How did your holiday celebrations go? Whether you marked Hanukkah, Yule, Guru Gobind Singh’s Birthday, Christmas or something else, ritual played a key role. Even those who count themselves secular have their rituals around this time. It could be decorating the Christmas tree, baking a special cake or lighting a candle.
Rituals include a wide range of practices from the everyday to the esoteric. They’re a fundamental part of human culture and one of the embodied pathways of connection. But how do rituals work? More importantly, why do they sometimes fail? Most of us have endured an ’empty ritual’, an old tradition that’s lost its power. A graduation, wedding or funeral marks a transition, and such rituals function as social markers however the participants experience them. But the real work of a ritual lies in its impact on us. Did the wedding serve to change the new couples’ perception of themselves? Did the funeral contribute to the process of grieving? Such changes happen below the level of conscious experience, changing the what or how of our embodied knowing.
This is the aspect of ritual that inspired me to study embodied knowing. Through my ritual experience, I came to “a deep knowing of the sacredness of the Earth that is more than just an intellectual awareness of the facts & figures about species decimation & habitat loss” (Harris, 1995). By allowing us to think “through and with the body” (Raposa, 2004: 115), rituals can provide access to what I call the ‘deep body’, a level of awareness where embodied thoughts and thinking function.
We create new rituals all the time, and if we do that with thought and clear intentions, they can be transformative. The transformative power of ritual is part of the inspiration behind a project I’ve just launched.
The Element Festivals
Many people use the classical Greek Elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth in their spiritual or psychological practice, and our lives depend on them. The Element Festivals provide an opportunity to celebrate these archetypal forces. Each Element has one day a year dedicated to it, a time of honouring and celebrating its power and our relationship with it. Individuals or groups will mark each Festival with rituals, creating artwork, having a party or simply enjoying that particular Element. I’m especially encouraging people to bring an environmental dimension to their celebrations, but even if participants choose not to explicitly do something to help the planet, the ritual of celebration will help deepen their connection to nature.
- The Element Festivals: https://theelementfestivals.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theelementfestivals.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_element_festivals/
