Bad Magic

Bad Magic August 25, 2016

Cauldron. photo by Bart Everson (cc) 2015.
Cauldron. photo by Bart Everson (cc) 2015.

New York City, Summer of 1992, I was enjoying the walk to the small garden to attend my first public pagan ritual as a young man in my early 20’s.  I had read Spiral Dance by Starhawk and dedicated to the Goddess alone earlier that year in the woods of Long Island.  My relationship with spirits and deity had always been solitary, so I was excited to attend my first public ritual.

We cast circle, invited divinity.  “We will do a banishing today” the young priestess leading the circle said, as she passed out paper and markers.  “Write down that which frightens you most.”  We chanted, focused, and wrote something from a vulnerable place deep within.  And then the priestess said, “Before we burn our papers, we will pass them in, trade them, and then read aloud each other’s greatest fears to claim power over them.”

I froze.  Nobody had said that what we wrote would be read aloud.  Or passed to another person.  As I write this I remember how I felt then, and can still feel a little queasiness in my gut.  When I looked around the circle I saw others clutching their papers in discomfort.  Looks of determination on some, fear on others, abject terror on a few.  We were all frozen.  The priestess said again, “pass in your papers.”  Nobody moved.  I felt a small word formed in the back of my throat.

“No”

It came out as a whisper.  “No” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear.  She turned, “If you do not then you are not claiming power over your fear.”  I remained frozen.  The circle was silent.  After a few moments of silence, her partner, her priest, said, “If they do not want to share, I do not think they have to share.” The two argued for a few moments while we watched.  Eventually, they agreed that we could burn our papers in silence and would still be banishing the fear.  I left the ritual, shaken.  I have never forgotten that experience.

Years later, after countless public rituals, some where I served as priest, I have a deeper understanding of both what happened in that circle.  While planning her ritual, that young priestess forgot to intentionally make room for consent.  In the medical profession informed consent is the basis for medical ethics, patients must understand the planned treatment and consent to it before it can start.  Such consent belongs at the center of group ritual as well.  Our intention drives our creation, so we must be intentional about inviting consent in our workings.  We gain so much power when we are in agreement with one-another, and pay such a price when we are not.

Regardless of the scale of the working, we must seek informed consent.  Even if we had been asked to write down something we “kinda didn’t like” to banish, it still would have been a violation to share it without our consent to share.  The violation would have been to a lesser degree, which would make it feel perhaps less painful, but it would be a violation nonetheless.

While there may be something said for pushing boundaries, public ritual is not the place.  I prefer to reserve pushing beyond boundaries for private work, where relationship, trust, and love can help sustain and support someone when they go outside themselves.  Even in those cases, most of the teachers I know ask a student if they feel ready to go into something new and more vulnerable, and they respect the student’s answer.

What does this mean to planning public ritual?

It means that in order to engage without reservation, people attending a ritual must know what they will be doing, and they have to consent to participate.  The ritual above would be entirely different if the priestess had said, “Today we are going to dig deep, write down our greatest fears, trade them, read them aloud, and then burn them for one-another.”  Everyone would have had a choice of what they wrote, how they engaged.  To demonstrate even more respect, the host of the ritual could have asked, “Is everyone ok with that?” and then offered “If you are not ok with it, then you may leave your paper blank, and we will have a moment of silence for your inner fear, to share all our power with you, that you might face your fears.”

Feels different, right?

I could have participated fully in that ritual, without reservation.  I would have been informed of what was going to happen, and I could have consented to it, which would have put my own power in alliance with the priest and priestess hosting our circle.

And together we could have made good magic.  Good work.  And isn’t that what we want when we gather?


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