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

Rituals for All Seasons & Reasons V
images of the Maypole, ribbons flying and dancers laughing as we wound the ribbons
joyously around the pole, tying our new May King to it. I reigned as Queen of the May twice,
the first time at 19, the second at 25. As a community, we mourned the cyclical loss of the Year
King at Samhain, wept with the Queen, said our goodbyes, and went into the world of Spirit.
We ate silently and fed the spirits who gathered as the veils grew thin.
First my younger brother, and later my firstborn, served as the Robin, the new year’s
Child King, atop the Yule log. (Yeah, my child is a girl. We’re flexible!) We sang and told
stories, exchanged gifts, then wandered in the snowy fields to call in the shifting season. We
greeted the dawn after the darkest of nights, making sure the sun still rose.
I served twice as Persephone’s vessel (with my third and final round approaching—a girl
must have her limits!), and sat on Her throne in the dark and drear underworld of Erebos, and
watched the myths unfold as we participated in the regeneration of deities more ancient than
written history. I grew chthonic, found my roots, and stood with Her in me to find the stars again.
We held and beheld the Mysteries, and tied ourselves securely to the Earth with them.
Ritual offered a space for recognition of the sanctified ground upon which we built our
dreams of new worlds, new words, a new age, a new Aeon.
I grew up finding rhythms in the natural order of things: birth, life, and death all had their
time and place. We grew a garden, helped our animals birth new broods every springtime,
and buried our dead in the soil. Of course, by our dead I don’t mean human relations, but our
animal counterparts. My pony died one spring and became fertilizer for the raspberry patch.
The remains of animals we took for food were honored with a resting place deep in the soil
that would offer up next year’s harvest.
There was no mediation between our lives and the seasons, and the lives of the lands and
creatures we cohabitated with were part of the whole. This inherent witnessing of cycles was
a pattern that we brought into the creation of our ritual cycles and myths.
My mother practiced a wide array of indigenous practices, and we honored the teachings
of all paths. We celebrated Ostara and Easter, Yule, Christmas, and Chanukah. We prayed to the
rocks and trees, and to the gods and goddesses for wisdom and assistance.
My parents encouraged faith and belief. I was told we were descended from the Pixies.
I later figured out that the Picts may have been the origin of the mythical Pixies, and if that is
so, what I believed was the truth. In magick there are many truths.
The ritual structures we founded were organic, just as the land and the seasons are
organic. Just as human relationships and the process of aging and growth, births, rites of
passage and deaths are organic.
We studied the Ancient Stories, created and recreated rituals that taught the Old Teachings.
We pulled together paths and followed them all at once. We initiated Mysteries and
learned from them as we taught; experienced the Mysteries as we performed them.
The loose-knit traditions of the Church of All Worlds offered space for intuitive ceremony,
and encouraged the eclectic recombination of structure and experience, form and limitless expansion.
In learning the basic elements of ritual structure, I became adept at creating and adapting
ritual formats to make room for as many points of reception as possible. Using the Celtic-Hellenic
hybrid that formed the basis of the CAW cosmology, and the ease of integration of the “Wing-It
Tradition,” I was given the tools to adapt, amalgamate, update, and re-vision mythical structures
and ritual formats.
On numerous occasions I have pulled together a ritual at a moment’s notice. I take the
elements desired, the deities to be honored, and the purpose of the Rite, place it in the cauldron
of mind and spirit, and pull out a fully-formed ritual outline in minutes. Once we have the
desired end-point in mind, the rest is dressing. But that dressing works best when it is flexible
and strong, inclusive and focused.
I sought ordination in the Church of All Worlds after years of training, and my path to that
ordination was ten years long from start to finish. I was the first, and as far as I am aware, the