RITUAL BASICS
These are the essential steps:
1. Open the Circle.
2. Open the Gates.
3. Invocation to the Powers.
4. Statement of Intention and Sacrifice.
5. Main Ritual.
6. Dismissal of Powers.
7. Close the Gates.
8. Close the Circle.
OPENING THE CIRCLE
The Circle is the place where magickal work is carried out. It could be a
circle on the ground, or a stone ring, or it might be an imagined circle
inscribed in the air. The place where the circle is created could be
anywhere. It could be an imaginary place, the ritual carried out in a lucid
dream for example. Secure the room against access as far as possible, take
the phone off the hook etc.
The Circle is the first important magickal limit: it creates a small area
within which the magickal work takes place. The Circle marks the boundary
between the rest of the world, your magickal working space.
Opening a Circle usually involves drawing a circle in the air or on the
ground, accompanied by an invocation to guardian spirits, or the elemental
powers of the four quarters, or the four watchtowers, orthe archangels, or
whatever. The precise method isn't as important as practicing it until you
can do it in your sleep.
The standard opening is called the Ritual of the Pentagram(both banishing
and invoking), which I shall cover in my Rituals page. There are of course
others, but I will as I said cover them on another page.
OPENING THE GATES
The Gates are the boundary between normal and magickal consciousness. Just
as opening the Circle limits the ritual in space, so opening the Gates
limits the ritual in time. Not everyone opens the Gates as a separate
activity; opening a Circle can be considered a de-facto opening of Gates,
but there are good reasons for keeping the two activities separate. First,
it is convenient to be able to open a Circle without going into magickal
consciousness; There are times when something unpleasant and unwanted
intrudes on normal consciousness, and a Circle can be used to keep it out.
Second, opening the Gates as a separate activity means they can be tailored
to the specific type of magickal consciousness you are trying to enter.
There are many ways to open the Gates, and many Gates you could open. I
imagine the gates in front of me, and I physically open them, reaching out
with both arms. ( I use what the call the sign of the enterer). I will
describe this on my Rituals Page.
INVOCATION OF THE POWERS
When it comes to Invocations I try to keep things simple and to the point,
so that I can do an invocation without having to think about it too much,
and that will leave room for the more important "consciousness changing"
aspect of the invocation.
An Invocation is like buying a ticket for a plane: if you can't find the
plane there isn't much point in having the ticket. Opening the Gates gets
you to the doorstep of magical consciousness, but it is the invocation which
gets you onto the plane and takes you to the right place. The power of
Invocation comes from practice, not from deathless prose.
STATEMENT OF INTENTION AND SACRIFICE
There has to be a reason for doing Ritual. Healing, divination, personal
development, initiation, etc. The statement of intention is the culmination
of a process of limitation which begins ehen the Circle is opened, and to
use the analogy of the plastic bag, the statement of intention is like the
blade on the scalpel, the more precise the intention, the more the energy of
the ritual is applied to a single point.
Now about sacrifice. In magick you don't get something for nothing, and if
you want to bring about changes through magick you have to pay for it in
some way. The question is: what can you give in return? You can't sacrifice
anything that is not yours to give, so the answer to the question "what can
I sacrifice" lies in the answer to the question "what am I, and what have I
got to give?" If you don't make the mistake of identifying yourself with
your possessions you will see that the only sacrifice you can make is
yourself, because that is all you have to give. Every ritual intention
requires that you sacrifice some part of yourself, and if you don't make the
sacrifice willingly then either the ritual will fail, or the price will be
exacted without your consent.
Now don't take me wrong. This doesn't mean that you have to drain blood or
cut off a finger or any other nasty thing to your body. Each person has a
certain amount of what I will call "life energy" at their disposal, and you
can sacrifice some of that energy to power the ritual. What this means is
that you promise to do something in return for your intention, and you link
the sacrifice to the intention in such a way that the sacrifice focuses
energy along the direction of your intention. For example, your pet is ill
and hasn't eaten for three weeks,so, as a last resort, fearing it would die
of starvation, you carry out a ritual to restore it's appetite, and as a
sacrifice you eat nothing for 24 hours. You used hunger to drive the
intention, and your pet begins eating the following day.
THE MAIN RITUAL
After invoking the Powers and having stated the intention and sacrifice,
there would seem to be nothing more to do, but most people like to prolong
the contact with the Powers to carry out some kind of symbolic ritual for a
period of time. Magickians operate in a world where ordinary things have
deep symbolic meanings or correspondences, and they use a selection of
consecrated implements or "power objects" in their work. The magickian can
use this palette of symbols in a ritual to paint a picture which signifies
an intention in a non-verbal, non-rational way, and it is this ability to
communicate an intention through every sense of the body, through every
level of the mind, which gives ritual it's power.
DISMISSAL OF POWERS
Once the ritual is complete the Powers are thanked and dismissed. This
begins the withdrawal of consciousness back to where it was before the
ritual began.
CLOSE THE GATES
The final steps are closing the Gates(returning to normal states of
consciousness). Closing down correctly is important. If you don't feel like
you have returned to a normal state of consciousness, or you just don't feel
right, repeat the steps again.
