 | Rituals: The Spirit of the Land by Jesse Wolf Hardinposted by Susan Meeker-Lowry, Exclusive AccessSaturday, September 19th 2009 @ 6:55 PM (not yet rated) |
Culture comes up out of the earth, vibrating through the body, as each individual affirms life and expresses her or his unique creativity. It is kept alive by consciously honoring the sacredness of the four Great Mysteries: food, sex, birth, and death. The ceremonial arts are channels for people to express their relationship with these primal mysteries.
-Sedonia Cahill
Without our mindful attention and conscious intent those acts we regularly repeat are simply habits, and our creations mere products. Our actions rise to the level of ritual whenever consciously dedicated to the purposes of love . . . to oneness, to betterment, to service, or to whatever one knows as God or Spirit. Repetitive chores become ritual with our conscious acknowledgment of their importance and meaning. One doesn’t need to take time away from living in order to engage in ritual, so much as we need to ritualize our day to day existence. Sitting up in bed each morning to face the first sun becomes a ceremony, as soon as we’re conscious of it as an act of interpenetration and a show of gratitude. The sharing of food moves from a quick refueling to a slow and artful communion as each serving is consecrated, every bite noticed, exalted and blessed. Communion with the lifeforms that feed us, with the sun and rain and soil that made our meals possible, and with the spirit moving through both the consumer and the consumed.
There is no overestimating the power of something as basic and familiar as lighting a fire when it is done in a way that honors the calling of the light, the return of the sun each morning, the lengthening of days after winter’s slender Solstice. And when it honors the wood that went into the match, once a part of a giant swaying tree. When it honors the heat that comforts as well as the flames that devour. In a single strike the flaring sulfur evokes the volcanic pyrotechnics that originally formed the igneous mountains defining this canyon where I live. In every lonely candle we can find those uncountable pyres built in honor of the thousand faces of God. In the flames of the fireplace, in the human heart, and the “hearth-beat” of our homes we honor this, the element of transition. Come Winter we sit at the foot of the creator/destroyer, when heat means life. The inner self is washed in flame, made pure, made inviolate again.
Attending the grave of a resting family member, on a certain day, in a certain way, is ritual. Marking the prominence of the full moon with carefully considered words, a ritual. The ritual of drawing water, when we’re mindful of its example and gifts. The ritual of expressing our love, with a pet expression, a sparkling touch in the fading light, a knowing and reassuring glance each and every night. The rituals of cleansing our bodies, of walking, of silence and singing, each carried out in nearly the same way every time with the mind exclusively focused on our process, our sensations, and our relationship to something larger or greater than the narrowly defined self. Each ritual can be looked at as a gift, both to ourselves and to the inspirited world we’re a part of. Each is infused with thankfulness and love, delivered with perceptible deliberateness and an economy of motion. The intended result is reconnection, as our practice weaves us back into the actual material of our existence and experience, context and place. Together with the ritual efforts of others, we cocreate the living fabric of culture, of human community and the community of all life.
Our early ancestors believed and acted as if the world would end if ever they failed to properly carry out their rituals on time. And in essence it was true, for these ceremonies grounded the people in right relationship with the Earth, without which understanding, reciprocity and deference the people could not long survive. A people divorced from the ways of Nature risk perishing as a result of this estrangement, and then for them at least, the world would have indeed come to an end. The first body of evidence indicating human ritual activity dates back to the proto-neolithic. Caves in Germany, Switzerland and Franconia feature the skulls and bones of giant cave bears stacked in a way that suggests they served as altars to the spirits of the great bruins. Another cave at Shanidar in the mountains of northern Persia hosted a chamber full of Neanderthal skeletons, the first indication of a system of care for the deceased. One large fellow was laid in a bed of flowers, their story of honoring retold in the ancient pollens still present in the soil. Even more amazing, further analysis indicated that the flowers were all from species known to have specific medicinal uses in the pharmacy of subsequent inhabitants! From that moment on if not before, ritual became a sharing of reverential responsibility. In time these came to include the protection of the land, the honoring of the other life forms, the giving of thanks and the celebration of existence in ceremony and ritual. These ancestral exchanges were synchronized with the ritual passage of the seasons, entrained with the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the arrival or departure of the plants and animals they sustained themselves on, the arrival of their children and their coming into manhood and womanhood, the elevation to elders and the passage of the aged into the cauldron of the afterlife. Their rituals were performed in the ideal environment for each, next to a cascading waterfall, on birthing grounds and burial grounds, in a cluster of boulders that align with the rising of the sun on the Equinox, in a grove of quaking aspen or beneath a certain ancient oak, in the spot where battles were raged or miracles witnessed, ground made hallowed by the spilling of blood or the ritual devotions of earlier peoples.
Whatever one calls it, there would seem to be a dynamic power that courses through this planet and its wind-filled atmosphere . . . a vibrational unity, an underlying if in some respects incomprehensible pattern, an entity or energy of inclusion that animates, inspires, enlightens, and fuels the best of what it means to be human “kind.” It is this sense of lasting integral beingness that we cleave to, whether envisioned as a male God or Yahweh, a female Goddess or Mother Earth or a formless force for balance or good. And whether recognized by Christian or Jew, Buddhist or Pagan, reformed urban cynic, or man and woman of the woods.
We, even more then the early human tribes, can benefit from ceremonies that are vested with intent and focus, with empathetic engagement and glorious celebration. We are made richer and more complete with the ritual commemoration of birth, of first menstrual blood, first lover, harvest and feast, the success of every battle with the tyrants of ego, the removal of obstructions from within or without, the opportunity for forgiveness, the giving of important gifts, the acceptance of instruction or completion of assignment, the grieving over the death of friends and family and of entire other species, the marriage to each other and to the land.
Honoring Gaia
Sitting at the center of my altar when I’m home, is a stunning forest-colored sculpture of a serene and beautiful woman of power: Gaia! She both graces and calls attention to our information table when I’m out giving conference or festival presentations. The artist and arch-wizard Oberon has sculpted her as a well-muscled figure sitting poised and cross-legged, with facial features belonging to no single race. She emanates not only the power of a protective mother but also the sensuality of a young maiden. Engraved on her legs are the shapes of a number of fish and shellfish inhabiting oceans both ancient and contemporary. Gaia’s equally green arms bear the outlines of primeval plant life and the giant sequoias that are lately in danger of being cut down by logging corporations in Northern California. Her beautiful hair is plaited into spiraling DNA-like braids, with diverse species of wildlife ascend her braided tresses, and with the oldest and simplest life forms at the bottom. The higher up on her head the more recent and complex the animal form, and sharing the highest point on her crown is both the telepathic whale and a young human child... holding in his tiny hands a small world that represents the planet we are each charged to learn from and care for. She is Gaia the Earth Mother, the Goddess embodied in the ground we walk on as well as the many other creatures and plants we live and travel among.
Early cultures taught that we had to keep our part of our sacred pact with the Earth Mother, and that if we blew it we’d end up sealing our own doom. Clearly, neglecting her or our connection and duties to her has brought about both the dis-ease of civilization and an environmental crisis of terrifying proportions. At the same time, everything we need is available right here right now, a gift of Spirit through Gaia. We’re each blessed to be able to turn to wild nature for the visions and lessons we need to be the Seekers, heroes, and heroines of our time.
Some Basic Practices
• Practice envisioning the Earth as a luminous living being capable in her own way of feeling satisfaction, joy and pain... Gaia! The more you do this, the less likely it will be that you will ever act in ways that hurt her, and the more attention you’ll pay to her needs, instructions, blessings and lessons.
• Try drawing her the way she appears to you, and don’t worry about how perfect it is. It should be more visionary than realistic.
• Now envision your physical being as a bodily extension of Gaia, as one of her organs of sensation and perception. Whenever you are tempted to do something that dishonors or disrespects your inspirited body like bingeing or starving yourself, drinking too much booze or doing the kinds of drugs that you know are harmful... keep in mind that what you to yourself you are simultaneously doing to her.
• Draw yourself as a part of Gaia, and then do another drawing of yourself with the spirit of Gaian inside you.
• Honor, but don’t worship Gaia.You are born with the ability to represent the worst of what Gaia does, and with the capacity to be some of the best of what she puts forth.
• Build an altar in your most special space, dedicated to the Earth Mother. Include powerful found objects that represent each of the clans of Gaia (such as feathers for the bird clan, rocks from the mineral clan that seemed to call you to them, a container of water to stand for her rivers and seas, bits of fur or antler for the four-leggeds and so on). Add other items collected on days when you went through major trials, in order to remind you of your hard earned lessons as you become ever-more the will-full wizard.
• Position a single item in the center of your altar, to represent the entirety of Gaia in the form you can most relate to. This can be a framed drawing, or a collage of natural images that you cut out of magazines and paste together into a circular globe or the outline of a woman. A sculpture works well too, and besides buying Oberon’s or some other figure you can get (bakable) clay and work up your own. You can also press natural found materials like shells, fossils, trippy wood or crystals into the clay. If all you can make is the most basic shape, be happy. It will then look most like the ancient Willendorf and other Earth Mother finds.
• Don’t be a pushy missionary shoving Gaian gospel down anyone’s throat. Nonetheless, you can still reach out at the perfect moment to better help other voluntary seekers to sense and tap the energy of Gaia both around them and within them. It’s good for the people you touch in this way, and good for the Earth that all life depends on.
• Choose a language that allows you to inspire people outside your community. Instead of using the term “Gaia,” you can substitute “Mother Earth.” Very few people will take offense at that. This ups the chances that you will be heard, and that the people you are talking to will be helped.
• Practice feeling the pain of what is out of balance both within you and around you in the world. This is one way Gaia senses an imbalance and can begin to slowly make the necessary magical and evolutionary corrections.
• Practice owning who you are as a special gifted being, and finding satisfaction in both the ways you are different and the efforts you make. Gaia feels satisfaction through us!
• Practice feeling joy without embarrassment or constraint, and sense how much that tickles and pleasures the whole of sentient Gaia!
• Create a song or chant that honors Gaia and connects you to the All.
• I nclude at least brief preliminary acknowledgment of Gaia as the source of all Spirits, entities and lessons... in every ritual you do and circle you cast.
• Write and perform both private and public rituals focusing especially on the Earth Mother, and aimed at awakening a sense of the immanence of Gaia in everyone attending.
• For every prayer that you ever ask of Gaia, pledge some act or effort in turn.
From Volume 3, No. 1 & 2
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