Lesson Two
Sections of Ritual
All rituals are divided into elemental segments and this includes online rituals too!
Ritual is sectioned to help attune the energies of the rite and the subconscious of the participants. The format used here is the established order laid down by the Correllian Tradition. If you do a search on the internet for online ritual you will find some have more sections and/or are laid out differently.
There are five segments:
Air
Fire
Spirit
Water
Earth
Specifically for online rituals before coming online especially for the Ritual Leader, it is a good idea to have cleansed your space around your pc and have all or any necessary candles or incense ready to hand not forgetting the matches or whatever you use for lighting your candles. In other words be prepared as much as possible so you don�t have to leave your pc once you have started ritual to go find the matches or the incense or what have you.
Also be mindful of safety where lit candles are concerned. It may be an idea to be prepared for your cat or yourself knocking one over and setting yourself or anything flammable alight!! Also please do remind your participants of the danger of lit candles! You don�t want to be responsible for your participants burning down their home or having the fire department descend on them because they have set off the fire alarm. So if you have advised them to bring their own candles to ritual make sure you
warn them.
It�s quite amazing to know that those of us that have cats often find our cats wanting to sit in on ritual, usually walking across keyboards or getting in the way of the screen! It is therefore quite possible that things will get knocked over, so always be mindful of this.
If you are doing a specific act of power then remember to have all the necessary things to hand before you start too.
Air
Usually done fairly quickly as most of it is prepared before the start of ritual.
Circle is cast
This is where you prepare. Make sure you have everything you will need for your ritual. First of all you will need the script. This is usually best to have your ritual
Scripted so you can copy and paste the lines into the window of your chat room or as I prefer to call it, ritual room, where you will be holding your ritual. This does save a lot of time and also means you will not forget anything. Once you are used to taking online ritual you probably will not need to use a script but the copying and pasting really does save time.
It can also benefit if you have someone as backup with the full script in case you do get thrown off the room for any reason, the ritual can then continue until or if you can�t get back in.
Make sure you gather everything you will need in the way of props or keys such as incense or candles and something to light them with. Plus if you are doing an act of power which requires anything you should have it all to hand.
Before actually beginning remind everyone online to ground and release before ritual
And bless their space around them and their computer.
You can also help your participants by leading them in a small meditation to ground and centre them. This need not be long and can help get everyone into the right frame of mind.
Then a circle is cast by the ritual leader.
Casting the circle:
Circles are used in rituals for amplifying energy. Members online can visualise the circle casting or cast one of their own while the ritual leader is in the process of casting, this only takes a moment to do.
Fire
Quarters are called
Goddess & God Invoked
Invoke ancestors if desired
Calling the quarters.
It�s a good idea to have four quarter callers for your online ritual it gives you a break and others the opportunity to take a serious part in ritual especially if you are teaching how to do ritual for your students.
You can choose to give your quarter callers calls that are part of your ritual that you have written specifically or you can give them the option of providing their own.
This is a good idea when teaching others as it gets them used to writing calls that eventually can lead to writing a full ritual.
There are four quarters
East - air
South - fire
West - water
North - earth
The quarters are called in that order which, for offline ritual would be deosil or sunward or clockwise. The sun rising in the East and setting in the West!
Each quarter is invoked by using associations for each one. These again can be simple calls or elaborate ones and if the rest of your ritual is basic then an elaborate set of calls will make your ritual more interesting without making it long. Ritual leader should say something such as please invoke [or call] the quarters
so that the quarter callers know to start invoking
We will go into more detail of quarter calls in the next lesson
Invoking Goddess and God
When writing your ritual it is a good idea to include a Goddess and God relevant to what your ritual is about. If it is a healing ritual then you would choose a Goddess and God with specific attributes for healing or if you are writing a Sabbat or Esbat ritual then you would seek out the appropriate Goddess and God. It is not entirely necessary to invoke a God it is really what you think is appropriate to your ritual.
Ritual leader would invoke the Goddess and God if this role isn�t given to others to do.
We will deal with Goddess and God in more detail in the next lesson
Invoking Ancestors
Invoke any ancestor you feel appropriate. Maybe you would wish to invoke a Tradition ancestor of one of your own family. It is not always necessary to invoke the ancestors but this also depends on how elaborate you want your ritual. Of course when you perform the Samhain ritual you would then invoke Ancestors. This would also be done by the ritual leader if not given to a caller to do.
In a basic ritual we usually have the Leader invoke the Goddess, God and Ancestors.
Spirit
Act of power:
prayer, meditation, poem
or task depending on what the ritual is
This is the act of power or the body of your ritual. It can be a prayer, a meditation or a visualisation that as leader you will copy and past or type into the window of your online ritual room to guide the members attending your ritual.
This will vary greatly depending on what type of ritual you are performing. Contrary to belief you can invoke a visualisation of dancing round a maypole if your ritual happens to be a Beltaine Ritual.
Online rituals as I�ve said before rely heavily on the participants� visualisation and imagination. I have been to some very emotional online rituals where much energy has been raised and it�s due to visualisation. It works in a similar fashion to when you use Reiki for distance healing. Energy that pervades everything is directed by the visualisation of the participants especially for the Healing Rituals.
All acts of power should be typed or copied and pasted into the appropriate ritual. A certain amount of visualisation is required, but those attending should not have any problems with this if you clearly paint a picture in words with instruction to imagine what is being written for those attending.
Basic Act of Power
This Act of Power was written by one of our
Let us all now combine our energies to send healing to those in need. Please visualize the following with me:
Still holding the hand of the people on your right and left, imagine a beautiful flower in front of you, suspended in the air.
Choose any flower you like. Make it radiant and clear, imagine the colours as beautifully as possible.
Concentrate strongly on this vision: Imagine healing energy streaming from your Heart Chakra and filling that beautiful flower. Take a moment for this visualization.
Now, in your mind, send the flower gently forward, until everyone�s flowers form a second circle within our circle.
See all the flowers in your mind, beautiful, radiant, full of life and glowing with energy.
Now, let us name those people who are in need of this healing energy. As you hear their names, please imagine them together, inside the circle of flowers we have created.
Water
Symbolic chalice blessing and sharing
This is the part of the online ritual that only the leader will be actually doing on behalf of everyone. The rest of the participants of the ritual will be visualising this, of course if they have a chalice there is no reason why they shouldn�t do this too.
The chalice is blessed and symbolically passed around. The only way for this is for everyone to visualise a chalice being passed to them and them passing it on, the leader will type the instruction into the ritual room window.
All that is necessary to say is: I will now Bless the Chalice. The members are then able to visualise the chalice being blessed and passed around.
Earth
Thank and devoke ancestors [if called]
Devoke Goddess, God and the four quarters.
Open circle and release all excess energy.
The Ancestors are devoked at this point if they have been called with the leader typing or copying and pasting the devoking or callers if you have allotted this part.
Goddess and God are devoked and then the quarters in this order which offline would be Tuathial.
.
North
West
South
East
Ritual leader must always give a cue for the quarter callers, or for those taking any other parts, to begin to devoke.
Once the quarters are devoked then the leader opens the circle.
Always remember to remind participants to ground and release excess energy
Quite a lot of energy can be raised during an online ritual.
When writing your script you should distinguish instructions for the leader from the rest of the script by either writing them in italics, bold font or perhaps coloured font so anyone else with the script can also come in on cue.
A basic ritual will be included in the last lesson. You can use this as a basis for your own ritual or as a guide.
� Sedna Temple 2008
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