what happens.
The second repetition, I take what I did first time and hone it. I might now add props, and call in the energy properly. I've got a sense of structure: what does it mean? Where does the energy start, where does it end. Who am I calling? What, if anything, is the goal? I might be getting a sense back off the land or the spirits which guides me this way or that. Do I need to shield, cast a circle, offer sacrifice, balance my energy, cleanse or any other specific technique essential to the rite - and when does this need doing?
Perhaps a third or fourth time is in order. I should by now be calling in the spirits for real, staying until they come, and making sure the energy is there and listening for their response. By now, it should be real. It shouldn't be dress up.
This is a new ideas so I'm not sure yet how many repetitions work, or when they ought to begin (on or ahead of the ritual date?), and when I should know to end.
But I do think it's a fantastic new way of working for me, to think of ritual 1 as a kind of practice run. I'm more of a "learn by doing" than a thinking through or reading person, so it might also help others with a hands on learning style.
I've always even bad at planning ritual. I usually end up doing an observance on the day which is totally off the cuff and DIY.
In some ways, this is very powerful. It's intuitive, responds to the energy of the day and where I'm at. In others, it's pants: rites lack structure & momentum, key steps get missed, and by the time ive worked out what im supposed to be doing its too late. It always lacks oomph.
Somewhere in my head is the idea that the Lammas rite (ie) ought to be performed once, and once only. As if, that's your one shot or one moment with the divine, But im not sure where that idea has come from.
And certainly in ceremonial magic, it is very common to repeat and repeat the same rite over and over to enneagram it in your head, to understand it better, and to make its actions so habitual your mind can better complete the work.
So I'm thinking, perhaps, I ought to begin using a new approach. When I do ritual, it feels like sketching - I start with gestures and materials and ideas, and slowly draw them together. In the course of the rite, I understand what I'm doing and why.
I ought to take that first ritual as a starting point. And then, repeat it. Maybe later in the day, maybe later in the tide
(I've already baked into Fencraft the idea that sabbats are energy tides, not days, and therefore some flexibility is permissable: one ought to be responding to the sense of the season over several weeks, not a one and done holiday. This fits my energy pattern better; it's more forgiving if I'm too ill to work on a key day; and it's a more Solar way of working too, the idea that the festival becomes part of your daily life and experience rather the more Lunar approach of it being confined to ritual space, and a single degree of astrologic time)
The first ritual, I wing. I might have some ideas about the season or my own goals, but I speak from the heart and kinda see what happens.
The second repetition, I take what I did first time and hone it. I might now add props, and call in the energy properly. I've got a sense of structure: what does it mean? Where does the energy start, where does it end. Who am I calling? What, if anything, is the goal? I might be getting a sense back off the land or the spirits which guides me this way or that. Do I need to shield, cast a circle, offer sacrifice, balance my energy, cleanse or any other specific technique essential to the rite - and when does this need doing?
Perhaps a third or fourth time is in order. I should by now be calling in the spirits for real, staying until they come, and making sure the energy is there and listening for their response. By now, it should be real. It shouldn't be dress up.
This is a new ideas so I'm not sure yet how many repetitions work, or when they ought to begin (on or ahead of the ritual date?), and when I should know to end.
But I do think it's a fantastic new way of working for me, to think of ritual 1 as a kind of practice run. I'm more of a "learn by doing" than a thinking through or reading person, so it might also help others with a hands on learning style.
