We had a beautiful and elaborate ritual arc planned. \u00a0We were going to have a ritual each day of the festival: opening with Earth, progressing through Air and Water, and culminating in Fire. \u00a0There were to be four elemental altars, each to be staffed by one of my Keepers for the two hours before the ritual they would officiate. \u00a0My ritual crew was to gather at the altars and process throughout the camp each night, calling people to ritual.<\/p>\n
Then we had a week of torrential rains. \u00a0Capped off by a tornado on opening day.<\/p>\n
The elemental altars were never fully erected. \u00a0My Keeper of Earth, an experienced hiker, felt that the path to hers was unsafe. \u00a0The Water alter never even made it down to the lake. \u00a0Having lost a day and a great deal of energy to the chaos of Thursday’s tornado, the oracular stations never took place. \u00a0Thursday night’s ritual, as I described yesterday<\/a>, just didn’t happen. \u00a0I have since issued a public apology for all of this, but more than that … we were all looking forward to it. \u00a0It was a loss for us as well as for the community.<\/p>\n After a great deal of discussion and soul-searching, we decided that the thing to do was to have the opening Earth ritual Friday night and conclude with Fire as we had originally planned. \u00a0We would figure out what to do with the Air and Water rituals after we’d made it past the first goal post.<\/p>\n The Earth ritual was focused on cleansing ourselves of what had come before — written originally as our “mundane” lives, but expanded to include the fear and terror of the day before — and revolved around two points; “we are of the earth, we are upon the earth, and in the end, we are below the earth”; and “be here now”. \u00a0Having led the participants through a rudimentary banishing, and ecstatic chanting led by Shauna Aura Knight, we conjured the genus locus<\/em> of the Gaea Retreat Center, as aspected by Lupa, to cement the deal. \u00a0We passed out hand-sewn pouches in which to collect sacred objects found or gifted throughout the festival, and concluded the ritual with a group hug, belatedly welcoming everyone to the festival.<\/p>\n At the end of the ritual, our Keeper of Air announced that we would be combining the Air and Water rituals for Saturday night.<\/p>\n The Air ritual was designed to help us discern and articulate our desires. \u00a0Our key phrases in that ritual were “breathe and think” and “breathe together, live together”, with Shauna once again leading the chants. \u00a0To the end of naming our desires, the Keeper of Air conjured the nine Muses, aspected by myself in a nine-faced mask — an experience that I will speak more on, later. \u00a0For this ritual’s tokens, we passed out cones of incense.<\/p>\n We concluded the Air ritual as written, and Shauna held the space by leading the participants in a chant while my crew and I switched gears, turning ritual leadership over from the Keeper of Air to the Keeper of Water.<\/p>\n The Water ritual brought us together to face our fears, the things that hold us back. \u00a0 \u00a0We brought everyone to the center of the circle as they chanted, and made them reach into a pool of water to get their seashell tokens. \u00a0Then the Keeper of Water conjured Typhoeus, father of monsters, performed by Shauna Aura Knight to claim our fears as his children. \u00a0Then everyone was brought back into the center of the circle to comfort one another. \u00a0It was written to be heavy, and it was Shauna’s chance to deploy a number of her ecstatic techniques that could not be woven into the other rituals gracefully. \u00a0The ritual thesis, dropped in the final line, was, “In the end, we must all face our fears. \u00a0But we need not face them alone.”<\/p>\n The final ritual was Fire. \u00a0Having sequestered ourselves, consulted the Muses, and faced our fears, it was time to act. \u00a0The Keeper of Fire spoke of rekindling the divine spark within ourselves, dimmed by oppression and defeat. \u00a0She conjured Prometheus to aid us, and he demanded an oath to pursue our ambitions before he would give us his aid. \u00a0Again, Shauna added her ecstatic chants to raise and maintain energy, and to focus it into the candles we gave as tokens — candles which serve as contracts with Prometheus, cementing the vow to act in return for his aid.<\/p>\n All in all, I think that the rituals went off beautifully. \u00a0There were a handful of flubbed lines and missed beats, but literally nothing that someone who didn’t write the script would notice. \u00a0My Keepers were amazing, each stepping up past their own previously conceived limits. \u00a0Lupa’s incarnation of the spirit of Camp Gaea was masterful and powerful. \u00a0Shauna’s chant techniques reinforced our script and filled gaps in the rituals that we had not known how to fix. \u00a0And Nels and Judy’s drumming helped tie everyhing together across all four rituals. \u00a0Oh, and the costumes. \u00a0I can’t wait to get the pictures back so I can show them off to you. \u00a0Especially the nine muses. \u00a0People poo-poo theatrical rituals, but it fucking works.<\/p>\n The feedback we have received so far has been overwhelmingly positive. \u00a0I think that I can safely say that we are succeeding in serving our community.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had a beautiful and elaborate ritual arc planned. \u00a0We were going to have a ritual each day of the festival: opening with Earth, progressing through Air and Water, and culminating in Fire. \u00a0There were to be four elemental altars, each to be staffed by one of my Keepers for the two hours before the … Read 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