Ritual Weaving

Ritual takes many forms. Your request for ritual might include, to heal, seek help, restore, acknowledge or give thanks, to name a few. A prior divination can suggest a need for a ritual, too. No particular set of beliefs is needed.

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Typically, ritual involves a collection of people with a shared intention all gathered in a specific place designated at that time for ritual, as well as calling in help from, and paying attention to, the more than human world. Sometimes the people gathered are family and friends, other rituals might be with strangers who, in ritual space, become new allies and friends. Individual rituals, designed for you to do alone, are sometimes called for.

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Healing and change is not always comfortable and can take time! 

The areas I know most to bring ritual to are:

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TRANSITION PASSAGES: It is possible to design timely and unique rituals for you which deal with your specific life circumstances, because as adults we go on changing, and needing help with becoming more fully who we are, in service to the life we have and the community around us. Let's call these adult life rituals Transition Passages. Such transitions are rarely done well alone, though our lives and culture often require us to do so. These changes are best enabled in ritual. Be in touch if you want to explore any of these rituals.

Some of the life phases we encounter, and can recognise as ordeals or transitions, might include:

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Mums (some dads too) dealing with the loss of their little boys becoming young-men.

Empty nesting: as children leave for university or work. Children bring meaning, where are you when they are not around? How do you feel in your new, more-alone worl. Maybe you have dreams to feed or dreams to find.

First Job: It’s taken for granted, but it’s a huge deal; earning your own money and taking responsibilities, as well as some stepping away from what, whereever or whoever was holding you before.

Work Transition: All sorts of changes, comfortable and less so, hellos and goodbyes, changes of how you think of yourself and how you are perceived: these and other issues might be worked into a ritual.

Separation or Divorce: Ritual can play a part with issues of closure, forgiveness, healing, moving on, and reacting to so many intense feelings. Separation can include relationships which to the outer world look casual, even brief, but can still impact us profoundly.

Retirement: Acknowledgement and gratitude looking back, laying down an old life or birthing a new one, can find support in ritual.

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If you are in one of these places, or some other transition (they can take on many forms), maybe a ritual can help you move through it. Let's talk about it.

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WHOLENESS: When life has taken a chunk out of you.

We all get on with whatever life brings our way us as bravely as we can but often alone and largely unacknowledged. Rituals can be designed to help lay down a burden, or to make whole a hurt or to make sense of an incident whose remedy can be found by undertaking a ritual.

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VISION BUILDING AND BLESSING CEREMONY: Ritual can be used as way to deepen personal and team or group commitment and coherence, to a goal or a vision. Ritual creates a space to feel into any uncertainties and a safe place to explore differences, from which it is possible to breathe life into the possibilities revealed.

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AND A PLACE: Rituals need a place on the land, a setting. This can be a place you have in mind or I can offer a site I have created in my garden (about an acre) with ritual in mind. This has been used for group and personal rituals over the years with shrines, fire sites, ponds, willow walk, and a rammed-earth lodge all fitted around a small amphitheatre.

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RITES OF PASSAGE

A current cultural focus is on passages for young people, or the lack of, and the consequent impact this has. Our style of life, and the demands placed by society upon people their teenage years, has pushed back any form of threshold crossing to later teenagerhood or early twenties, if at all.

TEENAGERS: I am regularly approached with requests for 'rites of passage' type events for teenagers, more for boys, who seem less well provided for. In response to this, I am exploring creating events for teenagers. Although their days are full of other stuff, some teenagers are hungry for, and insightful about, different ways of living.

If you want to pursue this with me, because you have teenagers in your life as a parent or guide, or are leader also feeling a call to this work, please be in touch to see what we might craft together.

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I encountered the ideas of rites of passage and initiation for young adults from mythologist Michael Meade and Robert Bly, whose ground-breaking book, Iron John, is credited with kicking off so much of what followed and includes many of the stages of initiation. I also learnt deeply from both Malidoma Some and Martin Prechtel who have spoken extensively about initiations in their own cultures.

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YOUNG ADULTS: Together with other foolhardy pioneers, I have been privileged to help hold a community bringing Rites of Passage ceremony for young women.

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As part of my commitment to helping young adults I offer life coaching for young adults at discounted rates. Click here.

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