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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Pagan ritual
Saturn-Day Soul Tribe Gathering

It is very important to gather your soul tribe and just celebrate each other from time to time. Here is a pagan ritual I have performed on weekends—I call it “Saturn-day night fever.” Over the years, I have added many embellishments, such as astrological or holiday themes. The basic ritual of cakes and ale, however, is a timeless and powerful classic.

Gather a group of friends either outdoors under the moon or in a room large enough for dancing, drumming, and singing. Have the guests bring a cake of their choice as well as a cider, mead, beer, or juice to share. (Note that the cake can be of any style, so it does not have to be an iced sheet cake; banana bread, Irish soda bread, or a braided honey bread will do just as well.) Place the offerings in the center, on an altar table. Then light green and brown candles for home and hearth.

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 The Egypt Game - Wikipedia

How many of us can honestly say that we got our start in pagan ritual from a kid's book?

I can. The book was Zilpha Keatley Snyder's 1973 The Egypt Game.

In an unnamed California college town, a disused storage yard becomes, for a small group of kids, the magical Land of Egypt, “a land of mystery and mud.”

There, in imaginative half-play/half-seriousness, they enact rites for the ancient gods of the Nile.

Then unexpected things begin to happen.

 

Illuminated by Anton Raible's charming drawings, The Egypt Game tells a large-hearted tale of the lived imagination. It has everything: likeable, flawed characters, mystery, even murder. Oh, and Halloween, too: that patronal holiday of children, which no kid's book would be complete without.

In 1973, assembling a diverse cast of White, Black, Asian, and Latino characters, as Snyder does here, was pretty radical for a children's book. Even at the time, I knew it was the Way of the Future.

And then there are the rituals.

Snyder captures, better than any other author that I know, the excitement, the mystery, the sheer joyful exuberance, of creating and enacting ritual.

You read about what the Egypt Gang does, and you know that ritual matters. You think: “I could do this too.”

So you do.

 

Modesty is not a pagan virtue; truth, though, is. Fifty years on, I can say truthfully that I'm one of Pagandom's ace ritualists.

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 Oak King Green Man Pagan God Summer Solstice 11x14 Print Pagan image 1

 

Two pagan rituals.

Which one would you rather attend?

 

Ritual A

Circle is cast.

Priestess invokes Green Man.

Clad in green paint and living leaves, the Green Man springs into the circle.

Green Man gives a speech about who he is and what he does.

 

Ritual B

Circle is cast.

Priestess invokes Green Man.

Clad in green paint and living leaves, the Green Man springs into the circle.

Drums come up.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    The throb of the drums will always lead us back to the heart of Pagandom. Praise to the drums, and their drummers!
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I like that version C with the strange drink tasting of nuts and fungus, but I would like to be numbered among the drummers instea
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    I've always felt that, like sex, ritual needs to be something that people do together, not what one person does to another. (Proba
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    B, of course. I have a hard time with performative ritual, where attendees just stand around and watch other people do stuff. Dan
  • Chas  S. Clifton
    Chas S. Clifton says #
    How about version C? Clad in green paint and living leaves, the Green Man springs into the circle. The Green Man offers strange

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Spring Equinox

 

Visual Lifesavers © Jennifer Smith 2008 

 

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Energy in Ritual: Different Flavors

What impacts the amount of energy in a ritual and the type of energy? And what's the difference between the energy in a private ritual and a group ritual? I recently saw a Facebook post about the topic and my response was long enough that it seemed more appropriate as a blog post. 

The conversation centered around this quote from the book Dedicant by Thuri Calafia:

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Shauna Aura Knight
    Shauna Aura Knight says #
    Thanks for turning me on to Thuri Calafia's work, Molly!
  • Molly
    Molly says #
    You're awesome, Shauna! I ended up buying Thuri's second book recently.
  • Rick
    Rick says #
    Thuri's first two books are reasonably good, I thought. Haven't noticed if the third one is published yet.
  • Rick
    Rick says #
    I have been to rituals that were barely on life support to me, whereas other people felt a lot of energy as well. I've also led so
  • Shauna Aura Knight
    Shauna Aura Knight says #
    Absolutely. I've been to a lot of rituals and I thought the energy was tanking, but others thought it was a great ritual. Expectat

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Casting the Circle - Holding the Magic

Several years ago my daughter and I attended an interfaith event at a Christian church. As we sat down in the pews, my daughter leaned over to me and said "How come we aren't sitting in a circle? How will everyone see each other if some people are behind other people?"

I can't think of a better way to highlight the differences between most* Pagan rituals and those of other, more mainstream faiths. For the most part, we do gather in circles. No one person is in front of another person and, in theory, a newcomer to the circle wouldn't be able to tell who was in charge just by the position that a particular person or persons occupied. There's something crucial and fundamentally different in that small action that separates Pagan gatherings from other religious or magical rites.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Gwion Raven
    Gwion Raven says #
    Thank you Lizann. You can take the witch out of the kitchen but you can't take the kitchen out of the witch!
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Love this!

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Cleansing - How a Ritual Begins

I am fascinated by ritual. Rituals of all sorts. In every culture, in every age there are rituals to commemorate births and comings of age and marriages and deaths. There are high holy days set aside to celebrate the gods, goddesses, fallen (s)heroes, venerated Ancestors and important moments in a culture's mythos. Rituals can be elaborate festivals lasting many days or simple, daily actions such as changing the milk in an offering bowl or setting a piece of food aside for the Fae folk or just taking a moment to pray.

Rituals are made up of many components. There's the liturgy, the actual words that are spoken. There may be songs and offerings and costumes and incense and props of all sorts. For me, whether it's a grand affair or the most humble of rituals, stepping into ritual space is a beautiful and necessary act, because rituals ask us to leave the mundane "outside" of the temple and allow us to connect with life and our past and our future, right now, in the present.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Gwion Raven
    Gwion Raven says #
    Hello Connie, Thank you for your comments. I'm glad to hear that you aren't sweeping the whole forest when you are doing ritual o
  • Connie Lazenby
    Connie Lazenby says #
    I can't DO a ritual without proper cleansing. If it is outside, I obviously leave out some steps (I am not sweeping the grass with
  • Gwion Raven
    Gwion Raven says #
    Hello Elizabeth, "Writer's Hygiene" - I think I'm going to adopt that term. I think of writing as a ritual and I'm recognizing th
  • Elizabeth Creely
    Elizabeth Creely says #
    I love salt. Saltwater, shaken from the tip of my whisk, is probably the most consistent thing I do -and the last thing I do- to m

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