Yet another post inspired by interesting search strings that show up in my stats. (Incidentally, I am greatly delighted by the interest in my recent book lists and HPS theory posts. Thank you, all, who’ve been reading and commenting and passing links on!)
The search string in question was “advantage of group rituals” It’s pretty obvious, if you read various other posts in this blog that I am a big fan of group rituals. But I have not yet talked about exactly why that is.
Scratching the itch:
First and foremost for me, group ritual scratches itches inside my head that personal ritual never does. It’s something about the interaction between me and other people in a sacred space. Don’t get me wrong: I value personal work as well, and I think it’s essential for a well-balanced religious life. But if I go more than about 6 weeks without group ritual, I notice myself getting more and more off-kilter.
One of my motivations, yes, for getting my 3rd degree, is that it means that no matter where I am, I can form a new group, should I have to. I very much hope doing that from scratch in a totally new place without any other groups around I can visit won’t ever be necessary - but I feel a lot better knowing that I have the tools and skills and abilities to do so.
But why does it matter to me? Good question, and there are some reasons I still haven’t puzzled out in the more than a decade since I noticed this. But there are some I’ve figured out…
Singing in harmony:
My standard comparison on this one is singing. You can sing many wonderful, amazing things by yourself. You can move minds, change the way people see the world, relax or annoy them. But what we can’t do with the human voice is sing interweaving harmony parts by ourselves. If we want to do that kind of music - which, again, has many wonderful options - we need more people. It’s not that one is better or worse than the other. But they are different, and they sometimes do quite different things.
The experience I get from singing to myself is different than the experience I have been in the circle with a round sung by multiple people there. The energy flow is different. The sense of holding and creating sacred space is different. All sorts of things.
Different isn’t always *better* - I can have fantastic experiences on my own, and fantastic experiences in groups (and, sometimes, lousy experiences in both settings.) But I find the difference brings a lot of benefit, just because I’m getting varied experiences.
The practical bits
There are also some practical ways that group ritual is different (and has beneficial differences in at least some cases.)
Make time: It’s sometimes easier to make time for something when it’s deliberately scheduled on your calendar and involves other people (so you need to prepare ahead of time, and there are more obvious consequences if you blow it off.) We’re more accountable. But it’s not just - at least for me - about making time to be there.
It’s also about making sure there’s time in my life to prepare for it. To get myself there, to prepare mentally for ritual. And, of course, these days, there’s also planning time for the ritual that needs to happen if the ritual’s going to take place.
Requiring myself to make that preparation time also oddly makes it *easier* for me to make personal time: I’ve got a better sense of what things I might want to focus on, work with, learn about, practice, or whatever else on my own. And, sometimes, an idea of what I don’t want to spend more time on right now. In other words, it helps me set priorities and goals in my personal work, by outlining some possibilities.
Articulate: Related to this, when we’re doing things with other people, we need to be able to articulate what we’re doing. Some of my best ritual designs are because I had to get out of how my own head works and come up with something that makes sense to people who do not live in my head. (Which is to say, everyone else.)
Feedback: Other people can give you continual feedback on what they see from you, and how to deal with problems or changes that come up. This can be frustrating at times, but it’s also a powerful learning opportunity.
New ideas: You often get to experience approaches you would never have thought to work with. The group I trained with rotated who designed full moon rituals among the initiates: it was fantastic to see how different people approached different topics, and what style of ritual they chose to do. It challenged me in ways that wouldn’t happen if I were working entirely on my own.
Support: You don’t have to do everything yourself. Seems logical, from the above points, but there are times when I’m really glad I don’t have to track everything going on in circle, and can just trust other people to do their bits, and get a rich and full experience. And, of course, in emotionally challenging rituals, you can get support from the other people there in doing deep and intense work.
Challenge: Perhaps my favorite. Now, I try very hard to be rigorous in evaluating what I do on my own. But I’ve found that working with other people requires me to challenge and develop my ideas and practices in a way even the most rigorous self-examination doesn’t always reach.
My current covenmate is a great example of this: I’ll poke at things over time, come up with something - and then she will, very clearly and precisely - ask me a bunch of questions that allow me to take it to the next level, or that make me look hard at certain assumptions. (She says I do the same for her: we’re a good fit for each other because we both find this incredibly useful and enjoyable.)
The only downside, so far as I can see, is that we have a very hard time having *short* conversations with each other.
[The following is something I've written up for internal coven documents, because I wanted to spell out what I thought my role was. I've run most of it by my covenmate, and included some other thoughts at her suggestion.]
Or, rather, I should say roles: I think there are a number of things going on here. To many people, the HPS is the one responsible for making sure the spiritual and religious stuff happens. At a basic level, there’s three parts to this, in my eyes: anchoring the spiritual core, providing direction, and making sure the practical details fall into place.
Anchoring the core:
No one group - no matter how fantastic, or how skilled the leadership – can be all things to all people. Part of creating the spiritual core is deciding what the core focus of the group will be – and what things are not on that group’s map, or are lesser parts of their work together. We have and must make choices. There are only 24 hours in the day.
Are we going to focus on being a working coven, with relationships developed over significant time? Or are we going to focus on training new witches? Are we going to focus on the use of music and dance in ritual, or something else? Are we going to be a small group, where everyone can fit around one table – or a larger community, with lots of people to talk to, but maybe less time to talk to each other one on one?
There isn’t one right answer here. While Phoenix Song is aiming at being a small working coven with a heavy emphasis on music and other arts in ritual, I deeply enjoyed my time in the group I trained in – what has now become a larger, enthusiastic training coven with many wonderful people.
Providing direction:
Rather than seeing or feeling energy, I ‘hear’ it – what you’d expect from a music major and composition geek. One thing that’s fascinated me since I started taking on various ritual roles is how the different roles sound to me.
Priestessing often sounds to me not like the melody (as you might assume), but like the bass line: the foundation that everyone else builds off of. Musically, these are things like what key and harmony we’re working within, or setting the pace we go at. Magically, It’s setting the basic functions, what possibilities might fit in the large cauldron of the song. As in music, everyone else gets some input – but we need to agree on some basic things, or it’s going to sound chaotic. And someone needs to make sure we’re all staying more or less on the same beat, and in the same key.
(Incidentally, I ‘hear’ the priest’s role as the melody: it is also crucial to the nature of the song, but it solidifies a particular line of potentials into something more clear-cut: it is a specific iteration, rather than the well of possibility. Consider also the elements of ‘conductor’ and ‘artistic director’ which are roles I think are more easily split by ritual leaders.)
There’s also the question of style. There are many types of music: most of us are good at some, but not all. The HPS who trained me, and who I love dearly, is such a Leo. She adores the shiny, and she radiates warmth and love and acceptance, and community simply by being there.
I tried, honestly, for about six months, to do what she did. It was always a struggle, always a constant effort. It was such an effort it got in the way of other important things. Details fell out of my head. I couldn’t relax and experience in ritual. By the end of six months, I could manage it for short periods, if I kept some of my concentration and focus on being open and welcoming in that style (and away from other needs). It never really got easier.
Me? I’m the water (and air) type. Where my former HPS is the fire at the center of the hearth, I’m the pool of water, or the well. I want to stand around it, and talk to you, and watch the dragonflies and the birds, and the ripples in the pool . Oh, but I want to talk. Talking to people, engaging the mind, is the way I best create and strengthen relationships. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the quiet presence, or the simple touch, or other modes – but the one that’s easiest for, the one that’s instinctual, is what’s going on in my head, and what’s going on in your head, and which bits we want to share, and why they’re interesting and linked to this other interesting thing.
Part of my hiving, therefore, was realizing that to be the best priestess I could be, to do the things that called to me, I needed to be working in a different bass line, a different song. One song isn’t better than another – but some fit us more closely than others.
Practical details:
This is the simplest of the functions in theory, though complex in practice. When and where are we gathering? What do we need for this ritual? Is anyone going to be absent? What needs to happen in order for all the spiritual work to go forward? What training or experience or skills do people need to participate most fully?
The priestess is not the only one taking care of these details. Delegation (and healthy delegation) is critical here. But if the priestess is responsible for keeping the spiritual work on track, then she’s got to keep an eye on these things.
That said, there are some other important roles here.
Incluer:
One of my friends, Jo Walton, is an SF author who coined the word ‘incluing’. She uses it to describe the process by which you tell the reader about details of your created world in small ways, without ever sitting down and dumping information on them.
I’ve thought a lot about the implications for coven work. Imagine that someone walks into a group I’m leading, (often a new and sometimes strange culture for newcomers.) In this case, people look for context. They are going to look at how I behave, and at how people behave towards me. A lot of that, in some ways, is seeking incluing: they are looking for small cues and details that help put what I’m doing into some sort of context they understand.
Now, making assumptions based only on these clues can be a bit dangerous – you may misinterpret something, or assume something is more or less important than it actually is. But the basic idea remains: what I do, how I behave, how I set that bass line and tone and key for the group is going to echo out in ripple effects.
It’s my job as priestess – as one of the people who most clearly have direct influence on the nature of the group – to be as careful as possible to be aware of those interactions, of what information I’m putting out for other people to pick up. It’s not just what I say, or how I respond to someone – it’s also in my body language, in the pauses in my speech, in all sorts of unconscious details. It’s also in how things like a problematic comment by someone else is handled. Are they slapped down in public, or quietly redirected in a gentle way? Which one’s appropriate in that setting?
I am obviously imperfect at tracking many of these things. I’m human, after all. But I do keep an eye on it, and I do think it’s important.
The one person who can’t simply walk away:
In some ways, the priestess is the one person who absolutely can’t walk away without fundamental change. If, as noted above, she’s the one who sets the spiritual work in place (and in many traditions, you can function, if needed, without a priest, but not the other way round), then there’s a logical outgrowth.
Anyone else up to and arguably including the high priest of the group, can theoretically decide to go do something else. There will be consequences if they do, of course, depending on how they handle it. But fundamentally, they have an easier time walking away: it’s elements of harmony and variation on the melody, rather than deciding which song we’re singing together and setting the foundation.
This is not to say that priestesses are irreplaceable. We are replaceable.
First, there is no one true perfect priestess. And second, it’s obviously a good idea to have a backup in case of illness or other emergency. But it is to say that they’re not interchangeable: the fundamental experience is – and really, *should* be – different, depending on who is running ritual.
Priestess and the Gods:
When I sent the first draft of this to my covenmate, she pointed out that I hadn’t talked a lot about the actual ritual steps: does the priestess mediate between participants and the Gods? Is there some other role? In many witchcraft traditions, people are considered to be their own priests and priestesses when it comes to their relationship with the Gods. I strongly agree with that: there is an element of personal responsibility and interaction that I think it is crucial.
Ritual is song, ritual is theatre, ritual is art: my job as priestess is to make sure it happens, and to keep it going, but I think it’s up to everyone else there to share in keeping the song going, to step into the experience, and to see what they will take away from it this time. One person might make a decision, another might decide a hard conversation with a loved one is needed. Someone else might feel comforted or enfolded. A fourth person may feel nudged to try something new. Very different answers, but all from the same basic situation.
That goes for people’s interactions with the Gods as well: my greatest hope is that I will help create and hold spaces where that happens regularly – but whether it does is not just about what I do, but about what other participants in the ritual do. I want to help – and Gods know, I will offer advice and analysis and theory discussion at the drop of a hat. But I also don’t have all the answers. I’d much rather help people figure out how to find them on their own.
Outside of ritual:
The other question my excellent covenmate asked me was about what happens outside of ritual.
I have this theory: inside of ritual, you may have different people than usual taking on specific ritual roles (priestess or priest for a given ritual, act as handmaiden or summoner, Draw Down, etc.) all of which depend on lots of other factors. In the training-centered group I hived from, this is an obviously important part of training.
But likewise, the HPS and HP over the overall group set a lot of the tone for group interaction outside of ritual. Done well, this creates a welcoming and thoughtful and caring space. Done poorly, people can feel left out, as the currents of the ritual group swirl around them, or even attacked or scapegoated. All of these things spill over into ritual: we are constantly changed and affected by our lives, and what happens in a coven meal after ritual is certainly part of that, no less than the ritual itself.
So, boiling this down, I feel I, as high priestess (and shared with the group’s high priest), am responsible for:
1) Setting the guidelines for the space:
I’m a big fan of the Greek idea of xenia or the guest/host relationship. In that, both sides have benefits – but they also have specific responsibilities. In all communities, there are some things that are utterly unacceptable, a lot of things that are iffy but possibly okay, and a bunch of things that are just fine. Some of these are big – murder, abuse. They’re obvious.
But many are small. How do you get into a conversation if people are talking rapidly and energetically without interrupting? Is it rude to correct a factual error someone’s made, or polite? (I spend time in communities where each of these is true.)
The trick is that the standards in Pagan settings are not always the same as in other places we spend time. I believe it’s part of the HPS’s job to help set the standards, and then to make sure the community standards are held to (as well as modeling and explaining them to new folks as needed.) I think everyone else in the community has responsibility for the group culture, as well, but it’s important to set the tone.
2) For generally modeling how I’d like people in the coven to treat each other
Beyond the above, I also think there are models of behavior. Someone studying, seeking to go through initiatory experiences, is often reshaping many of the ways they see the world. It’s important while that process is going on to have models to work from.
I thought a lot about this while I was in the process of getting divorced. I ended up talking a lot with several friends and acquaintances who’d been divorced, and looking at how people I respected and whose opinions I valued helped me handle some things better, and to deal with bouts of misery far more easily.
3) For setting the tone before and after ritual
I believe that a ritual event doesn’t just begin when we all form up in a circle, and end with the ‘merry meet and merry part and merry meet again’. It also begins when we’re setting up, when we’re talking beforehand, when we’re clearing things away, when we’re eating.
Phoenix Song has already made some steps in this direction: we’ve deliberately simplified our set-up so that it’s easy and stress-free for us, so we can focus on the details if we wish, but don’t feel overwhelmed. But it also can mean everything from drawing people out and asking questions, to making sure everyone gets a chance to speak. (This is, incidentally, the part I’m probably most nervous about.)
4) For making sure that people in crisis have a reliable, thoughtful, competent source to turn to if something goes wrong.
I don’t think that always has to be the HPS or HP: certainly it may make sense for someone to turn to a mentor, or to a covenmate with specific experience. But because all of these things come back into ritual eventually, if we’re doing this right, I do think the HPS and HP need to be aware of major concerns, etc. to balance and adjust appropriately in the planning.
This is a work in progress: there things I don’t know how I want to handle yet, because they haven’t come up in that specific way. On the other hand, I think this is a fairly clear idea of what I see my role as being – and how I see it playing out. The key with much of this is not about dictating something, or demanding something – but about being the kind of person that people who want that kind of space want to be around. Being that person consistently, even if I’m stressed or tired or crabby.
This is true of everyone, naturally. Just, the ripple effects are more obvious when there’s a clear group attached. What I do always has consequences, and the more I’m attentive to that, the better.
It’s also, of course, something that changes over time. The steps that are most important right now, when there are two of us looking at adding new people, are different than where we’ll be focusing (I hope!) in a few years with a stable small group who’ve worked together for a while. Which is the final role, I think: adapting gracefully and maturely to change.
Yesterday, as I mentioned, I got an email asking me about book suggestions. This turned out to be a surprisingly good motivator to get something done I’d been meaning to do for several months, which was to actually write up commentary on books I’d generally recommend.
There are four pages:
- Book Suggestions talks about how I approach the whole process. Go read it first.
- Books: Introductory Works highlights the intro books I think are generally solid starting points (but read more than one! Read many! You get better perspective that way.)
- Books with more details covers those books that go deeper into a particular topic.
- Other books worth reading includes those books which have other specific merits (and includes relevant fiction.)
I’ve added these links to the index page, as well.
I got a comment on my Critical Reading and Pagan Books article today that reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post. Namely - why I have trouble recommending books to people who ask “I’m new to Paganism, where do I start?” (The nice commenter had asked for suggestions, and the next tab over is with going to make a stab at that - but before I could write that, it made sense to write why I’ve got trouble with it.
My background:
A large part of this is because of my professional training as a librarian. In the library world the question “What should I read?” is called ‘reader’s advisory’. There’s a reason for this. It’s not meant to be me sitting there and saying “These are the true great books” - it’s meant to be suggestions and ideas.
Note the ’suggestions’, not ‘recommendations’. There’s a difference. As a librarian, I may be suggesting books I’ve never read (because, as much as I read, there’s no way I can keep up with everything. Or even a tenth of everything!) Since I’ve never read them, I may not be sure whether there’s something that might be objectionable to the reader (or just plain not what they’re interested in. I don’t want to put my personal weight (and recommendation) behind a book I only know from “If you like X, you might like Y!” or reviews.
There’s another part of this: it’s supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue. Different people look for different things in books, and what they need at a given time may not be what first springs to my head. If I want to give them really *useful* suggestions, I need to talk to them. I need to ask them questions.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t know how to talk to other people about their reading, and what they look for. Some people do, of course - but often, people want books ‘like’ some other kind of book, but don’t have the detailed language to describe that. Mostly, this is because it’s not something we do all the time. (Well, unless you’re an author or librarian or just like geeking about different types of books. Lots of my friends do, but I’m well aware it’s not the way most people function.)
In fiction…
There are different ways to break this down, but I like Nancy Pearl’s approach - what she calls the Doorways to Reading. There’s a nice summary of her presentation on this as it applies to fiction over here, but basically, she breaks it down into four different doorways. Different people have different doorway preferences (they’re listed with the most common ones first)
- Story. What happens. These are the “I couldn’t put them down” books, the ones where you keep reading until 2am because you want to know what happens next.
- Character. These are the books that appeal to people who like fully-rounded or three-dimensional characters.
- Setting. These books create a very strong sense of place and time - including historical fiction, historical mysteries, and historical romances.
- Language. These books are often award winners: they’re a joy to read for the sheer way the author uses language and description.
People often have more than one preference: I’m about equally divided between character and setting, in many ways (and this is arguably why I read the science fiction and fantasy I do, but also a lot of historical mysteries.) But I also enjoy books with large doorways to story and language, when I’m in the right mood
Books also often have more than one doorway - they’re just somewhat different sizes. I’d argue, for example, that one of the reason that the Harry Potter books were so successful is that they basically manage to hit all four doorways in some way. You have a very engaging and fast-moving plot. You have interesting characters whose motivations and histories can be endlessly analysed. You have an unusual setting, and one that captures people’s imaginations. And you have - through the use of created words - some interesting entry points for people who appreciate language-centered books (though Rowling’s prose style is not similar to a lot of books that language-doorway people usually prefer.)
How this applies to Pagan stuff:
Really, a lot of the same issues apply. When someone says “Hey, an you recommend some books?”, I end up feeling stuck, because all of my professional instincts are saying “Not enough information!” When I’m on a forum discussion board, it’s generally fine, because I can ask them some more questions.
There’s also the tricky part: to ‘recommend’ a book means that I’ve read it myself, and read it recently enough that I recall any potential issues or considerations for the person I’m suggesting it to. There are books where this is easy - but there are also books where it’s trickier.
I read a lot (somewhere between 200 and 300+ books a year plus a lot of online reading), so between now and the last time I read a particular Pagan book, there might be quite a lot of material that’s gone into my brain. Remembering the specific details of what a given book said, and whether I had significant concerns about it often doesn’t stick well without some review. I’m working on improving that, by rereading things, and taking notes, but it’s a slow process, and fairly far down on my priority list
Now, I have done a bunch of thinking about this, since going to Nancy Pearl’s workshop last March. One of the things that’s clear to me is that people look for Pagan material in specific ways. I’m working on a write up of that, but in the meantime, have a couple of links to other material:
- Helpful things to tell people when asking for book suggestions
- Book recommendations index
One of the good things about working for a school is the vacations.
(There are also downsides: my breaks are unpaid time, and I don’t get any say in when I get them - it makes it very hard to do things requiring time off during the school year.)
Last summer, I started a habit of doing a short retreat each quarter.
- Last July’s was focused on things I needed to finish before getting my 3rd degree. As part of it, I did a day of no words - didn’t talk (even to the cat), didn’t read, didn’t write. I did survive it, but it was an interesting experience.
- November’s was focused on preparing for my 3rd degree ritual (I did the retreat work over the Tuesday evening-Sunday of Thanksgiving, with the ritual itself on the Saturday)
- I took some brief time in February to decompress and relax.
- I managed to not do one in 2nd quarter, because I just couldn’t get time clear in the schedule in ways I could do something meaningful with.
And this week, I’m doing another one. I have a lot on the agenda, but in a different way:
- Revamping my daily schedule to make sure that time for things I really care about (making music, playing the harp, dancing, doing devotional and meditation work) happens every day. Less of the random webbrowsing.
- Reorganising my lovely tiny little house now that I’ve lived here and know I’m staying put for the forseeable future. I did a quick overhaul cleaning yesterday, and am spending each day this week doing major reorganisation in each room. (This is much easier when the whole house is 400 square feet, and you only have 6 theoretical different spaces - bedroom alcove, front room, kitchen, pantry, bathroom, and basement. I am not worrying about the basement this week, but everything else *should* be achievable with nothing much else on my calendar.)
- Eating lots of good for me food - one of the things on my agenda for a while has been eating more yogurt, and this is a good week to make sure I get in the habit. I also still have excellent goodness from last week’s CSA box in the fridge that needs eating.
- Making some more art. And music. And writing. And all sorts of other goodness.
- Some ongoing meditation and ritual work.
At the end of it, I expect to not only be refreshed and well-rested (one of my rules this week is no alarm clocks. If I am tired and want to read and nap, reading and napping is totally fine. There will be time for the other stuff later.) But I also expect to be far better organised, so that keeping up with things in future is *far* far easier. There is nothing bad about this.
I am keeping a running list of things I want to do - many of which are very short and easy to do, like “Water herbs” and some of which are longer (resorting the boxes under the bed, or the extensive pile of *stuff* next to the closet). The latter I do while watching a movie.
I’ve started with a long bath, complete with face mask and other good bath things. And in a bit, I’m off to attack the boxes under the bed, do some more reading, and then some music.
My rec for this week is not explicitly Pagan, but I do think it has a lot to say about how we view the world, how we treat other people, and how all of that fits together and how we develop community - and family. It’s also the reason I was too busy to post last Friday. [1]
Early this year, a group of immensely talented people (Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Will Shetterly, along with Amanda Downum) launched an online fiction project called Shadow Unit. Its official description is “Fanfic for a TV Show that never was”. What it really is is the stories of episodes on a show in a very slightly different universe from ours. (Go read Emma’s description here: she does it immensely better than I could.)
Season one finished right after Memorial Day. There will be a Season Two (and beyond that:they have a five year arc planned.) Right now is a good time to catch up.
All of it’s free - but they are doing this as donation-supported work, so if you like it, please throw a few dollars at the donation options. The authors appreciate it! There’s also a forum, a wiki, and other cool tools to help you sort through things. (I recommend checking the wiki for easter eggs and DVD extra content links.)
[1] Four of the five (everyone except Amanda) were at the Fourth Street convention I was at. Saturday’s panel that focused on Shadow Unit was fantastic.
I’ve been quiet for a few days, because I was busily off at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (I had a fabulous time and I am already looking forward to next year: many excellent conversations with interesting people about books and thoughts and the world in general.) It’s also sparked some thoughts about some things I really want to change in my life, and more on that in the coming days.
Today, though, a short post on something I was discussing else-net. One of the panels I was at this weekend was about the issue of message in a story: is it a good idea to be deliberately push buttons in your readers to make a point?
Emma Bull (one of the panelists, and one of my favorite authors to boot) made a comment I’ve been thinking about ever since: that all stories have your assumptions about how the world works. This comes through in the story, no matter what else you do.
This got me thinking. Ritual is, in many ways, a story.
Rituals are also stories, in their own way. Not in the sense they always have a plot, mind you - but in the sense that they have a context they exist in (what’s in their world), that stuff happens (there is a change between the beginning state and the end state of some kind), and that the successful ones have some kind of desireable emotional effect (because otherwise, we would eventually find them boring and never do them again.)
It’s that context (and my assumptions) that defines a ritual. And it’s how it works out for me that makes a ritual satisfying or meaningful (or, when it doesn’t work, frustrating and unsatisfying.)
And, likewise: if I do a given ritual only once, it still has a context: there are reasons that make sense to me that are why that ritual was that way. When I am done with the ritual, those reasons do not fall out of my head and cause a state of ritual experience amnesia: they continue to be part of my understanding of ritual experience, and how I’ll experience other rituals in the future, for good or bad.
It’s this, I think, that make public rituals so tricky: people bring such different experiences and contexts to them, that planning for all of their past experiences and buttons and such is just as complicated as writing a story (or novel, or whatever) that everyone will like. It is, however, a way I haven’t looked at writing ritual, and I think I’m going to keep it in mind for the next public ritual I do (probably for this year’s Pagan Pride, since the board traditionally does the opening ritual, and sometimes the closing one.)
The shiny new coven, Phoenix Song, celebrated our first Summer Solstice today.
It’s become the practice, in our tradition, to use the solstice as a time to revision the group for the coming year. (Yes, the timing’s a little odd, but it’s something that grew organically from stuff we were actually doing, and it turns out to work nicely.) What do we want to do together? What do we want things to be like? How do we want to honor where we’ve come from, while continuing to move forward?
In the group I hived from, the tradition has been to create something that is present in the temple all year as a reminder. In our case, that’s a little impractical (we’re doing ritual in two different spaces, and neither of us has space to spare.
We decided, instead, to do a deliberately impermanent piece of art. (Before I go any further, I want to be clear: L and I discussed whether we were okay with my posting photos, and she’s fine with it. While our interpretations and thoughts about some of this are private, the basic photos aren’t.)
L has a very lovely garden, in which she spends tremendous amounts of time. Her garden also has a flat paved part: this is what we used as our canvas. We used entirely natural ingredients: no artificial colorings like food coloring. We also paid attention to what will not cause havoc to L’s garden as things blow away, get rained on, etc.
Our materials included:
- bentonite clay (white)
- green french clay (the pale green)
- red french clay (the dusty red/brown)
- tumeric (the far more orange red/brown)
- dried safflower (the red/orange dried petals)
- dried lavender (the gray/purple ones)
- dried hibiscus (the dark red)
- rose petals (undried, from our friend’s garden last night: these are from a rose called Dart’s Dash)
- powdered eggshell - we tried something to get it to mesh to blue/purple, which did not work, but they produce a lovely dusty white that shades differently from the white clay.)
- marigold, dianthus, and a few other flowers from L’s garden.
- spoons and paper funnels to direct materials (and fingers!)
For next year, we’d really like something in the blue/purple range: this may prove to be tricky. We used far less of our materials than we’d anticipated: maybe 2 ounces each (and probably less) of the clays, and about an ounce or two of everything else. The finished space is about 8×6 feet, give or take.
Timing: I arrived at 1, we finished at 4. We didn’t do other formal ritual set-up, etc. but there was some setting up and getting things ready, and so on. It took less time than I was anticipating, but it was intense work.
If you’d like larger versions of the images (plus a couple I didn’t include here, you can go to my LiveJournal gallery.
Our workspace: note cat perfectly positioned for maximum difficulty. (This is L’s cat, a Bengal by breed. She was actually *very* good once we got started.)
Our first spiral: Everything starts at the center. Bentonite clay, red and green French clays, marigold.
Our first pause
(There was a second pause, too: check out the gallery for that one.)
We’re done:
My favorite detail shot (another in the gallery)
I have very mixed feelings about Father’s Day, for the very simple reason that it is logistically tricky to celebrate a father who has been dead for more than half your life. Especially if one is bound into the Hallmark holiday sort of model.
Not impossible, of course, and as I am a Pagan whose path includes a certain degree of ancestral honoring, certainly something I do include. Just not on random Sundays in June.
It does make me think, though. My father died when I was just over 15. We knew it was coming - the good thing about a terminal cancer diagnosis is that at least you have time to prepare. Long before the last moments of high school, or of college, I had long experience with a series of ‘last moments’ with my father.
Our last family trip together (to Quebec City and Montreal, the previous Christmas and New Year’s.) The last horse show. My last birthday (also a horse show, and a day I still consider the single most perfect day of my life.) The last time he had me help him proof the bibliography of one of his books (I got a very early introduction to academic citation). The last time he corrected my homework (a French project: Mom still has it in a scrapbook.) The last dog walk.
One thing I cherish is having been able to have those, to be deliberate about them, to know they might be the last, and to be careful to hold them deep in memory, just in case. It’s something that, I think, has shaped every relationship since: if I never see someone again in this world, I want to know we didn’t end angry, we didn’t end broken and jagged.
But I’m also aware - always, consciously, deliberately - that I never got to know my father when I was an adult. I grew up in the year he was ill - incredibly, deliberately - but 15 and very mature is not the same as 18. Or 21. Or 32. I wonder how much of my memories are accurate - and how many are an idealised image, a perfect shape brought on not by what really happened - but by the mists of half-remembered glory.
I know he loved me. I know he doted on me (I was *oh* so much his pet.) I know that his students, his colleagues, teachers and professors, actors and designers, adored him. But I don’t know - not well enough - the parts that made him human, not something on a pedestal of memory, with the rough edges rubbed smooth by time.
My siblings were lucky, in this way: they were in their early 30s when he died, old enough to have adult lives, adult relationships. My sister got married, shortly after his death, but my father never knew my nephew. And my brother’s wife and my nieces were not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I think. But my brother was already working on part of his own passion, and my sister was working on part of hers, and many of the individual pieces were there.
I never got to talk about Ancient Greek (his field, or rather, ancient Greek theatre was) with him: I took courses in it only after his death. I never got to discuss mythology with him, with an adult’s mind, not that of a six year old, walking to school, hanging on every story told in his rich, deep, Oxford-accented voice. I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten good enough at French to speak it with him, rather than listening to him translate Asterix from the original books, pausing to look up idioms.
Would I even have dared to take Greek if he’d still been alive? For a long time, I couldn’t walk into a Classics department somewhere without someone recognising the name (and thinking I was as brilliant at the languages as he was.) I know my own worth: I could manage competent, but rarely brilliant when it came to translation.
There are times I remember that his death changed my life. I was not a very rebellious teenager, but I suspect my later teen years would have been rather different if he had been around. He was fiercely protective, too much so, sometimes, even when I was 13 and 14. There were things I did not tell him, because I knew he’d worry.
I would not, I think, have gone to boarding school for my last two years of high school. I might instead have graduated high school early, and gone somewhere to college - not Wellesley, probably, either, the place where so many of the patterns of my cherished adult friendships were formed. It was at Wellesley I learned to have truly deep friendships, and to talk about my emotions, and to share in ways I might never have done at other schools.
There’s only one person in my life now, outside my immediate family, that I talk to at all regularly who knew him (and she knew him as her friend’s father, someone who gave rides, and who was loved, but who was generally ignored as backdrop, because that is how you view parents when you’re that age.)
There are also the mysteries. On the grave stone that is my father’s, and that will be my mother’s, some day, there are four lines of poetry. They’re the very end of T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding. They’re beautiful. I know they were chosen deliberately. But I do not know - and have never managed to ask - exactly why. There are things I do not want to pry about, with my parents.
On the anniversary of his death, just after Samhain (and, in fact, on November 3rd, just after the Catholic All Saints day, and then All Souls, so that he might have a day all to himself), I do take time for him. I read something that reminds me of him. Some years it’s Eliot. Some years it is old and fading Asterix or Tintin books. Some years it’s Shakespeare, or Euripides, or 1066 and all that. I do a Tarot reading, just to ask if he has any wisdom for me, anything I should pay attention to. I don’t pry - he died as a devout Catholic, had been considering a production of Everyman, if he’d lived. But I welcome his presence, even if where I am now, where my religious life is now, is something he might never have forseen.
But I also keep in mind a very dear experinence. You see, before my father died, the summer before, I went to a church camp. They asked our parents to write us a self-esteem letter, to be given to us at camp. My father took the opportunity to say things that he - as he said - were hard for him to say in person. I still have it, and treasure it, and reread it at least yearly. It’s filled with his humor, his turns of phrase - and his handwriting, which was gorgeous and personal and unique - I’ve never seen its like elsewhere.
In my first Samhain ritual with the group I was to spend more than 5 years of my life with, I found myself there, hearing the last paragraph quoted back to me, not quite word for word, but concept for concept. The priestess involved had no idea of this - I think she knew my father had died, but certainly none of the details. I’d think she was picking it up from me - but I was not particularly thinking of it, or remembering specific text, or anything like that.
It was that that simultaneously convinced me of polytheism, and that convinced me that my new path was where I needed to be. And that, as I’d been a constant surprise to my parents throughout my life to his death, perhaps this was just another step along that road: not such a change as it first appeared. And that was something he treasured about me, and encouraged, even when the surprise was a bit startling.
That’s the bit I want to take away with me. I do my best to live by that letter - not because I feel I need to, or because I think he will look badly on me if I don’t. But because he saw in me, in the very tentative first steps of adulthood, so many things that I do, indeed, value. Integrity. Commitment. Willingness to take risks on specific things I value. High *high* standards for what I do. They have their challenges, but I would not give up on these things for anything in the world.
Now, I think, I am going to take myself off with my copy of the Ancient Greek translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and see how utterly tangled I get in the language. (Probably quite a lot: I’m rather rusty.) It seems fitting.
Mostly cosmetic:
Index:
I’ve created an index of posts that I’d like to keep easy access to - just use the Index link at the top of the page. These include a couple of series (like the seeker series), but also posts that are either popular or have gotten links from other places. I plan to update this about once a month - but if you see other posts you think deserve some highlighting, please let me know.
House rules:
Nothing here that should be unusual or a surprise, but getting into writing (not just in my head) seemed like a good idea. I’d rather be clear and not have any concerns than not be clear, y’know?