to the gym as a spiritual and physical workout. People need ritual to inform and enrich their lives, to deal with stress, and above all, to create meaning in their lives.
Becoming conscious of the possibilities of ritual is the first step in The Witch’s Guide to Ritual. Daily spiritual practices and seasonal rituals create a life filled with blessings. Many of us were brought up with specific religious practices. Although I was brought up as a First Day Adventist, when I studied history, I kept discovering practices from the past that I felt were just as relevant today. One ancient ritual I discovered was bibliomancy, which is a form of divination developed when books were precious objects made of papyrus or vellum. Bibliomancy is a simple ritual that I have incorporated into my daily life for inspiration “from the gods.” You simply open a book at random and let a word or phrase come to your attention. You thus become inspired in the true meaning of the word, which is simply to breathe in.
The beauty of knowing history is that we can learn from the past and take the best to heart by applying it to our lives. Ritual is very much a part of our history and should be studied and applied to our lives today. Ritual gets us out of or heads and back into our bodies. It gets us into a place of spirit. By participating in rituals on a regular basis, you can grow in wisdom and feel an increasing sense of your aliveness.
For the Good of All: The History and Use of Ritual
Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead states in her groundbreaking text Ritual and Social Crises that “throughout human history man has employed ritual behavior,” that ritual is an important part of the socialization of our species. In his excellent Magic of Ritual, author and ritual scholar Tom Driver states that “everything points to the supposition that our remote ancestors were ritualizing before they became human. This activity became a pathway to our human condition.” Other great thinkers like Ludwig Wittgenstein agree with Driver’s theory, but also emphasize the importance of ritual in human history with a link to the expressive and performing arts. In addition, there are interesting theories that rituals honoring the gods and goddesses were the progenitors to the arts. Ritual is a source of culture for the religions of the world as well as for speech.
Medieval historian J. Huizinga claimed that ritualizing play provided a foundation for culture. Huizinga is most noted for his seminal text, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, in which he asserts that ritual and play were given an important role in the Middle Ages and kept people connected to each other. “Every event,” he writes, “every deed was defined in given and expressive forms and was in accord with the solemnity of marriage, death—by virtue of the sacraments, basking in the radiance of the divine mystery. But even the lesser events—a journey, a labor, a visit—were accompanied by a multitude of blessings, ceremonies, sayings and conventions.”
The great academic Roy Rappaport undertook some of the most thorough studies of rites and ceremony among the tribes in Papua, New Guinea. Based on extensive research, he found that ritual stemming from the marking of time in the context of cyclical celebrations is based on the natural world, and creates and maintains order in societies. Rappaport calls this “context making” and states that “annual rounds of festival” surely distinguish the seasons from each other more clearly than the weather does. Rappaport goes so far as to say that the seasonal festivals and their accompanying ceremonies created the foundation and ordering of our lives and communities. He states most emphatically, “I take ritual to be the basic social act.”
We are experiencing a renaissance of ritual at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Perhaps a new society is emerging from the creative kiln of ritual. Ritual processes regulate our lives, individually and as groups. Anthropologists, psychologists, and other students of the human race have shown that ritual has existed since the dawn of humanity and has always played an important role in culture. Scholars of the psyche, including Freud, who eloquently addressed the role of ritual, speak of the power of ritual and how it brings people together physically and emotionally. Ritual creates “communities” from which spring a sense of unity, harmony, and belonging. Rituals are outside of time. In ritual, we are in a moment when we can shed the normal conventions of behavior. We all have habits or idiosyncrasies that are not generally accepted—clapping hands, shouting out with joy, ululating, ecstatic dancing, and talking to spirits to name a few. None of this is shocking within the context of a shared ceremony where everybody has stepped out of the routine of ordinary day-to-day behavior and is embracing life itself.
Ritual is work, play, song, dance, and an embrace of the spirit. Ritual is change and forward movement, an affirmation of life. Ritual is a set of symbolic acts that represent a higher state of being. It is a raised consciousness and the glue that binds people together. It is time spent with the sacred, elevating us above our workaday duties to a holy place within and without. Rituals are freedom, the power of love, and the joy of release through participation. From Haiti to India to the Vatican, ritual is a vital part of people’s lives. The benefits of ritual are many: aesthetic, moral, personal, and communal. Being conscious of the power of ritual offers many benefits on an individual level, for groups and communities, and even globally. Our contemporary culture is in urgent need of spiritual renewal, and ritual can replace the void of meaning in people’s lives. Ritual can even relieve the modern symptom of isolation that has so many people spending so much time alone and feeling lonely. In troubled times, ritual can heal hearts and restore peace and harmony. We can enact rituals that liberate our souls, open our minds, and transform our lives and communities.
The human heart longs for ritual. To be fully alive and whole, we need to engage creatively in ritual. We should be active participants in rituals, whether they are rites of passage for birth, adulthood, marriage or death; ceremonies of healing, grieving, or celebrating; or political performances aimed at changing society.
This book is intended as a tool for you to engage more creatively in ritual than you have in the past. The lore and lessons have come to use from history. The Witch’s Guide to Ritual can guide you down the path until you feel ready to take that leap of faith and begin to design rituals of your own.
I have listened to and learned from many masters of the craft of ritual, and the message is clear: Rituals are the rhythm of life When you design your own rituals; you are designing your own destiny.
While this book focuses largely on rituals for the good of all, it also reminds us of ritual’s power to do harm. Harm can be avoided, however, with mindfulness to intention and awareness of the short and long-term effects of the energy being raised and managed.
We have all read frightening urban myths about “ritual abuse,” where well-intentioned folks fall victim to the manipulation of a misguided ritual leader. This “danger zone” cannot be glossed over. Sadly, ritual abuse can occur not only in cults and covens, but history has shown that it has also taken place in churches, synagogues, and temples. As people crave ritual for the sense of connection and spirit, ritual can be used to influence and control. Keep this in mind, and if you feel uncomfortable with any aspect of a group ritual, excuse yourself and leave that circle far behind you.
The creation and performance of rites and ceremonies are some of the very best activities human life has to offer. Rituals are similar to works of art in that their power may not be in sync with morality. Keeping this awe-inspiring strength to move the human spirit in mind and being aware of the potential downside of power will go a long way in preventing trouble.
Ritual has been used to change the world in dramatic ways. Mahatma Gandhi used ritual Hindu meditation to help gain India’s independence. Gandhi applied his ritual
