Animal Journey Ritual

Today I want to share with you a shamanic journey ceremony I wrote and which I have led several times for different groups. Now you can lead it and participate in it as well.

The purpose of the ritual is to connect with the energy of an animal that has meaning for you. This can be a totemic spirit or simply an animal that you feel a bond with. Dressing up as the animal, or wearing jewelry or accessories that symbolize the animal to you, can help you make that connection. The first time I led the ritual, I dressed as Cheetah, one of my animal guides. I wore a spotted cape and did basic face paint - not a Halloween costume type outfit, but one that invoked the spirit of Cheetah for me.

It is a good idea to share food and drink at the end of the ritual, as a way of grounding and bringing everyone fully back into the physical world. This can be as simple as bread and wine (or juice, if children are participating) or as elaborate as a full meal. The choice is yours.

This ritual works best in a group, with one person reading out the invocations and the guided journey for the others. If you wish to perform this ceremony alone, you will need to prepare beforehand by recording the guided journey so you can play it back as if someone else were speaking it to you.

If you enact this ritual, please share your experiences in the comments below or on my Facebook page. I would love to hear which animals you encountered and how the journey worked for you.

ANIMAL JOURNEY CEREMONY


This is a simple shamanic-style journey to make connection with an animal spirit.  It is a ‘moving meditation,’ in that the participants move around the ritual area, enacting their totem, during the meditation rather than lying still.  Children as well as adults can participate in this circle.

The attendees gather in the ritual area.  All are clad in garb that helps them identify with the animal they wish to meet tonight: costumes, jewelry, makeup, body paint, whatever pleases them.

If you like, you may have live drummers or recorded drumming and nature sounds; begin the music at the point noted in the ritual. This journey may be undertaken indoors or outdoors, in daylight or after dark, but be sure to clear a large area where the participants can move around safely. If you use candles, torches or incense, be careful to place them away from the area where the participants will be moving. A darkened ritual space (outdoors at night, or indoors with curtains drawn) will help the participants focus on the journey.

THE RITUAL BEGINS


The leader marks the ritual area out of time and space by walking around its perimeter while saying:

We journey tonight within and beyond.  I mark the beginning of our journey and the place where it ends.

The leader invites the Great Spirit into the circle:

Come, Great Spirit, and join us on our journey.  Bring to us your balance, your grand motion and great stillness.  Help us to find that within ourselves which we most need to continue our journeys and enrich our lives.  Welcome, Great Spirit.

The leader acknowledges the elements with invocations adapted from The Elementals by Morgan Llywelyn:


NORTH:  The stone sat on its hillside and thought.  Its thoughts were not cerebral.  It had no cerebral cortex.  Nor were they visceral.  Stones do not need viscera.  The thoughts of stone are the thoughts of earth, compacted, weighed down by the eons, thrust upward by cataclysm, encased in ice.  Immobile for millenia.  Then pushed, shoved, dragged, dropped.  The stone sat where the glacier had abandoned it.  The surrounding landscape slowly changed.  Vegetation appeared, softly mantling the ice-scraped soil.  Trees grew.  Rain poured over the stone; rain from its cousins the mountains, who helped shape the weather.  Sun shone.  Change followed change.  Two-legged mammals arrived.  They recognized the stone as fearsome and holy and bowed in worship before it.  In what served as its consciousness, the stone thought this behavior just and proper.  It was part of the sacred Earth.

EAST:  Everything that is, is alive.  Life did not come into this world.  The life forms of the earth are a natural product of the earth, as the living planet is a natural product of the living universe.  Life in any form is part of life in every form.  One, indivisible.  The terrestrial spark is connected to the most distant star, just as the collective consciousness of the earth is one cell in the infinitely greater creative intelligence of the universe.  It is said, no one can know the mind of God.  Yet we are the mind of God.  And so we dance for joy.  We dance to the music of life, which ripples and shimmers across the universe.  Even in the coldest depths of space, something is dancing the dance.  Something is part of the music.  Every molecule of Air on Earth has its part to play in the whole.  Myriad life form dance in what appears, to human eyes, to be empty air.  Air is not empty.  Air is alive.  The angels of the Air sing the songs of the spheres.

SOUTH:  Fire!  Fire!  Fire!  Let there be fire.  Hot hotter hottest singeing singing soaring burning blazing conflagration inferno holocaust.  Let there be light.  Sparking flashing flaring flaming illuminating glowing gleaming glaring dazzling radiant.  Let there be life.  Vigor ardor intensity vehemence fervor passion fury magic inspiration genius brilliance.  Thoughtless explosion of power giving birth to all thought, all awareness.  Vast outgoing surge of creative passion studding the universe with stars, smoldering in the souls of planets.  Simmering scorching scalding sizzling bubbling boiling molten inflaming energizing consuming.  Fire is.  Fire was.  Fire will be.  Mindless.  Allmind.  Fire.  Fire.  Fire!

WEST:  We are the sea.  We are the planet’s dual-purpose organ of reproduction and reverence.  The trinity of Sun, Moon and Earth exchange their sacred energies through the linkage we provide.  We acknowledge no limits, merely impediments that we continually whittle away.  We are a prism through whose liquid lens the colorful diversity of the planet is refracted.  Aswarm with life, we think trillions of versions of thought.  Our sentience is in your blood, in everything that contains water.  Man has crawled from our womb.  We are watching.  We are aware.  We are the sea.

The leader explains the meaning and purpose of the ritual:

Tonight we journey to the animals who lead and guide us, whose energies we carry and who can help us along our life paths.  Think about the animal whom you wish to meet tonight.  Focus on it during the meditation.  But be aware that the one you meet may not be the one you expect.

There are several points during the journey when you will be asked to choose whether or not to go on.  Should you choose not to, you should remain where you are in the journey (rather than coming out of the meditation) and wait for the others to return to that place.  Then you may continue back out of the journey with the rest of the participants.

You may move around as you wish during this journey. You may also stand or sit still, if you desire. Allow your inner voice to direct you, and heed its instructions.

Participants space themselves about the ritual area so that all may have room to move freely.  Drumming or recorded music begins now. The participants move, sway and dance in a way that helps them identify with the animal they have chosen for this ritual. The leader may call on his or her animal spirit guide, aloud or silently, for assistance. Then the journey begins.

Tonight you have made yourself in the image of an animal that calls to you.  Now you will journey to a place where you can meet that animal and discover its energy and its purpose in your life.  Once you have met your animal and learned about it, should you so choose, you may add its energy and purpose into your life.  Let us begin.

Feel your weight upon the earth, your feet against the ground.  Feel the rhythm of your breath and your heartbeat as they pulse in rhythm with the earth.  You become one with the earth beneath you.

You see before you in your mind’s eye a great darkness.  Look into this darkness.  Feel the warmth and closeness of a cave, the security of the womb of the earth.  You are in a dark cave.  You can see nothing at all.  But you can feel the warm, moist air and smell the deep, rich earth.  All sound is muffled by the still air deep in the cave.  Let your senses explore the cave.

As you look around you see a pale light far ahead.  This is the mouth of the cave.  You begin to move toward the cave mouth, toward the light of the outside.  You must climb up, out of the depths of the earth, to get to the cave mouth.  It is a long climb.  You work your way up the steep slope with great effort, pulling your weight against gravity as you climb toward the opening.  When you reach the opening you look out on a lush countryside, green and alive, with all the things you find beautiful in the outdoors.

Now step out of the cave and into the fresh air.  Look around you and see the beauty, the energy, the life.  Smell the scent of plant and flower and earth.  Feel the warm sun on your skin, the soil beneath your feet.  This is a good place, a safe place, a place full of life.

Explore the countryside around you.  Feel its energy, the abundance of moving, living, growing energy.  As you explore you hear the sound of a babbling brook.  Follow this sound through the land until you find the brook.

It is a small, shallow creek but you know that it is a token of a much greater boundary.  It extends in either direction farther than you can see.  As you look across the brook you see that on the far bank is the animal whose spirit you have called upon.  Your animal awaits you, ready to answer your questions and lend its energies to your life path.

PAUSE

To reach the animal you must cross the brook.  The land on the other side of the brook contains only truth.  Any question you ask will be answered in full truth.  Do not cross the creek if you seek other than the deepest truth for your life path.  Choose now whether or not you will cross.  If you choose to cross, I will tell you how to do so. If you choose not to cross, wait here until the rest of us return.

PAUSE

Stand on the bank in front of the creek.  It is narrow; you will cross it with three steps.  Set one foot in on this side of the creek.  With this step you leave behind your preconceptions about the animal you will meet.  Set the other foot in the creek on the other side.  With this step you leave behind your preconceptions about your life path.  Step out onto the bank on the other side.  You have crossed the border from your domain to that of purest truth.  Before you is the animal you have called.

You may now speak to the animal.  Ask of it anything you wish to know.  It will answer fully and in truth.  But especially, ask how its energies and purpose pertain to your life path.  Begin by asking the animal why you chose it and why it chose you.  Speak with your animal for as long as you need to.  When you are done, the journey will continue.

LONG PAUSE

You are now familiar with your animal’s energies.  You know why it calls to you and how it can be a part of your life path.  If you so choose, you may now make the animal’s energies and purpose a part of you as well.  This is a mating of spirits, a merging of energies.  From this mating will be born a new you, a fresh approach to your life’s activities and a renewed sense of purpose on your path.  Choose now if you wish to become one with the animal spirit.  If you choose to do so, the animal will show you how.

PAUSE

Feel now the energies within you, merging and emerging.  You know the way into this place.  Should you ever wish to do so, you can come here again.  But now it is time to leave, bringing back with you all that you have learned and all that you have become on this journey.  Say your goodbyes to your animal, knowing that you carry its spirit with you now and always.

Look around you at the beautiful countryside until you find the brook again.  Once again, you will cross it in three steps, but the steps have new meaning now.  Set one foot into the creek on this side.  With this step you bring the truth of this place into you and hence into the rest of your life.  Set the other foot into the creek on the other side.  With this step you bring the energies of the animal to your consciousness where you can use them in all your life.  Step out onto the bank of the creek.  With this step you bring realization that you are the only one who truly has the power to direct your life path; you walk your own walk; you choose your own life.

Stroll across the beautiful countryside taking in the sights, sounds, smells, sensations.  This beauty is all within you.  This much life, vitality, strength, abundance is within you.  You know where it is now and how to reach it.  When you are in need of beauty, of great richness of life, seek out this place within you.  It is always here.

Now as you move across the landscape you see the mouth of the cave, the opening whence you were born into this place.  Enter the cave now, knowing that this is the portal to your inner self, to tranquility, beauty and strength.  Through this cave you are reborn to yourself, to your own life.

Feel the warm, secure darkness around you as you move deep into the cave.  Feel the energy within you:  your new knowledge, the spirit of your animal, the spark of life within you.  This is who you truly are: what can be seen only with the heart.  Look inside you now and see your beauty, your strength, your purpose.  You carry these with you always.  Remember where they are.

The air in the cave grows gently and gradually cooler as you move toward the other end, toward the surface of the earth.  You feel the weight of your body as your feet press on the earth.  You grow slowly and gently lighter as the earth releases you, as you return to your starting place, to the sacred circle.  Feel your breath and your heartbeat, the rhythm of your life.

You have returned from a great journey.  Awake, arise and refresh yourself as a traveler might do.  But remember that you are only at rest; you have not yet reached your journey’s end.

The leader assists the participants to return fully to the present.  All join together to thank the Great Spirit for the blessings of sustenance and abundance.

The participants and the leader join hands in a circle to thank the attendant spirits and elementals and to release the ritual space. Then, with gratitude and a spirit of community, take the time to share food and drink with one another.

Brew Your Own Mead!

Late in the summer of 1993, I flipped through the Lughnasadh issue of Keltria Journal and was inspired to try my hand at mead-making. To be honest, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the few types of store-bought mead I had sampled, but being a pagan of northwestern European descent, I figured I owed it to my ancestors to give it a proper try. It was enough of a success that I decided I liked mead and kept on with the brewing, eventually branching out into herbal meads and fruit wines as well. Twenty years later, I’m happy to report that my cellar is currently stocked with peach wine, medlar wine, half-dry mead, muscadine wine and triple berry wine, all deliciously drinkable and remarkably inexpensive to make.

I highly recommend the mead-making article in the Lughnasadh 1993 issue of Keltria. Steven of Prodea gives excellent instructions and good advice, which I followed way back when. But I thought I’d give you some more specific information, a sort of step-by-step recipe that shares my experience (trial and error, much of it, to be honest). Ultimately, all you’re doing is providing some yeast with good food and a clean environment in which to do its thing. The result, of course, is sublime. And in my case, sacred as well.

I started with very simple equipment: an empty gallon glass jug that originally held apple cider, and a balloon. That’s all. I washed the jug really well with hot, soapy water and yes, I even washed the balloon, just in case. If I could give you just one bit of advice about brewing, it’s to be as scrupulously clean as you can manage. The yeast have to compete with any microbes that might be hanging around the environment, so wash hands, wash equipment, and work only on well-cleaned surfaces.

The ingredients for my first batch of mead were honey, water and Champagne yeast. That’s it. The flavor of your honey will influence the flavor of the finished product, so don’t use honey that you wouldn’t want to eat. If you dislike a particular type of honey, you won’t like the mead it makes, either.

Be aware that honey is often sold by weight rather than liquid volume. A quart of honey (32 ounces by volume) will weigh 48 ounces. So pay attention to labels to make sure you’ve got the right amount of honey. When in doubt, use a measuring cup at home to be sure.

Also, PLEASE use actual wine yeast. Yes, it’s possible to brew mead and wine with baking yeast from the grocery store, but it will taste like alcoholic bread. I don’t recommend it. Wine yeast is not expensive and is well worth the small investment to come out with a tasty product. I order mine from EC Kraus but if you live in a large metropolitan area, you may find a home brewing supply store nearby.

My apologies to the highly evolved folks who use the metric system. I’m American, raised on the Imperial system of measurement, so that’s how my recipes are set up. Please feel free to use one of the great online metric/Imperial converters, and try not to snicker too loudly.

HOMEMADE MEAD

Makes 1 gallon

Ingredients:
1 quart honey (measured by volume; 48 ounces by weight)
3 quarts warm water (105-110° F)
1 packet white wine or Champagne yeast

Equipment:
1 gallon container with narrow neck, preferably glass, but plastic will do
Clean balloon, color of your choice
Large bowl or pot, to hold 1 gallon liquid
Spoon for stirring
Funnel (optional, but helpful for getting the mixture into the gallon jug)

In a large bowl or pot, stir the honey and water together well, until the honey dissolves. Pour or spoon a few tablespoons of the mixture into a small bowl. Sprinkle the wine yeast over and stir until it’s dissolved. Let it sit until it foams up, about 10 minutes. This lets you know the yeast is active and ready to turn your honey-water mixture into wine. Gently stir the yeast mixture back into the honey-water, then pour the liquid into the gallon jug. Avoid splashing as much as possible, since oxygen slows down the fermentation process. Stretch the mouth of the balloon over the neck of the jug, making sure it seals well (you don’t want microbes from the air to invade your brew). Set the jug in a place away from drafts, where it won’t be disturbed, and let it do its thing. In one to two weeks, the fizzing will stop and the balloon will deflate. Carefully pour the contents of the jug into a clean container, leaving the sediment in the jug (that’s mostly dead yeast – ick). Clean out the jug, pour the good stuff back in, and fill back up to the neck with warm water. Put the balloon back on and let it sit for a few more weeks, until you’re sure the yeasties have stopped doing their thing. Pour the contents into bottles, leaving any remaining sediment behind, and enjoy!

You can scale this recipe up to make larger batches (I typically make 5 gallons at a time now). You can also throw in any spices you like – cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves – just a few pinches in a gallon batch. You can substitute fruit juice (apple and grape are good) for up to half the water for a different flavor, but don’t sub more than half the water or the resulting beverage will be too sweet to drink.

Be aware that yeast is active in direct proportion to the temperature, so if you set your brewing jug in a cold basement, you may or may not get mead. If you set it on a hot porch, the balloon may blow right off. You want a gentle, mid-range temperature (70s to 80s F) for good fermentation, about the same setting you would use for letting yeasted bread dough rise.

If you find you want to brew more and larger batches, you may want to invest in a few items such as 5-gallon carboys, airlocks and plastic tubing. But really, all you need is a jug and a balloon.

If you give it a try, please let me know how it goes. If you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them or point you toward resources that are better-informed than I am.

Happy brewing!

Invocation to the Four Elements as the Body of Life

Many years ago I published an ink-and-paper newsletter called Hephaestos' Forge: The Newsletter for Disabled Pagans. It was definitely a specialty item for a minority within a minority, but I felt it needed doing. You see, my first child was severely disabled. She spent all of her short life in a wheelchair, unable to care for herself. But the pagan community was overwhelmingly supportive and helpful to me and to her, in shocking contrast to the rest of the world (with the exception of the medical and therapy specialists who were so valuable to us).

So I published Hephaestos' Forge, soliciting letters and articles from the pagan community, printing it up at Kinko's and hand-addressing the issues. I met a lot of wonderful people through that activity, and learned much about the challenges many of us face every day. Often those challenges are hidden, not visible, but that doesn't make them any less real.

Eventually my life shifted, interest in the newsletter waned and I stopped publication. But I've held on to a few bits and pieces that I wrote for it, including the one I'm sharing with you today.

You see, one of my challenges as a pagan priestess was to include everyone, even those with physical disabilities, in ritual. It's easy to forget how much movement we require in a typical celebrational circle, until we're faced with including people who can't participate in those activities.

So I wrote up a ritual that allows the mind to flow outward, to move and shift and participate in the wonders of the universe, even when the body cannot. Today I'd like to share the opening invocation of that ritual with you. Regardless of your physical abilities or lack thereof, consider this an invitation to express yourself as a part of the limitless cosmos, as the infinite being you truly are.

Invocation to the Four Elements as the Body of Life

By Laura Perry

Hail, Spirits of Earth: be Thou my feet

That I may stand firm and strong,

Deeply rooted in abundant faith and love,

To weather any storm.

Hail, Spirits of Fire: be Thou my eyes

That I may see through purifying flame

With passion and determination

That which I most desire.

Hail, Spirits of Water: be Thou my legs

That I may follow every path,

However crooked or rocky or rough,

To the clear, deep pool of wisdom at the end.

Hail, Spirits of Air: be Thou my hands

That I may reach out and around me

To touch, caress and gently embrace

All that I hold dear.

Hail, Elements of Life: be Thou my body

That I may strive to learn and grow

In body, mind and spirit

In communion with the gods.