I recently did a cleansing and protective work on the shop; just basic hygiene after having entered the space a year ago. In the tradition I learn from my spiritual mother, this is not so simple as burning sage, lighting a Himalayan salt lamp, or performing a banishing ritual. It’s a process that combines the physical work of deep cleaning a space with sustained inner intention, as well as specific ritual practices and materials that use symbolic language to communicate with the invisible world.
Spoiler alert: I'm not going to give you the recipe. In our tradition, these are not to be spoken publicly or written down. Even when I work with a client, I might give them specific steps they need to perform in the work, or certain ingredients they need to acquire, but they will not know the whole process. There’s secrecy in this tradition, and the penalty for being loose-lipped with inside information can be very harsh.
But I can give a framework that I think applies to the construction of ritual across traditions, so that you can keep it in mind next time you have spiritual work to do. It will also help you, if you decide to enter into this or any other formal tradition, to understand why things are done as they are.
If you are creating the work from scratch, there will be a planning phase before any of this, in which you consider carefully the effect you are trying to produce, and which timing, ritual actions, words, materials, and so forth align with that effect. Just like with cooking, though, it is probably a good idea to follow recipes in the beginning, to get a grasp on the underlying theory through good old practice. Otherwise, the metaphors can get pretty mixed.
Because we are, in fact, working with metaphor, poetry, and symbols. The basic principle in all magical traditions is As Above, So Below. When we work with earthly time, materials, and actions, we are starting Below, linking up with the Above, and allowing the Above to in turn affect what is Below. We’re conversing with the invisible through the visible.
The collection phase is as important as the ritual process itself. Specific items are needed, some of which are not readily available. They are chosen for practical reasons— what you will be doing with them, and how they need to work— as well as their energetic properties. The choosing of items is always a dance between tradition, availability, and intuition. And budget, of course. One might have to make calls, drive all over town, and make odd requests of strangers to find the right objects for the rituals. This work is already a form of payment, and so are the literal cash exchanges you’ll make while shopping. You can feel forces start stirring and waking up around the work already during this phase.
A note on this: in more elaborate traditions like my own, there is a whole collection of materia magica that is made far in advance and is kept on hand to use as the need arises. So the planning begins long before actual work is necessary.
Once the materials are collected, timing is chosen for the work. Much like the names we use for the days of the week correspond to gods and celestial bodies, each day of the week is associated with a different energy, and in Vodou, with a specific lwa or group of lwa. Depending on your tradition, lunar phases, planetary hours, and astrological placements will also play a role in electing the time for the work. In some traditions, such as hoodoo, the directions of the hands of the clock and whether they are rising and falling will also lend itself to different types of work. When timing your own work, you can really layer astrological placements/days of the week/lunar phases/ planetary hours/clock hands as deeply as you want to compound your magical effect; assuming, of course, you have a lot of time to spare before you go for the effect you want. On the other hand, the best moment for anything is when you need it and have the energy for it.
Whenever you decide to perform the work, you will need to place objects. In a lot of traditions, work begins with lighting a lamp or candle. Flames are said to attract and activate invisible beings. Depending on the tradition, specific libations are sometimes poured, incenses are lit, and so forth to initiate the work. These will have to sit somewhere, and that somewhere will need to make sense in the geography of what you’re trying to get done. Just for an example, if you are trying to manage what can come in and out of your space, you probably want to locate the materials of your ritual on the threshold.
Speaking can be both internal and external during ritual. For me, inner intent is easier to maintain with a rote prayer or mantra than more free-form speech. I do, however, improvise freely when it comes to speaking aloud. I tell the materials and sometimes the space what their job is. I praise them for their ability to do it. There are prescribed things to say in a lot of the work I’ve learned in the tradition, so obviously I say those things. In certain traditions, rhyming is used to move the speech out of the head into the emotions, and to make it more memorizable.
Existing songs can also be used to allow the ritual to tap into historical and collective energy. What I mean by this is, a song is a ritual in itself. The more people already know it, the more links it has across time and circumstances. When you sing the song, you’re activating that web. If the song is relevant to the work you’re doing, it can bring the power of every other time it’s been used to it. This is true with prayers as well, incidentally, which might give you some idea why well known, universally repeated Catholic prayers are used in Vodou. I am going to blog about Catholicism in Vodou intensively one day, so stay tuned for that.
Directionality, like timing, is a whole ritual language. Along with the phases of the moon or the time of day, whether we work from back to front or front to back, or top to bottom or bottom to top, is communicating something about the effect we want the work to have. For example, if you wanted to get something out of your home, you would work your way down floors, from the back to the front, and end with ejecting it out the front door.
Payment is also often a part of ritual. Physical money, food, and drink all concretize the exchange you are making with the spirit world. Where you place the offerings corresponds to where the energies you want to work with live. Money can be immersed in liquid, buried underground, given to strangers, offered to the church, dropped on the ground, or left at crossroads, depending on the work. Food is strategically placed where the spirits who will be most helpful to the work live.
This leads us to disposal. The materials you use for the work will need to go somewhere afterwards. A stream, the earth, a crossroads, the branches of a tree, a roof, a mountaintop, or even a dumpster can be appropriate disposal sites depending on the purpose of the work. For example, if you’re working for love, you probably won’t want to throw your rosebuds in the trash when you’re done.
There is much more to this. For example, the number of times things are done is very important to ritual, as well as the energy that is built up around it through secrecy (or wasted through exhibitionism- really important to remember during the age where we are posting our every meal for all to see). But I’ll leave off here for today.
Please let me know in the comments about your ritual life!
