Religious Ritual<\/strong><\/p>\n Religious ritual is a common, nay universal, way of bringing deity into the world.<\/a>\u00a0 While not all ritual works, or isn\u2019t readily identified as ritual in the first place; the right ritual practice, at the right time, and under the right conditions, produces a sense of the holy.\u00a0 What characterizes a ritual experience of the divine?\u00a0 First, unlike the practices we discussed in the previous column where you do something inside or within yourself that produces the link with the divine, in ritual you reach out through a public, mediated, experience toward the divine.<\/p>\n Ritual is characterized by its repetition, public nature, embodiment of the public form of a religious doctrine (cultus), and general stimulation of the practical and symbolic senses of perception.\u00a0\u00a0 All of these tools help form, or mediate the experience. You are appealing to an external set of objects or actions to provide a window into the divine.\u00a0 This is what I mean by \u201cmediated,\u201d which is something that helps you experience the divine.\u00a0 Magic is even more mediated than ritual, as that almost requires actions and objects in order for you to have the experience.<\/p>\n Ritual is the seeking of the divine within a community, whether it\u2019s a physical community, or a temporal one.\u00a0 By physical community I am referring to the practice or ritual in groups.\u00a0 In groups like-minded individuals get together and go through steps that bring them a shared experience.\u00a0 But ritual can also produce a \u201ctemporal\u201d community.\u00a0 Here it is the repetition of the same actions and ritual elements through time that produces a community that connects the practitioners across time and space, even though they are not physically present.\u00a0 Repetition of ritual in community that has also been practiced over time produces a bond with a much larger community.\u00a0<\/p>\n Because ritual is connection with community, repetition is important.\u00a0 It creates a tie between past, present, and future religious community.\u00a0 It also gives what is done, no matter how outwardly silly or inconsequential, a gravity that comes from association with history and our ancestors. \u00a0An example of history\u2019s role in Pagan practice is the respect given in some circles to establishing pedigrees or genealogical histories for their practices.\u00a0 Practices, which are seen to have descended from historical sources, are given far more credibility than recent concoctions.\u00a0 Whether this is a result of the Abrahamic religions\u2019 natural obsession with history<\/a>, or a desire for depth and occult credibility by tracing back deep roots,<\/a> it is something that seems like its important.\u00a0 Ritual is a way of \u201ctracing back roots\u201d as it becomes the repetition of a rhythm of worship amongst those who participate together over a long period of time.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the second aspect of ritual that is important, its public nature.\u00a0 Now, just because we call something \u201cpublic\u201d doesn\u2019t mean that your neighbors have to witness you doing it.\u00a0 However ritual, in all its forms, is a calling together of the religious community for shared worship.\u00a0 So someone has to witness it, even if its just your partner is a very small coven.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sure, solitaires can practice rituals in their home, but, by my definition of ritual, what they are doing is a series of actions that set up an internal state for connection.\u00a0 They are doing a form of meditation, prayer, or magic, not ritual.\u00a0 In some ways they are getting half of the experience of ritual, all the \u201cshow\u201d but no \u201cwitness\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0 Religious ritual is intimately tied in with the speaking and witnessing of a public action.\u00a0 That public witness changes the space within which the action occurs.\u00a0 It could be said to change the \u201cenergy\u201d of the action: because other people are watching what you are doing and through the watching, the action becomes different.\u00a0 In the witnessing of shared religious ritual we make it into something different than it would be without the observation.\u00a0\u00a0 That difference is wrapped up with the presence of the other, the \u201cnot I,\u201d that is present during the ritual.\u00a0 The \u201cnot I\u201d of fellow witnesses reminds us, and manifests the greater manifests, and the greater, us \u201cnot I\u201d of the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 It reminds us of the much more massive otherness of the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n This goes back to my fundamental tenant of Paganism:\u00a0 the presence of the divine in the world.\u00a0 As Pagan Gods and Goddesses exist in the same way you or I do, then they also have the same sort of existential presence, the existential \u201cnothingness\u201d of consciousness.\u00a0 We are reminded of when we do something that is seen by others.\u00a0 The others remind us of the Gods and Goddesses, and in turn they remind us that the world is a subject, a being to be respected and given the credit of consciousness, as opposed to an object that can be manipulated by us without concern for the consequences of our actions.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n This seeing of the ritual creates a space that is the sum product of all the consciousnesses that are present.\u00a0 At its essence ritual is an invocation of the widespread and multiple consciousnesses of the world by the fact it brings together the participants as a focused, conscious, and aware circle.\u00a0 The circle allows everyone to witness the ritual, to witness each other\u2019s participation, and to create a space where the Gods and Goddesses are seen.\u00a0\u00a0 To practice without community, means that we miss that connection to the world and the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thus in the previous column we discussed the \u201cprivate\u201d acts of worship:\u00a0 meditation, prayer, and shamanistic journeys.\u00a0 Here with ritual we are bringing the public into our interaction with the divine.\u00a0 The introduction of the public brings both connection, in time and space to community, as well as observation.\u00a0\u00a0 Ritual brings the world into our relationship and experience of the divine.\u00a0 And, being Pagans, our Gods and Goddesses are intimately connected with the world, the same way we are.\u00a0 So our rituals should in fact place us squarely in the world, right where the Gods and Goddesses are.\u00a0 Which is why participating in ritual, and I would add public ritual, is so important to Pagan practice.\u00a0 In the same sense our history, our real history, is important to understand.\u00a0\u00a0 Because by understanding history we can begin to create a community that not only spans the practice in our current groups, but transcends both time and space.\u00a0 We become a community integrated across its history, and across the diversity of its practices when we understand our history, and other Pagan groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is another way in which these same bonds can be forged, a way that is special to the Pagan practice.\u00a0 That is the occult practice of magic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Magic<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a column on the ways in which we engage with, worship, and connect to the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0 It is not about the theory of magic.<\/a>\u00a0 That requires a lot more thought, discussion, and time than we have here.\u00a0 Instead I would like to look at the use of magic as a way to connect with the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n If ritual is the way we approach the Gods and Goddesses within the presence of the other, Magic is a way we approach them from within ourselves.\u00a0 Ritual is inherently public, shared, and selfless, magic is private, and generally all about the individual.\u00a0 In this sense it ranks with other \u201cinternal\u201d ways to encounter the divine such as meditation and prayer (which is why meditation and prayer are encountered frequently in magical workings).\u00a0<\/p>\n Now many ritualists and others are about to complain that magic has always been done in groups, so let me explain.<\/p>\n At its essence ritual is profession of faith witnessed by others.\u00a0 Whether those others are ancestral, dispersed through time and space, or actually present at the ritual, it is the witness of the other, the connection with another person, which changes ritual from a direct mystical experience of the divine into something else.\u00a0 Magic, on the other hand, is not witnessed in the same way ritual is, rather it is participated in by those involved.\u00a0 Likewise magic is not a mystical experience of the divine, as it is mediated by actions and words in the same way that ritual is mediated by actions and words (\u201critual\u201d).\u00a0 By \u201cmediated\u201d I mean that something comes between you and the divine experience, something has to be done, said, or be present (a statue) in order for the experience to happen.\u00a0 The experiences we talked about in the previous column, mysticism and prayer, are not mediated, it is just you and the Gods and Goddesses, and what you make of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Magic requires participation, and it requires mediation.\u00a0 In order to engage in magic you have to actually do magical practices, and you have to \u201cdo\u201d something that causes the magic to happen.\u00a0 This is unlike ritual, where you don\u2019t necessarily have to do anything actively associated with the ritual: you can simply witness it.\u00a0 In that sense magic is not something you can participate in by witnessing alone, it requires active involvement of the self.\u00a0 That is what I mean by magic being private; one inherent requirement in doing magic is that it is associated with individual action, not just group action.<\/p>\n So what does this mean?\u00a0 It means that magic and religious rituals are different.\u00a0 Doing ritual, as a way of connection with the Gods and Goddesses does not require magical practice, though in many existing concepts of ritual practice magic and Pagan ritual are intertwined.\u00a0 Often in the same way witchcraft and Paganism are intertwined in the United States and Britain where Wiccan practices have informed a lot of Pagan practice.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n This duality between \u201cpublic\u201d ritual and \u201cprivate\u201d magic is a reflection of many different approaches to the problem of the role of religion in public life.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 For example, Max Weber\u2019s concept of social action as applied to religion can be characterized as to whether the religious action transforms within (mysticism as an inner focused working), or within the world (magic as an action that occurs in the world).\u00a0 For example, salvation can be seen as deliverance from problems and troubles in this world, or the promise of a better life in the next.<\/a>\u00a0 This duality between the pragmatic, social, and the otherworldly, abstract, is at the heart of religious action.\u00a0 For some indigenous religions it is the pragmatic, social, interactions that dominate, as religion is a cornerstone of social interaction within the clan or tribe.\u00a0 For other religions, such as many religions characterized as \u201cNew Age\u201d, it is the inner workings, the inner experience of the divine, that is the key element of religious experience.<\/p>\n If mystical experiences and prayer are the way you seek after enlightenment and ritual is the way you build community and celebrate the Gods and Goddesses from within that community then Magic is where you end up if you are a Pagan and you want to get something done.\u00a0 Magic is religion divested of both community and transcendence; it is the practical tool that is used in a world full of spirit and deity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Drawing on the duality discussed above we can divide the Pagan experience up into a two-variable space much in the way that others have.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the first axis is the degree to which our action is performed within us, or within the world.\u00a0 Ritual and prayer are actions that occur in the world, while magic and mysticism are focused within us.\u00a0 We call this the \u201cworld\u201d axis, and it defines how much the activity affects us, or the world.\u00a0 The second axis, the \u201cspirit\u201d axis, defines what the goal of the working is.\u00a0 Is the goal mainly associated with connecting with the transcendent divine, or is it focused on connecting with or affecting the world.\u00a0 Prayer and Mystical experiences seek a connection with the transcendent, they cut us off from the world on interior or mystical journeys.\u00a0 Magic and ritual, on the other hand, connect us with the immanent divine within the world.\u00a0 They are actions that happen in the world, and seek to bring us to the Gods and Goddesses as they exist in this world.\u00a0 It is not surprising that magic and ritual are intimately connected with Pagan practices, while mysticism and prayer are actions that are shared with the Abrahamic religions. The figure illustrates these divisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Magic is our attempt to affect the world in a practical way.\u00a0 With magic we seek a worldly way to connect with the divine in the world.\u00a0 Without a divine world, without the mystery of having immanent Gods and Goddesses, magic would not work.<\/a>\u00a0 As we, too, are divine beings in a divine world (we are Pagans after all) the action of magic is our imitation, however imperfect or humble, of the Gods and Goddesses and their actions in the world.\u00a0 Magic is not so divorced from practical action; it merely is taking practical action to mimic the divine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As a Pagan practice, magic is a way to communicate with the Gods and Goddesses in a way that no other religious practice has available.\u00a0 Because magic is acting in the divine world in a divine way, you are actually attempting to emulate the Gods and Goddesses actions and results.\u00a0 While our wisdom and ability are far less, magic provides a way to experience the divine directly, by being the divine, by attempting to act as they do in the world.\u00a0 Thus, while magic can be seen as the most debased way to experience the Gods and Goddesses, I\u2019d claim that that is simply a prejudice held over from the book religions.\u00a0 If the Gods and Goddesses exist in the world, as I argue they do, then the whole world is infused with the divine.\u00a0 Doing something practical through magic in the world is harmonious with that divine world; it does not work against it.\u00a0 It is our ability to be the divine, to experience it in a practical way.\u00a0 Of course, as with any action in the world, what you do, and how you do it, will affect you and affect how you see the world, and how others see you.<\/p>\n This means that magic, unlike ritual, in an inherently self-ish activity, in the sense that it is self-centered.\u00a0 You do it, you then take responsibility for it.\u00a0 There is no way to put it off on someone else, like say a God or Goddess.\u00a0 As a way to connect with the Gods and Goddesses, magic is fraught with peril, the peril of self-centeredness, and ego.\u00a0 When we seek to behave like the Gods and Goddesses, we risk taking on the same moral and intellectual challenges confronted by divinity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike the three-fold law, which invokes the concept of karma,<\/a> magic as imitation of divine action makes taking magical action even more dangerous and at the same time roots it firmly in the Pagan worldview of the natural divine.\u00a0 Screw up a magical working, either through hubris, selfishness, meanness, or stupidity, and the Gods and Goddesses are the ones you will answer to.\u00a0 To attempt divine action without divine wisdom would seem to require great caution, circumspection, and humility.\u00a0 This means that all our ethical concepts and ideas apply to magical action, not just the simple retributive three-fold law.\u00a0 We should behave ourselves magically because our magic determines who we are and how we approach the world.\u00a0 Behaving ourselves simply because we might be punished is something that smacks of the book religious ideas of sin and punishment for transgressions.\u00a0 We are more mature than that.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n In all of this we have many different ways of reaching out to the divine world.\u00a0 We can attempt to communicate with the Gods and Goddesses directly, inwardly.\u00a0 We can experience them as part of a temporal or physical group through ritual, or we can attempt to \u201cdo as they do\u201d to be like them through magic.\u00a0 This is a rich and varied set of ways to experience the divine, with far more opportunity, danger, and complexity than simply accepting a savior and going to church.\u00a0 It demands careful, thoughtful, action, and growth in order to reach the true destination of a Pagan experience:\u00a0 knowing the Gods and Goddesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a> And determined that drugs were a strange, and inappropriately syncretic, way of doing business.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do drugs.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> Note that I am using the term \u201critual\u201d as shorthand for Religious Ritual, which implies a ritual conducted in the context of religious activity, including worship.\u00a0 You have a lot of different kinds of rituals, from how you brush your teeth to what you do before taking a test.\u00a0 It is important to distinguish a series of repetitive actions (ritual) from community worship (religious ritual).\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> Which is understandable given that their primary truth-claim, one that forms the under girding of all three of their religions, requires that one dude (Jesus, Mohammad, Moses) be alive at one specific time and engage in some historically relevant actions.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> Another tradition is occult groups such as the Rosicrucians and others seem always intent on constructing long and mysterious pasts that ultimately link them to Hermes Trismegistrus, Solomon, and the Egyptians.\u00a0 This desire for a link to deep history seems to be less a Abrahamic obsession and more of an underpinning of the occult group\u2019s need to have a hidden or \u201coccult\u201d set of information that they can peddle to their members.\u00a0 Otherwise, without occult knowledge, they wouldn\u2019t really be occult now would they?<\/div>\n <\/a> I know that this is a controversial position that will be objected to by solitary practitioners.\u00a0 It is important to remember that I make several distinctions in my thoughts about Pagan practice.\u00a0 The most important is that Witchcraft is different from Pagan religion.\u00a0 You can be a Christian witch, but not a Christian Wiccan or Pagan (at least from the Christian perspective, Pagans are more or less like \u201cwhatever\u201d).\u00a0\u00a0 Witchcraft is a craft or practice that extends across religious practices, but is far more accepted and common amongst Pagan religions.\u00a0 Witchcraft can be practiced in solitary, or in groups.\u00a0 The methods of witchcraft, inner journeys (meditation), visualization, and shamanic journeys are inherently solitary practices, and not religious ritual, as I would define religious ritual.\u00a0\u00a0 These practices are a part of a religious Pagan practice, but they do not convey the same things as public ritual practices do.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> Ritual nudity as practiced by some Gardnarian Wiccans (and here and there by many other Pagans) certainly fits with the idea of a radical witnessing; it is a radical reminder of the fact that ritual witnessed is ritual that is connected to community and the world.\u00a0\u00a0 While this fits theologically, I am totally suspicious about the motives and reasons why Gardner introduced these practices into revival British Witchcraft.\u00a0 I suspect that the reasons were not necessarily theological.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> To \u201ck\u201d or not to \u201ck,\u201d that is the question.\u00a0 Ever since Crowley began putting a k on the end of the world magic, the question becomes whether we should follow the convention.\u00a0 I would argue we should not for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 First, it\u2019s an affectation, and we don\u2019t need more affectations.\u00a0 Second the definition of magic is perfectly fine, and it is extremely unlikely that anyone will be confuse it with stage magic when reading a magic tract (though people like Jeff McBride seem to be blurring some of the differences).\u00a0 Finally, I would argue that the correct way to reference what we do is \u201coccult magic.\u201d\u00a0 This differentiates it from nativist magic, which, while some people do it, is different from the ritualistic\/Wiccan\/Western tradition, and it differentiates it from stage magic.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> See, for example, rituals in Starhawk and various BOSs.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/a> See, for example, Sharot, Stephen.\u00a0 A Comparative Sociology of World Religions<\/em>, New York University, New York, 2001, pp. 20-36.<\/div>\n <\/a> Sharot, p. 22.<\/div>\n![\"PTgraph\"](\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/ptgraph.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n