Ritual Writing

We've finally gotten our ritual spot confirmed for Pagan Pride.  We're up at 12 noon on Saturday September 6th.  In keeping with the theme of this year's Pride, we are blessing the land and and giving back.  

Miel and I talked through several ideas of what to do and how to stage it.  Hopefully, we can gather everyone together this week and again next week to step through the ritual and the blocking.  Public ritual is usually quite different from grove and coven ritual.  But because we are known of but not known in the community, I really wanted to try to keep to our standard ritual as much as possible.  

Blue Star uses a particular ritual set up over and over again.  Using that same structure repeatedly does a few different things.  First, because we have done the same thing over and over and over again all over the country and in other countries, it adds that power of legacy to it.  Secondly, it helps to get the participants transferred from that outside headspace to ritual and magical headspace.  Plus when you do a thing over and over, it becomes ingrained in your psyche.  You instinctively know that when those first notes of Home Again start that magic is about to happen.  

As much as every ritual is the same, every ritual is different.  Every ritual needs to be carefully considered and thought out.  

Why are you doing ritual?  What do you hope to accomplish?  Who is your audience?  How can you make sure that you keep everyone engaged?  How do you deal with the ebb and flow of the energy?  What songs or chants will you use?  Why?  Are you even going to use song?

For this ritual, we are doing an invocation.  We are drawing a goddess into the human vessel of one of our priestesses.  Any time we do this, we need to consider several things.  Why are we doing it?  Why are we calling upon the gods and having them come to visit with us?  Some of them like to simply come and be with us.  Some do not.  Some want to have a purpose, a direction.  What is going on with them in their myth cycle?  Will they be happy with being brought into this situation?  And do we have the things that they want to offer them for food and drink?  One god wanted liquid fire.  Another goddess was shocked and thrilled to have tasted chocolate for the first time.  

Another thing we are doing is using lots of song.  A good deal of Blue Star history is based in song.  We are good at it.  We raise incredible energy with it.  We are using four songs.  Because of the difficulty of some of the vocal parts, I carefully looked at who volunteered to help us out.  Do we have the right voices?  Are these songs that we can carry?  

One of the songs is for a power raising so for that one in particular, I need to know that it is the right song for that use.  It needs to be repetitive, maybe be sung in a round, must apply to the work and theme that we have, and one that most people will know or can pick up on easily.  

For the other three songs, we'll need to provide lyric sheets to our participants.  They may or may not know the songs.  There are easy choruses that everyone should be able to join in on quickly.  

Because it is a public ritual, we also need to consider how to get things out to people quickly and easily so we don't drag down the energy and the ritual doesn't lag or stall at those times.  Food allergies?  Handling of multiple chalices?  Sharing one chalice with who knows how many people?  Making sure that people project their voices so everyone can hear.  

Ritual writing is an in depth process with lots of little details to consider.  When you have the basic structure in place, you can concentrate on the meat of the circle or the work you want to accomplish.  It is a core and key element of Blue Star.  

Hopefully, we'll see you at Pagan Pride and you can see the results of our work.  

All the best, 

Lapis