Comments

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  Ruth Martin January 20, 2011 at 2:02pm

  I pass on prayer bowl from Huichol Indians. Mandala shaped using images made with beads and glued into a cleaned out gourd with beeswax. The images are their nature gods, deer, corn, water,hummingbirds, other birds. I will take pix and learn to upload them. Suggestions for technical 'how to' appreciated.
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  Ed Koffenberger December 23, 2010 at 7:34am

  Thanks for titles on which to spend my Christmas money. The Golden Bough showed up on my shelves from somewhere and has not been opened yet. Watts is a favorite but I have not seen his Myth and Ritual in Christianity - that one goes home with me today. Thanks again.
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  Lynn Marie Hynes December 23, 2010 at 5:50am

  Ed, having been pagan at birth, indoctrinated into Catholicism in my youth, I have returned in mid-life as an earthy pagan woman.  For this reason, I have more energy around the Winter Solstice.  If you do not have Frazer's, The Golden Bough, you need to have it.  On page 416, there are rituals around this theme of the light waxing.  I can scan the page as it is beautiful!  Also, if you do not have Watts', Myth and Ritual in Christianity, you need to have this also.  It gives good background on ritual and on page 231, there is a gorgeous verse Ecclesiastes 11:4, 7-8.  Let us know how it goes.
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  Ed Koffenberger December 22, 2010 at 8:42pm

  During this time considered sacred by several religions, are there rituals that any of you find still meaningful and numinous?
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  Ed Koffenberger November 20, 2010 at 7:19pm

  I bought it awhile ago along with several other titles about ritual BUT it has languished on my shelves since then. Thanks for the nudge.
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  Bonnie Bright November 20, 2010 at 7:03pm

  I have worked with African (Dagara) Elder Malidoma Some for awhile now and am currently in a 2-year intensive program with him. I highly recommend his book called "Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community" if you are interested...If anyone has read it, it would be great to hear your thoughts. Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Ritual-Power-Healing-Community-Compass/dp/014...
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  Ed Koffenberger November 8, 2010 at 1:29pm

  Lisa - blessings on your passing ritual on to your children and not handing that over to another, although others will come along. You have given me hope.
  Bonnie - I'm thinking about your experience with indigenous rituals and their focus upon and within nature and primary elements. If we can rediscover the sacred literally "from the ground up" then we can again have a solid spiritual foundation upon which to build soulful lives. I'm thinking that even rituals that use elementals such as fire still need to be outside any humanly built container for these containers give a false sense that human creations can contain the numinous. Maybe some may need this to feel safe but we don't need it to feel alive.
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  lisa hynes November 8, 2010 at 9:22am

  It is indeed an interesting question, Ed, and I think that bringing ritual out to the people takes courage because it can be risky, especially if others are not open to receiving the information or practice. I believe that if we hold the highest intention within ourselves, we begin to radiate out. Or there can be opportunities when people inquire 'asking for calm, something to hold onto, a container of sorts, ritual can be suggested. I have a clay rattle which says LIVE FULLY-BE RADIANTLY ALIVE and I shake it around my body each morning. I light a candle before school with my four pre-teen and teen sons and we state what we are grateful for, and they themselves have taken to saging the house when the energy turns negative and needs to shift or before a guest arrives. But bringing it out into the world I think can only come when others are open to it and perhaps we can be the conduit, the 'opener' just by being light and radiant ourselves whenever possible.
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  Bonnie Bright November 8, 2010 at 8:52am

  Ed: This is such a compelling question, and one which is often on my mind. Feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness seem rampant in our culture and, having participated in some beautiful and amazing earth-based and traditional indigenous rituals over the past years, I can speak first-hand for the effect they have had on my own life, somehow providing a container or a greater web of meaning in which I can locate my own little existence. I do believe there are many answers to your question--but perhaps my first intuition is to practice personal ritual in everyday life. Its true that we don't have to go out and seek formal ritual but we can make invocations and offerings by lighting a candle, setting an intention, calling on the ancestors and allies, burning sage, or even giving to charity. I'd love to hear of other ideas....
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  Ed Koffenberger November 8, 2010 at 8:25am

  The recent DVD about Marion Woodman (Dancing in the Flames) has a moment where she states that one of the greater problems of our world today is that we have lost the sense of ritual and thereby we have become too literal and concrete in our understanding of life and the world. So how does a person not just bring people in to ritual but take ritual out to the people?