The Ritual Practice
For the Full Moon in Aquarius on August 9
If you'd like to connect directly with the magick of our community web established during the first session of The Gathering Path, you're invited to perform A Web of Wonder. For those who have already performed A Web of Wonder, you can spend a few moments connecting to our community web before performing the ritual below by simply visualizing and feeling your personal web-line joining with the community web - but feel free to add as little or as much ritual to this (breathwork, chanting, candle lighting, etc.) as you like.
A Relic Altar for Healing
Building an altar is transformative work. I built my first altar within an hour of reading about them in Starhawk's seminal work on modern feminist Paganism, The Spiral Dance, and I've been building altars for private and public use ever since. The transformative quality of building altars is fed by many streams - from the radical act of creating something profoundly sacred outside of the institutions deemed "altar-worthy" to believing in oneself as being able to build a sacred space based on your needs and desires. Altars can unite communities in a common vision, making space for shared pains and joys, and act as physical manifestations of the calendar year, as we change their appearance with the seasons.
For our journey on the path of relics, our altar work will focus on the intimate healing that can come about from making space for something to be reunited with, mended or even separated from. The following altar making guide and simple ritual (for both individuals and communities) focuses on creating an altar for a relic that we have encountered on our path and want to shift energy around.
You will need:
A space to create an altar (or chosen outdoor location)
A physical representation of your relic
Additional items for your altar
Before shifting into sacred space in your chosen way, spend some time naming the relic you are wanting to work with, the energies you are wanting to shift, and gathering what you want to place on your altar. I'll use the story of Celina to illustrate the steps to creating your own healing altar.
Celina wants to work with a relic of lost love that has her caught up in ruminating about a previous relationship whenever she is considering a new one. On her journey along the path over the past two weeks she came across a broken stone heart which feels like a pretty good representation of her current emotional response to new love - a bit broken-hearted and stuck in the past when it comes to love. She finds a heart-shaped stone in her collection of rocks and decides to use that as the representation of her relic on her altar.
You can have a picture, a plant, a toy, a piece of jewelry, a stone or whatever else makes sense for you to represent your relic pulled from your inner landscape to live for a little while in the outer world. Next, we'll be choosing items that represent the sort of energy we want to shift to be placed on the altar alongside our relic.
Celina wants to soften this part of her heart so that repair can happen. She chooses soft fabrics in gentle colors to place on her altar and framed poetry that speaks to her beliefs about love. She also scatters dried Rose petals around her altar, as Rose is a plant ally she's been working with closely along her path.
If you're wanting to soften energy, choose soft items for your altar or items and images that make you soften your shoulders and relax whenever you see them. You could even make a nest for a relic, creating a sacred shelter for repair and care. If you're wanting to shift a perspective or belief about a relic, choose items that represent the new perspective or belief you are wanting to invite in. If you're needing to release energy, you might have physical representations of cutting cords, burying a relic to be transformed or even a cauldron for burning items in.
In the center of her altar, Celina places a bowl. She also has a bottle of her Rose oil, decorated with abundant images of love and compassion, that she places on her altar. She puts her stone heart in the bowl where it will soon be covered in heart-opening and softening Rose oil.
Choose some sort of physical action to happen on your altar to represent the energetic shift you are wanting to take place. For Celina, she'll be pouring her handmade Rose oil over her heart stone, representing pouring healing over that area of her life and giving herself space to soften up to the idea of new ways of being in love. If you're wanting to draw more light and clarity into a particularly shadowy area of your life, you can move candles slowly towards your relic. Or if you are inviting in gentleness, perhaps wrapping your relic in soft fabric and flower petals. Maybe you'll be cutting ribbons that stretch out from your relic to representations of the rest of your life. Altars are meant to be dynamic spaces, so let yourself play around with ideas before one speaks to you.
Once your altar has been built, create sacred space in your chosen manner. Then take a moment to journey into your inner landscape, meeting your relic there. This can be anything from a complex pathworking for those practiced in trancework or simply taking a few centering breaths and asking for your relic to appear to you. The point is to establish an emotional connection with your inner world to help guide you through the ritual.
Once the emotional connection has been made, wake up your altar in some way, either by lighting a candle on it or incense, singing over it or breathing over it.
Then speak over your relic, naming it and how it affects your life.
Celina holds her hands over her heart and speaks about the ways that this broken-heartedness has led to a feeling of distrust around her ability to discern loving relationships to engage with, how this distrust has created a distance between her and other people.
When you feel like the story has been told enough for this moment, speak the following:
Is, was, and shall be
My relics all transform with me
Next, speak of the transformative energy you are drawing in around this relic. You can even visualize what energy transformed in this area of your life would look like in your future.
Celina imagines the easy feeling of connecting with those she loves, even those people she doesn't know so well but wants to get to know better. She imagines being able to move freely in and out of relationships instead of always feeling stuck in one place. She feels her heart glowing with soft, rosy-colored light.
When you feel ready, speak the following:
Wise are the ways of my knowing
In my wisdom I am growing
If needed, it can be helpful to recite the previous charm repeatedly, to help raise energy for the next part of the ritual.
Next, it is time to perform the symbolic transformation of your relic.
Celina pours the oil over her heart stone. She ends up choosing to hold the stone as she does this, rubbing the lightly-scented Rose oil on her hands into her skin.
As you perform the symbolic transformation, I encourage you to come up with a simple phrase - your own magickal words - that embody what you are transforming. For Celina, she speaks some variation of "I love you sweetheart of mine - it's safe again to mend and move."
Spend time basking in the glow of energy in the process of transformation. After your ritual is complete be sure to take time to ground and center. For some, it might feel like the need of the altar is complete and it can be dismantled. For others, you might want to sit with the energy for a few days or even a full lunar cycle, continuing to shift the energy of your relic from one state to another.
For a community ritual trying to shift the energy of a shared community relic or even an energetic point in the landscape (like a geomantic adjustment to earth energies), the following adaptations to the above ritual can be made.
Create an altar in the same way, but as a community. Community altars are wonderful things when the intentions are clear. An altar might be built indoors on a kitchen table, for example, or might be built on or around an outdoor sight that will be the focus of the healing rite.
If you like, you can build the altar in such a way that at the end of the rite community members can take part of it home with them (either to keep on their altar or to complete a further ritual action like burning or burying the item).
Decide on the transformative action that needs to take place and who will be facilitating that portion of the ritual (the point is to make sure that the energetic focus and actions of the ritual don't flounder because no one knows what is supposed to happen next).
Continue with the ritual as described, with the chants for a group changing to:
Is, was, and shall be, all shall be transformed
Wise are the ways of our knowing, In our wisdom we are growing
Make sure that someone is in charge of facilitating the grounding and centering after the rite. Sharing food afterwards is always a good option.
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