Greetings yet again fellow Wiccans. As you all very well know who I am, I have yet another page to give you filled with wonderful information about the Craft. This is especially important for you newcomers. This page has information about Rituals from the Idiots Guide to Witchcraft, which Dragon yet again was kind enough to type up and email me. Thank you for all of your help everyone! Namaste!
Ritual is an important part of wiccan faith. In ritual you honor the God and Goddess. You can also practice magick within ritual. Because ritual is such a central aspect of the faith, you want to make sure that you are properly prepared before you start.
In this chapter, we'll tell you all about what you need to do to prepare for ritual. You'll learn how to ready your body and your mind. Youi'll also learn how to prepare your altar elements and tools. We'll even suggest some recorded music that you can use during ritual or before to get you in the proper mood.
A Cleansing Ritual Bath
Taking a ritual bath is one of the most important pre-steps. The bath helps prepare the subconscious mind for ritual. If the point is to be clean, why not just take a shower? While a shower is good for cleaning your body, it does little for your mind. A shower will leave you fresh, but it does not relax you the way a bath will. When in the bath, your heart rate slows and the body and mind find peace.
Why a Bath Is Important and When to Take It
The ritual bath is important much the way your magickal clothes and tools are important. They signal your subconscious mind to get to work. The bath helps you let go of negativity and distracting thoughts and focus your mind. It gives you the opportunity to reflect on your self and your intentions. Time in the bath is also enjoyable and refreshing! When you climb out of the tub, it's almost as if you are being reborn. You should take a ritual bath before you do any formal ritual, especially magick, to make sure you don't have negative energy stuck on you. In preparing for ritual, after you have assembled all your tools, gone over your checklist, prepared the room, unplugged the phone, removed your watch, and checked to make sure your ritual outfit is clean, you can get into the tub. But you can take a ritual bath at other times too, even if you are not about to do ritual. You can use a ritual bath to reflect, meditate, get grounded, and connect with deity. Just make sure that your bath is slow and relaxing. Whatever you do, don't rush! This bath is special and can be magickal in its own right.
How to Take a Ritual Bath
To prepare your ritual bath, put essential or magickal oils and/or herbs in the water. Use only a couple of drops, because you want only a subtle essence of sent. (You don't want to run everyone else out of the circle!) Choose your herbs based on your personal preference or on the kind of ritual or magick you plan to do. Turn off that glaring overhead light in the bathroom and light candles. You want you bath to be a special, magickal time for you. While you're soaking, think about ritual and any magick that you will be working. Meditating in the bath can be a powerful and yet gentle way to connect with the deity. Let the water soothe you, and allow yourself to feel nurtured. If you like, play soft music while you're in the tub to complete the special atmosphere.
As you are stepping out of the water, let go of any negativity. Imagine that it has stayed in the water and you are letting it flow down the drain away from you. This way when you emerge from the tub, you will be cleansed physically and mentally. Put on your clean robe or outfit (or stay as you are in your birthday suit)! and you are ready for ritual.
So Mote It Be
If you are lucky enough to live near a natural body of water, you can take your ritual bath in it. We said natural, because swimming pools, with all their smelly chlorine, don't count. You can bathe for ritual in a pond, lake, stream, river, hot spring, or ocean. As you exit the waters, imagine Venus, the Goddess of Love and Beauty, rising for the first time from the foam of the sea.
Consecration: A Means of Empowerment
After you buy or finish making your magickal tools, you need to consecrate them. Consecrating your tools before you use them rids the tools of any negative energy they may be harboring. It is also a way of dedicating your tools to the Lord and Lady, to the good of all, and empowering them with positive energy.
Book of Shadows
To consecrate something means to bless it or make it sacred. The word carries the connotation of physical change, as well. In the Catholic Church consecrate is the word used to describe the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. And that's a big change. When you consecrate your tools, you also dedicate or devote them to the Goddess and the greatest good of all.
Before you consecrate your tools, you need to consecrate the elements on you altar. (that will be explained the next chapter) To consecrate your elements, do the following: Say: "O element of Earth, may all negative energies depart and only positive energies remain. This is my will, so mote it be."
As you say these words, draw a banishing Earth pentagram in the air over the bowl of salt on your altar. ( that will be explained in the next two chapters) Then Say: "O element of Water, may all negative energies depart and only positive energies remain. This is my will, so mote it be."
Draw a banishing Water pentagram in the air over the bowl of water on you altar. Then say: "O element of Air, may all negative energies depart and only positive energies remain. This is my will, so mote it be."
And draw a banishing Air pentagram in the air over your incense. Then say: "O Spirit, may you charge and protect this altar from any negativity. May your blessing be upon it as I dedicate the work of this altar for positive purpose only so as it harm none. So mote it be."
Once you have concentrated you elements, take three measures of salt and put them in the water to make it holy waterAs you do this say: "One to purify the body, one to purify the mind, and one to purify the heart. This spirit will bind them all as one."
Take your athame and sprinkle the salted water over it. As you do this say, "With the elements of Water, I wash away any negative energies from this athame so that only positive energies remain."
Sprinkle salt over the athame and say: "With the element of Earth, I wash away any negative from this athame so that only positive energies remain." Or you can sprinkle the salted water on the athame and say:" With the elements of Earth and Water, I wash away any negative energies from this athame so that only positive energies remain."
Then, wave the athame over a lit candle and say: "With the element of fire, I wash away any negative energies from this athame so that only positive energies remain."
Next, pass the athame through the smoke from your incense and say:"With the elements of Air, I wash away any negative energies from this athame so that only positive energies remain."
Finally, hold the athame up to the Lord and Lady and say:"O spirit, may you charge and protect this ahtame from any negativity. May your blessing be upon it as I dedicate the work of this athame for positive purposes only so as it harm none. So mote is be."
Go through this process with all your alter instruments and with anything that you want to place on your altar, use in ritual, or make holy. As you probably can imagine, the first time you set up your altar it can take some time! After the first time, you don't need to reconsecrate all of your tools unless someone else has touched them without your permission. Each time you pull up the circle your tools will be consecrated by the sacred space.
Facts:
The Five elements are Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit. In Wicca, each element is associated with a direction in the ritual circle. Earth's direction is north, and Air is east. Water is west, while Fire is south. Spirit encompasses all direction because it surrounds and is part of everything.
After you've consecrated an object, no one should touch it but you. If someone does touch one of your consecrated things, you will have to reconsecrate it to get rid of that persons energy. Make sure you consecrate everything that your're going to use in the ritual, including you magickal jewelry. You can consecrate your clothing in the same way, if you like, but you don't need to. It is enough just to know that your clothes are clean. Or you can put them out under the full moon. (You don't need to consecrate your clothes because you don't use your robes or other clothing to do magick. They just serve to get you into the right frame of mind.)
What Does It Mean to Charge Your Magickal Tools?
Charging magickal tools is a way of waking them up and enlivening their positive energy. One of the easiest ways to charge your tools is by laying them out under the full Moon at night. If you can, spread them out in the light of the full Moon for a couple of hours or even over night. After some time in the moonlight, the energy of the Goddess will penetrate your tools and they will be ready to use. If you want to add the God energy, you can spread them out under the Sun.
If you live in an apartment, you can place items for charging on you balcony or windowsill. Just make sure they don't fall off! OR place them in a patch of moonlight that filters through your windows. Alternatively, you can hold your tools up toward the full Moon on a night when she is shining and ask the Goddess to bless them.
A Charging Ritual for Your Magickal Tools
The first step in a charging ritual for your tools is to cleanse a consecrate them, as outlined earlier. Then take your tools out under the full Moon. If you own quartz crystals, bring them with you and place them on or beside the tools to be charged. the crystals will help to pull positive energy to your tools.
Sit on the ground near your tools. Take a few deep breaths, or spend a few minutes in meditation. Envision the moonlight filling each tool with power. Ask the Goddess to bless your tools and fill them with light. If you can leave the tools outside overnight, do so. If not, wrap them up, carry them inside, and store them in a safe place were no one else will handle them. You can do the same thing with the God, except you would place your tools under the Sun at noon when it is high and bright in the sky. (We don't recommend this for candles because they will melt.)
Learning to Ground Yourself Before Ritual
If you don't ground yourself before doing ritual, your energies will not flow the way they should. Your energy will be erratic and your magick may not do what you want it to. When you ground yourself, you align the Chakas, or energy centers of the body. In addition, grounding allows yo to receive the natural flow of energy from the Earth and enables you to become one with the Earth. It also helps to prepare your subconscious to do the work it needs to do.
Book of Shadows
Chakra means "wheel" in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. The chakras are round, spinning discs of energy that lie along your spine from your tailbone to the top of your head. Hindus, Tibetans, Taoists, and Hopis all use chakra systems to explain the various energies in the body.
Visualization Techniques You Can Use
There are many different visualization techniques that you can use to ground yourself. Denise has her students envision that they are becoming trees. You can use this image or find another one that works for you.
Here is how you do Denise's tree visualization:
Sit up strait in a chair with you feet flat on the floor. Place your hands on your knees and relax your shoulders. Breathe slow and deep breaths. Relax your abdominal muscles, and let your tummy move in and out as you breath. Close your eyes and start to picture yourself as a tree. Your head and shoulders and the branches, your legs and body are the trunk. Take some time to really imagine yourself with branches and a trunk. See the picture in your mind grow clearer and sharper. Then as you continue to breathe, deep slow breaths, picture roots growing from the bottom of your feet. With each exhale, push down your roots deeper and deeper and imagine them growing longer. Watch them grow farther and farther into the Earth.
As your roots grow, they mature and bring you the nutrients that all trees need. As you breathe in, pull up cool, dark nutrients and water from the ground into the tree. As you breathe in, see the nutrients fill the tree. As you breathe out, feel your roots growing longer and stronger into the Earth. The nutrients you are taking in are the blessings from the Goddess. But this is only half of what we need to thrive--we also need the blessing of the Lord, the Sun.
As you breathe out, pull down the golden rays of the Sun into your branches, down through your trunk, and into your roots. As you breathe in, pull int he cool nutrients of the Earth. Breathe out and feel the golden light of Sun entering from above.
Breath in and feel the Earth's nutrients filling you from below. Feel the rhythm pulling in the Sun from above as you exhale and drinking in the nutrients from the ground as you inhale. Picture the tree getting bigger and stronger and healthier. Feel the air and sway in the breeze.
After you have gone through this exercise and given it your full concentration, you will be grounded and ready to work.
So Mote It be Are visualization and meditation hard for you? Do you sometimes avoid doing things that you find difficult? Do uncomfortable emotions come up for you when you sit still? We'll it's really true that practice makes perfect. The more you work at focusing your mind in meditation or visualization the easier it will become. If you practice every day for just a little while, you will get better and better. And it's nice to take 5 to 10 minutes out of your day to relate to deity. As your sense of connection grows stronger and stronger, you will be less plagued by unpleasant feelings. You'll be able to sit for longer periods of time. And your visualizations will grow sharper and clearer.
Focus Is No Hocus Pocus Focus is a really important part of doing ritual and magick. If you can't focus, you won't be able to get into ritual, and you won't enjoy it. And neither will you be able to do magick. Focusing is what channels and directs the energy you use. If you can't concentrate your mind on that task, your energy gets nowhere.
Focusing is not some esoteric art. Just like every other day-to-day activity, the more you practice focusing, the better you get. So practice, okay?
Fasting Before Ritual
Almost all religions use fasting to some extent. Fasting can be the total abstention from food and drink, or it can be more moderate. Christians, Hindus, Jews, Jains, and Muslims fast. So did the ancient Celts, Egyptians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and Greeks. (Kind of makes you want to reach for a snack, huh?)
Many people fast during the day when they are going to do ritual int the evening. Some will eat breakfast, skip lunch and dinner and drink only fruit juice and water during the day. Others might eat lunch and then have nothing but juice later, and still others will have lunch and a light dinner. Whatever you do, don't eat a big meal before ritual.
There are several reasons why people fast on ritual days. When you eat, especially a large meal, your blood pressure goes up. Your blood pressure also rises when you raise energy during ritual. So, if you eat a huge meal before ritual, you put your heart on double duty. Not only does it have to work hard to help you digest all that food, you're also asking it to pump blood to put out a lot of energy fro ritual.
A large meal also might make you sleepy. Hasn't that happened to you before? You eat and, because all your energy is going into digestion, you have to lie down fro a while. You don't want to feel like you need a nap to when you're trying to build power! Rather you want to be alert and at your peak so you can build up all the energy that you need for your ritual.
Fasting is cleansing and leaves you feeling light. As a technique, fasting has been used for thousands of years to help the mind move away from the every day and focus on the magickal and spiritual. If you decide to fast, make sure that you drink juice and plenty of other fluids. If you are diabetic or have another illness, you may not be able to fast. And that's okay. Fasting is not necessary, but it can make magickal work manifest more easily. Healthy people without existing illnesses should be able to fast for some of the day or at least a short amount of time before ritual.
Banish! Do not fast if you have any medical condition that might be aggravated by such an action. Consult your primary care physician before undertaking any kind of fast.
Magick Music
It's great to use music before ritual -- when you take your ritual bath, for instance. You can also play music during ritual. Music has a direct effect on the mind on both the conscious and subconscious levels. You can order meditation tapes or pagan dance music online or buy them at New Age or metaphysical stores. If you visit a store, you should be able to listen to the music before you buy it. You need to be sure you like it and it will work for you All stores receive demo tapes from the producers, so there is no reason that you can't listen first and buy later.
Banish!
Say you are getting ready to do ritual. You sit down and close your eyes to meditate, but your eyes keep popping open and your mind continues to whirl. If you can't ground yourself and get focused, then you are not ready to work Avoid working when you aren't prepared! If you're doing magick, your magick could go in a direction other than the one you intended.
Using Music in Ritual
Music can be used in several ways during ritual. For example, you can play pagan dance music to help you build a cone of power-- a large amount of energy that you will later release to carry out your magick. For this purpose, you want to select a piece that starts out slow and gets faster and faster. The faster you dance, the more energy you raise.
Or you can use music to help you celebrate sacred event. It is traditional (in many different traditions) to do a dance of celebration around the Maypole during Beltane. Witches dance at some of the other Sabbats, or holidays too.
And, of course, you can use soothing music to make you feel safe and calm for you meditation during ritual. Some people like to play New Age tapes. Others like classical music. Still others prefer natural sounds--birds chirping int he rain forest, the roar of the ocean, or even the singing of whales.
Book of Shadows
Beltane is a Wiccan holiday that is celebrated on April 30. the celebration of this festival has a lot in common with the May Day that you probably know I will have more about Beltane and the other Wiccan holidays in chapters to come.
Chants: Find Your Magickal Voice
Listening to a tape of CD of chants is a great way to get you in the mood for ritual. There is all kinds of chants -- form Gregorian to Sanskrit to Wiccan. Try listening to a few different types and see what appeals to you. You could listen to chants while you take your ritual bath, or learn a few chants and sing them to yourself. You can chant even if you don't like the sound of your own voice.
When chanting, you don't need to sound like a grand diva. The point is to focus on the chant and its intent. The Lord and Lady want to hear from you even if you cant carry a tune. One of Katherine's yoga teachers does not sing well at all. But he leads great chants and everyone always wants to chant with him. When he chants he is totally wrapped up in what he is doing and so devoted that people around him can't help but he moved by his energy. So, try chanting--even if your singing makes the dogs howl!
Facts:
The group Kiva, and we mean group as in band, has a great CD of Wiccan dance music and chants. The album is called Renewal, and it features tracks you might want to use in your next ritual.
Within ritual, you can use chants to build your cone of power. just the way you would with drumming, you start out slow: then you build the pace and raise the volume. You chant faster and louder until you feel ready to burst with the energy. But don't pop. Direct the energy you're raised into your magick tool or object. We'll tell you more about just how in up coming chapters.
You can also use chanting in ritual to re-ground yourself or to put yourself in a certain mindset. Slow, rhythmic chanting can be very soothing and calming. It can also help to open your heart to deity just the way singing a hymn would. And sometimes witches chant or sing their spells. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. You'll find out more about spells in upcoming chapters.
So Mote It Be
Here are some musical selections you might want to check out. You can use them during ritual or listen to them while you are preparing for ritual to help get you in the proper frame of mind:
> Loreena McKennitt, The Visit, WEA/ Warner, 1992
> On the Wings of Song and Robert Gass, From the Goddess, Spring Hill Music,1989
> Reclaiming & Friends, Chants: Ritual Music, Serpentine Music, 1987
> Mike Rowland, the Fairy Ring, Emd/Narada, 1982
> Troika, Goddess, Emd/Narada, 1996
Drumming
When you are building a cone of power you might want to play a drum. Drumming is an excellent way to build up energy. It's a scientific fact that when people listen to drums their heart rates speed up as the tempo of the drumming increases. With your heart beating to the beat, there's no telling the amount of energy you'll raise!
You can use a handheld drum, tambourine, rattle, your fingers against a hard surface, or anything else you can keep a beat with. You should start out soft and slow. Then increase the speed and volume. Keep drumming, getting faster and louder and faster and louder. Pretty soon you will notice that your heart is beating faster, too. You'll feel your energy rise up.
Drumming also can help to keep you focused. When you drum, the beat grabs your attention. The physical action of your arms reinforces the attention your mind is giving to the sound. Your body and your mind are intended on one thing--the beat. And that's great way to get ready for the work you are going to do.
