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Mud And Magic Blog

Isobars
Isobars screenshot from San Francisco State University Meteorological Program website.

I will admit to being a magic skeptic. I believe that we do have the ability to change ourselves using magic, but I am doubtful about our ability to change the physical realm. I think weather magic is a waste of time: no harm, but no benefit either. That said, people who do weather magic believe in their ability to create change, so I'm going to meet them where they are at and assume they can impact the weather... and ask them to please not do so.

I'm not a meteorologist, but I've got an amateur interest in weather and weather systems. I watch isobar maps and FD charts. If you don't know what those are, you really have no business messing with the weather. And if you do know what they are, you probably already know better than to try.

Weather isn't something that just happens where you are. All weather is connected, and a weather worker does not know - cannot know - what impact their working will have on a neighbouring area or on the long term forecast in their own place.

It is raining in Vancouver right now because there is a low pressure zone sitting over our city. Lows like to settle in and linger, and they bring in clouds that press up against our beautiful mountains and drizzle on us for weeks on end. In contrast, simplifying greatly, high pressure zones push out clouds and result in sunny days. High and low pressures are not created here; we tend to get our weather from the north-west of us, and it moves over us and on to other areas. To create a sunny day here and now, one would need to pull a high pressure zone from somewhere else. If one could force a high front to rush towards us at great speed - to get a sunny weekend, for example - then low pressure zones would be spinning in to fill the gap, and high zones to fill those gaps, resulting in dramatic weather changes potentially all over the continent, and maybe beyond.

Do that over and over, and have different magic workers in different areas all pushing different weather systems around in all different directions, and who knows what will happen. It strikes me as an awful experiment, like finding out what harm burning large amounts of fossil fuels does by creating holes in the ozone layer. Pagans of all people should know how little we still know about nature and how we affect her. We should know that our personal desires are not justification for causing widespread problems: "an it harm none". We cannot be so selfish or short-sighted as to think that we can do something here and have no impact elsewhere; that's not how nature works in general, and it certainly isn't how weather works. We should know that everything is connected.

There may be circumstances under which dangerous weather magic might be worth the risk. If an area is undergoing flooding, drought, forest fires, or hurricanes, maybe a case can be made for magical intervention (though I would still argue that we may make things worse and not better; well-meaning interference could result in a game of magical weather wack-a-mole). However, a sunny weekend for our pleasure and convenience is not reason enough to mess with something so complicated.

We've got a weekend Pagan camping trip coming up this weekend, and I know it will be more fun if it is sunny out. We're lucky that our camp has cabins; no one will have to deal with a wet tent. I am still hoping that the high just to the north-west of us moves down in time, opening up the possibility of frolicking and circling in the sunshine, and maybe even to do a bit of swimming, but I think it would be unethical to try to do anything to urge it on.

I also wonder why Pagans, at least of the nature-worshiping type, would want to mess with the weather. If we want to honour Mother Earth, if we want to stay in touch with the seasons and with nature, than we have to accept some rain and cold, even when it is inconvenient. If you want a climate-controlled temple, there are plenty of religions who provide that; please don't adjust the thermostat in your local forest.

GFLOE Logo

I'm sipping a glass of mead tonight, in preparation for my big Pagan weekend: The Gathering for Life on Earth. It will be my 16th time attending this local Pagan event and it has been an important part of my spiritual wheel of the year for almost two decades (there were two years in there where the Gathering had to be cancelled, so my first Gathering was 18 years ago).

When I was in university, I was running my university's Pagan club, serving as a volunteer proofreader for a Pagan academic journal, working on the Gathering's board of directors, running and attending other public rituals, going to Pagan Pub Nights, doing some media work, working part-time in a New Age bookstore, reading everything I could get my hands on, and running in Pagan social circles almost all of the time. But, after graduating, other activities gradually took over more of my time - and more of my money was needed for things besides books and magazines - and I slowly drifted away from the larger Pagan community. I was still very active in my smaller group, but the Gathering became my only large event, and I stopped consuming Pagan media (books, magazines, websites, email lists, podcasts) almost entirely.

At first, it was a bit of a relief. I'd stepped out of the politics, the in-fighting, the gossiping. By staying only in my little spiritual family, I could avoid the burning times conspiracy theorists, the cultural appropriationists, the woo-woo new agers, and the elitists and the fundamentalists of all stripes. I hadn't realized that I was burning out until I had some distance from it.

In the meantime, I had become part of another community that has no overlap with Paganism. It is a specialized sporting community with a small local community, sub-divided into smaller groups based mostly on who you learned from and with, with a larger, international community. And I had hardly been a part of it for a month before I began to see the politics... and it felt so familiar. It looks like the politics of people is the same everywhere; maybe it is the price of community. And you should have seen the mess they made of their annual general meeting! It made the local Pagan non-profit at its worst look organized and tidy.

So I'm going into this year's Gathering with a bit of fresh perspective, realizing that the politics is at least somewhat natural, and maybe not as bad as I thought, and refreshed from being out of it all for a while. I'm not ready to directly engage the politics again - I will not be running for the Board of Directors and I'll be trying to stay neutral in the usual people conflicts - but I do miss the other parts of being involved in bigger groups: the new ideas and perspectives, the interesting rituals and chants, and the intellectual challenge of discussing spiritual ideas with people who are of the same religion, but may disagree with me and with each other. If this year's Gathering can give me a taste of that, I think I might be ready to put myself back out there again.

I am not very fond of public speaking or being the centre of attention. I sometimes have someone else lead the larger public rituals in my place. Since I am not comfortable, I have to work on speaking clearly and confidently when participating in a group ritual.

As I've written before, participants can only really feel a part of the ritual if they can hear it, so speaking loudly and clearly is obviously important. Speaking at the right speed is also part of making sure your words are appreciated. I tend to speak too fast in front of groups and I have to make a constant effort to slow down and pause more frequently, especially while leading meditations.

The other thing I've noticed in speakers in group rituals of all sizes, however, is a tendency to speak as though the words were meant ironically.

I don't like acting. I am easily embarrassed. I have had the problem where the words that seemed so poetic and beautiful on paper seem cheesy when spoken out loud. And when all those factors are combined, I won't always commit to my part, and my speech ends up coming out without affect. When read or recited flatly, a beautiful quarter call or invocation can very easily sound sardonic or even contemptuous.

There are some people who just naturally have neutral voices, but when I hear flat recitals from someone who speaks with great enthusiasm and energy otherwise, I know something else is going on. And I do think it comes down to embarrassment. Those of us without acting or public speaking training often feel self-conscience in front of a large silent group, so the tendency is to just get through it so everyone's attention will move on. But along with that, our society currently seems to value irony and wit over enthusiasm and sincerity. I suspect that everyone with a sincere passion for something has had someone roll their eyes at them at least once, and it can be wearing to be surrounded by jokes about popular bands and snark about popular passtimes. It can start to feel like you have to choose between being smart, being clever, and being in on the joke, or being a "sheep", being silly, and being the joke. I'm as guilty of this as anyone; I have a jango.com radio station called "Songs I don't want people to know I like".

If in every day life, we're encouraged to treat our passions ironically and we get used to making clever remarks instead of responding authentically, this will leak into our behaviour in rituals. When then given a "cheesy" speech or a bit of purple prose to recite, some of us will naturally want to rush through it flatly, keeping ourselves detached from the emotions in it, keeping ourselves at a safe distance from something that should demand a wholehearted commitment.

I definitely see the value of acting lessons and public speaking practice in making for better ritual performances - some of the best quarter callers I know have these things in their background - but I don't think they are necessary for most of us. That said, I don't have a solution since I'm still working on this myself. What I am doing is practicing with my spiritual family before I go in front of larger groups of people I don't know as well, and working on saying things more slowly and really thinking about each word and phrase even as I say it. I'm also trying to be more aware of the ways in which I use wit and irony to stay detached in daily life. I challenge everyone to really listen to themselves the next time they call a quarter or invoke a deity. Speak with your heart, commit to what you are saying, and don't be afraid to let everyone hear your genuine voice.

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mythumbnailThis is the first time I've run my own website, and this is the biggest online project I've ever taken on. When getting started, I knew there were a few things I wanted to incorporate, and a few more things have popped up as I've been going. Here's a bit of information about some of the programs and project I have been including in my project:

reCAPTCHA:

I've been getting a lot of comment spam, and even though they were all being caught by the moderation process, it was a pain to deal with. I have reluctantly implemented a captcha system, but I am pretty happy with the one I'm using.

The reCAPTCHA program helps digitize books, newspapers, and more. Here's what they have to say about how it works:

To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

reCAPTCHA is a Google project; part of their great work towards preserving human knowledge and making it more accessible. Perhaps Google should be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for their efforts.

Creative Commons:

I strongly believe in Creative Commons licenses and agree with this blog's arguments for why Pagans in particular should embrace CC.

Here's a basic explanation:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.

I like that I can share my work, protect it in the ways that matter to me, but still allow it to be modified and shared. I have chosen a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license: "This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms." A more complete explanation of my rights as the creator and your potential rights to my work is available here.

The People's E-Book:

This is still a project in process, but I supported the Kickstarter campaign in order to keep tabs on it (and I got a cool sticker for my eReader). I'm hoping one day to use their program to put together an ebook of my rituals that I can offer as a download from my website.

Lulu:

Lulu is a print-on-demand publishing service that I have long admired. I can create my book, put it on their website, and they'll print a fresh copy whenever someone orders it and ship it off to them directly. Though usually used by amateurs, one of my favourite professional authors, Cory Doctorow, has used it in an experiment in serious (that is to say, money-making) self-publishing. Though I don't anticipate ever making any money off my rituals and writings, it is also a future dream for the website to be able to link to a book.

If there are any great programs and services for websites that I should be considering, please let me know!

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It is raining again in Vancouver. Cherry blossoms are being washed down the streets, and the temperature is back to autumn. This is quite the change from the gorgeous sunshine and early summer weather that so recently blessed us; I think we all have a kind of spiritual whiplash from the back-and-forth.

Despite the cold and wet, this weekend's projects include writing the Beltane ritual for my spiritual family. This is one of the things I struggle with as a ritual writer who wants to connect my rituals to what is happening with the season: I have to write the ritual in advance, without really knowing what the season is going to be when it is performed. It is working out this time, though, as the ritual I have in mind is about the heart.

A couple of years ago, I was training at the gym with a very athletic friend of mine. He gave me a lot of fantastic advice, but I remember one conversation in particular. We were discussing why it is important to do frequent cardio and he said:

"You only get so many heart beats. If your heart beats slower, they will last longer."

There's a joke about that, of course. A well-meaning seeker asks a monk: "What exercise should I do to live longer?" The monk responds: "Your heart is only good for so many beats, and then it will wear out! Speeding up your heart won't make you live longer; that's like saying you can make your car last longer by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap!"

Though exercise does temporarily increase your heart rate, doing it regularly decreases your resting heart rate, resulting in a net savings in heart beats. Which goes to show that you shouldn't take health advice from jokes... or monks.

Anyway, my friend's comment stuck in my head, and I've been contemplating a heart-themed ritual ever since.

I am fascinated by the connection between heart beats and life. I like the seeming paradox: make your heart beat faster in order to make it beat slower. And there's a beautiful tension there: our beating hearts keep us alive while counting down to our deaths. So much of the language of a full life is about the heart - her heart felt like it was going to burst, his heart grew three sizes that day, she took that to heart, he took heart in that - while each beat is closer to our last. To me, that tension feels like the same tension we have with Beltane and Samhain - Sabbats that are directly opposite on the wheel of the year. One is a celebration of love and life that includes death and the other is a celebration of the dead and the ancestors that embraces life.

On this rainy day that feels like autumn, I am trying to write a Beltane ritual that honours the miracle of our hearts: the real, physical importance, and the metaphorical truths. To that end, here are some random heart facts that get mine racing with inspiration:

The natural length of a lifetime for birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles seems to be about 1 billion heartbeats. Modern humans seem to get about 3 billion. (1 Billion Heartbeats – The length of a lifetime)

A mouse's heart beats about 500 times a minute and an elephant's about 28 times. A mouse lives about 4 years and an elephant about 70. (Size Matters: The Hidden Mathematics of Life)

The heart is the first organ to form in utero. The embryonic heart looks the same across nearly all species, including frogs and fish and mice and elephants: a pulsating tube. In humans, that tube will eventually loop to form the four-chambered heart we are most familiar with. (What is a beating embryonic heart?)

The heart symbol evolved from the ivy leaf portrayed by prehistoric potters. “This botanic symbol found in ancient Greek and Roman art ... represented both physical and, above all, eternal love, withstanding death. ... During the Middle Ages and early modern times, when medicine had a scholastic character, this symbol was used even by anatomists to portray the heart.” (Heart Symbol & Heart Burial: A Cultural History of the Human Heart)

The ritual is still taking shape in my head, but I think there's a two-parter in the works – one ritual for Beltane and one for Samhain – both playing on the tension between life and death.

Edited to add: The Beltane ritual I created from these ideas is now available on the website: Beltane: The Heart.

mythumbnailIn the previous post (Spirit of Generosity and Generosity of Spirit), I discussed what both ritual leader and participant have to bring to a public ritual in order for it to be successful. Here, I’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to write and lead a successful, unconventional public Pagan ritual. Some of this will apply to a standard Wiccan-style public ritual, and will certainly apply to non-Wiccan public rituals, but I am most interested in the presentation of experimental Pagan rituals.

Give advance notice.

Whenever possible, tell your participants a little bit about what to expect before you start. If there's an email or message board post about your event, include a note about what tradition or religion you are from, maybe with a link to a website with some basic information. If your ritual isn't from an established and recognized tradition, you may just want to note that you will be leading an unconventional ritual.

Face it: your potential participants are mostly Wiccans or Wiccan-influenced. Even those who don't identify as Wiccan will probably have a basic understanding of that ritual structure. By all means, conduct your ritual according to your own tradition - as un-Wiccan-like as it might be - but if you assume knowledge of Wicca when choosing what to explain and what not to explain, you will be able to pick your talking points with more accuracy.

If your ritual includes anything that could be controversial - political magic, nudity, mind altering substances, blood magic, sex magic - you absolutely must let people know before you start, and preferably before they arrive. You would think this would go without saying, but I have been in a circle where there was an undisclosed skyclad requirement, and one where participants were asked to make a voluntary blood sacrifice, and I know how upset some of the participants were in both cases. By the way, both rituals were led by elders of the community.

Even with advanced notification and FAQ links, there may be some things you'll want to explain to the group. If you can work the explanations into the ritual in a way that feels smooth and unforced, that is best, but sometimes it just can't be done. Rather than doing the "professor thing" of lecturing while walking back and forth or around and around during the ritual, just get everyone gathered up and give the most basic explanation possible of what's going to happen. I highly recommend writing this in advance and reading it off the paper if you have to; you want to be as concise as possible, explaining only what you absolutely have to as clearly as you can. Winging it will often lead to extraneous points obfuscating the important parts.

Show, don't tell.

The participants will be looking to you to model what is expected of them. Rather than explain that in your tradition, you call the element of spirit while all looking up, just do it. Make sure anyone else who is running the ritual with you knows what to do, or tell a few people in advance, but then just let it happen. A few people may bow their heads instead, in keeping with their own tradition, but most will follow your lead.

Do a walk and talk.

Have you ever noticed how TV shows deal with long exposition? When something absolutely has to be explained and cannot be shown, a show will often have the characters on the move, walking and talking down a hall or a street. Or the talking will be split between several characters, instead of a monologue. This helps the audience stay engaged. Similarly, in a ritual, instead of having your priest or priestess drone out all explanations and directions while standing in the centre or at the altar, split it up between several people and move it around. I like having each of the quarter callers take a piece of the explanation in turn, so the participants’ attention ends up flowing around the circle.

Commit to the performance.

You will quickly lose the attention of your participants if you mumble. If you are doing a very unconventional ritual, it is especially important that everyone be able to see and hear what's going on at every stage. Ideally, your participants have come to your ritual with open minds and generous spirits, but you will quickly use up their good will if they can't hear you.

I believe in practicing ahead of time. Even if you don't require memorization, everyone who is helping you put on the ritual should be familiar with what's going to happen and should know their cues. Make sure everyone reads or recites their lines out loud a few times before starting so they have a good flow to the words. For bigger and more elaborate rituals, do the ritual with a smaller group in advance - a dress rehearsal of sorts.

Make it work.

A public ritual is an act of generosity and compromise. Sometimes, something that works in your small group ritual setting will not work in a public or very large ritual. For example, in my circle, we all bring our own goblets for sharing drink, but asking 300 people to remember to bring their own goblets is impractical. Be prepared to modify how you do things to make the best ritual experience for everyone.

There are some common things to look out for when modifying or writing a ritual for a large group. We will talk about these more in a future post, but, as an example, look for long pauses where nothing happens for the majority of participants. Food and drink sharing is a place where this happens a lot; as the one goblet is being passed around, everyone else stands and waits. Consider using several goblets and/or adding a chant to break that up. Look at your ritual with the eye of a director putting on a play. You cannot provide a spiritual experience to a group if your performance basics aren't met, so I definitely recommend compromising on your religion's usual traditions in order to better serve the group.

Serve the ritual.

Some things cannot, and should not, be compromised. Even though they might be controversial or less than optimal for performing, if something is fundamental to the ritual, than do it. Just use this rule thoughtfully; plenty of things we do in rituals aren't fundamental and can be modified, they just usually aren't. As you write or edit every part of the ritual, ask yourself: "How will this perform? Will it be clearly heard, seen, and understood? Is there a spiritual or religious reason why this has to be done this way?"

In small groups, some things we always do because they are religiously important (for example, we may always call the Goddess before the God for religious reasons), and some things we always do because the routine - the ritual of it - helps get the group into the right mindset because of the repetition (for example, calling each quarter from the edge of the circle, facing outwards, may be just how things are done in your tradition). The latter things can be changed; your large diverse group does not have the repetition to call on, so it is more important to serve the needs of the group than to follow the exact requirements of your usual ritual structure. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the two, though. Try asking yourself: "What belief does this action serve?" If you don't have an answer, you may be able to compromise on that part of the ritual.

There is an art to putting on public rituals, and it can take practice. I recommend attending as many public and semi-public rituals for as many different Pagan traditions as possible and see what works and what doesn't for you, and what does and doesn't for the other participants. Then, practice with smaller groups - your coven, grove, or other usual group with some guests - before going to big groups of strangers. But at some point, if you want to conduct public rituals, you will just have to take the plunge and do it.

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Imbolc Labyrinth (with altar)

I've been in recent contact with a Pagan student leader. They have created a Pagan club at a local college and we were corresponding about what I did with my Pagan Students' Association all those years ago. I mentioned that we held Sabbat rituals, and often had quite large groups attend, including non-student Pagans. They wrote back:

"We don't hold rituals because we want to be inclusive to pagan faiths other than Wicca. We have people who follow many different deities, and we have Wicca from a variety of paths so I'm not really sure that an open ritual would work. How did you handle that?"

That got me thinking about the art of public rituals, especially with diverse groups. I've led some big rituals and been to ones by a lot of different groups, and some have been more successful than others. There is an art to writing and performing a Pagan ritual for a large, diverse group.

It is a generous gesture to offer to lead a ritual for a large event. Writing the ritual, perhaps rehearsing it, securing a space, gathering materials, and putting yourself out there to lead it requires a lot of time and energy. The person designing the ritual may have to compromise what they would usually do in order to remove tradition secrets, to simplify it for non-tradition members, to make it suit a larger group, or to make it more eclectic or generic.

There is also generosity involved in attending a public ritual. You have to go in with an open mind. You have to give up your preferences in order to experience what is being offered.

When people meet in the middle - when the generous offering of a spiritual experience is met with generous minds and hearts - beautiful sacred space can be created.

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Stuff Picture

When I was still fairly new to running public rituals - back in the early days of the university Pagan students' association I founded - a more experienced priestess shared with me the three things she had found were essential to successful group rituals:

1. Give participants something to do.

2. Give participants something to take home.

3. ... Unfortunately, I don't remember what the third item was.

I don't disagree with her points, though I have learned that point #2 shouldn't be taken too literally. Giving the participant something to take home could mean a thought, a feeling, or some inspiration. If you get a physical object from every group ritual, you can quickly accumulate a large number of mementos. I have a Rubbermaid bin full of things like in the picture at the top. People who attended my early public rituals ended up with Fimo acorns, dream scrolls, semi-precious stones, ribbons braided for Beltane, and more. I'm sure every bit and piece is still deeply treasured to this day by every one of those people.

I have now run a fair number of group rituals, for both small groups that are well acquainted with each other and for large groups that include strangers. I'm still working on improving my ritual design, but here are the four rules I currently use when writing something new:

Create a clear theme.

A ritual should start with a strong intent and the whole ritual should support and reinforce that intent. I treat it a bit like writing an essay: I start with a thesis statement. The opening - the cleansing, quarter calls, deity invocations, and introductory speech - serves to introduce the topic. The closing - food and drink, deity devocations, and quarter dismissals - wrap the topic back up. In between, the centre - the power raising and any other activities - should all be in service to the theme, almost creating a story or argument in support of it. The centre portion should be complete in itself; like with an essay, the introduction and conclusion restate the thesis but do not add new facts.

Engage the senses.

First, address the basics and make sure everyone in the Circle will be able to hear and see every part of the ritual. Then, make sure what they are hearing and seeing is interesting and relevant. Add the sense of smell through incense (if allergies and the environment will allow), oils, plants, or dried herbs; the sense of taste through the food and drink; and the sense of touch through holding hands, doing a craft, or engaging in movement.

Build to something.

Just as a good story needs a climax, a good ritual needs an energy raising. Your theme tells you where the energy is going, but the ritual structure you choose should support building that energy gradually, through the peaks and valleys of the entire opening process, into a single peak, then help you ground that energy, like the denouement of a novel.

Give participants something to do.

Pagan rituals do seem to work best when everyone participates. Participation can be chanting, dancing, repeating lines, meditating, reading parts, or even just focusing all on the same thing. It seems to work best when people are engaged on both the mental and physical levels.

If I follow these rules, I find most people come away from the ritual with something, though it is rarely something that has to be stored.

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