Getting Started
A hundred people were gathered tightly around our sacred fire, declaring we were now “walking in the way of gratitude.” It was a difficult road to get here, to make acknowledging our collective and individual blessings the primary force now
moving us forward. As participants added their own verses declaring their personal blessings, what became clear was that our collective reverence for the earth and
the opportunity to share our diverse spiritual selves were at the heart of our
gratitude. We were all together in this moment, ecstatic and blessed.
Gratitude ritual
To be successful at creating sacred experience for others you need to bring some commitments to the process. You must be willing to develop techniques for working with people. Learning and using all the skills needed for groups to work together as a team and increase their unity is as important and sacred as the ritual you offer. You need to accept that you may create ritual and attend to every detail, provide every symbol and clue as to what the intended experience will be like, but once the ritual starts, the best you can do is offer your gift and let each person define what is shared and what meaning they will take from it. You have no control over another person’s individual experience and how they accept the opportunity that sharing ritual in groups offers.
The purposes of rituals for groups are as varied and diverse as people are. Celebration of relationship with deity and the expression of our spirituality remains a primary purpose. The satisfaction of physical or emotional needs, strengthening of social bonds of support, moral education, demonstrations of respect, and obtaining acceptance have all become common themes within ritual.
Helping another ritualista or group is the best way to jump into learning. You can see how people think, share, and work together. Establishing a mentoring relationship with someone more experienced gives you a chance to learn some basic skills and observe the whole process from beginning to end. However, you may have no access to creative group ritual or a mentoring relationship.
If you are working as an individual, a rite of passage for another person or a celebration ritual is a good place to start. These have a clear purpose, hone your skills at meeting the needs of others, and have history to draw upon for inspiration. The purpose of the ritual inherently sets the tone, and participants are usually already prepared for what to expect. They are attending because they support the sharing that will take place and will be happy to be included. These rituals have an expectation that there will be a clear leader, a master of ceremonies, and are some of the few rituals that can be offered for fairly large groups by an individual.
As the ritual purpose becomes more complex or participant numbers grow, there are drawbacks to working alone. You have all the decisions to make and no one to bounce your ideas off of. You have the benefit of complete control over the script and execution, but one person can only do one thing at a time. Your plan must be very basic, something you can handle alone. You may be able to ask for specific help as your audience arrives, but be prepared to fill every role you plan for. Starting out, it is helpful to present your outline to someone you trust to give honest feedback before you finish planning. When you work alone, it is much easier for your vision of the event to get sidetracked into areas that may not be essential.
Many people have had some experience in a small group or coven participating in ritual as part of a tradition or as a guest. Any group in which you already work spiritually is a natural place to look for team members to join you in offering a ritual with a broader appeal. If you are offering a ritual for a more public or expanded group for the first time, be wary of using those familiar tradition methods without adapting them for your larger audience.
Everyone brings their own interests, skills, and biases to the ritual table. You may have a dominating love for theater, song, or dance. Costumes, pageantry, or constructing things might be a strong interest you want to share. You may only see ritual as meant for a deeply spiritual or transformational experience. Not every person who is willing to help will have the same commitment, and that is okay. It’s easy to think we know the best or right way to think about something, but at this point you are casting a wide net for people to work with!
Find and Assess Your Community
Who is your community? You may think it is just the group of your friends, but it can include most of the people you interact with. A casual assembly at an annual festival can create a community. With use of the Internet, people who have never met in person can interact and become a community. The amount of time spent together limits what a community shares but not necessarily the depth possible within it. In a mobile and fragmented society, place is not such a primary factor in the formation of communities anymore. Place loses its importance when you don’t know your neighbor, the guy upstairs, or the widow down the block.
Exercise
Make a list of all the connections you have and groups you interact with, then classify what characteristics each group has using the questions below. Add this to your ritual notebook.
It may be difficult to imagine engaging many of your groups to participate in a community ritual, but individuals from any of them may be interested in attending. The more the group shares in common, the more successful you will be. Most importantly, it should include people who are willing to explore their spiritual nature. Those groups we call your core ritual community, the best ones to create ritual for.
Many people who pick up this book will not have a community ready-made to work within. You may be new to your area, or in a place where a conservative mindset or a religious group dominates. You will need to find or create the community that will embrace sharing ritual together. Any group meeting to connect with the power within us becomes a community.3 For groups large or small, intimate or public, community forms around the ritual experience.
We work mainly in the Neopagan community, a diverse audience. Some follow specific religious beliefs; others have a vague sense of the divine in their lives. Most have a connection with the natural world, which includes people focused on environmental concerns without a strong spiritual component. Some are oriented toward promoting health, nourishment, and techniques to heal or help others.
How do you find Pagans or others in the alternative spirituality movement? You may have to search in your area to find this community or gather one up. Social media groups are the place to start. Use Facebook, Yahoo groups, Meetup.com, and other social networks online to look for alternative spirituality groups in your area. Try searching with many different words to find the diversity of people in your area exploring spirituality. The Pagan Pride Project has groups in every major city, and the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) has many chapters around the country. Check Witchvox for groups or events to contact.4
Exercise
Write down descriptive search terms, words and phrases that describe where you might find your community. Later, use the resources above to search online for groups and activities that you can network with. Add this to your ritual notebook.
Many types of groups, events, and activities could benefit from sharing a sacred experience together. Don’t overlook more general groups and communities that may welcome adding a spiritual component for their members. You may also find friends and potential team members by researching, participating, and volunteering with these groups:
Take care in how you present yourself when forming or looking for a community to work with. If you use words that are too specifically Pagan or “Wicca-centric” you may frighten off people who could be a part of your potential community or team. Even the word “ritual” can be off-putting if you don’t explain exactly what you mean in describing the event you want to plan. “I want to find others to help create a ritual ceremony in a park to honor and celebrate the bounty of the harvest” will resonate with a broad group of people. “I need help casting a Mabon circle to the Gods in a park” will draw a more limited response, even in the Pagan community.
The Audience
You have made observations about your community in your notes and have some idea of whom you are working with. Now you need to identify with them as an aspect of yourself or you will be helpless to design a ritual to meet their needs. It is easy to make superficial assumptions and apply them to a whole group of people. In ritual design, you will need to experience the ritual you imagine though their eyes.
What is the demographic information about your specific audience? Are they predominately young or old? What stage of life? Are they single? Do they have small children? Are they experienced in ritual or new spiritual seekers? What factors or interests do they have in common? Here is where you must rely on relationships already forged within that community; call, chat, and network until you have the information you need. Do your best to get accurate data.
You will also need to decide which parts of your potential audience you will accommodate. Adults are easy, but children and teens may need special consideration in your planning to keep them engaged and participating. Elders and many others may have limited mobility or may not be able to stand for extended periods. Will you provide or allow chairs for those who need them or a shortened distance to move within the ritual? Sight- and hearing-impaired people will often attend if they know they are welcomed and accommodated. How you integrate portraying and speaking in regards to gender can either empower or offend participants. Being sensitive and aware of the biases you bring to ritual is crucial if you want to reach the full range of diversity your community may include. In these important areas it is wise to ask for help reviewing your ritual plan from people who work with impaired or marginalized populations.
You may not have the resources to fully fund the event you envision. For some participants even a small fee may inhibit their attendance. Will you provide the budget yourself, fundraise, solicit private donations, or ask a fee of your audience?
Exercise
Write down all the different types of people, ritual experience, spiritual beliefs, and limitations you want to be sure to accommodate in your ritual. This may change with subject and circumstance, but make a record now of who you generally want to adapt for in your planning to ensure they are welcomed and can participate. Add this to your ritual notebook.
At some point in your planning, projected attendance will have to be addressed. If there is history with a community or event, that is a good place to start. If it is a new venture, look at similar events and their first-time attendance to get a reasonable estimate. Start with an estimate of the total of your likely audience pool, then consider any scheduled competing events that may draw some of that audience away.
Outdoor events can be completely dependent on weather for attendance, and even indoor rituals will be limited if travel is affected by weather. If outdoors, is there an alternate location? Can the ritual go onward in a light rain? Will you need to cancel in strong wind or rain, and if so, is rescheduling a possibility? How would rescheduling affect attendance?
Rites of passage and small group events (between 15 and 40) usually have a well-defined invitation list. Planning is much easier in this case. The difference between the number of people expected and those who actually attend is small enough that planning and ritual design need not be critically changed. The difference between 20 and 40 is much easier to accommodate than between 150 and 300!
For a large-group community ritual, you should be able to start with a “reasonable expectation” of attendance, say 75 people. This should be a just slightly optimistic estimate. Then add about 50 percent to that number (35, or 110 total) and be sure to have supplies to accommodate that many. Imagine the ritual’s ability to function well with that maximum number. Plan in advance for likely problems in the ritual design if attendance reaches this point. Have a few alternate changes to make on the fly to resolve these problems if you are blessed with overwhelming participation!
A peer ritual audience can be one of the best and easiest groups to design an effective and intimate ritual for. As their peer, you know their issues, likes, backgrounds, and have a common base of knowledge. You should be able to speak easily to their perspective and life insights. At times a unique interpretation of what a group has in common will touch peers more effectively than incorporating their obvious similarities. Here a brainstorming group can aid in expanding your ritual perspective in the early planning stages of ritual development. Even in this most homogeneous group a written definition elaborating the nature of their similarity will be helpful in your ritual description.
A shared experience may serve to define an audience. A traumatic event or cultural tradition may bond a group together. Recent conflict, resignation, death, or a reason to celebrate can be powerful elements to consider. An interview with a group elder may reveal more about this audience than other information available.
Public rituals can be some of the most difficult to design. In public rituals anyone who wishes to attend is welcomed. A public ritual outdoors may include anyone who happens by, the curious, or a casual participant. Indoors, a public ritual is usually limited at least to those who made the conscious choice to attend in advance. The tendency is to develop public rituals with a mind toward the lowest common denominator. This is usually a mistake that leads to the most unmemorable rituals! Rarely is your audience truly a simple societal cross-section. They may have a common interest in spirituality and spiritual matters. They may be generally familiar with Pagan, New Age, and occult concepts. They may have cultural, ethnic, or class similarities to draw upon. Advance research on your locality, advertising target, and likely audience draw will help narrow down which “public” you will likely be working with.
Sometimes the best method to really engage a public audience with an intimate ritual is to make your best assessment of unifying factors and work from there. The concepts you present and tools you use may seem old hat to some of your audience, but may be perfect for a majority of them. For instance, many people may have experienced the use of mirrors in ritual to promote self-examination, but for others it will be a totally new concept.
However you assess your public audience and choose to approach the ritual, you will probably need a larger ritual team. You won’t be able to presume a basis of ritual experience, and so will require more facilitators for key movement or action parts of the ritual. If you are using songs and chants you will need both a larger “choir” and a printed handout. These are good ideas for any ritual, but with this audience you need to plan on more of everything. Keep to a solid and simple ritual design, with a well-practiced team.
Children and Youth
Children are generally welcomed within community ritual. Your ritual should be clearly enough defined so parents know whether it will be suitable for any child, particularly if children are to attend the ritual unaccompanied by a parent, as is sometimes the case with teens. As parents, we always tried to consider whether we were bringing our children because we felt they would get something out of it, or because we could not secure other care for them. Children’s actions during ritual can be disruptive, but with a fully engaged ritual audience they often become invisible to participants, or even better, bring a blessed lightness to the proceedings. The effort to provide for participation of children will expand the audience of your ritual and help it become a shared family experience.
Parents, embarrassed by a child’s behavior, can be more disruptive with scolding and attempts at containment than the children themselves. A child’s attention span varies wildly with age and experience. Parents are the best judge of the length of time and the experiences their children can handle. A fiercely screaming or out-of-control child should probably be removed, at least to the margins of a ritual, but only by their parent.
A child’s reaction during your ritual is not within your control as a ritual team. The best you can do is clearly inform parents of the details, timing, and nature of the ritual in advance, and let them make wise choices. There are some ritual experiences that are not suitable for children. Direct sexual or death references, even when framed carefully, are not appropriate. It is so much easier to exclude and say “not appropriate for children” if you are offering controversial content. Most young children have a fairly short attention span, so long speeches or somber guided meditations are not recommended.
Rituals designed specifically for youth demand special attention to age-appropriate themes and content. Many would experiment with the tender sensibilities of youth in ritual, to offer what they believe they may have been moved by as a child. We believe the opposite approach is warranted. The best way to design rituals for youth is to find what issues and themes concern them most and then aid them in the development of their own rituals. Parents should be included in planning and reviewing the ritual intent. Lighthearted rituals and fun, even “crafty,” activities work the best for younger children. Clarity of ritual intent is particularly important for older youth rituals. They can easily lose sight of the purpose and focus on props or theater. Older youth have a tendency to organize rituals mimicking adult rituals, replacing content with what they find more relevant. Work with teens by reviewing the elements of ritual and then let them suggest methods and processes that they find meaningful to accomplish the main parts of a ritual. There are several published resources specifically for rituals for children and teens.5
Rites of passage for youth can be the most profound of experiences for young people and their parents. We don’t advise youth presenting their own rites of passage or creating one for their peers. The whole point is for the wise ones of the community to provide this event. The best results occur when both youth and parents are consulted in their desires and expectations for these rites, and then experienced ritualistas offer the actual ritual. These are not appropriate times to experiment.
What if you have a grand ritual vision for a large group of people? This is the time to start forming a team. A team is not the answer to a lack of experience, or a way to avoid responsibility by spreading out the leadership role. We have worked in purely co-created ritual, where many people collectively create by consensus. We have found over the years that working with a team to refine details and production is great, but having just a couple people at most with the overall guiding vision for the finished ritual usually generates the strongest result. Occasionally one can assemble a team of people with previous ritual production experience who can also effectively share leadership and co-create a ritual. This is a thing of beauty and reflects a community with significant ritual experience.
Being a leader is a scary thought! Responsibility is expected, personal risks must be taken, and demands are made upon you. No one starts out a leader. Sometimes you may find that you have stepped up because no one else will. Dare to take small risks, push yourself, and then bang! You get called a leader. Whether you are working alone or with others, it is time to start learning this skill.
Leadership is needed to recruit members, encourage team enthusiasm, develop talent, and make sure the essential decisions are made. Leadership styles that solicit member input, listen attentively, and respectfully direct the final choices for the team function best. The theatrical model of a director may work well for a specific vision with paid actors, but has some inherent obstacles to building the real team feeling of co-creation needed for creating an effective ritual.
In any group process, the leader needs the ability to sort through the personal dynamics and relationships involved in communication. This can be more important than the talent of the team or any other factor in creating ritual. Ritual team members want to feel appreciated and respected for their gifts. Being able to accurately assess people’s strengths and weaknesses is an ability that will serve well in the long run. Your leadership style will need to acknowledge and praise each person at every step of the process to keep your volunteers intact and happily involved. Often team brainstorming can produce enough good ideas to flesh out five rituals, and we all tend to invest ourselves into our ideas. Your job will be to sort through these ideas and decide which are most appropriate for your intent without offending team members.
To assemble a team, first look to the community for which the ritual is intended. Community members already have an investment and know their help will be appreciated by the ritual participants. To reach out to a larger community, the team leader will need to personally appeal to and inspire members to contribute. As in politics, a leader’s ability to translate personal capital (the goodwill accumulated by past acts and relations with others) into a ritual team volunteer becomes paramount. We as ritualistas have been compared to Tom Sawyer finding help to whitewash the fence. 6 You may need to develop the ability to cajole ritual service from community members!
Ritual teams for smaller rituals usually function as a “committee of the whole.” They make plans and most decisions together. The more egalitarian a ritual team becomes, however, the harder it can be to assert the leadership needed to focus on the intention of the ritual. With larger ritual teams, organizing smaller groups by the type of ritual role works well. Team members who help wrangle or move people, or have isolated or uncomplicated roles, can be integrated and rehearsed without the same time commitment as major action role players. Often a large ritual will have a choir, and they can certainly meet separately and be integrated with cueing. Volunteers appreciate attention to limiting their time commitment. No one likes to stand around at meetings or rehearsals that don’t engage the majority of the team.
For teams large or small, produce a list of ritual roles that you need to fill. In looking for members, try to fill the most challenging action roles first. Understand, you as team leader may need to take one of these roles, to inspire others to participate. Then cast the net wide in your community and follow up by personally contacting those who seem promising. This will be the most likely method to entice someone to join you.
Most community rituals will need someone to look to for cues and direction. These roles can be taken on by individuals willing to act as a priest and/or priestess or spirit worker. They represent a channel through which the energy of the ritual is distributed toward its intended result. Traditionally, and in many small groups, they may take the active role in directing nearly all facets of the ritual action.
Make sure it is clear who will be giving cues, and which action or activity follows each part. Designate at least one of your team as the handler or wrangler, the person responsible for dealing with issues that arise that may affect the success of the ritual. You need someone in this handler role so the whole team doesn’t stop to resolve any issues that come up. If your ritual is organized without a distinct leader, or the action leader is required to remain acting in character, a handler is essential.
One of the beauties of community ritual is the diversity of talents and limitations that your team will bring to your rituals. Some people will be natural thespians, able to speak loudly and act without inhibition. Others will avoid the limelight but may have a great sense of pacing or attention to detail. Some may be able to write words but not to speak them. You may have people willing to help who could dance, sing, or prepare costumes or props. Adapt your ritual to the team you gather to produce it. Most of your team will voluntarily gravitate toward roles that suit them.
More important than individual talents is the team members’ commitment to working well together. A cooperative and problem-solving attitude allows the joy of ritual team participation to dominate the experience. If a person can’t control their ego or treat every member with respect, their participation will be detrimental to the team no matter their amount of talent.
Community ritual is also a place for the team to grow as individuals. Encourage everyone to stretch their abilities, find and offer their creative expression, and expand their comfort zone. It is necessary to be flexible in the execution of your vision when working with other people. Don’t plan a ritual based on long, flowery, memorized lines with a team that does not have the time to memorize and rehearse or the skills to carry it off!
One of our first experiences as part of a ritual team presented this situation. A community ritual had been written with elaborate words to be spoken by many characters. When the team was presented with the actual text at rehearsal, just hours before the ritual, it became apparent that the team could never memorize their lines in the time available. We talked as a team about each character reading the words from cards, or if simplifying the words could work. Feeling these options would not be able to convey the ritual intent, we got creative. We assigned the loudest and best voice to speak for all the ritual characters. The team was able to focus on their actions as their character while the reader delivered all their lines standing off to the side. It was not a perfect solution, but in this case it was a success.
Assemble your team as early as possible and assess their capabilities. It is not necessary to have a group of experienced actors for a successful ritual, only to adapt your plan to fit the skills they offer. A simple act, such as inviting and acknowledging the qualities of a cardinal direction, can be done in many ways. A thespian can use elaborate words and actions. A dancer can welcome the East with movement. A singer can use a song. A speaker can use a few sincere words from their heart. A shy person can fan a smudge stick with a feather or bow silently in that direction. It is more important to have your team act with sincerity and confidence than to try to follow the details of the ritual vision but do so with inhibition.
Not everyone will want an action role in the ritual. For those who wish to help out but not have a starring role, consider whether their abilities and the ritual’s needs would make them an asset in these types of roles:
A major requirement for all members of your ritual team, in whatever role they take, is to overcome the fear of being real and authentic in their person. Ritualistas need to set aside any alienating or caustic traits they may have absorbed to cope with the world. Drop any sarcasm, ridicule, mockery, contempt, disparagement, or cynicism that you might normally allow to creep into your personal expression. Ritualistas offer themselves, their essence, to create a ritual. They evoke a sense of intimacy from their innate ability to recognize the heart of a human being shining through any action. A thespian relies on exact language or a stunning performance to convince us to believe something. Even so, we are only convinced for a moment. When a ritualista misses a line or trips or makes any mistake while offering himself or herself honestly, most folks will not notice. Our failings can even have the opposite effect. They demonstrate that the ritualista is fallible and human. When handled with confidence, this can help erode participants’ defenses and create a feeling of shared vulnerability.
Location: Sacred Harvest Festival, 2014
© Judith Olson Linde and Nels Linde
Ritual context
We assessed the community we had been deeply a part of for over a dozen years, and it was weary. We had together, in recent years, suffered betrayal, discord, and the loss of members. Those who remained had faced circumstances head on, facilitating a process of restorative justice to both acknowledge the harm and pain that had occurred and to reinvigorate the trust and values that had drawn us together originally. Our community needed something, a ritual theme that elevated us past our sorrow to a new state of grace. This ritual incorporated the words and wishes, and appreciation for our blessings, developed over a week of engagement with the theme of gratitude.
Ritual intent
To fully know and embrace the state of grace where gratitude lives. Move past our challenges and enter a new world that our gratitude creates and makes flourish. Bathe in the positive outpouring of well-being and good intention.
Ritual description
Gather and process from the Heart Chakra to the Sacred Circle. We live in this moment and graciously meet our future with each step. Share your heart and embark on the way of gratitude. Feast to the blessings and delight of the Gods. The rewards of our generosity of spirit return tenfold.
Ritual setup and supplies
All week the festivants had been writing words of gratitude on five muslin banners using black-light pens. Each banner had a unique theme: one for our ancestors, one for heroes or people who inspire us, one dedicated to life’s pleasures, one for challenges that help us grow, and one for the mysteries of the natural world. On the ritual night, the banners surrounded the sacred space, evenly spaced, displayed by team members in turn at the proper time. The path to the sacred space had five sheer veil gateways spaced along it, and a large veil at the deity pair.
We came together at Heart Chakra (the gathering place) and taught a procession song: “There Is No Time but Now,” by Veronica Appolonia. Five different-colored veils were set up along the woods path with two whisperers at each. At the path exit to enter the sacred space were two cots with veiled male and female deity figures lying in state, each holding a bowl of grapes.
Team members
Path regulator, 10 whisperers (5 pairs) at the veils, one male and one female deity, Ritualista 1, Ritualista 2.
Ritual script
A procession led participants to the entry of a brief path-working experience where they were sent in pairs about 10 seconds apart through the woods toward the ritual space. As each pair reached a veil, the veil was named, and words were offered by the whisperers, alternating lines as participants were greeted by one and passed through by the other.
At the green veil:
Whisperer 1: “The Veil … ”
Whisperer 2: “ … of Challenges.”
Whisperer 1: “With no expectations, what can possibly stand in your way?”
Whisperer 2: “Can you offer generosity of your spirit to those who wrong you?”
At the blue veil:
Whisperer 3: (kissing the back of each participant’s hand) “The Veil … ”
Whisperer 4: “ … of Pleasures.”
Whisperer 3: “What joy will move you to tears?”
Whisperer 4: “Whom do you remind of simple gifts each day?”
At the red veil:
Whisperer 5: (pressing each person with an open palm on their heart)“The Veil … ”
Whisperer 6: “ … of Heroes.”
Whisperer 5: “Who reflects to you your highest self without obligation?”
Whisperer 6: “Who recognizes your worth whether you deserve it or not?”
At the orange veil:
Whisperer 7: (asperging their feet with water and a branch) “The Veil … ”
Whisperer 8: “ … of Ancestors.”
Whisperer 7: “When we feel lost, who knows the way?”
Whisperer 8: “Connected to our roots, what can stop us?”
At the yellow veil:
Whisperer 9: (sweeping the earth before them) “The Veil … ”
Whisperer 10: “ … of Life.”
Whisperer 9: “What glorious vision of nature awaits us?”
Whisperer 10: “What moment of beauty is laid before us?”
At the woods path end was the purple veil:
Whisperer 11: (opening the veil) “The Veil … ”
Whisperer 12: “ … of the Gods.”
Whisperer 11: “What blessings flow from the gods of your hearth?”
Whisperer 12: “What harm can befall us when we honor the gods?”
The male and female deity figures, with bowls of grapes, were veiled and lying in state. As participants passed by the deities, they were greeted by Ritualista 1 and Ritualista 2.
Ritualista 1: (anointing them)
“Enter and know divine protection.”
Ritualista 2: (waving toward the bowl of grapes)
“Eat of the blessing of fruit, that the gods know your devotion.”
Participants were directed to form a circle just inside the five black-light-sensitive banners evenly spaced around the circle, still rolled up and so hidden. When all were assembled, Ritualista 1 created sacred space, saying:
“In a clearing on a moonlit night, illuminated by firelight,
Assembled here we circle round, to see what blessings can be found,
In the company of other folk, to see what magic we may invoke.”
Ritualista 1 then welcomed the directional forces, saying:
(To East) “Where the moon rises and dawn breaks the day,
on scented breeze newness comes wafting our way.”
(To South) “To the South lie the sands of fire, choices made, the loin’s desire.”
(To West) “In the West, the misty shore, the rainbows’ end, the oceans’ roar.”
(To North) “To the North, the mountains of stone, caves of our ancestors; antler, bone.”
(To Spirit, center) “The Lord and the Lady are present here too, and spirit,
as always, within each of you.”
The male and female deity figures rose up and began passing grapes
around the circle, as Ritualista 1 and Ritualista 2 spoke of gratitude:
Ritualista 2:
“An attitude of gratitude can’t grow within blame or fear or entitlement.”
Ritualista 1:
“Opposite from entitlement, gratitude is not getting what you deserve; it is
appreciating what you have.”
Ritualista 2:
“The reward of gratitude is that it reinforces generosity of spirit. We realize it is safe to give.”
Ritualista 1:
“Living in the way of gratitude is a state of being; every single thing is a blessing.”
Ritualista 2:
“People who experience gratitude have more positive thoughts, have a powerful
sense of well-being, and are happier.”
Ritualista 1:
“Gratitude takes an awareness and appreciation that but for the grace of the gods,
it could be another way!”
Ritualista 2:
“Gratitude is a state of optimism that never ends. The more gracious you are,
the more you have to be grateful for.”
Ritualista 1:
“Rather than looking at life as a glass half empty or full, gratitude is being happy there is a glass, and that you have it!”
Ritualista 2:
“Gratitude is the perception of being showered with blessings and divinely protected.”
Ritualista 1:
“Life can be a frantic lust for money, love, acquisitions, and happiness. Gratitude creates happiness; you appreciate and find joy in whatever you have been given.”
Team members revealed the five gratitude banners by unrolling them as Ritualista 1 and Ritualista 2 walked the circle with the deities. The deities shone black lights upon each banner in turn.
Ritualista 1:
“This week we have expressed gratitude to our challenges, our pleasures, our heroes, our ancestors, and for the Great Mystery of all we see.”
Ritualista 2:
“Tonight we recognize devotion to deity as another veil of gratitude to embrace.”
Ritualista 1 cued the deities to join them and began the spiral dance. All sang “Gratitude,” by Judith Olson Linde:
Walk in the way of gratitude, walk in the way of gratitude,
Walk in the way of gratitude, walk in the way of gratitude.
All around me, open my eyes, see
Blessings aplenty, give it freely.
Walk in the way of gratitude, walk in the way of gratitude,
Walk in the way of gratitude, walk in the way of gratitude.
Ritualista 1:
“Shout your blessings!” (inviting personal ad lib verse additions)
Ritualista 1 modeled the additions:
Nels and Joby (drumbeat, drumbeat), Max and Marty (drumbeat, drumbeat), smoke
and campfires (drumbeat, drumbeat), these are my blessings (drumbeat, drumbeat).
Call-and-response singing with drumbeats continued throughout the duration of the spiral dance.
Ritualista 2 gathered limited-mobility participants and drummers in the center as Ritualista 1 made the second turn in the spiral dance to gather participants toward the center.
He changed to an energy-raising song:
“Gratitude—Gratitude—Gratitude!” (Crescendo!)
Ritualista 1, as participants ground:
“Take a moment and catch the gaze of everyone here present and know gratitude,
for in an instant, this moment is gone!”
Starting in the East, Ritualista 1 moved to each direction and danced a goodbye. He then joined Ritualista 2, and they bowed to the deities, took their hands, and led all from the circle.
3 Malidoma Patrice Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community (London: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 49.
4 Pagan Pride Project, www.paganpride.org; CUUPS, www.cuups.org; Witches’ Voice, Inc., www.witchvox.com.
5 David Salisbury, Teen Spirit Wicca (Soul Rocks Books, 2014).
6 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (San Francisco: The American Publishing Company, 1876), Ch. 2.