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The following is an excerpt from Rites
of Worship: A Neopagan Approach, my book on liturgical
design, preparation and performance. Unlike my sharetext postings,
this text file may NOT be freely distributed on
the Net, since it is part of a published book.
Timing
Deciding the exact date and time of your ceremony
requires you to balance both magical and mundane factors, and
will have repercussions on everything else in your liturgical
design and execution. The magical factors have to deal with the
fact that different times of day, and different days of the year,
have different energy patterns (physical, psychological, social,
and thus magical) associated with them. So it may be easier or
more difficult to accomplish a particular magical or religious
goal at the specific time chosen.
John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, in The
Jupiter Effect: The Planets as Triggers of Devastating Earthquakes
(Random House, 1976) clearly demonstrated that the positions
of the planets in the solar system cause significant, predictable
changes in solar weather and sunspot patterns. These in turn
affect earthly weather patterns, especially the ionization of
the atmosphere, which the authors believe can trigger earthquakes.
Certainly research has clearly shown that the proportion of positive
to negative ions in a given location can have profound effects
on human and other animal mood swings. These patterns of ionization
change from season to season, as do the proportions of light
and darkness, which are also known to have strong psychological
effects.
The daily solar cycle thus causes the mana
available for use to be different at sunrise, noon, sunset and
midnight, and the halfway points between each. Similarly, because
of the yearly solar cycle, the mana available at the solstices, equinoxes,
and their halfway points are
also unique.
The phases of the moon also can have profound
effects (ask any law enforcement officer, ambulance driver, or
psychiatric nurse about full moons!), especially when the moon
is above the horizon. Readers who have a background in astrology
will need no persuasion in this department, and will probably
also consider the daily positions of the planets (and the angles
they form to the natal charts of the leading participants) to
be worth examining when selecting a date and time. The rest of
you will have to experiment in order to verify my statements
here. You may also want to pay attention to the biorhythms of
the presiding clergy, to make sure that none of them will be
having a “double or triple critical day” on the date
selected.
It has been my experience that performing
even a simple celebration of a Holy Day on the exact day of the
year, and at the exact (or at least the symbolic) time of the
day associated with the event being celebrated, will dramatically
multiply the ease and efficiency of your working.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get people
to show up for a ritual being held at an inconvenient time. Often
the proper date for a Holy Day is in the middle of the civil
week, and the time associated with the event may be very late
at night, or in the middle of the working day. However, you have
some flexibility in the choice of a time of day, since you can
choose to schedule your rite for either the astronomical or the
symbolic instant of the event. For example, the spring equinox
might occur on March 20th, at 10:15 pm in your local time zone.
You could do your equinox ritual at 10:00 pm, or at the following
sunrise. At the very least, you should schedule your ceremony
sometime between sunset on the 20th and sunset on the 21st.
This, however, often becomes a counsel of
perfection. If you are planning a large public celebration, you’ll
have to schedule it according to the convenience of the majority
of your group members and guests. This usually means that you’ll
be stuck with the weekend before or after the event. Even so,
you should try to do it at the appropriately symbolic time of
day. For example, a Midsummer’s Day celebration held at
9:00 p.m. would simply not be as psychologically effective as
one done at sunrise or high noon. If you want to do a nocturnal
ceremony, you can always make it the Eve of the Holy Day (at
least if you’re working with Indo-European holidays).
Don’t forget such mundane matters as:
the work and child care schedules of the members, local transportation
patterns, bus schedules, meals, expected weather and temperature,
fluctuating noise levels at the site, availability of facilities,
etc. All of these have an impact on how many people show up,
and on how well they enjoy themselves. The trick is to balance
genuine needs in the lives of your congregation against the laziness
and inertia of those who simply haven’t made attending your
ritual a high priority. Remember that if you decide to do a fall
equinox rite at sunset, you will probably not be able to get
the sun to delay setting while late-comers straggle in.
Location
Exactly what sort of site will be used for
your ceremony? Will it be indoors or outdoors, on private landr
in a public park, urban or suburban, rural or wilderness? Your
choice will effect physical, social, psychological, and magical
aspects of your liturgy. It’s better to be able to choose
a site to match the liturgical design, rather than vice versa,
but often you must simply work with what’s available.
If you’re going to be working outdoors,
private land is generally better than public, since you’re
less likely to be disturbed by tourists, hunters or park rangers.
However, if your group is seeking new members, doing a few ceremonies
in city parks, especially near universities, can attract folks
who might otherwise never hear of you. It can also attract trouble,
so make sure that security precautions are taken to prevent disruption.
It’s also essential to find out from the people who control
the land (whether local Neopagans or the city parks department)
just what their rules are concerning hours, fires, alcoholic
beverages, numbers of people, etc. If your congregation won’t
agree to those rules, you’ll need to choose a different
site.
Pay attention to noise levels and acoustics,
whether indoors or out. If there are railroad tracks, a fire
station, a hospital, or an airport nearby, you can expect loud
noises to occur at random intervals. These can drown out invocations
and music, destroying both the concentration of the participants
and whatever patterns of mana have been created. Cute comments
or jokes about “Let’s just pretend it’s a dragon”
or “As we were saying…” won’t repair the
damage. If you’re working indoors in such a location, you
should make every effort to physically soundproof the room.
One technique that has worked well in large
rituals is to tell the participants beforehand that noisy interruptions
may occur and that everyone should relax, not fight it, and softly
chant “om” over and over again when this happens, keeping
the energy focussed and moving, until the outside noise dies
away and the people leading the ritual continue.
As for acoustics, it’s a good idea when
inspecting a proposed site to do some shouting, singing, whispering,
drumming, harp playing, or other noise-making equivalent to what
your ceremony will require, at the expected time of day. See
how far the sounds carry, what the echoes are like, if details
are lost at a distance, etc. Then you can decide if you want
to use the location at all and if so, whether you’ll need
sound amplification equipment, louder acoustic instruments, etc.
If the weather is likely to be foul, or there
are members of your group who can’t handle being outdoors
long during the winter, and you don’t own your own temple
building, you should try to find, borrow, or rent some sort of
medieval or pre-medieval-looking enclosure (it tends to be part
of the Neopagan aesthetic). I know this isn’t always easy,
but trying to fit thirty people into a small living room can
be just as difficult, and far less aesthetically pleasing. If
you are planning an outdoor ceremony, but you don’t trust
the weather forecast for your scheduled date, you should have
an alternate indoor location readily available (always A Good
Idea, anyway) and your liturgical design should be adaptable
to the change. Make sure that your announcements mention both
locations and set an alternate time sufficiently after the originally
planned time to allow people to get from one site to the other.
If the alternate site gets used, try to post a notice to this
effect at the original location.
How do you get an indoor location? If you
own some land, you may be able to find a large cave, or build
a wooden cabin, yurt or longhouse. A half a dozen determined
people can create one of these in a month, just working on weekends
(see your local public library for instruction books, and check
the local building codes too). In six months you could build
a rough duplicate of the Scandinavian stave churches, which are
believed by some scholars to have originally been the same design
that was used for Paleopagan Norse temples.
Many public parks, even in large cities, have
rustic looking “lodges,” often with fireplaces, that
your group can rent inexpensively. These are usually surrounded
by trees, and can be ideal for medium to large groups. Masonic
and other fraternal groups, as well as ultra-liberal churches
such as the Unitarian Universalists, are often willing to rent
out meeting space to members of minority belief systems. Whether
you’re working in one of these lodges, your own temple,
a living room, or someone’s garage, try to set up the site
to look as dramatic and non-mundane as possible. Some study of
theatrical set design will give you useful ideas here, such as
drapery, dramatic lighting techniques, etc.
Whether indoors or out, don’t assume
that your site needs to be circular. Our ancestors had temples
in the shapes of circles, rectangles, ovals, doubled squares
and odd polygons. As for groves of trees, where many of the Indo-European
Paleopagan ceremonies took place, the average one is seldom a
precise circle. Although it’s aesthetically and democratically
pleasing to have the congregation stand around in a circle, and
this is the pattern with
which most Neopagans are familiar (thanks to Gerald Gardner,
founder of Wicca), you can do effective group worship and/or
magic using other geometrical shapes. Neopagan
Druid ritual scripts, for example, assume that the congregation
is standing outdoors in a circle, but in point of fact they have
worked well with everyone sitting indoors in an oval instead.
You could try having your ceremonies with the people in a triangle,
or in a square, or in lines facing a particular direction.
Consider the theatrical difficulties as well
as the mana patterns likely to be generated by your shape choices.
For example, those of you with theater experience will agree
that working “in the round” can be far more difficult
than working in front of the observers. Yet with the latter setup,
you may have problems with people who are unhappily reminded
of childhood experiences in mainstream religions, and who may
be unable to overcome their biases. It also tends to promote
a “performers vs. audience” perception among the participants,
instead of the unity necessary for effective ritual.
Generally, the larger a site you have, the
better, up to a point. You want enough room for the members of
the congregation to stand, sit, or lie in whatever geometrical
pattern you have chosen, while still leaving some empty space
outside of them. However, if you’re working indoors, you
don’t want a small group working in the middle of a gigantic
room, since this tends to breed a sense of isolation and weakness
(I've seen this happen at Pagan conventions several times). The
acoustics of a very large room with only a small number of participants,
will usually dilute people’s voices and other sounds, thus
draining a lot of dramatic power.
Outdoors, shade can be an important factor,
especially during the hotter months. Since the average large-scale
Neopagan rite can last an hour or more, you need to make arrangements
not only for shade, but for the health of the members of your
congregation as well.
Are there any members of your group who are
elderly or physically handicapped? Outdoor rituals can be very
difficult for them to attend if they are blind or mobility impaired,
unless you have volunteers ready to assist them. If you’re
expecting people to show up in wheelchairs, make sure your site
is accessible (see Making
Liturgy Accessible for more comments about integrating people
with special needs into your rituals).
Even people who are not physically handicapped
may have difficulty arriving at your site if it’s not near
public transportation, or doesn’t have sufficient parking
space nearby. In fact, some Neopagans will refuse to go to a
ceremony that requires driving a private car, simply on ecological
principles. Finally, if you’re going to go to a rural area,
park cars or bicycles, then hike a mile to the actual ritual
site, you’ll probably need a liturgical design that uses
fewer props (especially heavy ones).
Finding the perfect spot to do your rituals
can be a long, frustrating job, but it’s worth it. Eventually
you’ll discover what every other religion in history has
found out: having your own land, with buildings, trails, and
other facilities to fulfill the needs of your congregation, is
the best long-term solution.
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