oh ritual

I can't tell, when I write "oh ritual," whether I'm shaking my head at the wayward child ("Oh, Ritual, what did you do now?") or uttering an expletive after stubbing my toe ("Oh Ritual! That hurt!").

For now, I'll just leave it unpunctuated and undefined.

What does an animist with shamanic tendencies do when called upon to write a ritual?

Well, my first step was to load up the ol' google machine. Which, of course, got me about a bazillion Wiccan rituals that were in no way appropriate for what I wanted to do.

Oh, yeah, I'm trying to write a ritual for a handfasting. My handfasting. With Archer. Which means it has to honor the spiritual paths of Archer and me. Neither of us is remotely Wiccan. We're not really Druids, either. Nor is either of us really Asatru or Heathen, though I wander that way sometimes.

Anyway.

Where are all the animist rituals? (Wait for it...) Oh. Right. There aren't any. I'm starting to realize that none of the animist writers I read talk about doing rituals. This doesn't mean they don't do them, it's just that they're not talking about it. Not in the same way that you see Wiccan rituals all over the internet. The animist writer might mention having done a brief private ritual for this or that, but the ritual is so intensely personal and specific to their purpose that it doesn't translate, or they just can't/won't describe it at all.

Do animists do rituals? Is it just that I haven't found the ones who do?

With the clock ticking on designing this handfasting ritual, I thought about the elements I wanted to include. To shape these elements, I looked at examples of - yes - Wiccan rituals, Heathen blots, and Druidic rites (these were what I could find online and in the texts I own). I didn't necessarily use the forms I found; more often, I used them to craft an outline from negative space (to use an artist's term). That is, the examples of formalized ritual from other paths showed me what I wanted to avoid. Those were what not to do, while still being related somehow to what I did want to do.

To further complicate things, I wanted the ritual to also be meaningful to the other participants: a few of our closest friends and family, who aren't necessarily pagan at all (though luckily, none of them would be in any way offended by our pagan ways).

So here's what I did: I took all the things I did want, and tried to craft them into something that made sense to people not on the same path as either Archer or me, while shaping the intent of the ritual in such a way that it made me happy.

Example A: What to do about the elements? I haven't called quarters for my private rituals in probably more than a decade. I don't feel the need to call them, because they're already here. Always. They're part of me. I don't call my hand when I want to pick up a glass, either. In my way of seeing things, these energies we work with are not distant sprites to be called (or not) on our whim. They're integral to ourselves, to our world, to everything. But I do want to acknowledge the presence of those energies within us, and draw them to our attention because I think doing so strengthens the sense of commitment we will endow in our oath. 

So, if I'm not going to call the elemental energies into the circle (the casting of the circle is another thing I don't do... I'll come back to that) maybe I can call them from within ourselves, thereby bringing our own connections into play, and preparing us individually for making the handfasting oath. Here's what I have come up with, so far, for that:

From Within, we call Air: clarifying our thought and speech.
From Within, we call Fire: clearing the way for new life.
From Within, we call Water: rising from our greatest depths.
From Within, we call Earth: standing solid to house us.  

So that's what I've been struggling with for the past two weeks.
Oh and I'm working on a home blessing ritual that Archer and my son can participate in with me.
Oh and a dear friend of mine asked me to collaborate with a couple other friends to write a ritual for her coven, for Beltaine. Obviously I said I would, because I love her.
It's all rituals and cowbells up in here, folks. And me with no predilection for candle waving.

This morning, I saw the new prompt for the Pagan Experience. It goes, "Ritual - What is your definition of the word “ritual”? What are your rituals- mundane and spiritual? How do they inform each other? Is ritual a necessary component to spiritual practice?"
And I thought, I should write a response to that one. Maybe it'll help me figure out how to write this damn beautiful/wonderous/pile-o-awesome handfasting ritual.

This afternoon, while working on this very post by looking through my blog feed to avoid doing any actual writing, this post from Lupa, one of my favorite modern pagan authors (translation: one of the ones whose path I feel has the most affinity with my own path), came up in my feed. In it, she says, "there are things I’ve left behind me as I’ve carried along my path. Rituals, for example. I no longer do much in the way of formal ritual, unless it’s a very special occasion." And I thought, "Me too!" I remember doing tons of rituals when I was a baby pagan and had just learned of Wicca. I'd be sitting there with candle and Cunningham's in my fists, trying to breath properly and connect with a Lord and a Lady I wouldn't have known from Adam and Eve.

Deeper into Lupa's article, she shares this gem: "When I did formal rituals before, a lot of my purpose was to find connection to the sacred. Now I recognize that I am immersed in the sacred at all times, and my goal is not to find the sacred but to remind myself of it, both in thought and action."

Yes. Yes. Yes. So much YES. Exactly! So if I can just get the handfasting (and other rituals) to reflect that idea, I'll be alright.

(Incidentally, later in that same paragraph Lupa mentions working out of Cunningham's Guide for the Solitary Practitioner in her early days. I lol'd, companionably, with the mental image of that book cover burned into my retinas.) 

~~~

Yeah, I'll probably post all about the handfasting when I get it all figured out. No worries, y'all.
And I'll post the ritual I come up with for the house blessing, too.

By the way, I'm sharing this over at the Pagan Experience. Then I'm gonna read what everyone else over there has to say about the subject. Happy reading!

~~~

Oh crap, I forgot to get back to you on the circle casting thing.
Well, basically I feel like every space is sacred, so it's a bit arrogant to say I'm creating sacred space, eh? But there are practical reasons too. For one thing (and Lupa describes this in her article, linked above, too), I just don't need it anymore. I can focus on the sacred without the activities of creating a circle. Also I don't want to cut off the 'outside' world from what I'm doing 'inside' the circle. I'm seeking connection, so why cut myself off? Anyway that's my take on it. 

earthly - two points on stasis

1. The Masculine Earth

I grew up in the verdant northeast, in a place I can only describe as womb-like. Even the barren winter trees and thick blankets of snow couldn't hide the lushness of the land. In winter, it was a barren womb, but womb nonetheless.

Characterizations of the earth as feminine had resonated naturally, but I didn't know why. It seemed a random choice, but I went with it. I could imagine it, although it was a hollow, vague imagination, since I didn't really know what 'feminine' felt like. When I tried imagining the earth as masculine, or as nongendered, it didn't work in my head at all.

When I came to the Sonoran Desert - lush in it's own way - I learned. The presence of this place is powerful, as powerful as the forests of my birthplace, but distinctly masculine.

Tangent: I've sometimes wondered, as a genderqueer person who doesn't feel any strong attachment to any gender of my own whether I didn't feel gender because it wasn't there (am I agendered? I've wondered), or because my internal detection mechanism is wonky (maybe I just can't tell what gender is supposed to feel like, but it's there somewhere). When I felt the masculinity of this place, it took me some time to identify it as masculinity. The feeling was foreign. I don't remember when it happened, but at some point I was able to look back and compare this masculine place with my feminine birthplace, and feel the femininity by contrast. It makes me wonder if my gender detector is working (now, anyway), and I really am just floating along, unattached, in the gender spectrum.

It's an appropriate tangent, after all: our bodies are of the earth, are earth metaphorically and perhaps literally. Recognizing the flexibility of earth and the variations of earth energy is crucial in our understanding of ourselves. As humans, we tend to think of things as unchanging; we assign labels quickly and we don't like to shift labels once we've attached them. But we're not static; earth is not static.


2. Attachments

'Attachments are the root of all suffering,' said one of my facebook friends, and Buddha.

This may be true. We can come to depend on our attachments in ways that cripple our happiness. This is a well-worn maxim, no need to expound.

We have a weird relationship with things in American culture. We are, as a culture, too attached to our things. And to our labels. We know this about ourselves, and there's a sizable movement of people trying to detach themselves from all their things. Some even try to detach their labels.

'All things in moderation,' said my dad, and Aristotle.
Tangent: 'Even moderation in moderation' said I. But that's not helpful to my point right now, so nevermind that.

Because attachment is also the root of all joy.

One of the major symptoms of depressive disorders is a feeling of detachment.
Loneliness feels like shit.

Would parenting be joyful if you had no attachment to your child?
I see my point has been made. No further examples necessary.

Attachment is an earthly thing; it is tangible, it holds things together, holds things in place, makes things stable. When we eschew all attachments, we sever our earthiness to some degree. It allows us the labels our psyches need.


1 + 2 = 3. We just have to remember that labels can be changed. Attachments can be adjusted or even let go. Earth varies; we are not static.



~

This post was prompted by and will be posted at The Pagan Experience, which asked about Earth this last week. 

on Humanity

The Pagan Experience prompt for this week: How do you define “humanity”? What is your contribution to the collective space of humanity? How does your spiritual path support this definition and contributions? - http://thepaganexperience.com/2015/02/feb-2-wk-1humanity/

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

[I should note that while goodreads.com says this quote is from Neil Gaiman - and it very well may be - this book was written by both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. So it could have been written collaboratively or by Terry Pratchett. Or, perhaps goodreads has secret knowledge about who wrote which parts, and therefore knows that Neil Gaiman wrote this particular bit. This seems unlikely to me.]

Humanity, literally, is all members of homo sapiens.

Metaphorically, humanity is whatever we want it to be. Metaphors are tools, after all. Very malleable tools. 

The idea that humanity - members of our species, that is - has something that is uniquely ours in the animal kingdom, and that this thing raises us above other animals morally, is so longstanding that it has shaped our language since... well, how old is the English word 'humane'? How about the same meaning in other languages?

Humane means to treat kindly, respectfully, or with mercy. Compassion is, supposedly, what makes us better than other apes. Except that other animals show compassion too, and sometimes better than we do. Perhaps altruism... no, that isn't it either. Altruistic behaviors have been observed in many other species.

Hmmm. Well, what is unique about us? Perhaps if we get away from concepts that categorize us as morally superior, we'll find something.

We're not the only ones who use tools or language (other primates, and corvids, come to mind immediately).

We're not the only ones who have sex for fun or for companionship (lots of animals - no really, it's not just bonobos).

We're not even the only ones who engage in organized warfare (chimps do that). 

As far as I can tell, the only thing exclusive to our species is the development of advanced technology (as opposed to simple tools). So if we really wanted to be accurate (which we don't - humans aren't big on accuracy), "humane" would mean something about figuring out tricky sciency things, to include philosophical pursuits and, of course, bureaucracies. (Obviously bureaucracies are symbolic of our innate tendency toward cruelty. That, or our distrust of strangers. Take your pick.) 

 It's our higher executive functioning that makes us unique among animals. 

There is no spiritual difference, that I can see. Our thoughts about spirituality are probably unique, but that falls under the higher executive function umbrella. When I say there's no spiritual difference, I mean that there's no innate difference in our spiritual qualities or value. We are part of the same unidentified spiritual energy that exists in all things. (Maybe some awesome quantum physicist will figure that out someday, but until then I'm calling it spiritual energy, because that's how it functions.)

Knowing that we - humans - are basically smart, distrusting animals who are connected to every thing and every one else in the world, makes me want to put as much compassion out there as possible. I think this is something most people do, with varying degrees of awareness, ambition, and success. 

Basically, we're all just people, trying to get along. 

desert river divine... and stuff

The topic for the Pagan Experience this last week was "deity and the divine."

I already wrote a response to it, but then I didn't realize this was actually the same prompt, so I wrote another response. Because I'm organized like that. Then, as I was considering editing this - since I'm all rambly lately - I thought, hey, this is starting to sound just like that one post I did. Hm. Maybe... yeah, I need to check on that... Oh damnit. And it turns out the post I was thinking of was a different post, which was about the San Pedro River but not about deities. But whatever. This is another perspective on the topic/s. Or another way of looking at the same perspective. Anyway, it's different enough that I decided to go ahead and post it. Can one spam ones own blog?

~

The other day, somebody Awesome (okay, it was my tai chi teacher and most excellent friend, whom I shall name Awesome) was commenting on the nature of the divine, and she described it as those natural things that stand out to you, that reach out and touch your soul somehow. These things, these places, have a power of their own that speaks to us. These are the divine.

That's not a quote because my memory sucks and I can't remember her exact words. But that's the gist. We were talking specifically about the San Pedro River, and how it flows through the desert valley, a plainly visible strip of life even in the winter. The river itself is surrounded by cottonwood trees with silvery bark in the winter, and the lightest green leaves the rest of the year. It's a brilliant bit of desert enchantment, and it's most of the reason I ended up living in southern Arizona.

I was sent here for training while I was in the Army. When I got out of the Army, I wanted to come back. The land pulled me back. I'd never felt a place so full of masculine energy, so devoid of the womb-like energy of the forests where I grew up.

But this place, this desert, is not barren; it is full of life that thrives on struggle. The river epitomizes this concept, and functions as a focal point for the energies of this place. That is how I imagine deities: they are the focal energies of places, things, and intents.

When I say a prayer to Hel, I'm recalling the energies of transformation and bare-boned truths; when I seek Odin, I acknowledge the energies of sacrifice and knowledge. Sometimes these energies seem to move through the world in ways that draw my attention, like the river San Pedro does.

I was thinking, while we were at the river this weekend, that this is a place that brings all four elements together: the water reflects the sun's fire as it tumbles between the earth and air. The pull here is so strong it feels almost sentient. Or maybe it's beyond sentience. Who am I to say?

where I find god

In the rush of thoughts to fingertips,

in the clatter of keys; 

In the percolating furnace,

in the sighing of my sleeping son. 

In the fish-breath of my old dog,

in the memories of all the cats I've loved;

In the coursing awareness of my seedlings,

in the cool frosty glass in my windows. 

In the smattered red wash on the highway,

in the torn bits of fluff on the shoulder of the road;

In the chilling breeze that sets a timer on comfort,

in the sharp thorns that caught me dreaming.

In the tender silken thread that is new life,

in the cautious coming forth of each new day;

In the words we trade, for better or worse,

in all the ways we weave,

togetherness is god. 

~~~~~~

This bit of consciousness is brought to you by... well, me. But I was inspired by a writing prompt (at the Pagan Experience) asking about our gods. I'm an all-out animist. I thought about penning an essay about that, but that's been done. Y'all probably know what animism is - and if not, you can google it - so I thought I'd just express myself a little more directly. Because poetry is, in fact, more direct than an essay. 

Spiritual what now?

This weeks' prompt over at The Pagan Experience asks us to describe our personal spiritual practices, favorites and daily.

Do I even have any daily practices?
After giving it considerable thought, I've decided that I do have some things I could call practices. I take care of my plants. I hang out with my pets. I go on hikes (not daily, but often). I keep living in a way that is increasingly good for my soul. ...I'm not really satisfied with that answer. It just feels incomplete, or maybe like I'm not answering the right question.

The other day, I read a piece by Jeffery Pierce over at Old Ways that described paganism as a way of life, as opposed to a specific religion. He says: "To me, you can’t start separating pagan from who we are or pull it out of any area of our lives. It’s our baseline as human beings." That's the nail on the head, for me.

When I think about what my daily spiritual practices are, first of all the question feels awkward, ill-fitted. And at first my conclusion was that I had none. I rephrased the question and asked myself what is it about my way of living that reflects my spirituality. That was easy: all of it. Even when I'm not doing very well at living, the effort is still a reflection of my spiritual path.

But that wasn't really the point of the original question. So I rephrased again: If I were outside looking in, what parts of my way of life would appear to be entirely spiritual? Well, maybe none. I do maintain shrines in my home, though, which might throw my visitors off if they realized what they were. Mostly, I think they just look decorative, but their meanings are clear to me. They serve as visual reminders of all the parts of my soul that I hold most dear - my ability to create; my connection to and safety in my home; the strong bond between me and my charges (my pets, my plants); and my best memories. These are the things that keep me trying on those hard days.

I can live with that answer.