Creating personal ritual through intuitive guidance

As children, we don’t make distinctions between intuition and intellect, or imagination and fact. We experience the world with an unbounded heart-mind, holding simultaneous realities with ease. My own childhood was so, perhaps more than others. I spent most of my time alone in nature or immersed in books and art, we had no television, and almost all of my friends were either animals, or what we call “imaginary.”

It seemed perfectly natural and normal to me that I should be able to talk to forest spirits and ocean nymphs, that I should be able to read the flight of birds, see meaning in the stars, and read the messages written in treasures found in the woods and on the beach. Such objects could later be used to make magic, reveal secrets, and open doorways to unusual realms.

For me this is the essence of formal ritual. {I distinguish between formal and everyday ritual. Everyday ritual is about bringing the sacred home, attending to mundane tasks with a mindfulness and joy that infuses them with beauty. Formal ritual is about taking time to honour the spirit outside of mundane life, through prayer or special acts.}

So creating personal ritual was not something I learned as an adult, from a book, or from a human teacher. I learned it from the sky, ocean, and forest, and from my own open mind. There is ecstasy and grace immediately and vividly available to those who can read the text of nature. This gift isn’t only available to artists, children, and mystics. You needn’t travel to foreign places or drink dangerous potions to access this grace. You need only open your senses to the world. Personal ritual creates a container for you to begin to do this.

To read nature, it helps to be in harmony with her movements. This is intuitive, and needn’t be complex. Just look around you, and think symbolically. What is the purpose of your ritual? What season, time of day, weather, and setting are an energetic match for that purpose? We each have our own personal language of symbols, and it is important to trust your own feelings here. Are you doing a ritual of abundance? For one woman, a summer night lit by the full moon may evoke the richest feelings of abundance. For another, it might be the ocean at dawn with the new moon just rising.

Creating rituals in harmony with the phases of the moon is traditional, tried and true. How you use the moon energies is ultimately your own intuitive choice. Traditionally, the new moon is the time to initiate, plant, begin. The full moon brings celebration, harvest and completion, and the waning and dark moons are times for ending, shedding, clearing and cleaning.

A few nights ago I created a New Moon ritual for myself. When I create ritual, as when I make art, I surrender control as much as I can, and allow the dreamy, intuitive aspect of myself to take over. In other areas of life, I’m an extreme planner, list-maker, and instruction-follower. But not with art, ritual, or cooking! These things are all great pleasures for me because of the opportunity to surrender and be led by my magical self.

The truth is, it’s always the wild card that gets me. I love to make personal ritual because I learn so much from each experience. In every ritual, there are moments of surprise and revelation, the perfect pieces I could not possibly have planned, the gems of wisdom I carry out of ritual space and back into my daily life. I’ll tell you about how that worked for me last New Moon.

My intention was simple – to open to positive expansion in my work and life. I had a few specific personal desires that fit this intention too. I scheduled my ritual for a few nights after the New Moon, in the evening. In the days leading up to it, I just relaxed about my intention and let my creative mind play with the shape of the ritual.  I had just acquired some new stones, and I knew I wanted to play with the idea of a crystal grid, so on the day after the New Moon I took the crystals, carefully wrapped in a silk scarf, to the beach, cleansed them in the sun, and held them in the rushing flow of the incoming tide. A young friend was with me at the beach, and she showed me a special spot she called “the waterfall,” where the incoming tide ran fast and clear over the lip of a rock, creating a little musical waterfall that caught exquisite glimmers of sunlight in its flow. Here we washed the stones. Magic was happening already.

The night of my little ritual, I had dinner with two beautiful women friends in a seaside restaurant. We ate wild salmon and listened to each other’s juicy creative plans and rascally jokes, each other’s frustrating challenges and vulnerable hopes. I came away from that dinner with some questions I had been holding for my ritual already answered, and some splendid advice and ideas for implementing the kind of creative expansion I was dreaming into being with my ritual. So, more unexpected magic.

At home the house was quiet and serene, the long Northern twilight was falling on my woods and meadow, the cool night air was beginning to blow through my curtains. I was still feeling the golden glow of my special dinner. I eased into ritual space by gathering a few simple materials; my new stones, an abalone shell, a candle, some incense, some beautiful paper and a pen, a book of poems, a lily. I assembled the stones intuitively into the compass grid you see above, thinking about my intention all the while. Next it was time to bring in the elements of earth, air, fire and water – I needed something just right for air, so important for my intention of expansion. I decided to go for a walk in my meadow, to see what lesson nature would offer me about this element.

I walked out into the deep Northern twilight. The horizon all around was washed with a violet glow, the sky straight above opened to deep cobalt with a few stars emerging. My two acres of meadow are overgrown and scruffy this year – I broke the rider mower venturing recklessly into tall wet grass in the Spring, so for the first time in years, the tall grasses have been allowed to grow in wild profusion. As I walked through the tall grass, collecting little burrs and seed pods as I went, I looked around for what the world might have to tell me. I was seeking my symbol of air. Maybe a feather! Feathers are magical. I’m always hearing about people finding magical feathers. I looked around for a feather. Little airborne seed pods floated through the air around my face. I kept looking for my feather. Sigh! Where was my magical symbol of airborne abundance and expansion? I looked around in frustration, then brushed more of the clingy, floaty little grass heads and seeds from my black shirt. There sure were a lot of these little airborne seeds.

I know, I know. But we are all a little slow sometimes, aren’t we? Nature is quiet, persistent, forgiving. She continues to shower us with abundance and magic even in our petulance and ignorance. Of course it didn’t take me too long to really see the fluffy seed pods. I brought a few dried flower heads inside and held them in an abalone shell, then scattered them as part of my ritual. There was candle-lighting, writing, poetry reading, and quiet meditation, all of which was beautiful; but the true centre of my ritual was the moment I moved from not-seeing to seeing the seed pods. That was my magic and my lesson. And that is the kind of serendipitous, playful and spontaneous experience that I encourage you to open space for in your own rituals.

The important thing to remember is that nothing can go “wrong” in ritual space {and all of life is ritual space.} If the candle gutters, the glass breaks, the wind blows the seeds off the altar, or the water spills, listen to the message and be thankful. If you feel frustrated or disappointed because something isn’t “right,” stop and listen. Open up. This is the actual juice, the ripeness and perfection of your action. The moment when you think “Oh crap, that wasn’t supposed to happen!” is the moment you should be paying the keenest attention.

Embrace your personal rituals with a spirit of play and experimentation. Put the books aside and read the text of Nature. Open to surprise.

Have you ever had a surprising or revelatory experience in ritual space, or in communion with nature? I’d love it if you shared in the comments.