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Druid Rituals For Dummies

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I’ve written a great deal about my daily practice on this blog. There have been periods of prolonged drought, periods of genuine doubt, and times when I felt like my daily practice was all that was keeping me invested in my Druidism.

In my ADF Dedicant studies (which will be a central focus for me until Imbolc), one of the tasks for the student is to develop a steady daily practice. A regular practice, especially for solitaries, is key to taking your religion out of the book and rooting it in your life.

I had almost no regular practice in August. I kept the High Day, but after that I woke up and started my mornings with only a casual glance at my shrine. I was busy in my head before stepping out of bed, and I didn’t take much time to slow down and seek out the Kindred.

But I have a syllabus now. I’m a dedicated religious student (as I mentioned in my Druid School post). I’m going gung-ho, and I’m starting as a beginner.

ADF member, Melissa Burchfield, wrote a piece on ADF.org on how to adopt ADF’s Core Order of Ritual (COoR) for solitary use. For those who don’t know, the COoR is what makes and ADF rite an ADF rite. It’s the foundation for all ADF liturgy.

On this article, Melissa lays out a series of “tiers” for the beginning student. In the first tier, she strips down the COoR to these components:

  1. Initiating the Rite – Bell Ring, clap of the hands
    Light candle
  2. Purification - Breathe deeply, nine times to center
    and clear the mind.
  3. Honoring the Earth Mother
  4. Statement of Purpose - "I have come to honor the gods."
  5. Inviting the Kindred
  6. Key Offerings - Made to the Kindred
  7. Thanking the Beings - In reverse order
  8. Thanking the Earth Mother
  9. Closing the Rite - "The rite is ended."

Notice that the numbers are a little wacky? That’s because the COoR has a total of nineteen steps in its full form.

I performed the first tier of this druid ritual this morning.

For step one, I rang triple Goddess bell. I lit my candle and said,

“I light this candle in the presence of the Shining Ones above, in the presence of the Ancient Ones below, and in the presence of the Nature Spirits all around me.”

Step two was easy, and surprisingly effective. Feeling tense? Breath nine deep breaths. It’s like magic  (*ahem* — magick).

Honoring the Earth Mother is always a strange moment for me. I feel like my prayers can never be big enough. I said something to the effect of,

“Holy Earth Mother, on whom we move and live and have our being, all praise and honor belongs to you. From you we are born, and to you we shall return.”

What can I say? I was a cradle Episcopalian. I like the formalities.

After the statement of purpose (which can sometimes be elaborate, as in the case of a High Day ritual), I invited the Kindred.

I like this part. This is where I speak out loud to the Kindred and ask that they be present in my ritual space. When I call to them, I describe them, and by doing so I engage my imagination. I get to see them in form, in color, with attributes. That’s how it was this morning, at least.

I simplified my offerings today. Taking cue from Melissa, I poured a bit of steel cut oats into a small, clay serving cup, and used it for all of my offerings.

I made offerings to the Three Kindred, ending with the phrase that I hear at most ADF gatherings:

Nature Spirits / Ancestors / Shining Ones…. accept my sacrifice.

I love liturgy. I love the repetition of meaningful phrases. I nerd out over it sometimes. Saying the phrase “accept my sacrifice” with the same cadence and tone that we did at Eight Winds makes me feel — just a little — like I’m still at Eight Winds. Liturgy allows my small rite to feel like a giant group ritual.

I offered my thanks to all, and closed the rite.

The whole thing took about five minutes.

I share all of this not to present myself in a special light. My practice should not garner me any praise; that’s not what it’s for. But, I do feel that people — solitaries, especially — need to see that there is always an opportunity to begin your practice again, to start from scratch. With a beginner’s mind, you can simplify your religious life and relearn how to be what you are.

It all starts with a single flame.

Have you ever stripped things down to the basics? If so, what was that experience like for you? Do you find that a ritual with a reliable form and structure makes sense, or are you more of a ritualist who keeps it loose?

What would your “beginner” ritual look like?

Do Not Speak, and You Will Be Heard

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Today I approached my altar in silence. Speaking the words out loud, my standard approach to a daily ritual, felt unnecessary. In my mind, in my heart, the words rang out with perfect clarity, and I trusted that whomever needed to hear them would.

The effort I put into my daily practice waxes and wanes, and it is influenced a great deal by my emotional state. Some days I don’t feel I have it in me to make offerings of gratitude and thanks to the Kindred. There are financial concerns, piles of paperwork on the desk, and sticky-notes of errands that have been neglected. When I wake up with a busy brain I have a very difficult time making space for piety.

But today in my ritual, rather than using my voice to will the space into stillness, I went inward. I turned my gaze into the depths and found that there was already plenty of space for reverence. Caverns of it, really. And the stillness came.

To my delight, I found that the richness of my meditative, magickal work increased in this state of silent dialogue. My small candle flame transformed into the great, Sacred Fire with a force that it hadn’t before. The chalice became the Well, and reached deep into the center of the earth, effortlessly. In between the two stood the Great Tree, broad and majestic, and full of life.

All of this happened in a silent room, and it was only possible – I think – because I’ve been faithful to my daily practice to the point where the words I speak out loud could finally be internalized. The Kindred listen in ways that are beyond my imagination. The spirits of the land and of our ancestors are sentient, I believe, but I’m not sure how. I think that I was persistent in speaking out loud because I thought there was a connection between the sound of my voice and their ability to hear. This may have even been a lesson I was taught.

But I don’t believe it’s true. I don’t believe we need to approach the Kindred — the Gods of our heart — with the idea that their limitations are easily conceivable. They may not, as many Pagans have presumed, be omni-anything, but the exact shape of their being remains a mystery.

Sometimes I think the Pagan Humanists have it right in their approach to their practice. They see the Gods as archetypes, but they also see the archetypes as our entry into deeper engagement with the greatness, the expansiveness, the mystery of the Gods. In a way, I’d rather suspend my need to affirm some definite conception of the Gods if it allowed me to approach Them with greater reverence and wonder.

Does that make sense?

Before today, I spoke out loud in my room because I thought I needed to do so in order to be heard, in order for my ritual to be successful. But I’ve discovered that I can have the experience of being heard without speaking at all. It feels like there are greater ramifications to this discovery that I can’t yet see.

Does this inspire something in you?

On Meditation and Devotion: Weeks 7, 8, and 9

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Week 7

On the night after I wrote my last Meditation and Devotion post I became very sick. I’d just written how my daily practice had become a central part of my life, and then I was bedridden for days; unable to maintain my normal routine.

I lost about 3 days of meditation and devotion, and when I returned on February 12th, still a bit stoned from Nyquil, I felt completely shaken and unable to focus. I described it like this in my journal:

“…it felt as though there was a kind of hood over my inner eye. I felt like my inner vision was blocked off along the edges.”

The low energy and sinus pain continued on the following day, and things began to clear up on February 14th. That was also the day that I noticed that, as I put it,

“The trance-like intensity of my daily devotions and meditations has waned. Given, I am no longer in the thick of an intense creative process – or, at least, not the same creative process – but it is strange to me the way this is starting to feel ‘ordinary’.”

I was forced, due to the illness, to cancel a very important event in my life; what felt like, at the time, the culmination of much of the creative work I’ve done so far this year. On that day, February 16th, I was wrecked. I rushed through making offerings, drew cards but couldn’t see any meaning in them, and then closed the Hallows without offering thanks to Brighid and the Kindred. I was so upset that the illness had disrupted my life as it had.

Week 8

What brought me back into a pattern of meditation and devotion was the tarot. I put my focus on the spreads I’d lay after making my offerings, and those spreads began to show more sign that they were coming from the Kindred; they offered new insight, creating greater context for why I’d become ill and what I had to learn from the experience.

All of my entries during this week are heavy on the tarot interpretation. I focussed little on stillness in meditation, and went through the ritual of making offerings with a slight mechanical nature. The cards were my main focus, and they were what brought me back into an awareness of the mystery of this daily work.

Week 9

I reached a point where I was beginning to feel like my practice was solely a tarot practice, and not an extension of worship. I wrote on February 25th:

I’m having a difficult time starting this entry. I have a 3 card spread before me, and this is beginning to feel like a Tarot Journal rather than a journal to document my spiritual growth. Every day I perform my devotional ritual, and every day I sit down to draw cards. I ask the Kindred to guide my hands and send a message, and yet as I sit here now, staring at the cards, reading their interpretations in the DruidCraft book, I feel alone, and very much in my head. The rest of the experience feels spiritual, but trying to make sense of the cards launches me into a mental tailspin.

What is this time designed to do?

What had given me an entry way back into this daily time – the tarot – was now pulling me out of the moment.

I notice as I look back on the rest of the Week 9 entries that I’ve created a pattern of documenting my daily time. Each entry starts with 1 or 2 paragraphs of reflection. Then, usually somewhat abruptly, I write about the card reading. The rest of the entry is about the cards, and I don’t seem to spend much time contextualizing them or connecting them back to my initial reflection.

I tried that this morning, and I noticed that my mind went to a million different places. I think it is time for me to return to the DP material and search out techniques to control my mind. It’s time to bring more mental discipline into my practice.

A Response to “Omens and Tarot”

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This post is a response to the blog post “Omens and Tarot“, posted yesterday on Grey Wren’s Flight. I encourage you to read the full post for context, and I’ve provided a brief excerpt below which summarizes what she wrote.

“I’ve been incorporating omens into my devotionals lately, partly because I’ve been wanting to take my spiritual work to the next level, and partly because I have so many beautiful tarot decks that need love. (I’m such a little kid, wanting to play with my toys.)

The short version of this post: how do you take omens during a ritual?

What’s the best way to take omens? It must vary from person to person, but how does one find a method and feel confident that it’s working? Any thoughts?”

I’m delighted to read the you’re incorporating the tarot into your daily work, especially if you already have a relationship with the cards. I also use (as one of 2 or 3 regular decks) the DruidCraft Tarot, and I know exactly the image you’re speaking of.

For me, I’ve chosen to use the cards in a slightly different way. After making my offerings, I ask of the Kindred something like:

“If my offerings are acceptable to you, please provide me a point of focus, a message of guidance, an Omen.”

Then, I work with the cards. I may lay out a single card, or a three card spread. I have an Ogham deck, and I may choose to use that over the more visual, narrative cards. I allow the spread to be guided by my intuition.

I also may change my request of the Kindred to suit my needs at that moment. Today, my request was that they provide me insight into the story, song and poem that I’m preparing for the Bardic Chair competition at Wellspring. When I sat down at my tarot table, I chose to pull one card from 3 different decks – the DruidCraft, the Llewellyn Tarot and the Ogham Deck (something I’d never done before). The message that came forth was amazing!

This may not be strict ADF or PIE orthopraxy, but to me it feels right. I don’t just want to know if my offerings were accepted or acceptable, because I don’t think that all the Kindred want from me are some oats and a bit of oil. This is a relationship, and the offerings, in large part, are symbolic of something much deeper. I make these offerings so that I might initiate contact with forces that are greater and more powerful than myself. The objects I use are – I think – mostly arbitrary. It is the sincerity with which I share these object – these symbols – and the focus and intent with which I hold them up in worship that matters most.

I believe we should make offerings that feel right to us, and make requests of the Kindred as our needs and desires dictate. If, by Their wisdom, they do not see fit to provide us with exactly what we are asking, it seems to me that we need not take that as an immediate sign that our offerings weren’t “good enough”. It could be that our requests were simply not coming from the place of true need or right desire (if I might risk sounding moralistic by using that phrase).

So, use the tarot as feels best to you. Or, seek out their Omen in the clouds…or in the pattern of your coffee grounds! Or, perhaps best of all, still your soul and listen for the sound of their voices in the sanctuary of your heart.

My Portable Altar

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I have been away from home for nearly five full days. This isn’t that unusual. My work takes me away rather often. But, this is the first time I’ve traveled at all since I began my work on the Dedicant Path.

The trip I’m on now, which still has another 3 days yet, has been a kind of trial run in maintaining my spiritual discipline on the road. As the year goes on I will likely have cause to travel for 2, perhaps 3 weeks at a time, and keeping up with my work – specifically my daily devotionals – is very important to me.

I trust that the academic side of the DP work may be put on pause during long trips. One can only carry so many books at a time, and – alas – most Druid-relevant titles haven’t made their way to a digital format….which, I might add, strikes me as a little strange. You’d think, as Nature Worshippers, we’d be on the forefront of non-tree based media. Why aren’t our titles on the iTunes or Amazon bookstore?

I digress.

I’m OK with taking a pause from academia. But, worship? Worship goes with.

Enter, the travel altar.

My portable altar

This little Altoid box contains all I need to set up the Hallows and create a sacred space for my  morning devotional. Items I brought with me:

1. Matches
1. A tea-light candle
3. A dram of the water from my home-altar chalice
4. An itsy-bitsy offering dish
5. A photo of an Oak tree (just like the one here on Bishop in the Grove)

On this trip I had the pleasure of visiting a great, nearly 200 year old Fig tree, and I picked up this small piece of broken branch from the ground beside it. I’ve been using it for my Sacred Tree (but the photo worked just fine before then).

Having this portable altar has brought my daily tradition with me, and as a result this trip has been imbued with a new spirit and an invigorating energy. There has been a sense of continuity and integration. I’m still the same Druid-y Teo I was back home. I didn’t shed that as soon as I stepped on the plane.

Blessings to Rev. Michael J Dangler for sharing this idea with me. If you find yourself in a situation where you might need to travel, or if you would simply like to have the ability to ritually connect with the Kindred wherever you are, I highly recommend fashioning for yourself a little kit like this.

On Meditation and Devotion: Weeks 1 through 3

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Ideally, this series of posts, “On Meditation and Devotion” will come weekly, and serve to summarize the daily entries I keep in my hand-written journal.

Week 1

On December 27th, 2010, I performed my first ADF style daily devotional. I read, near verbatum, the ritual that Skip Ellison shared in his book, Solitary Druid. I proceeded through the ritual, not sure if my words would be heard. I called on Arawn – the Welsh God of the Underworld, who first made his presence known to me in a dream I had last summer (an experience worth unpacking in a future blog post) – and asked for him to open the Gates. I made offerings of lavender to the Spirits of the Land, oats to the Ancestors, and olive oil to the Shining Ones.

After making offerings, I sat as my desk and, honestly, didn’t know what to do next. The book calls for meditation, and my intention, before I decided to perform a more formal devotional, was to write. But, I was unclear if writing would serve as a “meditative” act. So, I did little else during this first ritual. I closed it out according to the book, and documented my experience in my journal.

I arrived at my altar every day during this next week and did much of the same things as on the first day. Once I got off the page, I discovered that performing this ritual, especially when centered around expressing to the Kindred my praise, thanksgiving, gratitude, honor and respect, was a very natural experience for me. I know how to do this. Liturgy just makes sense to me.

Week 2

Starting on January 4th, 2011, I began exploring meditation more deliberately in my daily devotionals. There was, to be fair, a meditative spirit to the liturgy during the first week, and I worked to slow my breath, center myself and free my mind of distraction. But, during Week 2, things changed and my meditation became more focussed.

On the morning of the 4th, as described in my journal,

“I traveled…to a place where the Land, Water and Sky met. I heard my breathing, and the sound became the crashing of the ocean on the shore. Each inhalation was the pulling back of the water, and each exhale was the water slamming on the sand.”

The thought occurred to me (a thought I was having in that place and not before my altar, if that makes sense) that I should be doing some sort of ritual there. I imagined an altar, but it seemed out of place. No symbols I imagined seemed to fit, and it occurred to me that enacting the ritual I used to open the Gates may not be the one I was feeling called to perform in this new, mystical space.

I didn’t know what to do, so I raised my arms and said “Thank you. I’d like to come back.”

I brought my awareness back to my body and closed out the ritual, profoundly grateful for this experience and a little mystified as to what it meant.

I continued to visit this place throughout the week, exploring a bit further the landscape, but never straying far from where I first appeared (a cave near the point where the Land meets the Water and Sky). Once I smelled a flower, which I think may have been a calendula. Another time, a memory surfaced, along with an insight into the relevance of that memory in my current life. Each day brought a new experience; a new mystery.

Week 3

In my post, Turning Over A Good Omen, I wrote of a sign I received from the Kindred. During Week 3, starting on January 10th, 2011, I brought the tarot into my daily devotional. Read this post for a glimpse into how this change of routine brought with it a profound experience of connectedness to the Great Ones.

I did not visit the Sacred Place in my meditations this week, but I did have a revelatory experience that I believe was a precursor to incorporating the Two Powers Meditation into my daily devotional.

From my journal entry of January 14th, 2011:

“A more centered mediation/ritual this morning. The Hallows are still open as I write this. When I look through my mind’s eye, the Fire is raging, the Water deep and moving, and the Tree wide and surrounded by a mist. It occurred to me as I sat down to shuffle, after perhaps the 5th or 6th turn, that when I stand with the Flame overhead and the Waters reaching up into my feet from the earth that I am the tree which holds the Middle Earth.”

For anyone who is aware of the Two Powers Meditation, you will recognize this vision.

The following evening, while reading through Our Druidry, I decided that I was ready to explore the Two Powers Meditation for the first time. When I read through the descriptions of the Earth Power and the Sky Power, and how the energy is circulated through the body, I was flabbergasted! I saw this! This came to me! What a blessing!

Perhaps the Two Powers Meditation is the ritual I felt called to do in the place where the Land meets the Sky and the Water!

Turning Over A Good Omen

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I started a new creative project today. It’s one I’ve been preparing for since November of last year, and one that will influence much of what is to come throughout the rest of the Winter. It’s kind of a big deal.

I decided that it would be right and good to make special requests to the Kindred during my morning devotional for their guidance, wisdom and presence as I start down this new path. I put my essence into the offerings, opening myself as much as I could.

Once my offerings had been made, and it seemed like I was finished, I started to close the Hallows. I called on Arawn to transform the Fire, and then the Well, and as I was about to move on to the Tree my hand brushed up against the candle – something that has never happened before during ritual – and hot wax splashed onto my palm.

This didn’t seem like clumsiness. It seemed like a message. It seemed like a call to keep the sacred space open. I sensed that I should return to a place where I could be receptive to communication, and listen. It did not seem like they were done with me just yet.

So, I stopped what I was doing. Recalling what I’ve learned through reading about ADF ritual, and what I’ve experienced first had in full, High Day ritual with Silver Branch Golden Horn, I decided that it would be appropriate and useful to take an Omen. This isn’t something I’d incorporated into my daily practice before, but today it seemed right. If the Kindred wanted this space to remain open, then perhaps they wanted to convey something to me, and the taking of an Omen might help that message come through.

I sat down at the round table I use for tarot readings, lit a small, mostly melted candle, and shuffled my deck. I laid the deck down, asked out loud if my offerings would be accepted, and then I turned over a single card.

It was the Princess of Wands.

She stood in the middle of a road, clearly moving forward. She was fiery, focussed, and she seemed beautifully self possessed. These were, of course, my first impressions. I pulled the DruidCraft book from my shelf and found the page corresponding to this card. At times, I find it useful to see what the artists intended for this card to represent, and to hold that meaning up against my initial, intuitive reading.

The book read this:

When not signifying a person, this card may represent the initial spark of interest in a project or a relationship, or it can indicate a message or communication, particularly one conveying news about the beginning of a venture. It may also indicate a general quickening of the pace of life – a new phase of activity just starting.

Could this have been any clearer that my words had been heard?!

I asked for a sign that my sacrifices were acceptable to the Kindred, and I received a clear and resounding message back – YES! They would be with me! It felt like communication. Real communication.

Today was brilliant. I felt the presence of the Kindred as I began my creative work, and I’m profoundly grateful.

Make your offerings with sincerity.

Open your heart fully and without reservation.

Be transparent and the light will shine through you.