I possess God as tranquilly in the bustle of my kitchen … as if I were on my knees before the Blessed Sacrament … It is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God … When I cannot do anything else, it is enough for me to have lifted a straw from the earth for the love of God.
BROTHER LAWRENCE
Once you have met the ecstatic archetype through active imagination or dreamwork, you can enrich your experience by bringing the joy you find there into your conscious life. Ritual and ceremony are excellent forms for this. Like an empty cup, you can fill a ritual with joy and drink from it.
We will first explore the nature of ritual, and then see how we can incorporate it into daily life.
The Nature of Ritual
It seems to me that we have two duties in life: We must be responsible members of the culture we are born into, and we must also be everything we are within our deepest selves. To find our way between society’s expectations and our spiritual needs is the way of ritual. It is the way that makes the impossible possible.
Ceremony, from a Latin word meaning “sacredness,” is an ancient and powerful way to make concrete what you have learned through active imagination and dreamwork. As the poet William Butler Yeats said, “How but in custom and ceremony can innocence and beauty be born?” I would add, Where else but in ritual and ceremony can those 100,000 volts of divine energy be contained?
Meaningful ritual and ceremony affirm our relationship to the sacred and nourish both the spiritual and secular worlds. Our inner nature needs acknowledgment from our conscious personality as much as our egos need to remember their source in the collective unconscious.
The Lack of Meaningful Ritual in Western Society
We live in an age almost devoid of good-quality ceremony. If one is fortunate enough to be nourished by the great wealth of traditional rituals and ceremonies which are our cultural heritage, one can live safely in this richness. But an increasing number of people lose contact with these old ways and live in psychological poverty. Probably it is a painful but necessary stage of evolution to be denied the nourishment of tradition and collective ritual, but it seems a hallmark of contemporary people that we must address our inner lives as an individual matter. To do this successfully is to come out the other side into a sense of belonging and of community, the Heavenly Jerusalem. But there is a dry, arid time in between the old ways, which are so rich, and the new vision, which is the promise of a new age. It is that arid time which is the concern of any truly contemporary person. The Bhagavad-Gita expresses our dilemma: “The world is imprisoned in its own activity except when actions are performed as worship of God.”
The point of ritual is not to make magic, to dominate someone or something and make it bend to our will, but to make a divine connection, to experience a momentary unity of the two worlds. Greek artists often portrayed Dionysus and his followers with their heads thrown back in the ecstatic pose, and engaged in their favorite pastime, swinging. Swinging is the symbol of being poised between two worlds. This transcendence is the hallmark of Dionysus, and this is what the Dionysian ritual aims for. Nicos Kazantzakis put this beautifully in Report to Greco:
Greek serenity is intricate and tragic. A balance between fierce, opposing forces which, after a toilsome and prolonged struggle, succeeded in making peace with each other and in reaching the point prescribed by a Byzantine, mystic effortlessness. In other words, effort’s peak.
No drunkenness was permitted in the ancient Dionysian revels, because one had to be aware and conscious to avoid the evil spirits that came along with the aroma of the wine. The worshipers sipped the wine in full consciousness that the wine was the god; and in taking the wine into their bodies they took the divine ecstasy into their spirits.
Today, however, we have forgotten all this. Our models are no longer gods but technology. We speak of “man as machine” and “cybernetic models for thinking,” even “artificial intelligence.” These images have turned us away from the irrational realm and left us with only our rationality. Half of our potential reality is unlived.
A few of the old Dionysian rituals have survived in America, but usually more as quaint relics and excuses for parties than anything else. Halloween, for example, is a remnant of an old Dionysian ritual. The church rationalizes it by saying that it was the last fling of the evil element before the following day, All Saint’s Day, when the souls of the faithful are honored, revered, and respected. But the earlier meaning of Halloween, All Hallow’s Evening, was to honor the ecstatic, the Dionysian, even the demonic element of life back-to-back with All Saint’s Day. This balancing act made the “good” possible because what was labeled “bad” was also honored.
The same is true of Mardi Gras. In French, mardi gras means “fat Tuesday”—the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday. The joyous, ecstatic, Dionysian element of life is honored so that Ash Wednesday, which is a day of penance, austerity, and fasting, might have its own validity. Up until the twelfth century even the monks were allowed out of their monasteries on Mardi Gras. As long as they arrived home by first mass on Ash Wednesday, no questions were asked.
We have not completely excluded Dionysus from religion in our time. We see some return of Dionysus in the charismatic religious groups of all faiths that have arisen in the past few decades. The Quakers, whom we think of as staid, are in fact a remnant in our society of a Dionysian organization. The early group was called Quakers because the members, in their religious ecstasy—a central part of their worship—would quake. The body would begin to tremble and they would be filled with the spirit.
In New England a group called the Shakers persisted well into living memory, into the 1930s. In fact, in early 1987 two members were still alive. We remember them primarily for their furniture—fine, simple, handcrafted work of enduring beauty and strength that reflected their profound belief in God. In fact, the Shakers were another expression of Dionysus. It was a kind of monastic organization of both men and women, who lived separately and never married. As their religious ceremony they would dance at night in what was called a round dance. The men circled clockwise and the women circled counterclockwise until they danced themselves into a religious fervor, shaking and trembling; hence the name Shakers.
In these modern rituals Dionysus lives on. It is not necessary to designate a “Dionysian cult” in which goats are torn apart in order to honor ecstatic expression. The traditions that have come down to us were right and meaningful for the cultures they originally served, for people who believed without reservation in the literal reality of angels and the divine right of kings. But the very fact that we feel uncomfortable with some of these images and beliefs means that we need to search for a contemporary container for them, which is as valid for us as the early ones were for earlier people. In the medieval tradition of the church it was said that the church must change to remain the same. This gives us license to find new ways in order to be loyal to the old.
Creating Our Own Rituals
An old Jewish story, which touches me deeply, illustrates the fact that we do not have to depend on existing structure to make powerful ritual expressions:
Once upon a time there was a great traditional ritual for the inner protection and nourishment of the people. The rabbi and all the people of the community went to a particular tree, in a particular forest, in a particular place, on a particular day, and performed a highly prescribed ritual. Then, so the story goes, there were terrible times. A whole generation was scattered and the ritual was forgotten.
When things got better again, someone remembered that there was an old ritual for protection and nourishment, but he could remember only its overall structure. The rabbi and the people went into the forest, but they’d forgotten exactly which tree was the right tree. So they chose a tree and performed the ritual as best they could. And it was sufficient.
More hard times came, and another generation was excluded from the ritual. Somebody remembered that in the old days their ancestors had gone into the forest and done something, so the rabbi and the people went out into the forest and made up a ritual. And it was sufficient.
And then there were more bad times, and much more was lost. The people remembered that in the good old days their ancestors had done something or other, but they didn’t know when or what or where. So they just went out and did the best they could. And it was sufficient.
And then there were more hard times, and all that was left was the vague memory that in the olden days somebody had done something. So the new generation went out and improvised and did the best they could, intending their new ritual to be for the protection and nourishment of the people. And it was sufficient.
The moral to this story is clear: No matter what you do, whether you do it “right” or “wrong,” it will be sufficient as long as you do it with consciousness and in the best way that you know how. That is the nature of ritual.
Art as Ritual
We have defined sensuous as “the life of the spirit as seen through the senses.” This is the world of artists and poets, and this is the world of Dionysus, whose teachers were the Muses. Through works of art we can glimpse the spirit.
Through the arts, as with ritual and ceremony, we can live out those parts of ourselves that can have no practical expression. In this sense both art and ritual are, paradoxically, ways of doing something but not doing it. We satisfy the inner urge without doing external damage.
Our culture and the values we get from it demand that we give up in outer form the rougher Dionysian element. Thus for modern people so much of the Dionysian element is to be found in subtle forms of art, or ritual, or ceremony. Our disciplined Western faculties will go dead, dry, and colorless unless some Dionysian elements are included in them. Very often these “spectator sports”—looking at paintings, listening to music, watching movies, and so on—are the only way for us to get this refined Dionysian expression—and thank God for them!
The arts have always been a source of ritual for humankind, a way to express the inexpressible. In fact it is only in comparatively recent times that we have separated “art” from the rest of human expression. Many ancient cultures had real spiritual unity. What we have come to think of as their art—decorative pottery, sculpture, votive objects, paintings, dwellings, even weapons—were an extension and expression of the spiritual dimension, which they accepted without question as an integral part of life.
Theater and religious expression are closely related. We have seen how the celebration of Dionysus led to the creation of classical Greek theater. Similarly, the Mystery plays of Jesus led to Western theater. The word “profane,” which we think of as blasphemy, originally meant “porch of the church.” When dramas were a highly introverted expression they were done inside the church, near the altar: That was the worship of God. When a play or drama or ritual was made for the populace it was done on the porch of the church, and expressed outward for the mass of people to see. Polish director Jerzy Grotowski has said,
The theater, when it was still part of religion, was already theater: it liberated the spiritual energy of the congregation or tribe by incorporating myth and profaning or rather transcending it. The spectator thus had a renewed awareness of his personal truth in the truth of the myth, and through fright and a sense of the sacred he came to catharsis.
George Bernard Shaw once said that “fine art is the only teacher except torture.” I would add that those things which turn up in our lives as symptoms—certainly a form of torture—can be expressed ritually in arts such as painting, sculpture, poetry, novels, plays, films.
One of the great Dionysian flows in our culture is the call of the South Sea islands. Almost everybody in our technological culture has South Sea Islands fantasies, and they are most emphatically Dionysian in nature. The paintings of Paul Gaugin, a French painter at the turn of the century, express and embody for others the Dionysian dimension in which the artist was caught up.
For some years Gaugin, a successful stockbroker, had been a frustrated Sunday painter. One day he threw over his job and family and literally went off to the South Seas, where he painted scores of sensuous, colorful paintings of voluptuous island women that are considered masterpieces of modern art.
Gaugin went to the South Seas in search of a paradise, but he found instead a personal hell. His own life was a miserable mess and he died of syphilis in Tahiti. But—and this is the important part—he painted a paradise; and by means of his art, his ritual, he found the paradise he was looking for. And when we look at his paintings we too get some of this Dionysian quality and are refreshed.
Making Our Own Dionysian Rituals
Now that we have learned something of the transformative nature of ritual, we shall see how we can incorporate ritual—and Dionysian ritual in particular—into our own lives, making them richer and more deeply lived in the process.
Basic Rules
Before you engage in any ritual activities, please read and remember the following basic rules. (If you wish more detailed information on creating and ritualizing experiences, please see Inner Work.)
Getting Started
Getting started with ritual is very difficult for many of us. Ritual is so seldom included in our daily lives that when we find ourselves involved in a ceremony—even a familiar one such as a wedding—we may begin to feel embarrassed. This is especially true when the ritual we are performing is of our own creation. It is easy to think that the whole idea of ritual is silly and that nothing real can come of it. But ceremony and its results are very real. Don Quixote once commented that he was searching for the bread that was “better than wheat”—a reference to the Host. Ceremony in its depth is “realer than real,” just as the Host is more real than wheat.
Ceremony is a conscious event. Even the smallest act can become a powerful ritual. An act performed with symbolic intent sets up an exchange between the unconscious and the conscious that allows for progression toward unity. This exchange can move in two directions: A consciously performed act will effect deep psychological change. A ritual act that springs from a change in unconscious attitude will be expressed as a change in conscious attitude.
Psychologically, ritual is symbolic behavior. Please do not think that you have to engage in wild midnight revels to create a Dionysian ritual; you do not. Jung cautioned that,
The pagan religions met this danger by giving drunken ecstasy a place within their cult. Heraclitus doubtless saw what was at the back of it when he said, “But Hades is the same Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat.” For this very reason orgies were granted religious license, so as to exorcise the danger that threatened from Hades. Our solution, however, has served to throw the gates of hell wide open.
I am in a terrible dilemma because, although I stoutly respect and advocate public ceremonies, I can’t stand to do many of these things myself! I suspect that many people are like me. We learn to make rituals with our own personal expression. Of course, if you are fortunate enough to be comfortable with the old ways or with some of the new, modern, collective experiences, this would be an excellent way for you to express the ecstatic dimension.
Personalizing Rituals: Using Conscious Intent To Effect Deep Change
We modern people have to tailor our rituals for the exact situation we are in. For example, perhaps you would like to express something that is not possible to express directly—deep love for your best friend’s spouse, for example. This can have no outer manifestation, because it would be destructive on a number of levels. You might ritualize your expression of love, however, by giving a gift to that person; or, if even this is impossible, to someone you designate as a symbol in his or her place. If you invest the gift with your love, then in giving this symbol you will have ritually expressed your love. You would be surprised at how much lighter you can feel after even such a small ceremony!
Ritual can relieve us of something that has become an obsession and which is doing us absolutely no good at all. I knew a man who desperately wanted to run a four-minute mile but simply couldn’t accomplish it. The harder he tried the worse it got, and he even found himself going slower because of it. The unattainable mile had become his enemy, and it began to seem that the more he ran the further away it was. Running had become a grueling chore completely devoid of pleasure.
I suggested to him that instead of being angry at the mile, he honor it with the simple gesture of walking around the block. Holding the image of the four-minute mile in his mind, feeling himself in fact having run the distance, he walked in great consciousness around the block. Afterward he found he had let his obsession go, and on a deep level had accomplished his goal. Later, with renewed intent and with much less effort, he was indeed able to run well and joyously.
Running—indeed, all sports—are natural Dionysian activities. We have all heard of the runner’s high, that rush of euphoria that floods through runners after they have gone past their personal “wall.” This is a wonderful way to call up the joyous Dionysian energy. Those of us who cannot personally take part in a sport can reap some benefit by watching others participate. Football and baseball games certainly release a great deal of suppressed Dionysian energy, and the Olympics—which have been watched on television by something like 40 percent of the world’s population—are great unifying forces. If you can participate in sports with some consciousness of their ritual aspect, you can make psychological as well as physical leaps!
Rituals can also be used as a source of spiritual refreshment. One day before a lecture I became so caught up in worrying about what I was going to say that I had no energy for the lecture itself. A wise woman friend who was with me that day gave me excellent advice as to how I could call up the Dionysian energy that I sorely needed. She told me to roll a heavy towel into a ball and throw it on the floor with all the force I could muster, and to do this consciously in honor of Dionysus. Five minutes with that towel put a light in my eye and a spark in the lecture.
Ritualizing Unconscious Images: Changing Behavior with Images from Dreams or Active Imagination
Now that we have seen how we can use conscious intent to effect change on the unconscious level, let’s see how we can create rituals based on unconscious material to effect positive behavioral change. The images for these rituals may come through active imagination or dreamwork.
Active Imagination
Remember the woman who was told to express Dionysus by jumping up and down, hands held above her head, shouting as loudly as she could? This is an example of a ritual that appears spontaneously during active imagination. Such rituals spring from the unconscious, and often surprise us with their power and energy. Our archetypal images understand ritual to a far greater degree than our conscious minds ever can. Therefore we can confidently ask these images to give us appropriate ceremonies.
Dreams
We can also get ritual actions from our dreams. By performing concrete actions based on symbolic dream images we can find ourselves suddenly able to comprehend these often puzzling archetypal messages. The following story is about a woman who first ritualized her dream image unconsciously, and later learned to do it consciously so that it provided her with a deep understanding of Dionysian expression.
This woman had been working very hard on her dreams, and she read somewhere that a good way to feel more freedom in waking life was to teach yourself to fly in your dreams. Flying is symbolic of soaring free, and flying in dreams can be very exhilarating.
So every night she went to sleep telling herself, “Tonight I will learn to fly.” And every night in her dreams she would find herself on an open plain, ready to fly, but she couldn’t seem to get off the ground. She would jump into the air and flap her arms, but nothing would happen. Finally, she found that the only way she could make any progress was to make swimming motions with her arms. In this way she got up off the ground and was able to fly in a rudimentary way. It wasn’t exactly the soaring of the spirit she had in mind, but it was the best she could do.
One day a friend convinced her that swimming, which she had never particularly liked, would be a wonderful form of exercise. For weeks it was all she could do to get across the pool and back. But one day she found herself swimming effortlessly. He dream image came flooding back into her mind and the swimming and flying seemed to merge, filling her with an overwhelming feeling of joy.
Through the dream her unconscious self had communicated to her ego the message that swimming would be the way for her to achieve spiritual release. Even though she began swimming without any conscious intent, she did in fact concretize the dream image. She now approaches her swimming with conscious awareness of its connection to the Dionysian experience, and it has taken on an added dimension. For her, swimming has become a bridge between the two worlds.
Ritualizing the Family Fight
Let’s take a look at what we can do to ritualize family fights. By putting an end to these anima–animus tugs-of-war we can do much to reunite the divine androgyne and bring ourselves closer to the self-nurturing Dionysian ideal.
I once knew a young couple who were good people and filled with energy, but troubled. The fellow came to me one day and said, “I’m at the end of my rope. Every weekend my wife and I have the most vicious fights. We start on Saturday morning and we fight and fight, screaming at each other and saying terrible things. By late Sunday afternoon, like clockwork, she starts throwing dishes and I storm out—because I know that if I stay, I’m going to beat her up.
“I’m so guilty and I don’t know what to do. It’s barbaric. I don’t want to live like this and neither does she. But we can’t seem to stop ourselves.”
To me, their fight seemed to have all the elements of a ritual, but not a very constructive one! So I said, “Why not try having a ritual fight on Saturday morning and see what happens?” He gave me a skeptical look, but agreed to try.
So, the following Saturday morning, feeling awkward but determined to end their fighting, they began their ritual. They stood in the center of the bedroom and bowed to each other, much as opponents in a judo match would do. They exchanged their opinions under the strictest, most formal rules of courtesy and respect. They were free to say whatever they wished as long as they followed this rule. When each felt that there was no more to say, they again stood in the center of the room, bowed to each other, and formally closed the exchange. In this way the fight was symbolically confined within the circle of the ceremony and would not leak into everyday life.
The husband came back to me later and said, “It’s the darndest thing. I don’t understand it, but it works. Saturday morning, early, we got up and had the ritual fight and enjoyed an idyllic weekend.”
I replied, “You have discovered ritual. You paid tribute to the god, and the rest of the weekend was yours. You have taken the Dionysian element in its crudest, roughest, least intelligent form and discovered the stuff of miracle, its transformation into ecstasy and joy.”