Ritual Writing and the Power of Spiritual Exploration

Get ready to unlock your spiritual understanding as we explore the compelling world of ritual themes! It's a thrilling journey of self-discovery, encouraging you to peel back the layers of your psyche and face your fears head-on. We discuss the often-misunderstood concept of naked rites from the Charge of the Goddess, revealing how it can positively influence your spiritual journey. 

We also delve into the dual nature of themes in rituals, highlighting how both positive and negative aspects play vital roles. With a dash of humor, we navigate through the liberating power of laughter and its role in ritual writing, offering a fresh perspective on spiritual practices.  We discuss how rituals can shine a light on overlooked aspects of life and how ritual writing can be a creative act of self-expression.

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Transcript

Lord Oswyn 0:27

Music Welcome to Pagan Coffee Talk. Here are your hosts, Lady Alba and Lord Night.

Lady Alba 0:33

So for the past almost year, as we're coming up on Samhain, we have been at Temple focusing on a very specific part of the Charge of the Goddess, and it is the segment where Doreen Valiant talks about naked rites. Right.

Lady Alba 0:59

You'd be naked in your rights and I decided it would be a great idea to {Wow, he's having a moment. My goodness, Mr. man, he didn't get his ritual invite. He's upset} that we would dissect it right and really talk about what it means, because I have seen over the years oh my gosh, the minute. I always find it funny, the minute anybody says the word naked to a beginner or a new person to craft, their eyes bug out of their head right and everybody gets paranoid because the automatic assumption is what? That we are going sky-clad, we're stripping down and we're taking it literally.

Lord Night 1:46

And don't get me wrong, there's at least two women sitting there pinching their sides saying how fat they are.

Lady Alba 1:51

For sure, and I mean, but there's always sort of a cold sweat that breaks out when the topic comes up. So, I said let's dispel it, let's just go ahead and break it apart. And so, each moon we have been looking at a specific aspect of naked rites. Now I don't know how far down that rabbit hole we want to get, but I think it's important to share with people how we come up with a theme and then stay with it throughout the year for the purpose of ritual writing.

Lord Night 2:27

Don't get me wrong. It's hard sometimes to come up with these themes.

Lady Alba 2:31

Yeah, yeah, it can be, but really anything can be a theme. Any small aspect of a passage, something that inspires you, a segment of mythology right, it all has the ability to do them. Oh my gosh, we've done so many different themes. I mean, I can't remember the last time we actually had full moon without one.

Lord Night 3:00

I can't think of one.

Lady Alba 3:01

We've been doing it for years and years and years, and part of it is that unification right, it's to keep everybody on the same page for the year and so that there is something that everyone can expect and sort of hold on to that they know. Ok, this is how it's going to go. They're already thinking about it, meditating on it, bringing it into their own practice throughout the duration. So, you know my gosh Naked Rites. What did we do? We started with you're born naked into this world. That's how we come in right. Conversely, shock, big surprise for the moon right before Samhain, you're going to die the same damn way. You go out the way you came in. What else we go into? The naked mind, emotional freedom, mental freedom, physical freedom, sex and how it affects us and how it affects our lives, and both positively and negatively. And I think that's the one thing a lot of people misunderstand. When you're exploring a ritual topic, please don't stay one-sided. Please don't just look at the positive, don't just focus on the good thing. You've got to look at the polarities.

Lord Night 4:25

There's bad things in life, and ignoring those things never helps out.

Lady Alba 4:30

No, and it's like anything else, right, too much of anything is no good. Too little of something might be no good. So we have to acknowledge. Does it mean we have to dwell on it infinitely?

Lord Night 4:43

No, Again, we think of it along the same thing, like our grandparents did, where it's hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Lady Alba 4:51

Yes, I also like to see it. As you know, instead of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. No, I need to analyze evil Because I need to know what's possible. I need to understand what else could be coming.

Lord Night 5:09

You need to understand how to fix the problem and how it affects you. And how it affects you. Again, here's what I don't see a lot of people doing on this, and especially when you're talking about the negative and the right is actually being honest with themselves to enough to where they can fix their problems. Yeah, and move on.

Lady Alba 5:27

Yeah, and that that really does. It takes a certain amount of vulnerability that a lot of people are not prepared for and they're not ready for Even in our faith, where I would like to believe that pagans, more so than anyone else, are the first ones willing to strip down, throw all of their worldly, everything away and go before their gods naked Mind, body, spirit. But that is not always the case. We tend to, not everyone, but some people hide behind this very optimistic sugar coated. Yeah.

Lord Night 6:10

Yeah, the. What did I call that? The witch, good witch.

Lady Alba 6:15

Mm Glenda the good witch. Yeah, yeah, it's the rosy, sunny rainbow's outcome. No, it's not. We have ups, we have downs, we have good, we have bad, everything falls into those balances.

Lord Night 6:31

You cannot run around acting like an anime character.

Lady Alba 6:35

I'm sorry what? And hey listen, I am not nearly as up on anime as you are, but from what I understand, there's some pretty dark-ass anime out there.

Lord Night 6:45

Yes, but it's pretty intense, but do you have a lot of anime characters? Out there and they're just all hello, kitty, hello kitty Right, you know the world is full of rainbows and it will all work out, no matter what. And you're like the world.

Lady Alba 6:59

Don't work that way, no, no, and so with ritual writing, we try to look at all of it, and one of the things that I've always enjoyed doing that you, I think, directly more so than anyone else, that you know that, were my elders. My, my right my teachers. You were the one that taught me it was okay to bring humor. Oh god, you're into ritual. Oh my god, it's so freeing, it's so refreshing, it's so fun, it's silly, it's playful.

Lord Night 7:37

It's joyful, yes, it's fun, it makes ritual fun, but not everyone does that. Well and again with that said, not every ritual has to be a comedy skit. No, no, no, no, of course not, but then on the other hand, not every ritual needs to be some downer, solemn right.

Lady Alba 7:55

I mean as somebody who was raised Roman Catholic, I Couldn't fathom in my early days what do you mean? We're gonna laugh. What do you mean? We're making jokes or we're talking about Like we're talking about you say that I'm southern Baptist.

Lord Night 8:11

I mean, come hellfire and brimstone, was every other Sunday, but I mean you know any, anyone, anyone who knows the Catholic?

Embracing Play and Exploration in Rituals

Lady Alba 8:19

I mean, it's so Regimented, it's so you know. You're up, you're down, you're up. You're down. You're, you're, it's almost militant in so many aspects. And I do think, as traditional, traditional witches, we carry some of that and that's you know. For me, anyway, what attracted me to the faith was the structure that I could anticipate, but also knowing you know what, some days we're just not gonna take ourselves that damn seriously. It's incredible.

Lord Night 8:52

It's a relief.

Lady Alba 8:53

It breaks the of life, but it also acknowledges something about life that we talk about all the time in classes, which is your inner child Getting in touch with play, going back to when things were simpler and innocent, and you know.

Lord Night 9:12

And you sit there and to think that the gods will not enjoy a joke every so often is just yeah, yeah, I literally remember.

Lady Alba 9:20

At one point I feel like this wasn't, this wasn't how it actually happened but in my memory it is.

Lady Alba 9:26

I want you to know. It was like you put a tiny little Pan in my pocket and sent me home and I was stuck with this little bastard Just doing his damnedest to be this joyful joker little trickster Everywhere. All the time I was like alright, alright, I get it. Okay, I'm gonna dance around and we're gonna play the flute. I give up. And it worked, it works, it works. And sometimes when we need a release, when we need to Cleanse, that's one of the best ways to do it, oh yeah.

Lady Alba 10:08

Yeah, I mean, you know, we all talk about a good cry. Yeah, you also need a good laugh.

Lord Night 10:14

The best laugh is after a good cry. Yeah, I Know that sounds weird, but it really is the best.

Lady Alba 10:25

So, gosh, what else I mean? So, over the years, ritual wise, of course, I'm trying to think of some of the themes now and I'm coming up short Because that's how it always happens in the moment. We did the different moons according to Celtic tradition, the, the various names of the moon.

Lord Night 10:44

Right what they represent. And again, those were what was going on that month of the full moon.

Lady Alba 10:51

We did one year. We did an entire series on full moon, where every single moon we learned a different yoga pose and its association and what what that pose represented spiritually. It was fun. We got people moving inside of Circle in a different way. That year too, it was fascinating to see.

Lord Night 11:20

Well, now we did the woods too.

Lady Alba 11:25

Yes, we did the nine woods and then we brought a couple extras in, but I don't think we didn't have a full 13 that year because we had a couple of brands that intercepted and we had to move the schedule around a little bit. But yes, we did the nine woods and we explored every single one, goodness.

Lord Night 11:48

They're aspects, they're spiritual effects. I mean, just like we were talking about the moon, it's the spiritual effects of the wolf moon. How did you feel the day you were in your cottage and you heard the wolves outside and you weren't.

Lady Alba 12:03

And it's the middle winner it represented and what you knew seasonally had to happen. I think we did something on the tides once and all of the different title formations, which there are a lot more than people really. It's a hell of a lot more than just high tide, low tide. As somebody who grew up on the water I mean around it I had a pretty good concept of that. But even I got a huge education from that. We've done stones and tools and we've done life stages. I mean there's so many things to explore as the wheel turns and as the seasons progress.

Lord Night 12:47

I mean again, this is supposed to be a representation of our lives as we go through the turning of the wheel.

Lady Alba 12:55

There's something about full moon and it's interesting because we've met a lot of groups over the years that do it differently. I mean, we don't fault them for it, it just is what it is Right.

Lord Night 13:07

So a lot of groups that hold not our tradition.

Lady Alba 13:10

Yeah, exactly, I mean, there's a lot of groups out there who use full moon for their spell work or coven workings and they use their sabbats and esbats as open ritual.

Lord Night 13:28

Right.

Lady Alba 13:28

And we're the exact opposite. We open the doors on full moon. Come on in. That's the time for us to invite guests. And because again, because we are keeping with that theme it allows people that sense of community Right, Whereas for us, the grands and the lessors, that's a little different.

Lord Night 13:51

Well, I think there's something to be said when you pop into a ritual and even if you're just a guest and you realize they did something last month and they're going to be doing something next month. Yeah, that sort of might encourage people too.

Lady Alba 14:04

Okay, now I gotta see what they're going to do next month. Yeah, I absolutely. Moons have also, for us, been a time to to equate it to other religions. Right, it's a sermon whereby we are offering those in attendance something to take home, be it physical, be it spiritual, be it words. Right, it's something for them to take home, take back into their own practices and work with.

Lord Night 14:38

Well, I mean how many students we have that sits there and goes, Why do our rituals always end with homework?

Lady Alba 14:44

That's true. Oh, that's so true, but I think the real answer to that is because for us, it's not homework, it's not, it's just part of life, and you can take it or leave it. Right, you can choose. It's like the old AA motto you take what you need, you leave what you don't.

Lord Night 15:03

Let's see Now and I like it when we do. I like when we do rituals, when we try to focus on a part of life that most people don't think about.

Lady Alba 15:13

There is an awful lot of living that people would prefer to ignore. Yes, and that's amazing. When you think about it, it's truly something there are. There are whole segments of the human experience that we would rather dig a little hole, shove it in and cover it up and go.

Lord Night 15:32

No, no, no no, no, no, no. I'm not going to discuss this Right. We don't want to discuss the negative aspects of our lives.

Lady Alba 15:42

And I see it all the time. I'm at a place now in my life where at almost 45. It's hard for me sometimes to connect with friends who you know are similar in age, who are dealing with an aging, dying parent Right. It's a universal experience for most of us. We tend to be a little more prepared. We do, and I see a lot of my friends in a very deep almost denial about that process and what it means and what it like. In a weird way I almost want to go. You knew your whole life, you knew this was coming. Your whole life.

Lord Night 16:29

At what part did you think it wasn't going to?

Lady Alba 16:32

Right, somehow you were going to evade it.

Lord Night 16:35

I mean, don't get me wrong. I know I joked with my grandparents for years, saying that neither one of them could decide which one was going to go first and they were both going to live forever. But I knew that not to be the actual case. It was just starting to get them to talk about it.

Lady Alba 16:50

But it's also our ego right. Our ego gets in the way, that we think somehow we're going to be spared or it's not going to happen to us or somehow you're special.

Lady Alba 17:00

Yeah, and we just we don't want to deal with the pain, and the problem is by not getting ahead of it, by not acknowledging it when it happens it hits you like a fucking freight train and it's hard, it's very, very difficult for people and I always see that and I have to be cautious, right of what I say or how I approach it, because I'm not always the most sympathetic or I'm not always the most helpful in those moments, because I'm sort of baffled by their denial.

Lord Night 17:37

I'm like how are you? How are you? And it's hard to explain to people. We get more wrapped up in that your behavior, why you acting. This makes no sense to us. I do have a problem with that, like I noticed when my mother and some other people there was this big old thing about oh well, he's not looking at me, going, I'm not mourning and I'm like no, I'm mourning just the way I'm supposed to. What's your problem?

Lady Alba 18:04

Right, right, I'm mourning my way. Yeah, it's so, it's just it is. It's fascinating. And, mind you right, I'm not talking about unexpected deaths, I'm not talking about accidents, none of that. It's just the fact that we all have parents who are older than us, who will continue to get older and who will eventually pass.

Lord Night 18:27

That's it.

Lady Alba 18:28

That's it. In those circumstances, yeah, I mean, it always surprises me when a 50 year old man is like, oh my god, my mother's dying. Well, yeah.

Lord Night 18:38

Yeah. That's what happened?

Lady Alba 18:40

She's been dying since the day you were born.

Lord Night 18:43

She's been dying since the day she was born.

Lady Alba 18:44

Right and I'm like how this is a shock to you.

Lord Night 18:48

That's beyond me Now I really don't understand these people in our religion who, again, like you said that, seems to want to stay on the sunshine lollipop route and never.

Lady Alba 19:02

It's very one sided. It's don't get me wrong I mean I've learned as I've gotten older. I've learned to appreciate my extremely optimistic friends a lot more. But it is, it's myopic and it can lead to problems later. So you know, using moons to start addressing, dealing with some of those things, I mean it makes sense. It's almost group therapy Almost.

Lord Night 19:32

Yeah, I mean, when you're sitting there and you're doing a ritual on fear and you're expressing this. Okay, you know, fear is a common thing that we have, but courage is doing those in spite of those fears and going in the ritual and talking about these things.

Lady Alba 19:50

And opening up the conversation that not only then takes place between members of the temple afterward, but many of us take it home and go. Hey, have you ever thought about this, have you? I?

Lord Night 20:06

mean there's a lot of us whose spouses or other halves do not have nothing to do with this religion, but we're doing and these people are going home, going. Oh, we just did this wonderful ritual and this is what it was about.

Lady Alba 20:17

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about our sex life. How's?

Lord Night 20:19

it for you, is it good Are?

Lady Alba 20:22

you fulfilled.

Lord Night 20:23

Because I think, because I just talked about this in ritual and I just thought I'd let you know.

Lady Alba 20:28

Yeah, I'm realizing that maybe, maybe we should explore this, but it does. It gives us that courage, it gives us the sense of not being alone. And, good god, do we need that? And I mean solitaries, look, I love you, I do, I do, I did it. I did it for a long time and what happened for me was I just got to a point where I said how the hell am I going to learn anything new when I'm only talking to me? Right, my experiences are too limited to possibly introduce new ideas. I had to seek out others and I knew that my growth was dependent on that. Does it mean I'm dependent on the people I sought out? Absolutely not. But for my own spiritual growth and education, yeah, I had to.

Lord Night 21:30

I mean it's back to that idea of diversity of thought. Mm. Hmm, all right that we need diversity of thought. We need more people sitting there going hey, did you think about this? What about this?

Lady Alba 21:43

I mean. To me, it's why people debate, right, it's why people talk about politics, it's why they talk about culture. It's what? Without it? Yeah, we are in a bubble and we will never grow beyond it. And often when we meet people in life where we're like man, that they're just really close minded or ignorant or any of the labels that we put on them.

Lord Night 22:07

I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand, just like you do. It's hard to sit there and listen to someone where they're talking about something you really do not agree with or like Absolutely All right. And yes, sometimes you have to break it up into small subjects or listen to it over time or whatever. Yeah, but it's better to do this to get the ideas. Sure, I'm trying to think of how to say that better.

Lady Alba 22:33

But I will use the best example that I have personally from my own journey. If it were not for seeking out my community and again broadening my horizons in craft, I don't think I ever would have, by myself, come to the conclusion of there is no super natural, there is only natural.

Lord Night 23:00

You know I love you so much. I know I love you too.

Lady Alba 23:03

But it wouldn't. It wouldn't have existed because I was so influenced by the things that I already knew and by media and by books and by what I was exposed to. It wasn't until that idea I was forced to kind of sit with that and go oh yeah, right, what's. I mean, again, I was raised Catholic, father, son, holy ghost. Oh right, ok, what's super about that? Right what's? There is no super that that was. That was a man, I mean. I know some people might be listening to this, going God, Lady Alba, you're stupid. But that was a huge revelation for me in my 20s. Yeah, it is a big revelation.

Lady Alba 23:53

So yeah, I mean, it's things like that we do so. So ritual to me at its core should be about those explorations, should be about those things that start to make us think, and it's not that we're trying to be some type of elitist. Yeah. Well, it's also that if you're the person facilitating ritual, it's not that you're trying to influence or you're trying to shove your beliefs into the equation. You're going, you know what. Here's something that I was curious about. You might be curious. You might be curious. Let's be curious together.

Lord Night 24:38

And see what happens. Yeah, you know. And again, what ideas come out of that.

Lady Alba 24:42

If there's not magic in that. I don't know what is. Yeah, I'm sorry, I mean. Again, all acts of magic or acts of creation, regardless of its thoughts, emotions or an actual item, yeah, and it's that, that curiosity that we bring to ritual, oh God, yes.

Lord Night 25:03

You know, we got to explore a little bit more. We got to sit there. We need to pull the and you've we've both done it at ritual, trying to pull this out of people.

Lady Alba 25:13

Trying to get them out of their shells. It's hard to do, it is, it's really hard. And the other thing about ritual writing, please let me. I want to say this before we wrap when we say writing, I don't give a damn if you're completely illiterate and can't, can hardly, write your own name. There's no writing, it's an idea, it's a concept, and I was guilty of it right when I was a young and I would come in with like a three page written ritual.

Lord Night 25:47

Oh God yes.

Lady Alba 25:49

And this man would take it away from me. He would wait until we were in circle. I would have be clutching my little script, right. I was so nervous. I was like, oh, and he would snatch it out of my hands and what I was left with was all right. Well, here's what my core idea was, and here's what I think. How about you guys? And it boiled it down to its purest form, and that is now how I write ritual. It might be one or two sentences, and that's it.

Lord Night 26:28

I mean, my whole problem with this is if you got a script, how are you going to be moved by the energies? And the gods.

Lady Alba 26:35

Yeah, we're not reading from the gospel, no, that's. That's the difference. And it's getting away from that idea that we have to have, yeah, that sermons component that's so planned out or mapped out. And don't get me wrong, sometimes we do, some rituals require that. Some holidays right, we do. There is a lot more intense reading, but for the day to day of full moon, no, no, we don't. We get rid of all that. So we we say we use the term ritual writing loosely. It's more like ritual conducting.

Lord Night 27:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more of conducting. It's more thinking of what your idea is, what you're wanting to get across, what you're hoping your, your other participants in ritual will get out of it and take out with them

Lady Alba 27:32

you damn self. Yeah.

Lord Night 27:36

I mean, you got to imagine what we got a Sabbath coming up. That Sabbath has already been written in my head for how long now?

Lady Alba 27:43

Yeah, and it's ironic because you will not put it on paper, I know you know, there there will be one sentence literally for the temple archives, so that we can look back and go.

Lord Night 27:57

Oh yeah, I remember that ritual. That was a good ritual. We need to redo that.

Lady Alba 28:01

We need to redo that, but will it be thoroughly and completely fleshed out with everything that happened? Like someone you know was was acting as court stenographer. No no no, it's very, very simplified.

Lord Night 28:17

Everybody went, and I think here's the problem is, everybody wants to over complicate the stuff.

Lady Alba 28:22

Oh, for sure.

Lord Night 28:23

All right, I understand want ing the, bei ng a drama person. I understand wanting the, the majesty, the, the spectacle.

Lady Alba 28:34

Yes, I mean, I understand those, but Of course, yeah, we want, we want a bit of that. We want to feel like we have worshiped, honored, done something with purpose. But you are, you are doing it with purpose. You're there, you showed up.

Lord Night 28:53

You know, that's what a lot of people don't understand. Just showing up is more than enough.

Lady Alba 28:57

Absolutely. That is the purpose and the intent right there. I need no finely worded right to know my seed. No, you don't. Mine y ou are and mine you shall remain. That's it the gods have been telling us for eons. I don't need a bunch of bullshit to know who you are.

Lord Night 29:20

I don't need nothing fancy, I just need you.

Lady Alba 29:23

So you out of coffee yet?

Lord Night 29:25

yes, I'm out of coffee, all right.

Lord Oswyn 29:27

Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pagan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Visit us at lifetempleseminary. org for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, Discord, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit.