Introduction to Pagan Ritual

What is Ritual

I personally define ritual as routine acts of any kind. Religious rites are also that, except for religious purposes. While there may be negative connotations on routine with regard to the spirit, and it is an understandable position for those who haven't seen the benefits of such a routine which is far from meaningless.

Rituals done fluently, which may or may not include those of a willy nilly nature, hardly require an intelligentsia, or a class of professional wisdom keepers. However for the more traditional paganisms, lorekeepers and liturgists preserve these traditions, namely bards, scribes and priests. In these traditions, the priests perform, further, and pass on new developments to the younger generations. In contemporary times, ritual is done by those with a strong relationship to the gods, ancestors, and spirits of nature.

These observances generally line up with transitional periods. Regular periods may include solar eclipses, dark moons, full moons, equinoxes, solstices, culling, planting, blessing, and harvesting. The irregular transitional periods are generally rites of passage, deaths, births, weddings, and other chaotic things.

Rituals are generally performed in holy sites, or sites that have been enchanted or set apart as sacred. This can include temples, chapels, streams, groves, churches, and trees. They're performed in homes, in fields, on farms, at work. Rites are often performed in cars, hospitals, restaurants, and generally wherever pagan people go.

Ritual Goals

The goals of ritual vary from person to person. A single public ritual with 25 participants may have a single goal given by the main priest, however, that goal may or may not be clear to the 25 attendees. They may prioritize their own reason for coming over the main intention set by the rite. The Purpose and Precedent step of ADF's core order can reset all these expectations verbally during the rite, guiding all the minds toward a single set of goals.

Ritual goals also vary depending upon belief. An atheist comes to ritual for mental defragmentation, while a polytheist comes to make sacrifice to their gods and give praise, and a christian attends because the personal offerings given by the participants can be done in a tribal setting, and be given brotherhood and honor without judgement. In fact, the greatest things are many things to many people, this is why they are elevated to greatness.

Ritual and Ceremony

There may or may not be a different between ritual and ceremony. I really don't think there is a dichotomy because there are few ceremonies that are not repeated. However some make a distinction between the two with the main qualifier being the frequency of the observance. A good example being a wedding. While repeated over and over in a tribe, a wedding is experienced usually only once per relationship.

Ritual and Breath

The most sacred and holy of rites are the life cycles of organisms. They are set apart from the non-biological activities of nature such as weather and tides. And for humans, the most basic cycle of our living forms is our breath.

Breath is life, breath is thought, and breath is relief. All spiritual activities start with the breath and the breath is a ritual itself. Structuralization it in intermediate pagan practice with things like rhythmic breathing gives purpose to breath. Inspiration always starts with the breath no matter what. The word for inspiration comes from the root inspirae(to breathe).

The breath is the fulcrum of spirit simply because one can say both that they are doing the breathing or the breathing is being done to them. What this reveals is a fault line between the conscious linear mind and the involuntary mind, where one can pull, tug, dig, claw and scrape for artifacts and tools which will aid you and continue your search for the state of the mystic, for oneness with eternal swine and the isle of apples, and with nature and the Cosmos.

Ritual Celebration

The celebratory and jovial nature of our modern rites may not have always been the norm. There were in the Iron age and prior in Hellenistic Greece and in the Vedic traditions, offerings for if you made ritual mistakes. One would start over and like a modern heavily liturgical christian religion, do it perfectly the first time.

We think this rigidity was at some part to play in the downfall of these traditions. Also this sort of behavior in a religion is what gives ritual and routine a negative outlook among people. We do our rites as they come out from out hearts, like jazz music. We're jovial and jolly, we burn bright our flames of might, love and wisdom, and let our genuity burn hot.

In HearthStone Grove activities, we do follow strict ritual outlines, litanies and protocols. However, it is important to let each ritual grow like a tree according to its order as well as the external forces placed upon it. Through this marriage of opposites, we find a moderation and fferyllt, or temperance that creates uniqueness that mirrors and models nature.

Ritual Devotion

Ritual devotion can be defined as the more serious work of ritual, usually done as personal work or in a very select group setting when the work needs more people to carry it out. This is the work of devoting to a god and performing rites and rituals which increase a relationship with a deity or set of deities. These relationships are ones of received experience and not of imagined ones.

Indo-European Ritual

ADF ritual was the first of its kind. It was the first pagan ritual to be based on the original catholic liturgy, seen as an amalgamation of the paganisms of europe. It was also the first kind of ritual to be structured around the right way to do european worship: making offerings. ADF rituals are divided into two main legs. The first being the sending of offerings, and the second one being the reception of communications and blessings. There are other ways to look at it but simply put, it is as simple as to and fro.

Overtime the core order of ritual in ADF changed. You can check out some of the history here. Later it included the three hallows based on its prevalence in all the other IE myths, having cognates in Norse, Celtic cultures and homologues as sacred doorways and offerings shafts in the mediterian cultures. Here are a list of links to help you understand the full Core Order of Ritual, which I will try to go over in this series.

Core Order Resources

• Core Order of Ritual
• Nine Tenets of Druid Ritual
• Adopting the Core Order for Solitary Use
• Core Order of Ritual as a Mexican Burrito members only

Devotional Rites

Small or short rites done daily or even weekly are beneficial to the life of the pagan. It keeps your practice fresh and increases the reception of random experiences from the gods outside of a ritual context. Those we regularly call and pray to, those simply we freshen in our minds, will be at play when we do our celebration and devotional works. Part of this series will include devotional rituals of varying kinds.

Magical Rites

Magical rites are interesting. In our magic, a form of low magic we have little use for ritual in our hands-on fluency. However, there are times in a magicians life, say as a leech for example, where you'll do routine bedside things. Or a farm witch may always provide an offering to an animal patient. These sorts of things aren't well documented in paganism. ADF as a whole doesn't focus on magical rites often in the sense of folk magic, Since it is more of an advanced topic, we'll leave it for a different series.

Memorizing the Core Order

In our local grove, our Standard Order of Ritual includes the Core Order, but rearranges it while staying within it's wide guidelines. We arrange our rituals into 7 groups of 3 steps. Memorizing the steps starts with memorizing the 7 sets: OGHOOBC: Opening, Grounding, Honoring, Otherworld. Offering, Blessing, and Closing. Once you remember these 7 containers, you'll be able to learn the 3 steps each container holds. After a while, the whole 21 step liturgy can be performed in an ad hoc manner. Slowly you can replace ad hoc parts with standard memorized litanies a step at a time. It only took me about 20 or so rites to go from fully ad hoc to fully memorized liturgy, a feat usually unheard of from many groves, but a feat I deem entirely minimal and necessary.

1. Opening
1. Procession
2. Horn Blasts
3. Opening Prayer
2. Grounding
1. Group Mind
2. Purification
3. Calling for Aid
3. Honoring
1. Honoring the Land Goddess
2. Honoring the Purpose
3. Honoring the Taxes
4. Otherworld
1. Recreate Cosmos
2. Opening the Ways
3. Inviting the Beings
5. Offering
1. Personal Sacrifices
2. Prayer of Sacrifice
3. Main Sacrifice
6. Blessing
1. Omen
2. Calling for Affirming the Blessing
3. Spellwork, Galdr, Charms, Workings (if any)
7. Closing
1. Thanking the Beings
2. Horn Blasts
3. Recession