RITUAL BASICS
These are the essential steps:
1. Open the Circle.
2. Open the Gates.
3.
Invocation to the Powers.
4. Statement of Intention and Sacrifice.
5. Main Ritual.
6. Dismissal of Powers.
7. Close the Gates.
8. Close the Circle.
OPENING THE CIRCLE
The Circle is the place where magickal work is carried out. It could
be a circle on the ground, or a stone ring, or it might be an imagined
circle inscribed in the air.The place where the circle is created
could be anywhere. It could be an imaginaryplace, the ritual carried
out in a lucid dream for example. Secure the room against access
as far as possible, take the phone off the hook etc.
The Circle is the first important magickal limit: it creates a small
area within which the magickal work takes place. The Circle marks
the boundary between the restof the world, your magickal working space.
Opening a Circle usually involves drawing a circle in the air or on the
ground, accompanied by an invocation to guardian spirits, or the elemental
powers of the four quarters, or the four watchtowers, orthe archangels,
or whatever. The precisemethod isn't as important as practicing it until
you can do it in your sleep.
The standard opening is called the Ritual
of the Pentagram(both banishing and invoking),which I shall cover in my Rituals
page. There are of course others, but I will as I saidcover them on another page.
OPENING THE GATES
The Gates are the boundary between normal and magickal consciousness.
Just as openingthe Circle limits the ritual in space, so opening the
Gates limits the ritual in time.Not everyone opens the Gates as a separate
activity; opening a Circle can be considered a de-facto opening of Gates,
but there are good reasons for keeping the two activitiesseparate. First,
it is convenient to be able to open a Circle without going into magickal
consciousness; There are times when something unpleasant and unwanted intrudeson
normal consciousness, and a Circle can be used to keep it out. Second, opening
the Gates as a separate activity means they can be tailored to the specific type
of magickalconsciousness you are trying to enter. There are many ways to open the
Gates, andmany Gates you could open. I imagine the gates in front of me, and I
physically open them, reaching out with both arms. ( I use what the call the sign
of the enterer).I will describe this on my Rituals Page.
INVOCATION OF THE POWERS
When it comes to Invocations I try to keep things simple and to the
point, so that I can do an invocation without having to think about
it too much, and that will leave room for the more important "consciousness
changing" aspect of the invocation.
An Invocation is like buying a
ticket for a plane: if you can't find the plane there isn't much point in
having the ticket. Opening the Gates gets you to the doorstep of magical
consciousness, but it is the invocation which gets you onto the plane and
takes you to the right place. The power of Invocation comes from practice,
not from deathless prose.
STATEMENT OF INTENTION AND SACRIFICE
There has to be a reason for doing Ritual. Healing, divination, personal
development,initiation, etc. The statement of intention is the culmination
of a process of limitationwhich begins ehen the Circle is opened, and to use
the analogy of the plastic bag, the statement of intention is like the blade
on the scalpel, the more precise the intention, the more the energy of the ritual
is applied to a single point.
Now about sacrifice. In magick you don't
get something for nothing, and if you want to bring about changes through magick
you have to pay for it in some way. The questionis: what can you give in return?
You can't sacrifice anything that is not yours to give,so the answer to the question
"what can I sacrifice" lies in the answer to the question"what am I, and what have I
got to give?" If you don't make the mistake of identifying yourself with your possessions
you will see that the only sacrifice you can make is yourself,because that is all you have
to give. Every ritual intention requires that you sacrificesome part of yourself, and if
you don't make the sacrifice willingly then either the ritual will fail, or the price will
be exacted without your consent.
Now don't take me wrong. This doesn't mean that
you have to drain blood or cut offa finger or any other nasty thing to your body. Each
person has a certain amount ofwhat I will call "life energy" at their disposal, and you
can sacrifice some of thatenergy to power the ritual. What this means is that you promise
to do something inreturn for your intention, and you link the sacrifice to the intention in
such a waythat the sacrifice focuses energy along the direction of your intention. For
example,your pet is ill and hasn't eaten for three weeks,so, as a last resort, fearing it would
die of starvation, you carry out a ritual to restore it's appetite, and as a sacrificeyou eat
nothing for 24 hours. You used hunger to drive the intention, and your petbegins eating the
following day.
THE MAIN RITUAL
After invoking the Powers and having stated the intention and sacrifice,
there would seem to be nothing more to do, but most people like to prolong
the contact with the Powers to carry out some kind of symbolic ritual for
a period of time. Magickians operate in a world where ordinary things have
deep symbolic meanings or correspondences,and they use a selection of
consecrated implements or "power objects" in their work.The magickian
can use this palette of symbols in a ritual to paint a picture which
signifies an intention in a non-verbal, non-rational way, and it is this
ability to communicate an intention through every sense of the body,
through every level of the mind, which gives ritual it's power.
DISMISSAL OF POWERS
Once the ritual is complete the Powers are thanked and dismissed.
This begins the withdrawalof consciousness back to where it was
before the ritual began.
CLOSE THE GATES
The final steps are closing the Gates(returning to normal states of consciousness).
Closing down correctly is important. If you don't feel like you have returned to
a normal state of consciousness, or you just don't feel right, repeat the steps again.
