PsychKicks©: Radical Rituals

Psych yourself up with like-minded sidekicks by exploring the symbols all around us—together.

Source of Inspiration
Life experience, childhood faith

Make your day rite! I’m talking about rituals. Repetitious habits, sayings, prayers or practices that anchor us in the choppy, ever-changing waters of life. Habits that, by their mere “mindless” repetition, put us in a relaxed and receptive state of consciousness. They help organize our lives and temporarily disconnect us from our chatty minds.

One of my favorite aspects of maturity is the ability to see the good in even the most painful parts of my past. I had a number of unfortunate experiences in Catholic school that I’ve grown beyond. Now I’m delighted to realize some of the greatest rewards of my childhood religious practices. The biggest one for me is the value of ritual.

Ritual defined by Merriam Webster

and some great sample uses:

The priest will perform the ritual.

He was buried simply, without ceremony or ritual.

The daily ritual of preparing breakfast ...

His day-to-day life is based on ritual. 

While I learned ritual in the priestly and religious ceremonial context, it’s the daily mundane rituals of my life that provide texture, stability and often a sense of home, belonging and joy. (You can travel or move anywhere, but if you take your rituals with you, you're always home.) I’ve pondered often about that transfer of spirituality to the mundane. This is what I’ve come up with.

As a child, I could not understand the usefulness of repetitious prayers, particularly the Our Fathers and Hail Marys of the Rosary. Show me a Catholic who didn’t mumble them by rote and I’ll show you a saint. How could something work that was so mindless?

Back then I didn’t absorb the value of singsong mumbling or the things that would keep me from stumbling in the morning. (I have a hard time getting up and into my body, much less cranking up my activity level. Rituals are the crank on my Model T of Me. They help me get started, especially making and drinking coffee.) No matter how little you concentrate on the meaning of prayers or a mantra when meditating, the meaning seeps through, maybe even more when you don’t “pay attention.” Again, these mantras, including the rosary, quiet the mind to let spirit and inspiration come through.

My dad was not a church-goer, and from him, I got the idea that God could be found anywhere. Back in the days where I saw God as the Ultimate Father, my earthly father was as close to divine as I can imagine a human being. So something was planted in me to see spirit in everydayness. (My dad was a double Leo with a number of Virgo planets and a prominent Saturn.)


But the truth is …

I Learned the Most about Ritual from My Dog

My husband and I had a big, loopy Yellow Lab named Bear. He was the most

Bear as Groucho Barx

ritualistic being I ever met in my whole life. When Tim and I first got (back) together in 1997, I sang to Bear when he was just waking up from sleeping in his crate. From that introductory moment on, he was hooked on my songs, which led us to a wacky and wonderful nighttime ritual.

Bear always slept in his crate in our bedroom. For him, it was like going back to the womb, his place of comfort and retreat. I created a special tuck-in song that I sang and then gave him a cookie (dog biscuit) before he went in. I usually put him to bed at 9:00 pm. If I hadn’t started the ritual by 9:05, he’d sigh, harrumph, and quickly rise up and lower himself on his front paws to show his impatience. When I got up to start the song, he’d run down our long hallway ahead of me, galloping to his bed. This was the song—to the tune of Rock-a-Bye Baby:

Rock-a-bye, Beary in your sweet crate.
Mommy will tuck you, she won’t be late.
Gallop to dreamland—pills, cookie, kiss.
Isn’t it heaven, nite-nite like this?
(Spoken: Nite-nite, sweet Bear!)

I never saw a being—human, canine or otherwise—who got so much joy out of a custom ritual. On the horrible day we had to euthanize him, I whispered Bear’s song into his ear when we sent him to Dreamland for the last time.

(Astro info: Bear had a stellium in Capricorn and due to his very clownish nature, I’m positive Jupiter was angular, either on the ASC or MC. What a clown. Wish we had a birth time: Jan. 12, 1997.)

From Bear’s Nite-Nite, Sweet Bear song, Tim and I ultimately formed our own bedtime ritual where we say nite-nite to each other and all the pets we’ve raised together. It ends with:

And nite-nite to all the pets and people we have ever loved and ever will love, wherever they are. Peace on Earth. Amen.

Like Bear we can hardly sleep without it.

Holy Everydayness

One of my favorite quotes is by author Anne Lamott, “Laughter is carbonated holiness.” This is an example of how the mundane and spiritual intersect. Rituals can become portals to living a spirited life. I think of my own rituals as percussion instruments that help me keep the beat in the flow of living.

When a habit becomes a ritual, it is energetically raised to that connection with the All. It’s like plugging ourselves into the linked network of heaven and humanity. Rituals don’t have juice in and of themselves, but when their two-pronged plug of mundane and spirit are pushed into the Grid, life is electric and hums the cosmic tune, Om.

Larger Rituals

The rituals we’ve been talking about here are personal, one-on-one or at the most family-involved. We also need community. The rituals we participate in as larger groups, whether it’s at church or other organizations of like-mindedness, are just another way of practicing the mundane-to-spirit connection. For people like me who are more spiritual than religious, my article, Astrology and Ritual, tells how I co-created a ceremonial community and how anyone can do the same.

Why Radical?

In one of the earliest posts on The Radical Virgo in March 2009, I shared how the word radical is derived from the Latin word for root. Rituals root us. Their mundaneness plants our feet fully on earth and with that grounding, we increase our ability to bring spirit down to earth and to grow optimally.
What’s not to love?

This Week’s Questions

• Can you identify your existing rituals? How do you feel doing them?
• What new rituals would enrich your daily routine?

Photo Credits: Kids side kicking ~ keigo1027yasuda – fotolia.com, Bear as Groucho Barx by Joyce

Resource
"Ritual." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 11 Aug. 2017.

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Fully Seasoned: Astrology and Ritual

© 2009 by Joyce Mason. All Rights Reserved

Happy Autumn Equinox! What’s not to like about this time of year? The Sun moves into Libra, the sign of love, relationships, and beauty—in gorgeous, breathtaking color. This is the time of crisp air and abundance in the Northern Hemisphere. In the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving and our gratitude for Earth’s plenty. It’s a time I relish.

As I’ve shared in other posts on both my blogs, I’ve been celebrating the solstices and equinoxes for over 20 years with a groovy group of women known as the Solsisters. I cannot begin to tell you how much these rituals have enriched my life. Celebrating these seasonal changes brings astrology, spirituality, and the cycles of life down to earth for me where I can hug them in community.

I have a special resonance to the Autumn Equinox, because I was born on the cusp of fall, less than 24 hours before the Sun moved into Libra. My first Autumn Equinox was part of my first day on Earth. What a way to get off to a good start in an incarnation!

Harvest time is the reward of a life well lived, the goodies we get out of all the work we do. Astrology may help us to understand ourselves, others, and even world events. Ritual does even more. It brings the dancing sky down to earth where we can dance with it. In that dance, we can feel, discover and show our gratitude for the magnificence of creation by offering our awe at these times of shift. If you don’t believe me, try it! That’s the point of this post--to tempt you to create ceremony under the stars in thanks for the cosmic symphony.

Getting Started

All it takes is a few people who are interested in exploring the idea. The Solsisters were born out of the annual candlelighting ceremony at our largest, local Unity church. Inspired by the Season of Light, several of my friends wanted more. I was the astrologer, so soon we decided to create a Winter Solstice ceremony in addition to attending the candlelighting service. I had never done anything like it before. This was in the late 1980s, so I was still high from the Harmonic Convergence. I had the spirit of peace on earth all year ‘round and a Catholic background. My religious roots ingrained me with ritual, ceremony, and liturgy from my head down to my toes. This kind of worship permeated my soul.

We ad libbed a lot, and I’m sure we had our share of divine direction, the ritual equivalent of automatic writing. Our celebrations were so satisfying, after the first couple of years, we began meeting quarterly at all the solstices and equinoxes. There is no right or wrong in rituals that celebrate the cosmic clock. You could just as easily celebrate any major event in the sky or the ingresses of the Sun into the various signs. Do as much or as little as you like. Do what feels good and raises your spirits. I often give a quarterly astrological overview as part of the process. For us the solstices and equinoxes offer just the right number of get-togethers and spacing to see progress in our lives. To spin off a quote by ‘70s pop poet Rod McKuen, “Love is a season and holidays (or solstices and equinoxes) like signposts mark the time.”

Evolution of Structure

Even the most Uranian of us all needs a little Saturn and structure for life to tick like the cosmic clock itself. Over time, a natural framework evolved in our ceremonies—the bones that hold them together with differing things that feel right in the moment to flesh them out. We borrow from every tradition you can think of: Catholic, Jewish, earth religions, Native American, Buddhist, and a multiplex of cultures. After nearly two decades, my friend and I who act as primary leaders wanted to encourage more women to try their hand at creating these soul parties. We came up with this outline by simply writing down what had already emerged naturally:

Basic Elements of Our Solstice and Equinox Ceremonies

1. Smudging – Purification of each person participating in the ceremony by sage or incense smoke. Alternatively, especially when we’re out of doors in high fire hazard areas, we use sound—bells, chimes, or rattles. The concept is to clear the energy field and help each participant let go of worry and concerns and come into the celebration with a clean slate. One person starts and each person then smudges the next person after being smudged until smudging is complete around the circle.

2. Casting the Circle – Calling in the Directions to create a sacred and safe space for ceremony. The circle is a space defined by the raising of energy. It replicates the zodiac and division of the year into four equal parts by the equinoxes (spring and fall) and solstices (winter and summer).

3. Opening Prayer

4. Opening Remarks on the Meaning of the Season – If there is a theme, this is the time to share it. For example, last Winter Solstice, our theme was The Magical Child Within.

5. Optional additional prayers, special blessings, or discussion of seasonal holidays and/or astrological overview.

6. Activity reflecting seasonal theme, e.g. preparing seeds of our growth in Spring, going into the “river of life” or play in Summer, harvesting seeds in Autumn, candlelighting affirming our inner light in Winter

7. Meditation – usually on the theme

8. Praying for Ourselves and Others - After a general prayer for all present and absent members present in spirit, anyone in the circle can put forth a prayer request for others.

9. Optional Oracle – We love drawing tarot cards or other oracles and use various decks to reflect the theme of the particular ritual. With last year’s inner child theme at Winter Solstice, we used Isha Lerner and Mark Lerner’s Inner Child Cards (A Fairy-Tale Tarot).

10. Communion – Sharing recent growth or our experience in any other part of the ceremony, such as what tarot card we drew. The card or inspiration we received in meditation often reflects what's been happening in our lives. These parts of the ceremony help focus our sharing updates.

11. Optional parting poem, prayer, or remarks

12. Releasing the Four Directions, Opening the Circle


Tips for First Timers

Here are the tips we share with Solsisters who are creating the ceremony for the first time:

Order. While the beginning and ending rituals such as casting and closing the circle need to be in those positions, the rest of the steps can be reorganized, if they feel more comfortable in a different order.

Extras. Don’t hesitate to add an extra step or swap one out if it feels right to the flow of the ceremony you are creating. This is a basic structure so we have the comfort of repetition that helps us reach the relaxed altered state of consciousness for getting the most out of a ritual. Within those minimal boundaries, the more creativity and variety, the better. Music always enhances. We do many of our celebrations at the river with the natural sounds of water rushing and birds singing.

Resources. The Solsisters celebrate our oneness with all creation, the reason we often use material from many faiths, paths, and sources of inspiration. When it comes to material, you’d be amazed at what you can find at the Pubic Library, often your library’s online resources. The Internet is one of the richest sources of material for ritual available to humankind. Plug words like ritual and a season name such as spring into Google and see what you get. The more words you try, the more you’ll find. As you do ceremonies over a period of years, your previous ceremonies become part of your resources. Most people barely remember what we did last year. Go back two years, tweak it a little, and you’ve got a brand new ceremony with minimal effort. I keep copies of everything in files that are easy to sort and access: ceremony outlines, different options for calling the directions, prayers, poems, and meditations. You can create a file of your most helpful links online.

Co-creation. The most important ingredient in designing a ceremony is letting Spirit flow through you and with you in its creation. Allow yourself to be “led” from one idea or resource to another. You’ll be amazed at how the ceremony creates itself once you merge into the mental and spiritual place where all things are joined.


It Only Gets Better

Even though I was born on autumn’s doorstep, my big ritual every year goes back to where it all started for the Solsisters—Winter Solstice. I lead this one solo and hold it at my home, including a potluck following the ceremony. I go a bit crazy with creativity on this one because I love the winter holidays and I resonate to the season of love, light, and giving. Our winter solstice always includes a candlelighting ceremony and many surprises. Most of the Solsisters met in our environmental work for the State of California. If you love the earth, you have to love the sky above it.

Honoring the earth/sky interface—and interplay—is part of a philosophy where everything is holy, infused with the gifts of the Creator. I know of no other time when I feel more alive—or luckier to be.

~~~

Photo Credit: Lovely Autumn © Шпорт Олександр |Fotolia

For more solstice and equinox inspiration, check out these posts: Autumn EquiKnocks  and Happy Autumn Equinox; Spring: New Beginnings, New Blog; and Summer Solstice – “Let the Sunshine In.”

New Moon Manifestation Ceremony

Toolbox – Rituals

By Dana Stone, Guest Author

Note from Joyce: Each month we have a Golden Opportunity to capture the energy and natural cycle of the Moon. The lunar cycle is our vehicle to create what we want in our lives for the next 28 days. By putting forth our desires at the New Moon, the time of new beginnings, we align with heavenly forces to co-create what we want to manifest. Our desires ripen at the Full Moon, when they peak to fulfillment. Then we watch those desires wane as we absorb their resolution into everydayness. Other issues soon surface and drift to the front burner for the New Moon Treatment!

Dana Stone is not only my dearest friend of 30 years, her metaphysical know-how and this New Moon Ceremony, in particular, are invaluable to me. Enjoy Dana’s recipe for getting what you want out of life, and more insight than a Full Moon could ever illuminate.

Items needed to create your sacred circle:

· 1 white mini-candle
· 1 red mini-candle
· White sage wand (or incense preferred)
· Earthen (clay) or crystal bowl filled with spring water
· An offering (a piece of fruit, coins or article of clothing etc.) for donation
· Bound notebook or creativity diary
· Colored pens, pencils, paints, art objects, pictoral magazine clippings
· One to four tarot decks or oracles

Here are the basic steps for my New Moon ceremony (about 60- 90 minutes long):

1. Smudge or sage your sacred space in a large circle.

2. Center yourself, see and open your seven chakras.

3. Light two mini-candles: one red to energize and one white, representing wisdom and vision. Say an invocation prayer of gratitude for all blessings past, present and future.

4. Sit quietly and reflect on what is most important to you right now in your life and what you would like to create or have manifest in the next 2-3 weeks. Focus on the end in mind. Where do you want to be or what you want to have changed or manifested in your life?

5. Write down what you'd like to manifest in the current moon cycle. The more specific and clear, the better. (For example: I want to be clear on my passion and purpose, without hesitation or reservation; or, I want laser clarity on the next steps I must take to discover my passion and purpose.)

6. Next, make two colorful drawings: one reflecting or representing how you are feeling now and one reflecting or representing how you will feel when you manifest or achieve your goal. Your drawing can be abstract, a picture of or impressions of your goal, creating or coloring in a mandala, making a collage--whatever comes to mind and occurs to you spontaneously.

7. Now, while holding your intent on the goal or manifestation, in your mind and in your heart, shuffle four different tarot decks. Draw one tarot card from each deck (or select four runes), to aid you on each of the four levels of body, mind, spirit and emotion. (All four tarot cards can also come from one deck or you can use a deck representing each level of awareness...follow your intuition...do what “feels” best!) I interchangeably use SARK, Voyager or Motherpeace decks for the body and spirit. Goddess Cards and Medicine/Animal cards work well for the mind and emotions. However, I often switch them around, or I'll introduce another deck that I am attracted in the moment.

8. Next, reflect and write about the impressions, messages or insights that you receive from the cards or runes images in your notebook/ lunar diary. Write freely and do not stop writing for at least 5-10 minutes.

9. Place the four cards or runes on your altar or nightstand so you can stay focused during the next two weeks on your creation. This visual reminder also allows more awareness and insight to filter through your consciousness and your dreams.

10. (Optional) After reflecting on the cards or runes and recording information obtained, I pause to allow a musical representation come to me. I jot down whatever comes to mind. It can be a song, lyrics, or one or more vibrational notes. Initially, what you hear or what comes to mind may or may not make sense, but the lyrics, notes or rythym are usually clear by the Full or Disseminating moon. If nothing immediately comes to mind during the New Moon Ceremony, do not force it. Often the music or song will come to you in another way…usually in the dream state.

11. Finally, write a clear affirmation for your manifestation, say a prayer of thanksgiving and drink the water in your bowl, imagining the flow of your wish and its outcome into each cell of your body. (Optional: use the water as the base for a flower essences combination.) Do not blow out the candles and allow them to go out naturally.

12. Give the offering as guidance or insight directs, at the first available opportunity.


© 2009 by Dana Stone. All Rights Reserved.

~~~

Dana Stone is an International Coaching Federation Certified Empowerment Coach with over 30 years of successful managerial and executive leadership experience. A graduate of the University of California, Davis, she holds several leadership and teambuilding certifications along with extensive training and experience in energy principled therapies including metaphysics and quantum healing. Her unusual combination of executive leadership and experience in the intuitive healing arts enhance her value as a catalyst and coach in both business and personal matters. Dana brings a unique perspective and blend of art, science, business and intuition to help all clients achieve personal and professional success." Visit her Astral Coach website.

Photo credit: NEW MOON © Zuboff Dreamstime.com

Next New Moon: Apr. 24 at 8:23p PDT. Adjust for your time zone in the US or World.

DREAM DATE: Don’t forget Joyce’s appearance on Paranormal Connection on Monday, 9:00 pm PDT.