Creating Circles and Ceremonies: Rituals for All ... - reading...

Book I: T he Magick Circle 55
Feminist theologian Mary Daly created the word be-speaking, and defines it as “bringing
about a psychic and/or material change by means of words; speaking into be-ing.” To be-speak
an invocation, you must be fully present with what you are saying. Let the words arise out of the
lips of the Divine Spirit who resides within you. Hear your own words, your own voice; listen to
what you are saying. Experience your voice, spoken or sung, as a pathway for the deity to enter.
Listen for the echo of your own voice speaking and singing back to you.
The goal of invocation is to speak with such an openness of mind and heart that you come
into resonance with Divinity. This can be difficult to do if you are holding a piece of paper and
reading your invocation. If you read your invocation, your eyes and mind are on the printed page
and not with them. Remember that the purpose of invocation is to connect with Spirit. Preparation
is most important because it gives you the energetic experience from which your words will
emerge. Therefore, writing an invocation prior to the ritual helps to clarify the purpose of your
invocation, and can be a part of your energetic preparation. During the actual ritual, however,
trust yourself to have a conversation with the God or Goddess. Do you write down exactly what
you are going to say before you phone a friend to ask a favor or have a heart-to-heart chat? You
might make notes of points to cover if you intend to have a long conversation, but most of the
time you just dial the number and talk when the connection goes through. Initially you may want
to memorize your invocation or evocation, but with experience you will move beyond this. Once
you are experienced with invocation, you will rarely, if ever, need to prepare a script in advance.
A ritual Circle can be a wonderful place to jump into the waters of improvised invocation.
Be-speaking does not necessarily have to involve words. Invocation can be communicated
entirely with movement, with music, drums, percussion, or breath—or even with silence. Whether
in solitary space or in a supportive environment, you can learn to trust yourself to communicate
directly with the Deities, unaided by a script or “cheat sheet.” As long as you convey the essence
of what you are asking for, a simple, concise invocation can be magnificent.
T he Mystery of the Gods
By Oberon
Deity manifests in so many ways! Theologically, Morning Glory and I are basically Pantheists.
We believe, as Cicero said, that “everything is alive, and everything is interconnected.”
We also believe in immanent divinity (“Thou art God/dess”) and emergent evolution.
Just as consciousness arises and develops in an individual person, from infancy through
life, so does emerging consciousness arise through the evolution of all life, both individually
in each creature and synergistically in the entire planetary biosphere—Gaia, Mother Earth,
the Goddess. Thus we are all cells in a greater body, just as we ourselves are composed of
tinier cells. We also suspect that the Earth—perhaps the entire solar system—could be just a
cell in the larger body of the galaxy, and that galaxies may be cells in the body of the greater
universe. And perhaps this universe is but a cell in the vaster complex of “multi-verses” that
physicists are now proposing. There’s really no end to it, in either direction:
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
—De Morgan, “A Budget of Paradoxes”
Coherent consciousness coalescing synergistically at scales and levels greater than ours
is what we conceive of as “divinity.” This consciousness or divinity seems to be not only
immanent, but also transcendent. We share in the greater consciousness of Gaia, for instance,
just as the neurons in our brains share in our own minds. But we are legion, and each of us
has our own sense of individuality as well.