What Is Ritual?
The 28-foot-tall effigy figure of the Corn King was swept into flames, and the result of many days of effort by scores of people was soon engulfed, sending sparks high into the dark sky above us. We who experienced the journey to this moment had created a bond. It was a connection that would sustain us through the dark time of the year, and bind us to again join in this gift to our collective spiritual expression as a community for years to come.
Ancestor Chair ritual
Ritual is being defined right now as we speak. In city parks, community centers, farm fields, meeting rooms, libraries, condo party rooms, and church basements, large group rituals are taking place. People are joining together to bless a new baby, welcome the return of spring, support a family whose house burned down, or just to celebrate the blessing of making fresh apple cider. The prescribed order of the ceremony, its liturgy and visual impact, are uniquely created just for the moment, much like performance art. Similar to the use of the word “ritual” to describe an oft-repeated habit, today people are assembling to share their feelings, vision, sorrows, and joys as a growing reoccurrence. We call it community ritual.
Describing ritual is like this parable common across many Eastern cultures: What is the true nature of an elephant? Six blind men feel different parts of the elephant’s body:
- • The man who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch.
- • The man who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a pipe.
- • The man who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan.
- • The man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar.
- • The man who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall.
- • The man who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope.
Ritual is as clear in its nature as our experience of the elephant. It is defined by what we feel and perceive, and then we transcend our first impression of that elephant, and the “truth” becomes different every time!
Ritual can be an honoring or devotional ceremony. It can be a practical method to accomplish a goal. It can be a set of actions designed to create change or influence a situation. A ritual can be a spiritual event to open a pathway between oneself and the unseen. Ritual is sacred theater, evoking the principles of belief or faith, reenacting tales of the gods or of myths. Participation in ritual is a commitment to set aside time to explore our world and ourselves from a new perspective, and share that experience with others.
Rituals send signals directly to our subconscious. Mythologist Joseph Campbell believed that “by participating in a ritual, you are participating in a myth.” 1 Ritual is one method for the subconscious to communicate with our waking selves. We can think we know a thing, and speak about it, but until our subconscious embraces it, it remains superficial to us. To enlist the cooperation of the subconscious we need to show it, in a sensate manner, that it can absorb the essence of the information presented in a structured time and space. Ritual is a tool that helps us take the experience and processes of living and understand and integrate them.
Rituals are a feature of all human societies. Each historical and regional culture has defined its own specific priorities through how it has shaped its rituals. How did they establish their status as adults, leaders, elders, warriors, or in spiritual leadership? How did they promote their group welfare or survival? How did they deal with loss and tragedy? The rituals a society practices are the key defining feature in understanding a culture, past or present.
We demonstrate our need for ritual all through our lives at births, spiritual dedications, entry into adulthood, pairing unions, graduations, anniversaries, and even at death. Ritual can be for just a few people to conduct in private, or it can be for an experience for a specific or large community.
Ritual is a response to our questioning the existence of magic or deity. When we doubt, ritual comforts that uncertainty.
Nels: I recently attended a sumbel ceremony, which involves three rounds of individual toasts offered by participants.2 In the first round we each toasted to our own deities, and the participants were instructed that they could answer with “All hail [deity name]!” if they felt they had a relationship to that deity. When it came to be my turn, I raised the drinking horn and said, “I honor the un-named Horned God who is my patron,” since he had not revealed his name to me. I had no idea how others would react to him. At that instant the heavens cracked open with lightning striking directly behind me. Those assembled responded immediately with “All hail the Un-Named God!” All knew he was present.
Judy: Years ago, at a friend’s coming-of-age ritual for her teen daughter, I took the role of ritualista. Just as I started my incantation to the Goddess, it began softly raining. As I finished, maybe a minute later, the rain stopped. She was certainly there, and tears were shed.
In ritual we experience the supernatural, unseen forces that shape the present and future. To speak to the power within nature, or the supernatural embodied as deity, requires a special time set aside from normal life. These events occurring within ceremony confirm that forces are at work in our lives and reassure us spirituality is real. In this way, the experience of ritual offers healing for recurring feelings of doubt.
Ritual is not synonymous with theater. Not all ritual involves theatrical principles and skills. Neither is a theatrical performance inherently a ritual. There is a lot of overlap between the two, and the tools and techniques of each can be used enhance the effectiveness of the other. Theater almost always defines its audience as spectators in something performed for them. It is rare in theater for the audience to be meaningfully drawn into the story and experience it at the same depth as a ritual can offer.
Ritual offers a way to acknowledge and meet our specific needs, and be free of the control of religion within the experience. Rituals outside the context of religious tradition are by nature ephemeral—they tend to be different each time they occur and can change rapidly even when repeated. This uniqueness does not define the potential of their impact upon us nor their importance to our well-being.
Why Create Community Ritual?
We embrace this definition of community ritual: “A community ritual is a set of actions, gestures, and words offered within a large group to benefit its shared spiritual and emotional needs or interests.”
Why would you offer community ritual? The prime motivation must always be to offer it as a sacred gift of service. It is not about ourselves, our message, or our ego. It is about a community, their needs and desires, and how we can help to fill them. In ritual we connect with the sacred, and that experience is of benefit to ourselves and our audience. Many of us live in isolation, even when surrounded by people. Ritual creates a mutual intimacy that draws solitary people out to dare to reveal themselves.
You will personally experience the benefits of the community you build through ritual. You will make new friends and find people similar to yourself. If you are a spiritual seeker, you might find a teacher, or if you are a teacher, you may find students. You will certainly create a base of people who have a common interest in exploring their spirituality and establish a network of people who can offer each other support.
Creating ritual will expand your perspective about people and their feelings. Humans respond to the ritual experience in very individual and sometimes surprising ways. You may find a reserved person speaking deeply from their heart in ritual, or a seemingly unemotional person awash in tears. You will also learn so much about yourself. What emotionally moves you? How do you express your own spiritual nature and share it with others?
You will grow from the experience. You will learn how to share yourself with others authentically. You will learn how to work with a team, how to ask for what you need and offer what you can give. The skills of working with others come easily for some of us, but putting together a ritual involves knowing both when to step up and knowing when to step back and let someone else shine. A ritual team is made up of volunteers, and working with and guiding a group of volunteers requires patience, finesse, polite firmness, and compassionate understanding.
You will observe the effects of authentic rites of passage upon people. Most of us have experienced life passage rituals that had little meaning to us, other than we survived them. You may discover you haven’t had meaningful rituals that were needed to move past and integrate your life experience.
You can create ritual! The creation and offering of this gift of service requires some learned skills. In our larger society we too often relegate the skills we can benefit from learning ourselves to professionals or clergy. Today most couples are intensely involved in making their wedding ritual relevant to what they particularly want. They are taking a hand in creating a ritual that is sacred to them.
Ritual validates and affirms what we already know as we move through our lives. We need ritual! We crave it and suffer from its absence. The created ritual experience, in its diversity of types, forms, and purposes, can be of great benefit for both individuals and communities. The lasting ritual tradition of the future will be one created by all of us and for our benefit.
How to Use This Book
Most people who pick up this book have had a significant or life-changing experience or realization in a group ritual. Until you have felt that sacred jolt or heartfelt joy, all these words are a bunch of interesting concepts. It takes time for this kind of motivation to come to you through observing the real difference ritual can make in people’s lives. Offering ritual to others can be a very heady ego boost, and you need to remain aware of that possibility. Those who commit to it and keep at it will connect to ritual’s true nature. It is a vehicle for improving the human condition and making us all more whole.
Creating and offering a ritual involves many different skills. Especially as the numbers of participants in a ceremony increase, the skill level needed and the complexity of the many factors affecting the ritual experience also increase. By starting with smaller communities (fewer than 25 people) and offering basic and focused rituals, you can develop your skills and confidence to overcome any doubts you might have in your abilities. The power of ritual to create change will be felt within you as you seek to make your gift the most meaningful it can be.
Creating ritual involves a lot of list-making and brainstorming. This is a great time to start a ritual resource notebook or folder. As you move through this book there is a lot of information to absorb. Start keeping notes of those concepts and ideas that resonate with you. Judy keeps a small voice recorder with her at all times for preserving thoughts while driving. This book contains exercises to help you develop your ritual skills. Take the time to try them and add them to your notebook, even if they feel premature. The information you add now will be invaluable to review and include again later as your skills develop.
We have included stories of ritual experiences we have offered to different communities. While most could be used as presented, they were designed for a specific time, place, and community. Use them to get your imagination and creative juices flowing. Once you begin working with ritual you will find ideas, songs, concepts for props, and hands-on activities start coming to you. Jot every idea down; you will probably use it at some later time. We have held on to ideas for years and it is so gratifying to pull them out when we need a solution.
All that is essentially required to start creating ritual is a vision and the desire: knowing you want to help people, groups, and communities be better friends, be closer, and share the joy of being human. With some tools to guide you, the rest will fall into place.
Ritual: Ancestor Chair
Location: Home Samhain Ritual, 2003
© Nels Linde and Judith Olson Linde
Ritual context
Every year for the last 20 years we have provided a Samhain celebration for our extended community and family of choice. This has always included a corn-covered brush effigy figure, from 20 to 35 feet tall, constructed over the two weekends before Samhain. On the weekend nearest October 31, more than a hundred people come out to our rural home, decorate, and make final preparations of the ritual circle and effigy centerpiece. Our ritual is different each year but has evolved to include similar elements. We cast sacred space surrounding our whole property at dusk. We all gather in our home for a potluck spirit supper at which a mysterious figure joins us, and then follow a path-working experiential journey in the darkness to our ritual circle, where within the ritual the Corn King is set aflame.
Ritual intent
We embrace the time of our ancestors when they are nearest and can hear our pleas. We offer sacrifice to them that they will help and guide us.
Ritual description
Prepare your offering, a symbol of your sacrifices, and hear the words of Charon. Journey to the river Styx and pass over to death or plant the seeds of rebirth. Your card holds the key to the year ahead.
Ritual setup and supplies
We instructed participants ahead of time to bring a dollar bill with them to the ritual.
- • House: Spirit chair, ancestor altar curtain, ancestor silhouette, dollar bill basket and instructions, a red marker, hemp rope, lamp oil
- • Along path: Luminaria, Hecate setup with scissors and bag of fava beans, hot-glue gun with cord, bowl of pomegranate seeds, bowl of apple stars, tarot deck
- • River: Four-foot planter box hung on metal posts at river edge, oar for Charon
Team members
- • Two guides to select people to send down the path from the house
- • Hecate
- • Maiden with glue gun
- • Pomegranate giver
- • Apple giver
- • Charon
- • Death Dancer
- • Several keeners at the river
- • Card reader at the final circle path
- • Choir in circle
- • Ritual tasks:
- » Pairs for calling the directions
- » God caller
- » Goddess caller
- » River path regulator
Ritual script
The ancestor altar was set up all day Saturday in the house: two main tables and the spirit chair between them at the west wall of the living room. A colored-paper silhouette of a person was behind the chair, and there was a curtain for privacy. There was a board in front of the chair with two candles, the dollar bill basket, and instructions: “Close the curtain and mark your bill in a manner you will recognize. Place in the basket for the ancestors, and spend some time imagining the sacrifices made to allow you to progress to this point. When you are done, open the curtain.”
Food for the spirit supper was fully prepared to serve when the ritual began at 7:15. The ancestor curtain was removed. The ritual area was blessed privately at dusk. The circle was defined by a teen carrying a torch, encompassing the whole property. The directions were called by pairs who were spotlighted as the moving torch reached their direction, then the male/female deity was called in the front yard. All returned to the house, where we filled and offered the ancestor plate.
There was a knock at the door and Charon entered. He was dressed as Death and offered his advice: honor and respect the ancestors, and know and appreciate all the sacrifices that were asked of them to bring you to this day. Dinner began with his departure.
When dinner was finished, the team prepared the ritual area. They lit all the torches and altar candles and the small drummers’ fire at the ritual area, as well as luminaria along the path. The glue gun was plugged in. The fruit givers, Charon, and the path characters and guides took their places.
Two keeners in white face came into the house and removed the spirit chair outside to Hecate’s path station. Then guides began selecting guests to give the “start card” to. This was a card that said to ready themselves, go to the basket and retrieve their marked sacrifice (dollar bill), and make their way to the back door. So the team got the full experience as well as the guests, the guides selected people in this order: Hecate, glue maiden, basket givers, regulator, keeners, Death Dancer, Charon, card reader, drummers, and choir. They each traveled the path to their station, and finished their experience when all guests had passed by.
The path to the ritual led first to Hecate, where she took the sacrifice (dollar bill), folded it, and cut it in the center with scissors. She passed a fava bean through it to the guest, saying:
“The seed of life always resides within death. Plant it in its time … when the dead dance for you.” She then offered her tarot deck and told each guest, “Draw a card
to find your key this night.”
Hecate handed the participant’s dollar bill to the glue maiden, who folded it decoratively and hot-glued it to the ancestor chair. A helper guide sent the guest down the river path. Next the guest met an apple server at the crossroads, who offered a piece and said, “Eat of the fruit of Life that is Death.”
The guest proceeded onward to meet the pomegranate server, who offered a piece and said, “Eat of the fruit of Death that is Life.”
Approaching the river, each guest was stopped by the regulator, who timed the progress of the guests so that each went forward to the river alone. Charon was at the river’s edge, with a keener on each side of him, walking upstream and downstream making sorrowful sounds. The Death Dancer was across the river in a black leotard painted as a skeleton, and front-lit by three candles.
Charon introduced himself and asked, “Is it your time to cross over?”
The planter filled with earth was nearby, and the guest was left to meditate and commune with the dead until their bean had been planted (if they didn’t figure it out, Charon chided the guest to plant it). A keener moved each guest down the path, where they encountered the card reader.
The card reader looked at the tarot card each participant had been given and handed the guest a candle to light, saying:
“Light this from the torch of the [East, South, West, or North by type of minor arcana card],” or “Light this where the ancestors call to you [for major arcana cards].”
The card reader noted who had the Magus and Empress cards and told Hecate their names when she arrived.
As the last person down the path, Hecate walked the circle, saying:
“You have all tread the path, tasted the fruit, and planted your seed at the edge of the underworld. Your sacrifice has been accepted here, upon the seat of our ancestors. Two of you have been called this night to open the gate. Hold out your cards now so I may find you!”
The guests held up their cards and Hecate quickly found them (Magus and Empress) by the advance tip from the card reader. She took them to the ancestor chair, now covered in dollar bills. Hemp rope, which had been dowsed with lamp oil, was fastened down the back. A torch was passed to Hecate, who lit the chair that was covered with the sacrifice (dollar bills). The Magus and Empress carried the chair once around the circle and placed it between the legs of the corn effigy figure. Hecate and the guests, using their candles, lit the circumference of the effigy.
The choir began the song “Hecate,” by Seridina. The song continued until a bell was rung at the fire’s crescendo, followed by a silent elemental release by Hecate … and drumming and dancing continued on into the night.