Why you shouldn’t be scared of engaging in ritual, what the point of performing ritual is and how to create sacred ritual in your personal space.
What is the difference between a ritual and a spell?
The terms spell and ritual are often transposed.
Both set alchemical motions in place.
Rituals can be everyday actions (habitual thought patterns, emotional states and behaviour) that you repeat to create your reality without even realising.
But, ritual can also be performed with specific intent to become a deliberate act of creation.
As such, ritual is encapsulated within the spellcasting process.
Spells
• A spell is to create something and embed its stirring life force within the living matrix.
• A spell adds an energy strand to the energy web
• Spells instruct, craft, weave, swirl and mould life force.
• A spell is a representational formula to incur change.
Rituals
• A ritual, no matter how simple, touches deep within your core.
• A ritual fosters connection and soulfulness with body, mind and spirit.
• Rituals hold space by helping you maintain an internal state until it becomes a default.
• Ritual is prayer-in-motion, a physical gesture that merges within and without, above and below, integrating them in your present by shifting and transforming your vibration.
Brush your teeth. Walk the dog.
Invoke the Ancient Ones. Dance with the Little Ones.
What underlies these actions?
What meaning do you derive from them?
So many people today dismiss ritual and ceremony as something fine to behold yet irrelevant to “modern life.”
Rituals give form and structure that provide a safe space from which to open up to explore your innermost being and/or honour the sacred.
I like to think of ritual as a blueprint.
Spells are transformational in essence. You can cast a spell for the purpose of spiritual expansion or you can cast a spell for the purpose of making overt changes in your reality.
A spell is a conduit that gives purpose to gathered energy (life force). You are fervently focussing on what it is that you want precisely. Creating a concentrated vortex and the releasing it to return manifest in the physical.
Hence spell-casting. You are literally casting your emotionally charged intention into the ether.
I like to think of a spell as a projection of energy.
There is a ritual constituent to spellcasting because you follow a ritual format, performing a series of actions that merge both hemispheres of your brain ~ such as creating sacred space, calling on the quarters and stepping into the emotional vibration of what it will feel like to achieve the outcome you desire.
You operate outside of physical limitation, linear time and space effectively entering the rite in one reality and exiting in another, where your will is firmly embedded in the matrix.
Every day is an opportunity to start anew. In fact so is every moment.
What Ritual Is
If you have ever participated in or carried out a ceremony, have you noticed how you feel better? More serene, more connected and aligned, more balanced?
Ceremony is just ritual beautified by incorporating more embellishments and/or making it a public display.
Ritual holds within it something primal that tugs at our archetypal roots and strengthens the link to our collective unconscious.
Powerful, mysterious, profound and vast, the sum total of all that was, all that could be and all that is yet to come.
Ritual is a series of actions which lead you into the vortex, connecting you with your core Self and facilitates stepping into the essence of the relationship you want with whatever you desire E.G. wealth, success, love, health, appreciation.
It can be employed to; enhance your sensory experience, alleviate emotional anguish, become more mindful, mark an ending and a new beginning and symbolically restore order to perceived chaos.
Ritual also helps you hold that vibration intensely for an extended period and effectively bridges the gap from “here” to “there” through all time and space.
Ritual is the thread spun outside of our conceptual framework that turns metaphor and vision physical.
Ritual can be as mundane as the habits you cultivate around rising in the morning, preparing for tasks and exercising. Your daily practise as it were.
Or ritual can be arcane such as lighting a candle, ensorcelling some botanicals, greeting the elements and placing an enchanted item strategically with purpose.
Either way you carry this set of motions out with deliberate purpose, holding a specific outcome in mind as a result of your action. Whether you are altering your habits to get fit, gain more financial security or to catch that cutie down the road’s eye.
The Purpose of Ritual
Ritual melds the left and right brain, lending tangibility to the subtle energies you are drawing on, rearranging your unique vibration to shift into the potential you are shaping for it. Ritual brings you from a state of distraction into a centred presence from where you function optimally.
When you make behavioural change from within, the change is reflected without. Do what you say you are going to do. Be the instigator of transformation. Think, act and speak like the expression of you that you are choosing to become.
Slay those rituals that no longer serve your truth or meet your core values.
For example
Change your diet, start exercising, expand your streams of income, diversify your talents, recite your mantras, attend single’s mixers, type that set number of words per day, take a bath, sprinkle salt, bake and bewitch a gingerbread man.
Choose a set of actions that take you closer to who or where you want to be, apply them consistently and to the best of your ability and you will see results. Also bear in mind that every day is an opportunity to start anew. In fact so is every moment.
Does Performing Ritual Open You Up to Unwanted Things?
If you come from a background where this type of spi-ritual practice is frowned upon and considered negative, it can be quite scary to get started because of all the lies you have been told about it.
Much like telling children frightening tales to get them to behave the way you want them to!
So naturally there is some fear around the topic because you have been misinformed about the beauty and power of ritual.
Mainly misinformation is spread because if more people engaged in deliberate ritual it would instil so much self-belief in themselves that they wouldn’t need others to tell them what to think and how to behave.
They say you are opening up doors and portals to things unknown, communicating with malevolent creatures. That lower entities just can’t wait to invade your space and that you are unable to delineate who (or what) enters.
The only thing to fear is fear itself. In effect, by entertaining the thought of negativity infesting your intention, you have already invited it in. Whatever you think about expands. What you place your attention on animates a quality of energy within you that colours your experience of events.
Come to think of it, if ritual is “evil” then more situations go unresolved and more people have issues that are not processed so more heavy, untransformed, shadowy energy remains. Is that not perhaps the proposed aim of “evil”?
By rejecting your personal sovereignty you fail to actively take charge of your own energy and vibrational wellbeing. Evil is keeping you in a constant state of fear, dependant on others for information to keep you subordinate, misinformed and unaware of your true potential.
How Ritual Works
Ritual is prayer in motion, a metaphor carried out in gesture for what you want to accomplish. Ritual is a way to shift internally, to raise your vibration and alter your frequency so that you may experience differently on an external level.
You enlist the power of your subconscious mind by consciously conveying and illustrating your desire. In so doing, you redirect and reshape your conscious mind to prepare it for the new condition or resolution you are intending for.
Should you wish to employ Creative Forces such as elemental and celestial energies, ancient beings as well as your personal Spirit Helpers to intervene and help rearrange quantum particles to present ways to experience the results you seek, you will certainly gain from opening up to their benevolence.
However, you don’t have to.
Your subconscious mind is VERY powerful and by simply engaging in ritual gestures your subconscious will respond and you will already experience shifts. If you feel uncomfortable about calling on archetypal forces, know that their company is strictly upon invitation. MAKE IT CLEAR that you know that. It is universal law.
Only those you invite and/or allow in can enter your space. That means you set firm, clear boundaries about what you will entertain in your space. This sets a barrier in place impenetrable to all who do not match the invitation you have extended. “Shielding” sacred space, it is not performed from fear of “something out there,” it is done to preserve the frequency of the space to create an environment for comfortable receptivity. Here is a sample declaration…
“Only those of the highest energy, purest vibration and of good intention may enter this space/ attend this rite/ intervene/ hear my prayer for better.”
Four Ways Ritual Is Good For You (including the ones you perform every day)
Aside from planned ritual around the lunar phases and seasonal events, you also need to consider the daily rituals that set the tone for your life day in and day out.
• What rituals are you unconsciously moving through that keep you stagnant?
• And how will you change them to shift and transform your life?
Everyday ritual (habits) like waking, stretching, ablutions, dressing and applying make-up you are pre-paving and preparing for your day.
So by performing intentional ritual magick you are pre-paving and preparing for an event or desire that takes you somewhere new i.e. find yourself on new ground. Ritual aligns the conscious mind with the change you desire.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man”
̶ Heraclitus
The Benefits of Ritual:
#1
Ritual places you beyond time and place where what you are asking for already exists. Engaging in ritual is a passage of rebirth for your personal frequency. It recalibrates you to who/ what/ where you want to be.
Essentially you are stepping into ritual from an old self into a new self in the desired “now” vibrational pattern. Thus when you come out the other side of a ritual, no matter how simple or elaborate, you are a different person to the one you were when you started the ritual.
#2
Ritual can change the way you think about something and bring new awareness. It creates new neural pathways. Like opening a gateway, stepping through the looking glass, across the threshold supported by what your brain perceives as a sacred space ~ safe to fearlessly explore limitless possibilities.
#3
Ritual acts boost your confidence, relieve anxiety and raise your vibration.
They instil a sense of power over circumstance, which soothes and has a powerful impact on thoughts, feelings and behaviour, elevating mood and attitude.
That’s highly likely due to the abovementioned benefit #1 where you have stepped into the feeling state of possessing your desired outcome, reaching through time and space (embracing your true multidimensional nature) to claim it for yourself now.
#4
Engaging in ritual focuses your intention or petition into the matrix in a similar manner to how a cat hones in while it stalks it’s prey.
The “after burn” effect of the ritual on mind, emotion and spirit helps you carry that frequency match to your desired outcome for an extended period of time.
The 4 Steps You Absolutely Must Take BEFORE You Start a Ritual
How to prepare and (properly) draw in energy before any rite, step-by-step.
All too often we have our thoughts fixed on the desired outcome of a ritual. Whether it is about creating better for ourselves or requesting healing, love or peace for another, we’re projecting our energy toward what is coming instead of aligning with it in the present.
It’s as if we are peering over a hurdle anticipating the finish line without taking the starting position and flow of technique we require to get there into account.
While it is important to know what you are asking for and the underlying motivation for it (which I cover in-depth here) it is just as key to centre yourself in the precise moment where you ignite the ritual act.
Those of you familiar with my coaching style know that I don’t advocate drawn out or complicated formal ritual. No matter which, 5 minutes or 55 minutes will be as effective.
The secret is to make it highly evocative on several levels and that is where these four easy steps come in.
Step One: Consciously Commence
Consciously acknowledging the very commencement of your ritual is like piecing together a beautifully crafted introductory paragraph that draws you in to a captivating novel or carefully selecting that precise meaning laden word that serves as the precipice for a stirring piece of poetry.
This may be achieved through certain techniques that indicate the start of a ritual such as drumming, the scratching sound of a match head as it is struck alongside the box or the murmur a candle wick makes as it springs afire.
You don’t need any tools or props to do this though, simply become aware of your body (both feet on the floor, your extremities, your heartbeat and the blood coursing around your body), then focus on your breath. This is enough to dissolve both the past and future so there is only Now.
Through this action you emphasise your knowing that something is shifting in this instant.
Step Two: Settle into Presence
Settling into a calm presence helps you to stop thinking about what (or who) may have aggravated you just before the chosen time of your ritual or wondering about what you are going to make for dinner…
Ground to consciously reinforce your connection with Source (or your preference) and Earth. Centre to realign body, mind and soul and to fully access your personal power at its optimal level of functioning.
You may want to set your sacred space and open it with a blessing such as, “I surround this space in diamond light, may only those of the highest light and purest intent enter here.”
Trust your feelings, if the vibe is right you will feel at ease and comfortable. Avoid entertaining any notions of what can go wrong based on what others have told you or that you have read up on. By allowing these thoughts into your consciousness — you allow them in.
Step Three: Step into Alignment
You’ve heard the old proverb, “We plan, life laughs”?! This is the point before you get to the asking part of your ritual, where you allow for cosmic winds to flow around you.
This indicates your acceptance that what you are wanting may differ from destiny so that you aren’t futilely pushing against life’s plan. Here is a sample prayer:
I am one with Source (or your preference).
I connect with the living essence in all things.
I acknowledge the Greater Whole within which all things exist.
I attract endless blessings from this infinite realm of potential.
My intentions serve only my highest good and flow to me effortlessly.
Step Four: Connect with the Primordial Elements
This step helps you to pull in inspiration and support from the universe, involving something greater than you to bring your dreams into form.
Take your attention to Air, Fire, Water and Earth in turn. Consider the qualities of each element and sense their presence in your chosen space in whichever method works best for you.
For example, if you are more inclined toward clairaudience than clairvoyance you will hear a sound that you associate with each element rather than visualising each one and so on.
As you conjure and connect with each element ask them to refine, bless, fuel and manifest your intentions. This is because of free will nothing can intervene in your life without your consent.
Now you are ready to begin your ritual (or spell)!
Nevertheless you may ask… “I haven’t done anything like this ever before, now I know how to prepare but to perform a ritual in- or out of doors, day or night?” Here is where you need to listen to your inner guidance.
How big or small do you want to make the rite? As stated at the beginning of this guide, it could be 5 or 55 minutes. What counts is the meaning and emotional charge you attribute to it.
You could go outside and have candles lit with incense going or fresh flowers in a circle around you. Alternatively, you could take a nice long candlelit bath and soak up the energy through the element of water.
Just like you can’t necessarily see the sun on a cloudy, it does not mean the energy is not present and showering upon the Earthly realm. So you don’t have to be outside or far out in the countryside to commune with Source energy.
You could simply say an incantation before sleep, it’s totally up to you and what suits your personality and lifestyle when it comes to how complex and elaborate you wish to make your ritual. You can’t do it “wrong”.
You could even do the above examples in sequence; under the stars followed by a magical bath and then enchanted sleep!
To summarise, relax and enjoy the magick.
How Magick is Like Cooking in Disguise
Have you ever noticed the magick that unfolds during the cooking process?
The fine art of preparing a meal has long been associated with an alchemical process.
From the stirrings of a craving to the final product of your deliberate act of creation on the serving dish before you, exists a harmonious flow of intent, purpose and transformation.
The Process
You observe what your palate desires then you gather the ingredients, selecting the freshest most nutritious items you can find. Next you set them out on the counter to prepare.
Your driving focus is on the outcome you have in mind of the final meal ready to appreciate and devour. Yet for now you focus on the task at hand, peeling and slicing.
Next follows the fusing of flavours, colours and textures. Optimistic testing then adjusting the components to taste. All the while fuelled by a constant motion of shifting states. Frying, steaming or grilling. Adding just the right amount of power that will lend your vision form and render it complete.
This is what a ritual gesture mimics, when you gather and enchant herbs, light a candle or partner with a crystal helper…
You are opening to new experience and recalibration of body, heart and mind. Spellcasting is not what it seems 😉
The Synergy
The practise of magick is just like cooking. You pinpoint the true desires that underlie your wants. Then you deliberately choose where you will place your attention, with thoughts, words and deeds that nourish what you want to create more of in your life.
You prepare a vibration that matches the experiences you seek and who you are becoming with a consistent peeling away of old beliefs and past programming. Slicing away outmoded aspects of self and fusing all your best qualities to consciously shape a new beingness.
All the while enjoying the day-to-day tasks before you, as Spirit and the unseen forces collaborate with you. You live lighter in a playful, curious state because everything is in transition and the whole experience is worth savouring.