Note: this was originally intended for SubStack.
Now, one of the first points considered when planning a ritual is often:
what is the ritual's purpose?
That
seems obvious, but it assumes a ritual will only have one purpose.
There are indeed some matters which should properly be in separate
rituals - for instance, trying to combine causing rain in Area A and
reduced rain in Area D is likely to be ... problematic (there may be a risk of confusion on the part of the humans performing the ritual), but there are often aspects of situations which can usefully be combined - such as:
- different aspects of a goal,
or - issues that are complementary or holistic.
1. Different Aspects of a Situation
Beginning with the first of these, one categorisation I find often useful is to consider the "good" and "bad" aspects of a situation.
To
illustrate that with an example from mundane life, human resources
surveys may show that staff have mixed feelings about a workplace - they
may, say, love the hours, but hate the pay
(or vice versa)
.
Thus the two aspects of like and dislike exist together, in the one place or situation.
If you wish to improve that situation, your choices (of mundane world action) are:
- improve the hours even more
- improve the pay (I am writing this from an Australian context, where minimum pay rates are much better than some other nations)
- or attend to both
The first and third options would apply if the strength of liking for hours worked was weaker than the dislike for pay.
To
illustrate this in the context of ritual, let's consider addressing a
world situation - which, in many cases, will be a mixture of "good" and
"bad" aspects.
Now, before I go into what those could be, I should explain I dislike using "good" and "bad": I prefer judgments
(and that is what "good" and "bad" are) based on the concept of "balanced positive"
(which I "define" here, and am examining - slowly - at an online shrine here) and "spiritually mature"
(which I "define" here
- and something can be old/well established and just be old, not
mature, just as a person/organisation/idea can be young or new and
mature), which I combine into "Balanced Positive, (spiritually)
Mature", or BPM. Whatever is not BPM, or is it's opposite/opposing, I
describe as
nonBPM.
So ... in that world situation:
- BPM issues could include:
- the desire of those involved to do better, even if that is not being manifested;
- any evidentiary support for doing better (expert reports, etc); and
- supportive resources (such as any organisations with relevant BPM aims, or possibly government budgets for the BPM aims).
- nonBPM issues could include:
- public ignorance and biases;
- inadequacies in any of the BPM assets listed - e.g., insufficient listening to people when preparing reports, etc; or
- situational factors such as natural disasters, war, etc.
The aims, in a ritual, would be to minimise the nonBPM issues, and increase and/or improve the BPM issues.
For the purposes of an arbitrary example, a situation might involve, say:
- some people wanting to do better, but being unsure or afraid of taking action;
- public ignorance and biases; and
- a recent natural disaster.
The ways of addressing this may be - for this invented example only:
- an education campaign on ethics and correcting misconceptions;
- additional resources for recovery after the natural disaster.
In terms of a ritual to address this situation, the broad options would be:
- a ritual for either action 1 or action 2; or
- a ritual to address actions 1 and 2.
For that second ritual approach, further options could be:
- allocate separate people to focus on each goal, and do one after the other in the ritual; or
- combine both actions in the ritual for everyone.
With the combined ritual, I may ... invoke more than one Deity
(one for each function), have a chant that includes both aims, or create a dual sigil - such as
(and this is a quick, not seriously proposed example) a book
(for education) on a wheelbarrow
(for physical aid).
There are some constraints on this:
- the aspects being dealt with in the same ritual should not be antagonistic - for instance, you could not have a ritual which attempts to combine, say, increasing education and also supporting populist superstitions, or getting more government assistance but also reducing taxation (although such combinations MIGHT work if you are all extremely capable and experienced with this style of working);
- there is an upper limit on how many items can be combined, and
that is limited by the skills of us involved in the physical world:
- ignore anyone who claims there is a hard and fast number limit - that reflects their experiences and capabilities, particularly limits on their capabilities, whereas yours might be different (stronger, or weaker, for that matter);
- our capacity and capabilities, as with so many things, improves as we do more - especially with deliberate, intentional, directed practice.
As
another example of combining aspects in a situation, consider a ritual
to address workplace stress. The aims of the ritual could, perhaps, be:
- personal aspects:
- strengthen ability to cope with stress, perhaps working with a personal guiding spirit;
- attract additional healing options, which may involve using a sigil to create new opportunities; - workplace:
- change the workplace culture, which may be complex enough to need its own series of rituals, or may just need something to improve communication.
In
each of these theoretical examples, multiple actions have been
proposed. In real life, whether one, several or none of these would be
used must be assessed (ask more experienced people for help when
needed - including asking them to undertake a divination on specific
technical aspects of the ritual/work), with due consideration to
personal skills & abilities, whether your reserves are too depleted
for this, the impacts of taking action/not acting on those you care
about (for instance, changing job may - IF possible - be easiest on
family members, or family goals may suggest "sticking it out" for a
while and trying to make it better), what sort of assistance you can get in the real world and from others who know how to work with ritual - and, if
a situation involves anything unethical, illegal, or harmful, get
competent legal and other relevant physical world advice/assistance, and
act to maintain the safety of yourself and your loved ones.
2. Complementary Aspects of a Situation
As an example of complementary aspects, in a ritual, many Wiccans will invoke both the Goddess and the God.
That ritual could be relying on:
- the action of the Goddess primarily;
- the action of the God primarily;
- the combined effect of both working together reasonably equally;
- a varying combination of all of the above.
A more advanced working would also recognise non-binary Deity or duality in what could, perhaps, be considered more of a Taijitu sense, where one polarity contains the seed of the other within (which has always seemed to me to be one continually flowing into or becomes the other).
There
is also the possibility of combining complementary aspects or including
catalysts. The first of these may, for example, combine a set of
influences promoting growth in a garden bed with another set of
influences guiding birds etc to a separate plant bed established for
animals to feed there, rather than on the plants being grown for food.
The second may involve working with a Deity for enlightenment of some
people who are discriminating, after which one can work towards (progressive) resolution of the abusive behaviours and situation(s).
Finally, there is also
the aspect of fine tuning or careful direction/control of a ritual - which is a bit like operating a hair drier: it has to have a suitable electricity supply, but then the output (air flow and temperature) can be adjusted.
In a ritual situation, consider doing some work to end a drought: rain is needed, the rate and amount of rainfall must be right - too much and either nothing will happen, too much and damaging floods (which will wash dry soil away)
may occur, or the rain may lead to a lot of short term growth which
either leads to the water being used by the additional plants and not
helping the (say) trees which were the intended beneficiaries, or there
may be dangerous conditions such as growth that could create a bushfire
risk later. In terms of the ritual, that means thinking about and
including a control mechanism such as adjusting rainfall in response to
plant growth and/or other issues.
This
is, perhaps, more likely to be an issue in rituals aimed at changing
personal characteristics. As an example, if you are seeking to increase
your confidence, you do not want to become arrogant ... or if you are
seeking to relax more effectively, you don't want to do so to the extent
that you find activity difficult.
Whatever the situation: think about "how much", "what else can help" (possibly
with control of the extent/type of work / results being achieved ... on
that, personally, I find friends are a great feedback loop if I use any
psychological ritual too much), and also think about "where is this coming from?"
It
is easiest to illustrate that last point using rain, again, as an
example: if rain to end a drought in one area causes a shortage of rain
elsewhere, it is defeating the purpose. It is important to understand
the mechanics of what you are seeking as much as you can. So, with the
rain example, it may be best to work on a SLIGHT (to avoid creating a cyclone) increase in ocean evaporation upwind of the drought affected area (and possibly a weather system to carry the wet air to where the rain is needed without causing any harm along the way), rather than thinking of redirecting clouds from elsewhere, for instance.
In
any psychological ritual, think about what you may be shifting from
elsewhere: for instance, if you boost your confidence by stealing energy
from self care, you are, again, defeating the purpose of the ritual.
As
a final side note, I have been invited to be what is termed a Storm
Crow on two occasions - which is not part of my path, so I will neither
name the other path nor give any details. However, on the first
occasion, the woman who invited me said I had done well, but had not
done enough; she later performed that role herself ... and the area
being worked on suffered a flood.
Also, on affecting physical weather conditions, this episode is about a “doctoral
candidate in atmospheric science at the University of California ...
[who] ... is conducting an experiment on psychokinetic influence of
atmospheric turbulence”.
3. Outside of the ritual
Attempting
to do anything in a more flexible, better thought out, more
comprehensively prepared way is not only beneficial to that activity: it
may have flow on benefits elsewhere - such as more flexible thinking,
better observational skills, and the ability to do better research - both magickal AND physical.
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
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Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here.
(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).#PsychicABetterWorld and may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical BPM because #KindnessIsThePoint
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