circle rituals
The Most Challenging Rites
The most difficult kind of rituals to write and execute are large group rituals (what I call circle rituals). There are many reasons for this. The first is that Witch rituals just weren’t designed to be large. Back in the 1950s, no one envisioned a group of fifty-plus people getting together to celebrate a sabbat magickally. For several decades it’s likely that there were only a few thousand self-identified Witches living in the United States and Great Britain. Maybe there were enough Witches in London or New York City for such things (along with just a lot of curious folks), but not in most places.
The second problem with large rituals is that they encourage passivity. Witch ritual is designed to be engaging, not just for the High Priestess and anyone who might be directly helping her but for everyone involved. Witchcraft is not a spectator sport, but in group settings it often becomes exactly that. Witchcraft is not meant to be celebrated by Witches sitting on their hands as if they were in a Christian church; it’s meant to be actively celebrated by everyone at a sabbat rite.
Raising energy and engaging in magickal practices requires trust in those around you, and that trust is a multifaceted thing. Generally we are trusting that the people we are celebrating with have some sort of understanding of just how magick works. When someone doesn’t know what they’re doing while creating the cone of power or calling the watchtowers, that confusion can often be felt by everyone in circle.
There are many Witches who don’t have the patience for new or poorly educated practitioners, but I’m not one of them. I love the energy that excited newcomers bring with them, but I’m also aware that as a ritual leader I’m going to have spend some extra time going over the basics before and during the ritual. Trust extends to ritual leadership, and a good leader needs to be able to trust in themselves to explain what’s happening during ritual and make up for any shortcomings or confusion that those with less experience might have.
Trust extends to everyday concerns too. Trust means having confidence that everyone in the circle will be treated with dignity and respect. If the young lady next to you is worried about being on the receiving end of leering looks or being inappropriately touched, it will be nearly impossible for her to focus on magick (and rightly so).
Perfect love and perfect trust is a lofty goal and is often unobtainable in large group settings, but no one should worry about being sexually harassed or assaulted at a Witch ritual. Some may think I’m exaggerating a bit here, but make no mistake, I’m not. I have met many women over the years who have been inappropriately hugged, touched, and kissed at public rituals. Many of these people stopped going to public rituals or even engaging in coven practice. “Perfect love and perfect trust” is hard to attain, but we should at least be able to get to “respect and obtain consent” consistently as a community.
While I believe large rituals can be difficult to pull off, the rewards are tremendous. There’s a special satisfaction that comes from presenting something to your extended community. Your large ritual might end up being the gateway for a seeker new to the Craft, or it might reawaken a seasoned practitioner’s love for magick and ritual! There’s also the incredible feeling that comes from raising energy with fifty or even a hundred people. Knowing that we can have those types of large communities in the Witching World is something to get excited about.
Large rituals are an example of service to the Witch community. We present rituals for others, not for ourselves. The easiest way to ruin a large group ritual is to suffer from the delusion that we are presenting ritual for ourselves. Ritual leaders are the facilitators, not the stars.
There’s a person in my local community who loves to present ritual because they turn it into a personal showcase. They dance and sing in the middle of it for no reason other than to dance and sing in front of people. To them, ritual isn’t about connecting to the gods, the seasons, or magick; it’s about being the center of attention. The end result is a disjointed ritual that doesn’t serve the needs of anyone (not even the person who put it together). So remember to keep the focus on everyone in the circle, and not just the people presenting the ritual.
Ritual Should Give People Something
to Do and Keep Them Engaged
This might be the hardest part of planning a large ritual. It’s not easy to come up with an activity that engages thirty to two hundred people all at once. Many people take the easy way out and create rituals that feature a lot of sacred drama or guided meditations. I understand the inclination, and these things aren’t always bad, but most people aren’t “doing” very much in those types of situations. And I know several people who tend to tune out entirely when such things are offered in circle.
I think the ideal at a large public ritual is to have two activities of some sort for the working part of the rite. Something that requires a bit of physical activity is good. Just making people walk somewhere makes them a part of the ritual, but the most important thing is connection. Is there an opportunity in the ritual for everyone to connect with deity, the dead, magick, or the Wheel of the Year? Is an environment being created where people feel magickal and engaged?
Ritual should indulge the senses. That’s why Witches use incense (smell and sight), chants and bells (sound), salted water (physical touch), and candles (sight). If something looks like Witchcraft, it will in turn feel like Witchcraft on a spiritual level. When a ritual looks good, I find myself paying more attention to it. I know how superficial that sounds, but it’s true for most people.
My most successful public rituals have been the ones that offered several different types of “doing.” At Imbolc, for example, you could have people speak with a drawn-down goddess Brigid, welcome in the reborn light, and then use that light for magickal purposes. All of these things can be done simultaneously by the people in the circle if it’s all explained clearly. Some explanation of what you want people to do during a large group ritual is especially important, and it’s something I often find myself subtly repeating two or three times during the course of a working.
Don’t be afraid to explain things a third or even fourth time. It’s better to get things right than to have everyone wander around aimlessly. This is when having a large group to assist you in putting together a ritual can be a major help. Let everyone directly involved in the rite help everyone else out, or have them demonstrate what you want everyone else at the rite to do.
Perhaps most importantly, large group ritual should offer everyone a “moment.” Moments don’t have to be long. Simply giving everyone a moment to say the name of a deceased loved one at Samhain can be enough. It’s the little things that often have the most lasting impact. Part of good ritual facilitation is making sure everyone at the ritual has had a chance to engage in it to some degree. When a person with mobility issues goes to a ritual built around dancing, they may have trouble finding their moment within it, so it’s up to you to make sure they do.
Moments and experiences can’t always be scripted either. When we put together a ritual, we’re setting up a container for the experience. What we can’t necessarily dictate is how that experience is going to play out. Everyone experiences magick, the Wheel of the Year, and the gods differently. There are atheist Witches and polytheistic Witches; because of that, a ritual about Brigid will resonate on different levels depending on the individuals.
I’m a bit of a talker, and I sometimes find myself writing overly wordy rituals. This can be problematic. No one wants to be spoken at for thirty minutes, and long, drawn-out monologues often result in people losing a sense of what the ritual is actually about and what their role in it is. I was at an Ostara ritual once where the High Priest spent fifteen minutes explaining the Wheel of the Year to everyone in attendance, and most of us ended up tuning out. No one wants to hear that. If the words are not essential to your ritual, cut them out!
Staging and Theatricality
Coven and solitary rituals generally take place in a limited area, and most of what goes on in those sorts of rituals takes place primarily near or behind the altar. That’s not good enough in a circle ritual. To make everyone feel involved and close to what’s going on, all of the space in the circle has to be used. A ritual is not a play, and a Witch does not have to be a trained thespian to lead an effective public rite, but what’s required for large ritual goes a bit above and beyond what most Witches do in their smaller circles.
The first rule of big rituals is to go “big and slow.” Every word that is spoken in the circle should be said loudly and slowly. How it comes out might sound odd to the person saying it, but it will be appreciated by the person standing twenty-five yards away. In ritual, especially when we’re nervous, we have a tendency to speak quickly, which makes hearing words at a distance more difficult. In most cases, the Witches leading a public rite can’t speak slowly enough. Take time to enunciate each word and really pause between sentences.
Ritual actions should be big so that they can be easily seen. If you’re using an invoking pentagram (figure 2) when calling the watchtowers, draw a very large, person-size pentagram. When we’re performing the symbolic Great Rite in front of a hundred people, I raise my athame high up over my head and my High Priestess wife raises her chalice and then slowly lowers it so everyone can clearly see what she’s holding. Making large, dramatic gestures may sometimes feel foolish, but everyone in the circle will appreciate it.
Many Witches make the mistake of standing still when conducting a large ritual. Instead of standing behind the altar and reading the Charge of the Goddess, move around the entire circle while reading it. Make eye contact with as many Witches as possible, and share what you’re doing with the entire group instead of limiting action to only one part of a large space. When doing public ritual, I rarely stand behind the altar. Instead, I like to be within a few feet of everyone I’m circling with, at least for a few minutes.
The middle portion of the circle is the friend of every High Priestess, High Priest, quarter caller, and circle caster (figure 3). I’ve been to too many rituals where the people calling the quarters walked to the outside edge of the circle, essentially turning their backs on everyone they were circling with. Not only could no one see what they were doing, but no one could hear them either! If you’re calling the spirits of the east, by all means stand in the east, but do so in “center-east,” where most everyone will be able to at least hear or see you. The same goes for anyone casting the circle. In coven ritual with thirteen folks, it’s easy to simply walk around the outside of the circle, but if that’s done with sixty people in attendance, the person wielding the sword will get lost among all of those bodies. Stay in the middle.
Figure 3. The Middle of the Circle Is Your Friend
I don’t rehearse or practice my coven or solitary rituals, but for group ritual it’s a must! Everyone who is in the ritual should be familiar with what’s happening and aware of what their responsibilities are, and there’s no better way to figure those things out than through practice. Even the best set of ritual instructions will leave something out (even those in this book), so the only way to be sure of exactly what might happen during ritual is to do a practice run-through. Since most large public rituals have additional ritual roles that might include people we don’t generally work with, knowing how they do ritual and conduct their magickal business can be figured out only through practice.
Rehearsing also allows a group to get a good idea of just how long their ritual will be. I think the ideal amount of time for a large public ritual is about forty-five to seventy minutes. Anything shorter than forty-five minutes and people sometimes feel cheated; anything longer than that and people start to tune out. There are exceptions though. Samhain rituals will often run long, and perhaps a Beltane ritual with a maypole will too, but most people aren’t looking for a three-hour sabbat ritual. Rituals will generally run faster than most practice runs, simply because people tend to speak faster when fifty pairs of eyes are on them.
I know many Witches who believe that everything we say during ritual should be memorized. I’m not one of those Witches, and my memorization skills are absolutely awful. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading during a public ritual. However, having text available during the ritual is no substitute for practicing. Everything that we say should be practiced (out loud!) ahead of time. “Ritual speak” is often very different from how most of us normally talk, and it’s easy for our words to become garbled when reading something for the first time. (Also, no one wants to listen to someone struggle to pronounce a challenging or unfamiliar deity name such as Melusine.)
If you do choose to have a script available during public ritual, that script should be presentable. Something fresh off the printer or a few sheets of notebook paper are not good enough; put your script in an attractive-looking book or folder instead. I think it’s better to have a script available than to forget one’s lines or mess up the meaning of a ritual, which is something I’ve seen happen several times over the years. If someone’s part in a ritual is small (such as someone calling a quarter), decorated notecards are an attractive alternative as well.
Most rituals don’t require hard memorization either. Simply knowing what you’re going to be doing is often enough for the experienced ritualist, but having a script around in case you get off track can be a real lifesaver. I go off script all the time. Rituals are living, breathing things and sometimes they require slight adjustments instead of exact readings from something put together on a computer.
We tend not to think of things like cakes and ale as staging issues in ritual, but they are. Passing around one chalice during cakes and ale takes what can feel like an eternity during ritual. The easiest solution is to use several chalices, or better yet, pour individual cups of wine or juice and have them on a tray and ready to serve ahead of time. At the public rituals presented by my coven, we have four trays ready to go for cakes and ale, two full of drinks and two full of food. This makes distribution of cakes and ale easy and, most of all, quick. People get restless near the end of a ritual if they stand around for too long, and this is most noticeable at cakes and ale.
Some covens wear robes in rituals, some do things skyclad, and some are “come as you are.” I’ve been in all of those situations, but when it comes to public rituals, I’m almost always in a robe or some other type of magickal dress. When the people running a ritual are dressed up, it shows they care and are trying to create the proper atmosphere. It also helps focus attention on the ritual leaders, which makes giving out instructions in the circle easier.
Even a group that practices and does everything “right” at a public ritual is still likely to stumble now and again. The most important thing to remember about mistakes is that people don’t know something is a mistake until you tell them it is. Flub a line? Unless your audience is reading your script as you execute the ritual, no one will ever know. Laughing at yourself is acceptable too. Sometimes people just do things out of order, and it’s okay. Don’t get flustered!
Keep Control of the Ritual and
Avoid Too Many Moving Parts
Nothing derails a large public ritual faster than when the Witch leading the rite loses control of their ritual. I think most of us in the Witch community are nice people, so when someone starts talking out of turn, we don’t exactly know how to stop them from doing so or how to tell them that “now is not the time.” I’ve led dozens of large public rituals and this is still something I have trouble with. It doesn’t happen with much frequency, but occasionally you will no doubt run into someone who wants to be the “star” of your ritual and will do everything possible to make that happen.
The easiest way to avoid this is not to offer a lot of opportunities for people to talk publicly. There are individuals who will take advantage of a directive as simple as “Say out loud that which you want to be rid of,” and turn it into a ten-minute treatise on how terrible their life is. I always feel for such individuals, but it’s not fair to everyone else in ritual and changes the energy and dynamics of what the group is building together. When I do allow for people to speak in ritual, I have them do it all at once, or I specify slowly, deliberately, and forcefully that their remarks need to be no more than a couple of words or a short phrase. If someone begins to overstay their moment, it’s well within your rights as a ritual leader to cut them off. I know how ruthless this sounds, but your ritual will be better off for it.
Relying on the participants of a ritual to react or behave a certain way is a gateway to disappointment. I have a friend who likes to imagine all of their rituals as beautifully interactive celebratory rites. They plan on people toasting or perhaps engaging in games featuring competitive boasting. Such things often work in a coven situation, but they don’t work so well in situations where people aren’t familiar with one another. When we create ritual, we set up a container, and how people react in that container will vary from person to person. It’s not fair to rely on people at a ritual to behave a certain way or happily engage in things that are far outside their comfort zone just because you think they should.
I generally advise against drawing down (invoking) deities during large rituals. (Of course, I write that knowing there are three circle rituals in this book that call for drawing down deities.) A drawn-down goddess will often change the course of a ritual to her liking unless preparations have been made ahead of time, and that’s one of the keys. The circle ritual for Samhain in this book (in chapter 37) has the High Priestess drawing down the “Goddess of Death.” My wife assures me this is Persephone, but my wife has also had a long relationship with Persephone, so when we draw her down in ritual, certain conditions have been agreed to ahead of time.
Do I recommend asking deities to do (or not do) certain activities when they are invoked in ritual? Not particularly. They are deities after all, but if there’s an established relationship between mortal and deity, you probably won’t get in too much trouble for asking. Still, even with such an understanding ahead of time, there’s always the chance a goddess will change the ritual more to her liking. Even though I know that drawing down a deity is not always the best of ideas, the drama, danger, and excitement of it during public ritual makes it hard to resist.
When deity is drawn down in a group ritual, it’s often done in order to let everyone in the circle have an experience with that deity. In the Samhain and Imbolc circle rituals that are a part of this book, there’s an opportunity for everyone in the rite to converse with the Goddess. However, when we do that during ritual, we have individuals in place whose job it is to watch over the drawn-down Lady and not let anyone monopolize her time. A few other tips and tricks for managing such situations are included in the individual rituals.
Long pauses and silences are another way to lose control of a ritual. I have seen more rituals get off track during cakes and ale than I can count, generally because people are standing around waiting, with nothing to do. A line of seventy people all waiting to be cleansed at the entryway to a ritual generally makes for a long line of people chatting with each other, whispering, playing with their phones, and telling jokes. If the buildup for a ritual takes twenty or thirty minutes, you’re likely to lose everyone at your rite before it even begins.
If you don’t take your ritual seriously, no one else will either. Many people who present ritual forget that it’s a serious endeavor and, because of nervousness or some desire to be a stand-up comedian, use ritual time for joke telling. Jokes aren’t out of bounds at rituals and are even appropriate sometimes, but probably not before calling on your ancestors or trying to draw down the Horned God as the Dread Lord of Shadows at Samhain. If all the people involved in a ritual are telling jokes during the serious part of a rite, why should anyone take it seriously?
I think people like to be surprised during ritual. Doing something new or out of the ordinary creates a heightened sense of awareness. However, adding things to ritual that will likely result in people scratching their heads can ruin a rite and take people out of ritual headspace. The very definition of ritual references “a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order,” and if you get too far away from that, it’s possible that no one will recognize what you’re doing as a ritual.17 Ritual should be familiar enough that people can easily follow along to some extent.
People also expect certain things at certain rituals. Putting together a rite for one’s ancestors is perfect for Samhain, but it’s a bit out of left field when done at Beltane. It’s common to reference Maiden goddesses at Ostara, but less so at Mabon. We shouldn’t let such things stifle our creativity too much when creating ritual, but ritual should always have at least a touch of the familiar.
A ritual with too many moving parts is often a disaster waiting to happen. Most people can handle a couple of activities or even three, but seven? There’s a point at which participants will simply become overwhelmed and not know what to do. The more moving parts something has, the greater the chances are of that thing breaking. “Keep it simple, stupid” is a commonly repeated piece of advice, and I think it pertains to ritual too.
“Too many moving parts” can also be an issue in terms of the number of people you have involved in a ritual. Many years ago, a High Priestess friend of mine was putting together a ritual that required drummers and several singers, along with her usual cast of quarter callers, High Priests, and circle casters. The day of the ritual, none of her drummers showed up, she lost her voice, and all of her singers got sick. She doesn’t believe in using prerecorded music, so she had no backup plan for the absent singers and drummers. The ritual was obviously a disaster.
When planning a ritual, I do everything with the knowledge that I or a trusted friend might have to step in at any moment. If necessary, I can always call a quarter or pass out cakes and ale or whatever else is required. About the only person I ever have 100 percent confidence in is my wife, and that’s only because I know where she sleeps. Keep even the biggest rites simple enough that a ritual role can be adapted or filled in for on the fly, and always have a backup plan just in case.
Rituals Require Adaptation
Let’s say you’ve written an amazing ritual script and practiced your rite several times and yet it’s not quite working. This happens, and the smart ritualist will adapt, roll with the punches, and keep moving forward. Rituals are living, breathing things because they are full of living, breathing human beings. Even the most accomplished ritualist has a tale of two of things not working quite right.
At a large Pagan gathering several years ago, a friend of mine was leading a late ritual, so I went to see what they were up to. Apparently lots of other people did too, and they ended up with a line of about a hundred people waiting to get into the ritual. This person had made the decision to challenge every ritual attendee at the door with a sword. Each confrontation lasted at least thirty seconds to a minute.
Even if every challenge was super short, it was still going to result in wait times approaching thirty minutes before the rite even started. I was one of the first people in the ritual space and I immediately found myself having to pee, but there was no way out of space without leaving in a way that some might consider disrespectful. Two hours later, the ritual was finally done, but all I could concentrate on the entire time was not peeing my pants.
Circumstances often require us to change public rituals in order to accommodate the realities we’re facing and the expectations of others. If everyone at your ritual is expecting a riotous devotional to Dionysus and the ritual you’ve prepared is serious and sober, it’s going to be problematic. One time, my coven was leading a serious rite at a festival near where we live, and up until then the only rituals I’d presented at that particular festival had been lively and fun affairs. When everyone entered our ritual space, they were expecting a party, and I had to add an opening bit to our ritual to temper those expectations.
I have seen what should have been a good ritual become a miserable failure because no one bothered to check up on where the ritual was being held ahead of time. If your ritual is to be done outside, do you have a backup plan in case it rains? Just because your friend offered to let you use their backyard doesn’t mean it’s all clear of dog poop, and there’s nothing worse than a maypole dance held in an obstacle course. If you’re using a public park, make sure to get there early and check the grounds for sticks, trash, and other debris. If your ritual will be indoors at someone’s house, make sure the house is picked up and ready for people. These all may seem like things no one would ever overlook, but it happens.
Large rituals require a good amount of preparation and a large degree of flexibility. Nothing worth doing is easy, and that’s especially the case with public ritual, but the results are often worth the extra trouble. If you’re prepared for the various obstacles along the way and have a plan to get through or around them, everything will work out in the end.
17. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “ritual,” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ritual.