Raising Energy
It is the last night of a week of intense community ritual at a festival. Following a winding 20-foot snake puppet, the procession has led us along the Serpent Path on the Tree of Life. As we passed by, tarot trump characters spoke in mystic tongues. Our path ended at Kether, marked in the twilight by a central blazing fire. The Fool has led 250 excited, dancing souls here, singing, “We are your people, join us!” I wait in the South, dressed in my flame costume, my sword growing heavy as I mentally run through my lines of farewell as the King of Wands. The crescendo must be over, I think, as the energy begins to wane. No, they are still moving, still dancing, and now a lone singer overlays, “Follow, follow your heart! Deep in your heart, you know the way home.” The group chorus and drumming picks it up, and the volume and energy soar yet again. My heart is pounding with adrenaline and tears of joy come as this sacred moment stretches on. My people need this. I can wait.
Path of the Serpent ritual
You have brought your community into sacred space, opened their minds and hearts, given them a sensory experience to move them toward embracing your ritual intent. Now what? Similar to bonding your ritual community together with an attunement, at this stage of the ritual you will want to provide a time, structure, and action to unify around fulfilling your ritual purpose.
You can again pull out your ritual toolbox and use the senses to center around an activity to summarize and bring focus to that purpose. This is the critical time where you either move your community to embrace your intent or let them leave feeling mildly entertained. Use your written intent as your guide. Read it out loud. Have you educated, celebrated, created fellowship, marked a transition, offered an act of devotion? Before you move to clearly empower and accomplish your purpose, verify you are still on track!
As ritualistas, somewhere between the first time we discuss a ritual theme or intention and our planning stages, we have an inspiration that we just know will be effective and that we settle on as the “hook.” This is the action, focus, experience, or environment we are creating that we see as capturing the essence of the intention. During the ritual, the details of our gathering activity, procession, entry, and making a safe and sacred ritual space directly prepare us for the hook experience. Often the hook involves a sensory engagement of the subconscious integrated with one of the experiences of awe and wonder from chapter Ten. We are vague here defining a hook because the solutions to ritual are limitless; as soon as we make rules to define what we can do, an idea appears that breaks them all!
Empowering and Energizing
In ritual, people move from a sense of wonder to the optimism that together they can make something happen, either for each person, for their community, or for their environment. In whatever manner you have brought your community to this point, you need to design something to create a feeling of empowerment. Empowerment is a tool to help your community internalize the intention of your ritual. We cannot integrate what we experience within ritual unless we have permission to make it our own, to take possession of the sacred and shared purpose we now have, to take the sacred back.
The attractive force of community ritual is found in action, the hook that embodies the intention and the purpose. This is the empowerment that is at the heart of your ritual. Any activity that participants take control of, such as a themed song led by strong voices, will accomplish this. The lyrics may inspire people to add in harmonies or transform it into a multi-part round. Once you get participants invested in it, they will feel and build upon the sense of empowerment. If you are in a place where it is possible to have a large bonfire, building it, lighting it, adding tokens or prayers to it, and dancing around it are all empowering activities.
Look at all the symbolism you are using and find an activity that participants can take ownership of with their energy. You need this to be integrally linked to your purpose. In celebratory rituals, it is an appropriate moment for a symbolic act related to the nature of the experience, celebration, or rite of passage.
Many activities can promote a feeling of empowerment. Creating a situation where participants must rely on their communication to accomplish a goal in ritual is empowering. Any trust-building action that demonstrates group reliance on each other or calls on them to act in strength and unity works. So will achieving what seems impossible until the group focuses mind and muscles upon it, such as moving or building with boulders, logs, or earth.
Some of our best ritual hooks have combined and integrated a prop that participants have contributed to and a song, chant, and dance to empower them. In the Theseus myth–based ritual (see chapter Three), after the battle between Theseus and the Minotaur moved out of sight, an empowering song of release was started. As the energized song reached its peak, the head and mane of the Minotaur were brought back and mounted on a pole next to the central fire. The mane was covered with the shadow traits participants had added earlier, and as it was added to the fire, the song (and now dance) reached a crescendo with participants moving toward the fire. This was a perfect empowerment for participants to release unwanted shadows from their psyche.
In another ritual, a group chant was used to call Flora and Jack in the Green to enter the sacred space from their wooded home. When they appeared each in turn, the empowerment felt was palpable. One of our most effective empowerments was also the most whimsical and fun. At the conclusion of the Stone Soup ritual (see chapter Twelve), participants were given popcorn kernels with the question: “What seeds can you plant to ensure our community grows?” They added these to a 4-foot beeswax poppet drilled with hundreds of holes to receive their “seeds.” After being smothered in Crisco, this poppet (supported by a sheetmetal circle) was laid over a large hot fire with these words: “With the sweetness of magic, with fire transformed, join power and hands! Make our image reborn!”As the empowering song and dance surrounded the fire, a fountain of popcorn came shooting out of the fire.
Creating Ecstasy
The excitement of celebration expressed as a unified group is an uncommon occurrence. Imagine if you could help facilitate a ceremony where a large group of people could directly feel what the ecstasy of an “ever-expanding universe” was like? Now translate that feeling into a shared sense of increased well-being. The group experience of things much larger than ourselves, an intimate shared feeling of empowerment, creates a sense of elation and excitement—of ecstasy. The need to experience ecstasy has been diverted in modern society to expression through taking drugs, video gaming, gambling, sex, and most any thrill-seeking, adrenaline-producing activity. Community ritual can provide a safe and empowering place to reclaim this basic human drive as a positive force.
An ecstatic experience is not necessary for a successful ritual. You can plan for an ecstatic energy raising and never quite get there. You can plan for an empowerment activity that shifts into the ecstatic without intending to do so. In either case you need to be prepared to recognize when ecstasy has arrived, and be able to bring it to a climax and back to earth.
The ecstatic experience provides an altered state of consciousness. Participants feel a diminished sense of self and an increased unity with the group mind and, extended further, a part of the cosmos. The creation of ecstasy in ritual is almost like mass hypnosis. Once a few individuals cross over to the ecstatic state of mind, it becomes infectious and spreads rapidly through your ritual participants. Modeling by your team can be very effective for this, in effect giving permission to those who may be too inhibited to go there on their own. Your team, however, also needs to maintain a connection to their role as ritual leaders.
The natural curve in which this rising feeling of ecstasy takes place is sometimes called “energy raising.” It builds through a group process, reaches a crescendo, and helps people internalize the experience as it dissipates. We sometimes call this the “all dance” portion of a ritual, because movement is such an effective tool for experiencing it. Any of the ritual tools you are gathering can be creatively applied to accomplish this. The goal is to find and integrate the one energy-raising activity most effective for your particular ritual. A powerful group experience can fall completely flat if it doesn’t clearly bind the feeling of euphoria and connection to the group and the ritual intention. The words of a song or chant, the tempo of music, percussion, or dance, the visual or sensory experience presented as you guide this ecstatic moment, will all define how the ritual is remembered.
An ecstatic experience can be included in many types of rituals as an energy-raising technique to help empower your ritual purpose. This is often the most difficult point in a ritual. If the ritual has led participants to a feeling of safety and emotional readiness, the transition to “let go” and rise to an energetic crescendo can hardly be stopped. When the ritual has failed to create that intimacy, your efforts can now fall flat! A misinterpretation of a group’s affirmative desire and predisposition for ecstasy will prevent it from happening.
The ecstatic experience is one of the expressed ritual purposes of a devotional. Your whole ritual can be aimed at creating ecstasy to commune with named god forms or deities, or to feel connected with an aspect of the sacred nature of the universe. In these rituals, every action is developed and planned to support the ecstatic intention. For this to take place, you need several things: a group of participants ready to connect, a ritual designed to elaborate the characteristics and nature of the god form, and an ecstatic experience relevant to it.
Guiding the Crescendo
To take the energy generated within a community ritual and transform it and apply it for the best overall result is not an easy task. We’ve already discussed the use of a physical object or prop that is symbolically charged with the intent of the ritual and then transforms. Lighting a central fire, adding an offering to a fire, or changing lighting conditions can be a great focal point to aid participants at this time.
The plan for the group ecstatic experience can go well, but without a focus at the crescendo, and a gentle, planned method for returning to a normal state, we create a bumpy ride. The team or team leader needs to be perceived as trustworthy to manage this energetic experience. A mixed community of participants is contributing their energy from many levels of focus and understanding. Everyone needs to feel like their contributions are added to a conduit with direction, unifying the focus at its peak, and bringing us all back down.
A team-modeled act of will, gesture, or indication of thanks can signal the peak has been reached and aid people to come back from the ecstatic experience. This signal should be clearly communicated and understood by your ritual team. As exciting as this time is, your team needs to remain focused and aware of the peak being approached. Hand and arm waving or body movements can be coordinated to signify the energy peak. Sound, such as a gong or chime, is also effective as a signal. At the energy peak you can increase speed or tempo or the pitch of any vocalization you are using.
People attend community ritual with the expectation that anything they contribute energetically is used to further the intention. The best way to demonstrate that is by having a concrete focus during energy raising. Participants may not know each other or the team. By offering a prop or symbol to energize, we take away any trust issues inhibiting people. There are always people in the group who sense and direct stray energy, as your team should. As long as people feel empowered and trust their contributions are used, they will add their energy.
Ritual Integration
It is perfect! You have a whole community sincerely connected, joyfully holding hands. They might be clapping or singing with feeling, or walking, stomping, or dancing with wild abandon. The energy has peaked and you have empowered the ritual intent. Now let’s just bring it all home. How do you bring your group back to earth with a feeling of accomplishment?
Once you have clearly peaked the ecstatic experience, a smooth movement to a pause for a time of calm is called for. As hard as it is to guide a community to reach for an ecstatic or energetic peak, it is just as hard to settle your community so what has been experienced can be absorbed. We don’t have to just turn off the excitement we have generated like closing a spigot. Like a pot of boiling water, we can just take it off the heat and let it simmer down to a manageable level.
Whatever method you used to raise the energy can keep going, but allow it to taper off to the point where participants begin to feel what has happened. If you used movement, the action might slow or change from moving around your ritual space to happening in place. If drums are driving the ecstatic energy, arrange ahead of time for a signal to stop. With song or chant, this can be accomplished by a change of pitch or tempo or a reduction in volume down to a whisper, or all three techniques. Your ritual team will need a cue to help guide this process smoothly and together.
Participants will sense the change, and now it is up to your team to make sure they are all on the same page and understand what has happened. The easy way is to tell everyone what they have done: “We have empowered our purpose of celebrating the arrival of spring.” Here is another opportunity to use the senses to communicate and do this with a prop, banner, or small drama. Use your imagination and creativity to make a more memorable choice!
Ground the Excess
If you have really generated a sense of excitement, there still may be a wonderful but distracting buzz filling their ears. Immediately assess what your participants are feeling. You can change gears and do what is called “grounding” the excess, helping people remove any distractions from continuing on to complete the ritual. There may be people who want to keep working the intention, and you can now tactfully help stop this with team modeling.
Your ritual team can lead activities similar to what you learned in attunement, but now directed at our most consistent source of stability, the earth below our feet. Have your team model assuming a slightly exaggerated comfortable and anchored stance and taking a few deep breaths. This simple action will usually completely change the atmosphere, reducing all participants’ level of distraction. If this is hard for your community to do, accompany the stance with descending hand and arm movements or sounds to really demonstrate sending energy downward. In some instances, your ritual team may actually have to kneel on the ground and lower their heads to the earth. There are plenty of other options for creating this ritual transition, and knowing your community will present the best alternative. You may not have to do anything, and people will do it all on their own.
Ritual Endings
Sometimes you will need an activity to acknowledge that the ceremony is over and prepare your audience to leave ritual space. This usually happens when participants are having too good a time to want it to end. Recognizing what you have all just shared in ritual will anchor the communal experience in their memory.
Sharing food or drink is a traditional way to acknowledge your work together. This celebration of the ritual purpose fulfilled could look like:
- • Passing out bread, a cracker, a cookie, something in a bite-sized piece
- • Orchestrating participants feeding each other
- • Participants passing by a feast table and choosing an item
- • Passing around a chalice of water, juice, wine, or spirits
- • Accompanying a fire offering with appropriate words
- • Offering a verbal affirmation
- • Distributing a gift or ritual token
In a rite of passage, this task usually falls to the ritualista facilitating the ceremony. No matter how obvious the transition or ritual purpose, your team may need to offer something that summarizes the experience. For many communities, allowing participants to have a time of sharing together, even with a song, is enough. We don’t always need to be guided!
Ending a ritual can be one of the most difficult parts to master. You have seen meetings end with the shift from a group focus to an individual one. This can be very jarring. In ritual, you are transitioning from a shared sacred experience and returning back to a world of separateness. If you don’t respect that boundary in how you plan your ritual ending, you risk diminishing what just happened to your community. You can use a few well-crafted words, distinct changes in tempo, or an abrupt change in focus to help prepare this transition.
You may have called many resources to help you make this ritual experience happen. In any step along the way, if you have asked natural forces, ancestors, deities, or shared powers to aid you, formalize a way to thank them. This thank-you doesn’t have to be with words. It can be demonstrated with an offering: a flower or a candle, or a libation of food or drink to a body of water, the earth, or a fire. Sometimes a bow, a curtsy, or a physical flourish will fit the occasion as a thank-you.
Sometimes it happens that the “all dance” ecstatic energy raising becomes the ritual’s end, and your participants disperse gradually as they are ready. That is perfectly acceptable, but you and your team should plan on staying until the last stragglers have left. Again, if you have called spiritual forces to aid or witness your rite, acknowledging that and releasing that connection must be done, even silently, during or after the ecstatic ending.
You may find yourself in a situation like one we had early on. We were completely finished with the ritual and yet no one wanted to accept it. Ritual participants stood looking at each other in our sacred space clearly waiting for more, some sign that they had to be done. Being unprepared, we finally said, “Okay, the ritual is over now. Thank you for coming!” That was an important lesson for us. After the ritual critique, we came up with a better solution. Now we always plan in advance for a solid ritual ending and exit.
In a ritual exit, your team models a physical leaving or deconstructing of the sacred ritual space. This could be moving out through any gate you had entered, starting a song or chant of farewell. The physical outward procession from the ritual space offers many advantages. People leave while still in the ritual mindset, and yet many will stop just outside the gate to engage in casual conversation. Individuals who are immediately moved to offer praise or criticism of the ritual will often return with you into the ritual space as you re-enter to take props down. Either way, the exit procession has cemented the ritual’s end for you before these casual interactions take place. Indoors, the ritual team can form a sort of reception line to move participants through, even if you never leave the same room.
You may have further business to attend to before people actually depart. Many communities welcome a time to announce future events. Your team may want to solicit ritual comments or invite participants to fill out a feedback form. There may be a social gathering or community feast in a different location that ties in to the community. Whatever you have to do, be sure there is a clean break and at least a short pause before any “normal” announcements or interruptions take place after the ritual. Participants will be processing their experience and most will appreciate some uninterrupted time to do that.
Team leaders should thank everyone on the team privately for their service. In offering community ritual, modesty in glorifying your team contributions is appropriate. Let participants thank your team on their own. For sponsors or benefactors, a mention in any printed material is usually enough of a thank-you.
Ritual: Path of the Serpent
Location: Sacred Harvest Festival, 2008
© Judith Olson Linde and Nels Linde
Ritual context
This was a celebratory ritual after a week of exploring the Fool’s Journey and the many aspects of Qabalah and tarot. A slow snake puppet led a procession of 250 participants along the magical serpent’s path, winding through a 100-foot long Tree of Life. All the trump personas from the Tarot Path-Working Ritual were present, reciting from The Book of Thoth as the procession passed by to an energetic closing ceremony.
Ritual intent
Take an experiential journey through the Tree of Life.
Ritual description
None was provided to the festivants.
Ritual setup and supplies
A Tree of Life large-scale set was created, with Kether at the central ritual fire, and Malkuth as an entry point. Sephira symbols were placed on poles and marked with torches. Path lines were marked in ribbon on the ground. PVC pipes were dug into the ground to support the snake puppet when the carrying supports were inserted to form a standing gateway.
Team members
All the tarot trump characters. Four court card characters: King of Wands, Queen of Cups, Prince of Swords, Princess of Disks. Seven volunteers to carry the snake puppet.
Ritual script
The trump characters were at their path stations and ready. The snake-head stick puppet was mounted on two carrying poles with a couple of sections of body hoops behind. The festivants had been energized by drumming at the gathering place in preparation for the procession through the park to the Tree of Life. The snake began the slow procession along the Serpent Path.
As the participants passed them, each trump character spoke his or her Book of Thoth poem quote from the Tarot Path-Working Ritual (see chapter Six), describing the definition of each path. The line of festivants, led by the snake, turned left at the Fool’s path. Now led by the Fool character, the serpent procession emerged at the crown. The procession headed widdershins (counterclockwise) around the central fire of the large circle area where, just past the fire, poles were in place to set up the snake head and body as a standing gateway facing the eventual exit for the ritual.
The Fool led the line of folk through the snake gateway from tail to head, and then deosil to form a large circle, to the song for the Fool’s path, “The Happy Wanderer,” by Florenz Friedrich Sigismund.
All sang along, as the festivants continued into the circle. The snake puppet was now laid upon the ground, its carrying poles lowered into pipes dug into the earth, and the body folded up behind it. Once the circle was filled, the Fool led the festivants on a slow inward spiral, singing, “We Are Your People,” by Beverly Frederick, and clapping until all were in a tight, moving, laughing group. As the energy faded, the Fool moved dramatically to the South, focusing attention upon the King of Wands character:
King of Wands: “I am fire of fire, and I stand in the South to close the portal between this world and that. Djinn, mighty ruler, we find a gracious host in you. With gratitude we now bid adieu.”
At the West, the Queen of Cups: “I am water of water, and I stand in the West to close the portal between this world and that. Nixscha, mighty ruler, we find a gracious host in you. With gratitude we now bid adieu.”
At the East, the Prince of Swords: “I am air of air, and I stand in the East to close the portal between this world and that. Paralda, mighty ruler, we find a gracious host in you. With gratitude we now bid adieu.”
And at the North, the Princess of Pentacles: “I am earth of earth, and I stand in the North to close the portal between this world and that. Ghob, mighty ruler, we find a gracious host in you. With gratitude we now bid adieu.”
The Fool said: “Merry meet and merry part and … ” He waved his hand, palm up, gesturing for the festivants to finish: “Merry meet again!” The serpent head was raised from its ground position and led all in a return procession to the gathering location.