You might want to consider a distinction between ritual and ceremony.
I am one of the list-lurkers from West Virginia and I have been working with/studying a group that is a real mix of Appalachian tradition, native American, eclectic witchcraft, Norse, and ceremonialists. We have organized ourselves through CUUPS and are doing "projects" where we conduct a series of "workings" around one or another member's system. Our current project is a series of ceremonial rituals based on the American Neopagan version of the sephera as a series of 10 states of consciousness. Our next project will be a either a series of meditations from a book based on a Wiccan system or a series from the Norse system.
The members who are from the Native American/Appalachian tradition see the ceremonial rituals from the kabalistic system as a real curiosity. The practices they call rituals are much simpler and looser. Examples would include (a) chanting a rhyme while stuffing someone's object into a box and filling it with red peppers, then setting it into running water to get someone's influence out of your life (it worked), or (b) noting that someone needs healing and spontaneously putting them into the center of the group and using chanting, crystals, tarot cards, feathers to infuse them with energy. They certainly work with and revere deities in a ritualistic way, but see it as very different from western ceremonialists. It is more than a prayer and less than a ceremony.
There has also been a lot of discussion within the group about whether deities are internal or external, and while the group has not articulated a conclusion, in practice it seems to be settling on a model in which deities have some existence that is external to us as individuals, but are best understood and worked with by us using internal states of consciousness. Curiously, and this may be a matter of our highly eclectic composition, I have rarely seen people in the group call on them to do things for them in the material world. Most of the magical practices tend to be more hoodoo - kind of implying a mechanical universe.
My two cents from the "third world" region of the US.
_marty
Marty Laubach
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Marshall University
One John Marshall Drive
Huntington, WV 25755-2678
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Harry Roth
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 2:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Ritual (was Deities)
jason winslade wrote:
> Ritual isn't a 'hindrance,' but
> rather is meant to remove hindrances. It's not 'between you and
> something you're trying to do,' it is what you're trying to do.
Yes, I too was puzzled by the idea of
ritual as a hindrance or obstacle or as
having decorative purposes only. To me,
ritual is a tool for focusing one's
will, desire, or energy towards a
specific purpose, whether that be the
accomplishment of some goal or the
reception of spiritual guidance or
magical knowledge. It's more like a lens
than an obstacle.
I have seen objections to the very idea
of ritual, though, on the part of some
folks identifying themselves as witches,
especially those who might use the terms
"kitchen witch" or "traditional
witchcraft." Some of these folks see
ritual as an alien thing that flowed
into witchcraft through Wicca and into
Wicca from lodgecraft and grimoire
magic. That said, I also know people who
identify as traditional witches who use
ritual on a regular basis.
Harry Roth
|