Thoughts on playfulness and ritual

I remember my school days, when at the end of the school year we would have a service at the local church and our teachers would keep an eye on us and place all the rowdiest pupils in the front rows. Any misbehaviour would be punished. When we went to church with my family it was the same: you had to sit quietly in your seat and pay attention, dress neatly and be at your best behaviour. Going to church was a boring event, yet stressful because of fear of doing something wrong and having everyone stare at you.

When I started getting into Wicca and performing Wiccan rituals, I had to face these past experiences. Even today, when I have been Wiccan for a larger part of my life than I was Christian, I still remember and confront these past experiences: the gravity of going to church, the kneeling at the altar, the submission to a higher power that might judge you for accidentally farting during service. When one comes from this tradition, how does one move on from it?

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My first rituals were quiet and still. I lived with my parents who did not tolerate deviation from their Christian tradition. They were by no means fundamentalists, in fact they were quite secular. However, they had grown up Christian and knew nothing else. Add to the fact that at this time Finland had just had its share of the satanic panic, so anything deviating from the safety of Christianity and tradition was scary to them. 

So I set up small altars that would not draw too much attention, I told them not to disturb me because I wanted to meditate. And so I sat down in my small room, in front of the few ritual objects I owned (a rock, a seashell, a feather, a red candle and some incense) and I performed my rituals sitting there, while visualising myself performing circlecastings, quartercalls, communing with the gods, etc. 

My rituals were almost as quiet as my church visits, if not even more so. I had no hymns to sing, not that I could have sung them anyway, and no space to move. When I moved away from home a few years later and got my own apartment, I finally had space to perform rituals and no one to hear me. But breaking out of the quiet shell during ritual was difficult. I had no problem doing so outdoors, but indoors was problematic.

Today I still reflect on this difficulty because it is still present, especially when I do solo rituals. During group work it is easier to speak out loud, to move, but sometimes it feels silly and pointless to do it by myself. At those times I remind myself that I do this for my gods, not for anyone else to see and that usually helps. I have also noticed that the more I do it, the easier it gets. At times in my life when I have had less time to perform ritual, they also tend to be more quiet when I start again.

Rituals can be breath-taking and demand silence, like this early morning view that I woke up to last summer.

But what about playfulness? What does it have to do with ritual? I will get into how I personally approach playfulness in ritual shortly, but let me first make a few notes about playfulness and ritual in general. As a theologian one of my interests of study has been ritual theory. I also study games, and there is a peculiar overlap between ritual theory and game theory regarding playfulness, or what might otherwise be called a ritual mindset.

To phrase it as concisely as I can: In order to enter a ritual or a game, the participant has to be willing to engage with a ritual mindset, a certain playfulness. This entails a willingness to submit to the rules of the game or ritual, as these are governed by other laws than those of the mundane world. When we enter a game we accept the reality of the game and the rules it entails. At the same time we leave behind our mundane selves and commit to a role in the game. When playing chess it really doesn't mater if you are a lawyer of a nurse in real life. For the sake of the game you are equal players. Likewise, when we enter ritual, eg. the Wiccan circle, our mundane lives, social positions and status give way to our roles as participants in a ritual. Once we exit the ritual or game, our lives return to normal.

In order for this process to work, for us to be able to enter the liminal space of ritual, the world between worlds, we need a certain kind of playfulness. We need to accept that the ritual reality is needed. To achieve this we might use certain symbols to trigger this response: we decorate an altar with special tools, we light candles and incense to set the mood, we wear jewellery specifically dedicated for ritual use. We set the mood, and we set our minds. And through this, we are able to experience ritual in a completely different way than without preparation.

I have sometimes wondered if this preparation is what has made Wiccan rituals so powerful for me? Compared to those church-visits where everything seemed boring and non-engaging, would they have felt different if we had prepared for them? I remember my confirmation: There was preparation, there was the wearing of robes and memorising of verses. I looked forward to it, but I still felt like I was being watched and judged. Maybe I could blame our church leaders? I'm not sure.

Rituals can also function as doorways
to other worlds and new perspectives on
life, philosophy and other things.

I said I was going to talk about how I approach playfulness in ritual. In the beginning when I could have ritual without the fear of parents walking in on me, I had to force myself to not make my rituals less "grave", like the church services I was used to. It took some time to come out of my shell, and it was always easier to do outdoors.

Ten years ago I got together with some other Wiccan friends. None of us had really performed ritual together with others before, at least not in a group. All of us came from similar backgrounds so we had some quite extensive discussions on ritual and how we wanted it to feel. This was extremely valuable to me, as I learned that it was no big deal if one stumbles a little on the words, or if mead is spilled on oneself while drinking. Or that laughter is a wonderful addition to ritual.

Since then I have tried to keep these things in mind and to not bee too serious in ritual. I mean, of course rituals are serious business, but that does not rule out that they can be fun. In fact, they should be. In the words of Doreen Valiente:

"Let there be reverance and mirth within you."

Those words are from the Charge of the Goddess and they ring true for everyday practice as well as for ritual.

~Stella

PS: A really interesting and fun way that I have found for dealing with my past church-experiences within Wiccan ritual, is to sometimes chant or intonate (in Swedish: mässa) certain parts of ritual. If you haven't tried it you should. It feels super ritualistic and works well. And it can lend a special feel to group rituals. 

What is that?! Thoughts on knowledge about wicca

This post is mostly going to be random ramblings about things and thoughts that have been occupying my mind as of late.

I have started reading a few books on Wicca for review. A couple of these seem to completely omit any information about the history of Wicca, while still being aimed at the fledgling Wiccan. One of them seems to confuse the words witch and Wiccan, and uses Wicca and witchcraft as synonymous, which they of course are not. Wicca has a lot to do with witchcraft, but to do, as one of these books, and claim that Wicca is simply "a way of life", makes me honestly cringe in dislike.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the current trend of Wicca, witchcraft, paganism and different forms of divination that seem to have become so popular on eg. Instagram. When I try to browse for Wiccan images I seem to come across a lot of pictures of tarot cards and pretty looking young women dressed in Killstar-clothing with very eccentric makeup on. Not that there is anything wrong with eccentric makeup, dark clothing (although we could discuss the influence of brands like Killstar on the occult, pagan and goth scenes) or tarot cards for that matter, it is just that I do not expect that to be the first thing to see. And that brings me to the topic of representation.

How do we, or even I for that matter, represent myself on social media? I do not have a very large following on Instagram, barely over a hundred followers, most of whom are my friends, and I post pictures of a varying content. A lot of my Instagram consists of pictures of historic clothing and the sewing thereof, snippets of my daily life (including selfies), food pictures (because I love making food), and the occasional altar picture. My Instagram has not been a primary outlet for content relating to Wicca, rather it has been more reflective of other things I do in life, mostly clothing and fashion.

The point of my Instagram was never to be an outlet for Wiccan themed posts. I intended it to be more oriented toward sewing, goth fashion and snippets of my personal life. However I have started thinking that I should include Wicca more in my feed, and as I have been thinking about it I have also began wondering how I would represent Wicca, and witchcraft for that matter, in a good and versatile way. It takes a lot of time to prepare good content and I have not had that time, and I do not know whether I will have it in the future either. But as a Wiccan of some fifteen years, I think it is my responsibility to think about how I present myself and my faith on social media, because there are so  many young people looking for their own path in life, and if all they see when they search for Wicca on social media is tarot cards, black-clad women in perfect makeup and hauls or unboxings of witchcraft-related items, then they are not getting a very good idea of what Wicca really is.

And this brings me back to where I started. If these books (geared toward the beginner) that I am reading omit important things like the history of Wicca, the mentioning of the Goddess and the God, claiming that Wicca is only "a way of life", or even get basic things (like drawing down the moon, of consecrations) wrong, where does that leave us? Have we reached a point in Wicca where celebrity culture has taken over and we listen only to the most popular outlet of information, instead of learning as much as we can and thinking critically about it for ourselves? Is it only symptomatic of society in general?

I am wondering where we are headed. I am not part of a coven or any tradition. I have always been a solitary and eclectic Wiccan and witch, and that is only a result of the circumstances in which I have grown up and lived in. But I have made it a point to read and learn as much as I possibly can. I am by no means claiming that I know everything, far from it. And it might be the academic in me, but when I read a book that is supposedly about Wicca, and it contains no references, or the reference list consists of five books and does not reference any of the books that laid the groundwork of Wicca, then allow me to be skeptical of the contents of said books.

Maybe I am nitpicking. Everyone has to start somewhere, and anywhere is better that nowhere if it inspires the novice to learn more from better sources. Or is it? I would prefer that books for beginners be well written and contain correct facts. Here I believe that the publishers carry as much responsibility as the authors. I believe it is unethical to claim to write a book for beginners on Wicca and make such a crap job of doing it that you muck up even the most essential details. It honestly makes me angry that such misinformation is allowed to be published, and I fear that publishing was done mostly for monetary reasons.

Anyway. I think I shall end my rambling rant here. I will be publishing a few reviews soon, once autumn arrives, and one of them will unfortunately be a rather poor one. But on the positive note, I am also reading some very good books at the moment, so look forward to those.

What do you think about representation or the responsibility to fact check what you write for a young or inexperienced audience? Tell me in the comments.

~Stella