Ritual… It doesn’t have to be Elaborate.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe that magic is a holistic practice; meaning it’s intrinsic to your life. It touches and effects every part of your life. One of the major assumptions that many people drawn to a magical spiritual practice make that can be their downfall is that in order to do magic or perform a ritual it must be elaborate.

Many of the books written about starting or deepening your practice give examples of rituals that require specific ingredients and are time consuming to perform.(please don’t think I am denegrating them… there are many paths and many ways to worship, each and everyone of them are valid)However, throughout my 20 some odd years of practice I have talked to many witches, who lament that they would like to practice more regularly but they don’t have the time or money to do so. This , unfortunately, is a product of our modern capalist society. People always want to sell you something. I must admit that I was drawn into this idea when I first began to study and practice magic myself, but as I have gotten older and grown more familiar with the world of magic, gained and maintained a connection to a patron Goddess, and worked toward deepening my connection to the energies around me, I have learned that I don’t necessarily have to run out and get a gold candle, and plan my ritual for a specific planetary hour of a specific day on a specific moon phase. (while these elements of ritual can help and boost the efficacy of a spell or working, they are not mandatory) Magic will work if what you have to work with is less than ideal. In fact some of the most powerful rituals I have come across, require very little in the way of material ingredients and are as basic as you can get. The biggest thing in performing a ritual is intent, though I will say a healthy understanding of ritual theory is very helpful as well. (perhaps we will discuss this a little later)

The recent holidays, buying a house and some work stuff has been very stressful for me lately. I have found myself exhausted, frustrated and feeling lost. Couple that with a demanding work schedule, trying to finish college classes and managing a house, time is not a commodity I have to spare. However, the witch in me knew I had to do something to ease the energetic tension I have been carrying around for the past four months. At the beginning of the Pagan year I had decided that I wanted to return to the basics, many things have changed over my life since I first started practicing and following my spiritual path, and so, as I am sure many of you have done, I decided to revamp the literagy that I use in my own spiritual practice. This led me to my solution to the stress and energy drain I was feeling- I needed some ritual in my life.

Time being in short supply, and being filled with a yearning for some simplicity I returned to a ritual I heard about several years ago. In the book Evolutionary Witchcraft by T. Thorn Coyle there are a couple techniques that resonated with me deeply. The prayer for alignment and making kala.( I highly reccommend this book and especially these exercises for anyone.) The prayer for aligngment, boils down to controlled breathing meditation and the only thing you need to make kala is a cup and some water. All together these two things can take as little or as long as you like. For myself, I spent five minutes, I lit a small candle, burned a little sage that I had on hand and performed these two actions. It was calming, and freeing. It reminded me of the times when I didn’t feel like I could hardly afford to sleep, and incidentally I slept better after performing them than I have in a while.

One of the other rituals that I have is to light a candle as an offering and say a small “thank you” for all the blessings in my life. I have also incoporated ritual elements into my home decor. Next to my front door is what I call the smudging station. It is a small hanging shelf (which has a drawer underneath) On the shelf is a candle, a lighter, a smudging bowl and my smudge fan. In the drawer there are different cleansing herbs. In my house the big ones are sage, palo santo and frankencense. Each member of my household knows that if they have a particulary bad day, they are to stop just within the doorway and if need be ask someone to take their things and smudge themself before continuing into the house. This keeps the negative energy to a minimum and is also a rite of return. We know when we do this that we have come home to our own sanctuary. And that is part of the point of ritual. It is actions performed regularly with deeper meaning, generally (at least in a spiritual sense) with the intention of connecting with the divine. They can be as simple or elaborate as you wish. Journaling is a type of ritual, they way we clean our houses can be a type of ritual, in fact for me it is, but that is a subject for a whole different post.

By expanding our understanding and letting go of preconcieved notions, we can truly find what ritual work, works for us and that is the truly important thing. Please ask yourself, what things you do that could be considered a ritual? What rituals would you like to perform that maybe you don’t have time for? How could they be simplified, what are ways that you can adhere to the spirit if not the letter of a purposed ritual? Please share any ideas here, i have found the sharing of ideas , and points of view can really help to spark growth and insight and inspiration in others, and when it all comes down to it that is the point of this blog.