Ritual Conception
Theseus and the Minotaur battle their way through the sacred space and out into the woods where we can all hear the fight still raging. A bellow echoes through the grove, and we hear the rattling of bones and then there is silence. Theseus returns carrying the head of the Minotaur, its mane draped with our deepest, darkest fears. He mounts it on a stake near the fire. We watch as he exchanges his sword for a torch and the mane catches fire. We sing for our cleansing and our future, our words building in intensity. Finally in a thundering crescendo we all shout, “I release and I let go!” The shadow we carried is gone!
Naming and Claiming the Shadow ritual
What is your motivation to create a ritual? Every ritualista needs to periodically reassess and examine their motives for creating ritual; they will not always be pure and altruistic. We cannot help but bring our life perspective to whatever we create. Knowing oneself and what drives us to create ritual is invaluable to keeping our intentions focused and our ritual content objectively assessed.
Framing your ritual to relate to a specific and defined community is a great way to keep your motives and ego in check. Ritual driven from our creativity alone can too easily lose relevancy within a community. It is easy to work with our own inspiration and then try to impose our feelings where they are not appropriate. You must be sure that your offering is what your community really needs.
Style
We use the term “ritual style” to describe the ways your participants experience ritual. Rarely is a ritual able to be categorized as all one style. Usually rituals will combine two or more. You will naturally fall into a style that your past experience, history, and personality direct you to. Part of the beauty of creating ritual is that the process will stretch your experience and abilities as much as it does for the ritual participants. A good way to consider what ritual style to begin with is to compare the skills and talents you (and your team) have, and ones you could benefit from more experience to develop.
Exercise
Brainstorm a list to document your personal skills and resources and the skills to improve upon. Use the example below. Add this to your ritual notebook.
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I can create a ritual with:
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I can grow my skills to:
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When starting out as a ritualista it is best to use the skills and resources you already have. Rely on any past experience or participation in ritual and expect your ritual style will reflect that. As you gain experience it is rewarding to pick a few things from your skill set, and add a few skills you need to grow to put into your next ritual. You will make mistakes and learn to understand what makes different ritual techniques successful.
Theatrical style is used to describe a ritual if there is a clear separation between ritualistas and attendees. Participants are expected to invest their energy into the activity, but from a distance. Often the participants are seated in a horseshoe arrangement and only interact with the performers at the culmination of the ritual. This style can be effective for telling a story or demonstrating an extraordinary skill, such as music or dance. The more the drama that is offered has a mythic resonance that it draws upon, the easier it will be for the audience to experience it as a ritual and not simply entertainment. Theatrical style can be very effective in highlighting the actions, costumes, and words of the ritual players. One of the advantages of a theatrical style is you can thoroughly vision, script, plan, and rehearse your ritual in advance. Elements of this style are often incorporated into other styles as well.
Experiential style describes a ritual where all who enter the space are invited to contribute to the energy and the activity that takes place. Often this style manifests as a circle of participants with the presenters moving about inside the circle. In this arrangement most of those attending can see and hear not only the ritualistas but each other. Words, gestures, items, or energetic opportunities can be passed from person to person easily. This style of ritual presentation is very effective for making those who attend feel valued as contributors and included in the community.
Path-work style describes a ritual experienced while moving through a space—think of a candlelit labyrinth on midsummer night. When using this style you might arrange a journey passing by stations in the woods with different experiences at each one, or a series of mini-meditations spoken by guides as participants walk from one place to the next. This style of ritual gives each person a feeling of individual intimacy. It is easy to integrate this style with other styles.
Intimate style describes a ritual that involves as much one-on-one interaction with members of your ritual team and other participants as is practical. This ritual style requires the utmost in authenticity by your team to be successful. An intimate ritual demands we act, speak, and react from our sacred core at all times. When the ritual is structured carefully, participants can be confronted with deep emotions and observations that lead them to engage your ritual purpose. However you express this style in ritual, consider multiple “tracks” for participants to follow. You don’t want to rush the offering of intimacy, and it may be better to divide the experience into several groups to keep the ritual moving.
In chapter Two, you learned the importance of and some of the factors in assessing the ritual needs of your community. What we begin now is the process of sorting through all the factors you are facing to engage your community through ritual.
To clarify the ritual purpose we will be working with, we review a whole list of verbs and adjectives that can describe how our proposed ritual might affect our community. Make your own list and keep it as a reference. We look to words like bonding, building, informing, uplifting, honoring, acknowledging, enriching, or engaging. Most rituals will incorporate more than one purpose, but they should have a primary one that becomes woven into every aspect of the ritual vision. When you develop your ritual this way, your “honoring” ritual will probably also end up a very “bonding” event.
Exercise
Write down as many descriptive action verbs and adjectives that describe what you see your community benefiting from, experiencing, or feeling in ritual. Add this to your ritual notebook.
Both purpose and style help define what type of ritual you are creating. We often use descriptive style words like these to describe what the ritual experience will be like: experiential, theatrical, spiritual, transformative, celebratory, ecstatic, devotional, or meditative. Here you will use every bit of information you have gathered. What is the ritual purpose? What methods of ritual style will your community likely respond to best?
Who are your ritual team members and what are their abilities and desires? A ritual is a gift, and like any gift it is more important that it comes from your heart than what exactly it contains. How the gift is received is often more important than what the gift is. A highly spiritual ritual will not be received well by a group that does not share spiritual beliefs. In many cases, though, you will have a wide range of choices to make in what to offer any specific community.
Inspiration
Ritualistas find inspiration all around them, in nature, in spirituality, in people, and in their interactions. We got you started in observing by looking at your community, noting all the things that make each community unique. Before we can have anything to say we need to quiet ourselves and listen. Place yourself in the imagined essence of your working community and feel, hear, and imagine what is filling that community consciousness. We can observe the thoughts, circumstances, and issues that are current in the many individuals of our community. They show up in our ideas or images of what our community is—in a small sense, this is a vision.
Ritual is spoken in the language of symbols. To find the inspiration that fits a community, you need to take your most objective observations and translate them into the language of symbols. You might observe anger, frustration, pride, or accomplishment in individuals and gain some insight into what is most influencing of the individual experience. Sometimes we avoid the most obvious symbols because they seem, well, so obvious. A sprout, seed, or egg will always resonate as a symbol for new life or a beginning. This is the nature of symbol in ritual: sometimes the most direct symbol will be the most effective, no matter how obvious.
Just as you should have a primary ritual purpose, you should have primary symbology that will support your purpose. Even when you include several thoughts into your ritual intent, a single strong symbolism to demonstrate the primary purpose will usually make a stronger ritual. Keep it simple!
Be educated in the events that are affecting individual lives in your audience community. A birth in a community of a hundred may not seem like much of an influence. One significant experience can affect a small subgroup profoundly but then also ripple outward, causing many to think about or be touched be the nature of an event like a birth or death. Drawing upon what is current and evident in the life of your community for your ritual purpose will often lead to incorporating the most effective ritual symbology for that moment.
A great prop or trick of sleight-of-hand magic has inspired many a ritualista to then develop a deeper purpose as the ritual is defined. Anything that evokes a sense of awe in us opens a channel to our subconscious, making the experience memorable. The yearly calendar, the seasonal changes, even weather trends create a shared impact on a community. Our region’s local specifics, from a high pollen count to an invasion of cockle burr or a shortage of woodpeckers, all can inspire a symbolic examination of our world through ritual.
Our collective or individual stories are an account of an event or experience. These words that describe our experience help translate our ideas, our observations, into a symbolic form others can hear in their subconscious. Since they arose from the here and now, they will always reflect something current. These personal stories can be difficult to work with directly; we are too close to them to recognize the symbology. In ritual, the telling of personal stories to others can transform them into tales with mythic status.
Beyond these specific stories, we have the stories of hundreds of cultures to draw upon, to reflect the symbology demonstrated through our community experience. Native people from the poles to equatorial regions have culturally based tales, often animist or shamanic in origin. They are a ritual resource that offers a story for every ritual purpose. Anthropological studies of indigenous peoples are another rich source of story and myth. As we move outside our own ancestral heritage we must be careful in the use of culturally based stories. Starhawk advises: “But when we take over the symbols or practices of another tradition without permission, acknowledgment, training, or commitment to the real-life struggles of the people, we are in effect appropriating their culture … ” 7
Children’s stories, parables, and folktales can work well when adapted to your ritual inspiration and symbology. Children’s classics, from the brothers Grimm to the tales of the Turkish trickster Nasreddin Hodja and even modern children’s books, can provide source material for the story needed for your ritual.
“Stone Soup” is an old folk story in which a hungry stranger persuades local people of a town to give him food. A traveler arrives with an empty cooking pot. The villagers are unwilling to share their food. He goes to a stream and fills the pot with water, dropping a large stone in it, and builds a fire under it. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what he’s doing. The traveler answers, “Making stone soup.” He says it tastes great, it just needs a garnish to improve it. The villager adds a few potatoes to the soup. More and more villagers each add to the pot until a delicious soup is complete and eaten by them all. Now imagine that story as part of a ritual, where the contributions from the community are symbols of health, prosperity, and healing. (See the chapter 12 ritual, “Ritual: Stone Soup.”)
Most tales and myths are already written using the language of symbols and symbolic acts. They are meant to inspire the reader, and can guide the ritualista to think within the language of symbols when seeking inspiration from them. Myths already have a resonance with our collective psyche. Even when they are altered for a ritual purpose we are predisposed to find their content compelling.
Find the Story
Think of ritual as the framing of a story. An opening statement sets the stage, there is development of the storyline, the empowerment of action, and then the grounding conclusion. Nearly every effective ritual will follow this outline. Each part is an important aspect in the development of the story, and yet each part can take a myriad number of forms.
Essential to your ritual is the relevance and type of storyline. To discern from the many types of stories, these definitions from Donna Rosenberg will help us sort out some story types:
- • “A myth is a sacred story from the past.”
- • “A folktale is a story that, in its plot, is pure fiction and that has no particular location in either time or space.”
- • “A legend is a story from the past about a subject that was, or is believed to have been, historical.” 8
American mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote the most complete works of comparative mythology available. Study of his research, writings, and thought is inspiring training for the ritualista. “Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.” 9
Myths to inspire you may come from cultures all over the world, including Norse, Celtic, East Indian, Chinese, Sumerian, Egyptian, and African. Many indigenous cultures have stories and myths passed by oral tradition that now are available through research, including Aboriginal, Native American, South American, and Inuit. Myths follow a familiar format. They have strong, usually godlike characters who are confronted with a problem to solve or quest to complete. There is usually a twist in the story that results in a resolution unique to the context. Key to the nature of myth is that somehow the story’s resolution can be applied to our common human experience.
Most familiar are the Greco-Roman stories, as they are some of the earliest myths that are fully documented. Their relevance to human psychology is evidenced by their use in clinical terminology, from Oedipus to Psyche. Greco-Roman stories contain most human archetypes and describe every aspect of the human condition. These myths should be a familiar reference for anyone serious about community ritual. They can be a primary source of inspiration and are easily accessible. Having been active in the Western consciousness for thousands of years, they contain a subconscious, symbolic connection with us, whether in exact retelling or by subtle reference. Their powerful messages can be used as they arose within the classic myth or to support a different or derivative ritual vision.
Example
In the myth of Icarus, Daedalus (his father) built two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before taking off, Daedalus warned his son to follow his path and not fly too close to the sun. Overcome by the thrill of flight, Icarus soared higher into the sky. He rose higher, too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Soon Icarus had no wings left and fell into the sea and drowned.
This myth could be used in ritual as a metaphor to symbolically connect to:
- • A youth not heeding an elder’s wisdom
- • A person not knowing restraint
- • A person filled with ego meeting calamity
- • A community reaching for heights outside their capability
- • Being blinded by excitement after initial success
If you have never read mythology texts and want to get a simplified overview, look for resources adapted for children.10 They contain the essence of many stories, and once you find one that can support your ritual idea, you can read more deeply for the context and details that defines it.
Adaptive Myth
Ancient myths that have entered into our common psyche carry the power of the archetypical characters and story inside them, even when we modify the story to suit our ritual purpose. Mythic reference can prepare us to experience spiritual mystery. Even with a different storyline the strength of the original myth can empower the presented symbology. As an example, we have used the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur effectively in ritual.
In this myth, the hero, Theseus, responds to the injustice of Greek children being offered as sacrifice to the monster Minotaur on the isle of Crete every seven years to appease the threats of war from King Minos. Theseus takes the place of one of the children, and on arrival conspires with King Minos’s daughter, the spoiled and bored Princess Ariadne. She gives him a ball of string to mark a path back through the labyrinth maze and a sword to slay the Minotaur. All she asks is to be taken away so others may adore her for her beauty. Theseus succeeds, and on a stop while sailing home, the princess falls asleep on a remote island, the island villagers adore her, and Theseus then sails away.
This myth has many levels to it: the hero righting injustice, conspiring with one of questionable stature and ethics, a trick to gain advantage against insurmountable odds, the hero’s success, and then the bargainer getting what she deserves. These elements speak to classic human confrontations, and even if we extract a small portion of the myth for our ritual, our story will resonate with the power of the whole.
In this adaptive myth, “Naming and Claiming the Shadow,” ritual participants wore an adhesive name tag, randomly received, with a negative personality trait written on it. They followed a maze and passed by the Minotaur, who read the tags and insulted them about their written failing. Theseus approached and the confrontation ensued with the Minotaur. As they worked around the circle battling, participants released these traits by sticking them to the Minotaur’s mane. The fight then carried the battling pair outside the circle, and Theseus returned with the head and mane of the Minotaur, which was burned, disposing of the unwanted traits.
Here is how the ritual intent and description were offered to participants:
Naming and Claiming the Shadow
Ritual intent
Using the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, identify and become intimate with the diversity of our shadow names. Discard our unclaimed shadow elements.
Ritual description
Carry the shadows of your community in the walk of sacrifice to the Minotaur. The way has twists and turns, but the psyche always follows the thread to guide the way back. What hero can save you and offer your own time of choice? Confront and embrace the monster as is your fate. Take the piece that ties it all together.
This ritual theme was about self-awareness and symbolically releasing negative personal traits from our shadow selves. We confronted the Minotaur, transferred the traits to him, and then vanquished him and these unwanted elements. Even though we took liberties with the myth, participants recognized the analogy between our hero confronting a seemingly invincible foe and each of us facing our inner dark side as similar and heroic acts.
The direct involvement of the participants in this adaptation brought that deeply embedded archetypical relationship into each person’s ritual experience. While the actual myth of Theseus and the Minotaur was not accurately presented, they witnessed and aided the hero in victory against impossible circumstances. This demonstrates the power of adapted myth included in your ritual story to carry forward your ritual intent. In researching myths or stories, you may not be looking for the complete ritual storyline. Most often you are looking for archetypical analogies that can be made through reference or inference to the main theme of the myth. Also consider any myth or story from a different perspective. How would Ariadne tell the tale of Theseus? How would the sun relate the story of Icarus?
Everyone has experienced brainstorming—being asked to come up with ideas for some project. Learning to be effective when generating ritual ideas is more difficult. In 2014, we needed to create a series of rituals around the festival theme, gratitude (see chapter Two’s ritual). We did what we usually do, a brainstorming session while traveling by car. We taped the discussion and realized it was a great way to demonstrate how to use brainstorming to inspire ritual. Here are some notes from that session:
How do you show gratitude? Does the object of gratitude need to know or feel gratitude for you to express it? No one needs know that you feel gratitude; it is about the feeling. It doesn’t need to be validated by anyone.
What is gratitude? Gratitude is a state of being and a way of life. First, learn to be aware of the blessings in your life. Understand that but for the grace of a higher power or fortune, things could have gone another way. Don’t look at the world as a glass half full or half empty, but with pure joy just knowing there is a glass waiting for you.
What does one look like when living in a state of gratitude? Gratitude is a state of awe and optimism that never ends. The more gracious you are, the more things you have to be grateful for. When you adopt an “attitude of gratitude,” life begins to give you additional blessings. Happiness is simply appreciating all you have no matter what it is. Gratitude is the opposite of feeling entitled.
What does gratitude look like? Making you feel thankful because you feel like you are special, to live in gratitude. A ritual about gratitude might be about making people feel special.
What makes a person feel special? Which actions best reflect gratitude? People getting noticed for something that may not be obvious as a quality, being attentive to others’ qualities. Ritual might include the careful observation of others, and then a reflection on what is observed.
Graciousness is from gratitude? We rely on the benefit of the doubt, assume the best of everyone. A presumption of good intention makes gratitude authentic. We are grateful for kind acts, but not that another did it. We presume that they sincerely wanted to be kind without thought for themselves.
To translate gratitude to ritual, how do we engage participants, what do they do? What do we learn from gratitude? To be humble? To appreciate others? We learn that it is safe to give. When people show gratitude for what you offer it makes you want to do it again. It reinforces a behavior of Generosity of Spirit (GOS): a good concept to use to model what gratitude is in ritual. It is listening to others, being polite, eliciting feelings from others, making others comfortable and at ease. GOS is what it takes to offer gratitude and appreciation for the contributions of those who may have slapped you in the face in the past. Acknowledge all who built the festival, even in absentia and after a harmful leaving. Read all the names in ritual. Appreciate those attending, those who have left, those who have passed, those who can’t attend now. Honor all categories in stages: guests, workshops, kids, etc.
How does gratitude make you feel? Like crying, emotional relief, a momentary reprieve from self-doubt. It is a recognition of self-worth, and worth in general. You feel pride. Gratified means well thanked. It affirms a choice another has made, implies value within another’s choice.
Why is it hard to express gratitude? It is at the core of prayer and devotion. An expression of gratitude to deity. If gratitude isn’t a core element of your spirituality, how can you express it to each other?
Can gratitude grow in an atmosphere of blame? Gratitude cannot exist when you are blaming someone else for your problems. Maintain an “attitude of gratitude.” The need to blame makes a difficult human medium for gratitude to grow in. Blame is not accepting responsibility for your circumstances. Disempowered people are stingy with gratitude. Empowered people don’t blame. People who do not fear empowering others can offer gratitude.
Summary of ideas to integrate in gratitude rituals:
- • Display levels of thankfulness in gratitude.
- • Cosmos, universes, solar systems, planets that sustain life.
- • Forces of nature, the elements, seasons, moon cycles.
- • Humans are unique life forms, connected in a moment.
- • Our gods and their roles for us.
- • Ancestry, lineage, and lifelong influences and happenstance.
- • Wonder, beauty, lovers, children, work.
- • Occasions, times of challenge, despair, take risks and opportunity, find resources needed.
- • Being here, now, all together, by choice.
- • All who contributed, large and small, teaching, acts, crafts.
- • Bring participants through all the levels of thankfulness. Ask them to draw forward into their consciousness one example of thankfulness at each level.
- • Focus on an experience that makes each individual feel special in some way.
- • Develop techniques to demonstrate and encourage an “attitude of gratitude.”
- • Develop exercises to experience being attentive to others’ qualities.
- • Model a Generosity of Spirit attitude: listening to others, being polite, eliciting feelings from others, making others comfortable and at ease.
- • Develop personal pride, empowerment over blame. Acknowledge with gratitude even those who have harmed us.
- • Include humble prayer and devotion to deity.
Essential to productive brainstorming is asking creative and relevant questions that explore a topic, and then documenting the answers you discover. All this material then becomes a resource when we create ritual.
Visioning is a special type of experiential brainstorming that is intuitive and creative. Considered by some to be a natural talent, we believe a serious will to understand and employ all the tools presented here can allow anyone to learn to envision the ritual experience. Visioning is that part of ritual development that requires the most practice. It helps to know your audience and learn their issues.
Visioning includes every aspect affecting the environment of your audience. It is very much like guided meditation. Imagine all the details, the blocking, sounds, and smells. Be aware of thoughts or emotions that bubble to the surface as you create a complete model of a participant’s experience in ritual. When you have a significant personal experience, you may relive it in your memory, slowly adding in all the layers of what was sensed and felt as it occurred. Using ritual visioning, create what you imagine the ritual experience to be, and then add layers of sensory “tracks.” Each track is another stimulus refining, adding to, and moving the participant toward the ritual purpose. We live in an era where we are sensually bombarded with media telling a story. In ritual visioning, your mind is the camera used to place yourself in a realistic “movie” of how your ritual will unfold. As you “live” the ritual experience, note which areas seem inauthentic, or which don’t have enough action or sensory experience to support the results you expect. You will vision your ritual many, many times as the outline and plan develop. With each visioning, the details become clearer, and also what may be missing or incomplete will start to appear for you. When working in a team it is very effective to lead each other through this process.
Once you have some experience designing ritual this process becomes second nature. To get started, having a general outline of ritual organization to refer to is helpful to make sure you cover all the things a participant would encounter. A written format is the first major tool in your ritual toolbox.
Review the results of your ritual team’s initial brainstorming of the whole ritual experience. Try to see it through the eyes of the participant. Does it flow from one part to another? Imagine what a person without any expectation or preconceived notion of this ritual would feel. Make a mental space for questions to bubble up into your consciousness. Where should I be standing? How will I know what to do? Will I understand what I see? Will the action distract me from feeling the emotions of the intent? Is there something missing? The deeper you are able to create a mental experience of your ritual, the more precise your assessment can be.
Your sense of the audience’s direction, community issues, current events, and even economic conditions may shape the direction of this process. Look at the broadest limits imposed by the shared experience of your audience, and seek areas where you see relevance and an impact in people’s lives. Placing limitations on the scope of your ritual can be beneficial in shaping that initial canvas of ideas. A ritual designed to truly develop or effectively explore a simpler vision often outshines one with too broad a scope. Starhawk describes the three levels of impact within effective ritual: “Ritual is most powerful when it works on multiple levels: the cosmic, the community, and the personal, giving us each a stake in the outcome.” 11
Working Within Limits
Much of our challenge in developing community ritual has been in creating large group rituals for festivals. As both blessing and curse, we were charged with the limitation of developing specific ritual experiences that explored the theme for that year. It was a curse because writing a single ritual specific to a subject can be difficult enough. Writing a series of rituals to express various approaches to a theme was even more demanding. Writing within this limitation was a blessing because we were forced to dig deeper and probe the sometimes subtle aspects of a larger motif.
Theme work in ritual can be a most difficult limitation. We all tend to find inspiration within our daily, personal, and community life. These are limiting factors for us. You may have to reach out to others with more experience if the theme is beyond your scope. No one can be expected to have complete experience in all areas of life. In these cases, much like an author, “go to the source.”
The limitations of a theme can also be liberating. You may collect many great ritual ideas through brainstorming relating to a topic. Using the limitation of theme as a filter, you can quickly sort through to find the ones better left for another ritual. Most devotional or seasonal celebration rituals have themes, so whatever ideas emerge, they will never be wasted.
Ritual: Naming and Claiming the Shadow
Location: Sacred Harvest Festival, 2004
© Judith Olson Linde and Nels Linde
Ritual context
This ritual was written for participants to work with their shadow selves, those parts of ourselves we are not so proud of. To do this effectively, participants were only asked to “carry” those traits, which were then ritually destroyed through this adaption of a Greek myth. This is a wonderful example of an adaptive myth that was used to confront negative emotions but from a positive perspective.
Ritual intent
Using the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, identify and become intimate with the diversity of our shadow names. Discard our unclaimed shadow elements.
Ritual description
Carry the shadows of your community in the walk of sacrifice to the Minotaur. The way has twists and turns, but the psyche always follows the thread to guide the way back. What hero can save you and offer your own time of choice? Confront and embrace the monster as is your fate. Take the piece that ties it all together.
Ritual setup and supplies
A simple, three-turn labyrinth was defined in the circle with barn lime and lit with tea light candles on the ground. The Minotaur wore an elaborate mask and a long, flowing mane of twine, foam hooves, a sword, and a cloak. He sat at the center near the fire. The Priest and shadows acted as guides. A pole was set upright in a cardboard tube for the mask to be placed on near the conclusion of the ritual. A papier-mâché openable Moon Egg sculpture and a soft snake sculpture were used as props. The “golden thread” used was yellow mason’s line, later cut and distributed with a small moon bead to be added to a tribal bead necklace gifted in a prior ritual. Adhesive name tags were marked with shadow traits (see the list following).
Team members
- • 4–6 shadow assistants dressed in all black with black face paint and black hats. These also acted as the choir.
- • Priest (lead spirit worker)
- • Theseus with sword
- • Minotaur with mask, mane, tail, sword, cloak, and foam hooves
- • Ariadne as a young goddess
- • Three Fates characters
Ritual script
Participants entered the woods and moved through an induction path to get to the circle. They encountered shadow guides along that path who chant-whispered as they walked by, washing them with a cacophony of thoughtful sound:
“Conceal myself … reveal myself … heal myself,
know myself … find myself … free myself.”
Ariadne was waiting at the ritual circle entrance and asked all participants to pause and aid the community by carrying whatever shadow burden the gods may decree. Participants then chose a shadow tag (adhesive name tag) at random, affixed it on their chest, and entered the circle area. They were taken around by the Priest to form a circle. There was a brief sacred space setup by the Priest, who began casting with the staff, saying:
“With this bone that is her essence, with ocher her blood, I chant into being the magick circle. From the void of Khaos, the self, protected by Nyx, and encased as are the stars within the shell of moonless night, grows the embryo of consciousness. This circle is between the worlds where all is possible. Time waits for Luna as she hides. Like the snake swallowing the cosmic egg the moon has been swallowed into the womb of space. … It is done.”
The Priest was preceded around the inside of the circle by a shadow who smudged with sacred smoke. Behind the participants, outside the circle, were two shadows with antler rattles that sounded like bones. They stayed even with the smudger but varied their rattling in height as they moved. A fourth shadow started the Moon Egg passing hand to hand around the circle of participants, and then picked up the soft snake and followed the egg around the circle, symbolically “chasing” it. At completion, the snake was coiled around the egg back at the West.
The quarters were called simply by the Priest:
“Blessed is the sacred air, for breath is life.”
“Blessed is the sacred fire, which warms the hearth.”
“Blessed is the sacred water, which washes away.”
“Blessed is the sacred earth, which renews us.”
The Priest, with help from the shadows, now guided the circle of participants into the labyrinth while unraveling a spool of golden thread onto the ground. As the participants reversed upon themselves in the turns of the labyrinth, the shadows made chiding, mocking introductions among facing participants:
“Repression, meet Envy here, the great distracter. And Self-Pity, I’m sure Addiction can help you out!”
Once the Priest reached the center, he left the rest of the golden thread at the Minotaur. As the participants got to the center and faced the Minotaur, he greeted and confronted their carried shadow tags, threatening to claim them (ad-libbing):
“Welcome, Anger—I can hold you! … Shame, let me mix you with Guilt and
make a wash for my mane. … Addiction, when will you have enough?”
The participants then circled around the central fire and reversed in the labyrinth to follow the golden thread back out to re-form the circle. The shadows began the song “Cauldron of Changes,” by Lindie Lila.
Theseus now emerged from the woods with a sword and slowly followed the golden thread into and through the labyrinth slowly and deliberately. After he passed, a shadow followed him and removed the golden thread and collected the labyrinth candles into a basket so the circle was cleared.
The song ended as Theseus confronted the Minotaur. They battled with swords, moving outward to the edge of circle. As Theseus backed the Minotaur around close to the circle of participants, the shadows followed and encouraged participants to add their shadow tags to the Minotaur’s mane, saying, “Take your chance!! Unburden yourself now!!”
The shadows facilitated getting all tags from participants and onto the mane. When this was complete, the battling pair backed out into the woods where the battle raged out of sight, and then there was silence.
Enter the three Fates, who spoke in turn to each person:
“What speaks to you?”
“What must you release?”
“What makes you whole?”
And they held, cut, and gave a piece of golden thread to each participant.
A shadow followed, handing out moon beads from the opened Moon Egg
prop, and the other shadows helped participants tie the moon bead onto
the golden thread. This Moon Egg necklace was a symbol of their personal
path back from the shadow confrontation with the Minotaur.
The sound of the Minotaur roaring and swords clanking could be heard every little while, but they were still out of sight in the woods. The Priest kept Theseus and the Minotaur updated on the Fates’ progress handing out the golden thread. As the Fates finished, there was one last huge bellow and then silence. After a pause and some bone rattling, Theseus returned with the mask/head of the Minotaur with tags stuck to its mane and placed it on the center pole.
A Pagan variation of a song was started: “I Release,” by Rickie Byars Beckwith and Michael Beckwith.
Theseus exchanged his sword for a torch and circled to the building energy of the song. As the energy was near climax, Theseus set fire to the Minotaur’s mane with the shadow name tags on it. The energy climaxed with the mane completely burning up to the mask. After a pause the entire ritual team squatted and modeled placing their hands on the earth and lowering their heads in an action of grounding in silence.
The Priest entered and gave Theseus his new Moon Egg necklace. He circled once with it as Priest said:
“As at the time of rebirth, I accept no negative thoughts, words, or deeds from
others. I flesh my own bones and bring my own shadow fresh to this world.
Knowing the shadow within I transform, and remember, and find balance.”
The Priest donned his own new Moon Egg necklace and thanked the four directions, rattling at each quarter. The shadows followed the Priest outside the circle, rattling the antlers. The Moon Egg and snake, each carried by a shadow, slowly chased each other once around circle. The Priest said to Theseus:
“Come, let us carry the mask of our shadow to the celebration, and there bind our knowledge lest we forget. The circle is open.”
The drums began for the procession back to the gathering location. The Priest took the hand of the first person Northwest of West and peeled the circle back on itself deosil and outward, then back around to West and past, and back out the gate, leading the exit procession.
Shadow traits for tags
Abuse, addiction, alienation, anger, apathy, argumentativeness, arrogance, bigotry, blame, compulsiveness, confusion, cynicism, deceit, denial, depression, despair, detachment, disdain, disowned, domination, envy, fear, greed, guilt, hate, ignorance, indifference, intimidation, intolerance, insecurity, irresponsibility, isolation, jealousy, judgmental, lies, manipulative, narrow-mindedness, opportunism, over-indulgence, pain, pessimism, procrastination, purposelessness, racism, repression, resentment, rigidity, self-centeredness, self-consciousness, self-doubt, selfishness, self-pity, sexism, shame, short-sightedness, spite, stubbornness, violence.
7 Starhawk, “Creating Community Ritual,” Communities magazine, Issue 154, www.ic.org/creating-community-ritual.
8 Donna Rosenberg, Folklore, Myth, and Legends: A World Perspective (Columbus, OH: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2001), pp. xiv–xxv.
9 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Novato, CA: New World Library, 3rd edition, 2008), p. 1.
10 For example, “Myths, Legends, Fables and Folklore,” at www.planetozkids.com/oban/legends.htm.
11 Starhawk, “Creating Community Ritual.”