Is this an important element of Druidry ritual? If so, why? What do you know of its history?
Emma Restall Orr : This is most interesting for folk exploring Druidry out of interest, yet whose understanding of a temple or place of ritual is normally defined by walls, ceiling and floors. Though I would imagine the majority of Druid rites are held outside, it is not the lack of walls that is necessary: there is absolute freedom as to where we create space for our rites and rituals. Walls are perhaps an easy way of ensuring a lack of physical distraction within a world that isn’t focused on ritual, but the trees of a woodland, the space and wind of the moors, the sound of breaking waves and the emptiness of a beach at night, these can provide barriers as easily. What is poignant in our learning Druidry as a spiritual or religious craft is how to create space when there is no such easy natural temple, enclosing us, removing distraction. For usually there are no such barriers in our mind, allowing us to be internally undistracted. How we do this alters according to our intuition and how we were taught.
Kris Hughes : In my own rituals I use 12 stones that I carry with me, each one reprsenting the eight festivals and the four winds of our ancestors, each one is acknowledged and set in place with poetry and song. Our grove also has a stone circle on a larger scale. The space is acknowledged by poetically expressing the attributes of each stone, finishing in the centre at the “Maen LLog” (altar stone). Items are ritually placed on the altar to express the nature or intention of the rite. The four cardinal stones represent the ancestral dead to whom mead is offered, they also represent the four elements who are acknoweldged with votives of their primary powers. The space is completed by honouring the living tribe, those who gather there to express their inspirtion.
Phil Ryder : Not something I would normally consciously do by marking it physically, but by our actions in preparing for a ritual we define that space. We may place some items that aid focus in the centre, we may place small items at the cardinal points that define what those elements mean to us at that time, we acknowledge our surroundings, and in these and many other ways we create our sacred space. Other places we use regularly need no defining, they welcome us back at each visit as clearly defined as any cathedral.
Star : Ritual for me can take on many forms, and is constantly evolving. It can be created in my mind. I might simply sit quietly and breathe letting the moment unfold without needing to do anything. Sometimes it is just holding a precious moment with honour. It can be wearing my beautiful robe, using special sacred items, thus symbolising stepping into my nemeton. I find rituals shared or on my own are equally valuable if the intention is right.
Damh Smith : I like the casting of a circle for a number of reasons. Firstly it helps me to slow down – this is especially important for ceremonies where people might have traveled long distances in a hurry. People can gather in a circle, and the casting, blessing with fire and water etc., creates a space and time that allows them to gradually move away from their journeys and into the mindset for ritual. By the time the ‘guts’ of the ceremony begins, the journey has been left behind. Another effect is that it creates a liminal space, a place between the worlds. I’ve experienced this too many times now to just dismiss it as coincidence: the air gets colder after the circle has been taken down, it starts to rain just as the last part of the ritual happens. Then there is the aspect of safety: not just in an unseen way, but also in an inclusive way. For instance, at the Samhain open ritual there are often very open displays of emotion when people call out the name of a friend/relation that has recently moved on from this world to show they have not been forgotten. They need to feel safe to express that emotion, and the circle’s separation from the more judgmental ‘outside’ world really helps that expression.
Treegod : I don’t cast circles but I do believe in Sacred Spaces. In personal ritual I speak three words, not to make a barrier but to invoke a certain energy around me and create a ‘ritual mind’; these are, Safety, Secrecy and Sanctity. But the real Sacred Space is something I call Home – this space offers me some sanctuary that allows me to loose myself from the eroding tides of society, where I can be my Self and not live by a mask. I live in this Sanctuary, a Sanctuary of the Self that makes a barrier between Self and society. It is also a Sanctuary for Nature, where society can’t encroach and eat it up as just another resource – it can live for itself.
Mark Rosher (bish): Most folk live nowadays in a world that is so busy, so noisy, so intrusive as to make that intimate connection that comes through singular concentrated focus almost impossible. I find value in a personal space which allows full contemplation and projects a ‘field’ of isolation from the everyday. Similar in many ways to the way the hooded cloak is used, to pull over the eyes in order to shut out the noisy world, I have been known to purposefully erect such a sphere of intention (not a circle, of course – two dimensional thinking …), to achieve that silence. I am not speaking of the noise of the ‘natural’ world (it’s my flippin’ sphere, I’ll tell it what can come through!) but of the modern one – of interruption, mobile ringtone and ‘just’ jobs …
Denise Mamma : I tend to do what feels right at the time and place, but normally I have feathers for east, candle for south, a bowl of shells for west and a large amethyst crytal bed for north. I place a moonstone necklace in the position of the moon. I ground, centre and protect myself, then use the necklace to open the circle. And this is where I do my own thing: I hail and welcome any spirits of ancestor, tribe, place and animals at each direction, my necklace swinging clockwise as I move around the circle clockwise, starting and finishing in the east. Then I meditate, connect, honour, whatever my purpose is. I may call on a god or goddess. When finished do the reverse, saying hail and farewell to my visitors. If any negative energies have remained, I ask them to leave and be healed elsewhere.
Michael Eric Berube : Our Grove is blessed to each have space on land that we each own (look after) which we’ve set aside specifically as spaces for us to hold ritual in. These spaces aren’t any more sacred than any other, but they are pleasing locations. We also routinely choose other places to come together. Bringing our nemeton together to relate in a common goal is more important to us than raising and lowering a boundary before and after ritual for the ritual to happen in. We make set a beautiful altar, because we are drawn to certain aesthetics to ritual, but we don’t ask for any special protection from the world(s) around us, rather it seems the intention is to sink INTO the place we’ve chosen to do ritual at together.
Ximena Eduarda : Preferably, I choose natural sacred spaces for ritual. These can be physical or in other worlds. In unseen worlds, those I visit have an indescribable majesty which reminds me what we were once, not necessarily in the sense of ‘edifications’ which often they are not. Sometimes, I take the space for ritual between the folds among worlds unconsciously.
In this world, and indoors, I consider the four corners of my room and everything within them as ritual space. Outdoors, which can be any place of nature (never with cement for it oppresses life!), the space for ritual builds itself following the natural disposition of seen and unseen beings dwelling the place. I also have the privilege of living in territories where ancestral traditions and practices are alive, here people make rituals daily. If they can be carried out anywhere, at the same time they keep alive the legacy of sacred spaces on the land, some active, some not, calling them ‘Wak’as’. In these ‘energetic vortex’, the space for ritual gains relevance in many dimensions (history, potency, function, flux, etc.), they can even be approached as portals to cross worlds. Besides, in these highlands, factually over the mountains, surrounded by vertebral snowed peaks and together with Lake Titicaca, the sacredness of the space distributed throughout the cardinal point is on itself a perpetual ritual for life, of which I feel an intrinsic part.
Seeking for the natural disposition of nature on the Wheel of Life, considering the eight magical moments of the cyclic process, is for me the way to call present tutelary powers, establishing a circle, which is the fold among worlds where magic can be reached. This also insures the invitation to present entities of which I am not aware of as a way to amalgamate with that space of nature and its worlds.
I display salt circles counterclockwise around the offer and I, as protection and to concentrate awaken forces. Then, I let the space vibrations impregnate me, listening, feeling, seeing and letting those forces be within me. Chanting, speaking out loud or dancing depends on what the space brings out of me, could also be the deepest or loudest silence.
But, as soon as I arrive to the place and choose it as ritual space, I ask for permission from the guardian entities in order to proceed, I wait for a while for an approval sign; if it does not come, I change from the place. If it does, I ‘Salute Free Spirits’ of the place, which include any existence present and myself, and continue a little following my inner self and a little with the guidance of present entities.
Most of the time it is a solitary ritual, when I join a local communitarian ritual, I follow the practices of the group and apply mine mentally, through movements stirring up the energies and I do not stop from seeking the natural dispositions of the place, tracing the Wheel of Life and letting the space impregnate me.
Being part of the lands where I dwell, many local customs are part of my ritual and are linked to the space for ritual. For example, the presence and use of coca leaves, for the offer, around it and to chew it (‘acullico’), invocation of Pachamama (Mother Earth), use of sheep wool in the colors of the rainbow (which are the colors of the ‘whip’ala’, the aymara and other people’s flag) surrounding the offer and sometimes choosing the color according to the occasion for protection and magic; blow the ‘pututu’ (horn) or a big seashell to wake up the spirits of the place; incense, myrrh and copal to break densities and open the doors between worlds; depending on the cyclic moment the use of objects shaped with water, sugar and tint; sound of drums and wind instruments to stir up the energies and search for nature heartbeats, etc.