Rituals in progress.

On Winter solstice I observed Yule. For the first time, I had to bring my  celebrations inside; it was raining all night. 

But the adjustment worked out beautifully; using the detachable top of my outdoor fire pit, I made a diamond of candles and lit them all to serve as a small fire. It was lovely to sit next to the Christmas tree, that most celebrated of pagan traditions that managed to survive into the present despite centuries of doctrinaire Christians trying to eliminate it, and contemplate continuity with the past.  

Flexibility, I've learned, is necessary when going about developing your own rituals. In my earliest pagan holidays, I came up with elaborate scripts and lists that planned out the order of events and observances down to the last detail. But I’ve found that that generated more stress -- and frankly more stuff to clean up the next morning -- than benefits. So while I have kept the best aspects of my initial constructions, I’ve been trying to simplify as much as possible. 

Doing so also pushes me to accept what comes — and more importantly, doesn’t come — in the course of my ceremonies. Because paganism came to me through my search for a broader system of expressing and nurturing my spiritual and emotional realities, in the beginning I figured the more incantations, acknowledgments, steps, and procedures I planned, the better my chances of hacking my brain into that ecstatic place. What I found, however, is that too many attempts to get to that desired state can build up frustration, which is the ultimate buzz-kill for any such experience. So as any practicing pagan will likely tell you, there has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of shifting through what seems to work and discarding what doesn’t.

But also crucial has been learning to sit with whatever frustration occurs, going with the flow even when it brings me to a place of feeling blocked. Sometimes this simply leaves me in a place of calm sadness; sometimes it can build up to a release of longing and loneliness that in and of itself puts me in touch with what I wanted to commune with. And there’s no way to tell which way it will go, and what the result on any given holiday will be; I just have to take what comes. Considering that acceptance is a key pillar for my practice, this actually counts as much of a success as anything could, even if I don’t always get to feel the thrill of the wild hunt. 

One aspect of my rituals I’m still feeling divided about is drinking. The practice of imbibing mind and mood-altering substances is deeply appealing to me — I mean, alcohol is basically a potion (and technically a poison), and as such it hits all the buttons in my brain associated with the communal, the mystical, and even courage — I can’t help but feel like a bdadass ready to meet the gods when I throw back a dram, it just works. 

But not always in large doses. If the effect of having a ritualized drink or two of my favorite whisky — which I only drink during my practice, heightening the symbolic impact — works very well, having more than that starts to get pretty mixed results.

I can’t say it has ever gone terribly bad, because — and this is going to sound weird but it is kinda crucial to understanding what I’m after — if I get very upset or even angry, this is in my own terms something of a success, as I’m accessing and confronting something that obviously needs to be dealt with and in the meantime, makes me feel quite alive. 

But, it can fall flat. Sometimes it makes the drums of the music beat ever more forcefully in my heart, and makes the tears stream down like a waterfall. But other times it makes it harder to focus, harder to sit, harder to simply be content with the process you are pursuing. It can make you restless. And that’s one of two things I really don’t want to feel during nights of recognition. 

The other is shame. Oh shame, my old demon. When I confront shame during my practice, I am confronting the one thing that kept me from it for all those years, when I didn’t know how to embrace my spirituality because I was too embarrassed, sometimes, to even describe it. And while drunkenness can temporarily seem to free you from shame, as anyone who has felt like they were taking “the walk of shame” knows well, that feeling often does not last into the morning. In fact, it can bite you in the ass in the same night; right before I went to bed just this last Yule, I glanced in the mirror and, considering that I had been drinking, smoking, crying, and dancing for the last few hours, I looked a fright. And immediately, I was hit with intense shame. Fortunately, I was able to observe this feeling rather than being pulled under by it, and I was exhausted enough to simply pass out before it took me over. Still, in that morning and in most mornings following drunkenness, I recognize my heart yearns for someone to tell me, it is ok. You have no reason to be ashamed. 

What this shame is about is a topic for another post, but the thoughtful observer might simply ask, if this is the case — if moderate drinking works great for your rituals but immoderate drinking poses a serious risk of backfiring — then why not just stick to moderate drinking?

One is simply the old fashioned problem of control. It can be hard to stop at two if you’re having a good time or chasing the sun. One strategy that helps with this is having something else special to drink along the way to quench the urge to be continuously drinking (one which I have as much with sober substances as alcohol; I can’t sit down to do work or read or really any non-physical task unless I have a new cup of coffee, or tea, or ginger beer, or whatever). This Yule, between every drink, I had a cup of Tulsi tea I made from Tulsi I grew and dried this spring; that was so lovely!, and felt right given the occasion. It also helped me feel strangely not that hung over the next morning. 

One might think that substitution with other, less physically brutal drugs might help as well. But alas, alcohol and weed are the only real options for me; an anxiety disorder combined with some self-knowledge about what I find anxiety inducing takes mushrooms or other psychedelic drugs off the table. And I don’t really enjoy being high (it makes it too hard to enjoy the emotions of a moment) unless it’s combined with being fairly drunk. 

The other problem is that part of what I’ve recognized I need, spiritually, is to fly a little too close to the sun on occasion. Because this shouldn’t be too often, I’ve narrowed my primary holidays — where I go all in — to just four for the year, while all the others get scaled down celebrations that deliberately exclude more than one drink. But as the saying goes, everything in moderation — including moderation. And moderation being in moderation is actually pretty important to me. I kinda believe in occasionally going to the edge and jumping into a place you can’t entirely control. And when I fly too close to the sun and get burned, it helps more than anything I know in appreciating the calm, balance, and yes!, moderation, needed in life the vast majority of the time. I need those little reminders of why I do, in fact, only want to do this a few times a year. And sometimes, when it hits just right — well, it leaves me with memories that nourish my heart and satisfy my soul whenever I want to go run with the wolves. 

So, that’s where I am at right now. Feel free to comment, make suggestions, ask questions.