A local festival asked a friend of mine if he would write a ritual for them.
“We can't guarantee that it's going to be in any particular location,” they told him.
“Sorry,” was his reply. “If you can't give me a place, I can't give you a ritual.”
Corollaries:
- There are no generic pagan rituals.
- All pagan ritual is place specific.
Take, for example, the kachina religions of the American Southwest. You couldn't really pick these religions up and practice them in, say, Minneapolis. They've evolved as a perfect unity of place, people, and religion: what in Witch we would call Land, Lede (“tribe”) and Lore. This unity constitutes the pagan ideal.
I look at my coven's Wheel of the Year. Nearly every one of our rituals has evolved to fit a specific place. You could, theoretically, enact them elsewhere, but it would require a re-envisioning and a recasting of the rites to fit the new location.
The Paganicon 2020 committee asked if I would be interested in crafting Opening and Closing rituals for the upcoming event. As you'll have gathered, I'm not much one for casting circles and calling corners in ballrooms, but if things were to go as I foresee, our rites would mark the tribal Ingathering with what heathens call a “land-take."
It was the perfect moment.
