Ritual creates a container or sacred space for transformation and magic—defined as the art of changing consciousness at will. It is connection, presence, resistance, awareness, integration, and communion with the unseen. In its most profound essence, it is reenchantment. Ritual is not overly prescriptive, punishing, or burdensome. Depending on your intention, it may invite qualities like divinity, protection, and playfulness. What is ritual? Let’s explore definitions and elements of ritual, then craft your signature ritual for creating sacred space.
What is ritual?
Throw stones over your left shoulder into a stream, one for each thing you’re letting go, says my sweet and magickal wisdom-teacher-friend, Andye.
What is in your cauldron? says beloved friend Karna, as we stir a soup of emotions and qualities about a thing.
Play pupa people with me, Mommy. What color are your wings? says my son.
Hum, like carpenter bees in summer to invoke warmth, says a wiser version of myself.
Put licorice and marigold seeds on the altar, say my ancestors.
Sing to me while you harvest, say dahlias and sweet peas in the yard.
Ritual is the act of creating space for transformation and magic. Dion Fortune defines magic, as popularized by Starhawk, as the “art of changing consciousness at will.” Ritual creates space for transformation in a broad sense, including connection, resistance, communion, awareness, and more. It bridges worlds, converges the mundane and sacred, and is an entrance to liminal spaces or thresholds.
Starhawk’s magical definition
Starhawk defines ritual as “the act of setting a stage, creating a container for sacred transformation. When we call a circle, we say, ‘We are in sacred space,’ and that’s the first step in magic and change.”
Ritual as reflection and integration
Anthropologically, ritual is a socially recognized and culturally specific set of behaviors, gestures, and language that convey beliefs and values. It reflects what people and communities believe and hope and where they resist and defy. In Jungian psychology, ritual is a necessary mechanism for individuation, the process of becoming one’s true self. That ritual integrates the conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche by engaging with archetypal energies and symbols.
Ritual as resistance
Rituals are subversive when they reclaim histories, identities, and values. For example, when they:
- Subvert traditional religious practices by honoring the feminine, nature, or marginalized narratives
- Challenge patriarchal structures
- Foster empowerment
In this way, ritual becomes an act of resistance and liberation. (Read Adrienne Rich and Poetry as Spellcasting by Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White to learn more about this. Join the conversation on Substack if you have recommendations on this topic.)
Read Allhallowtide: Beyond The Veil for a subversive reclamation of Halloween weekend.
Ritual is temporal technology for housing oneself
This definition by Byung-Chul Han in Noema blows my mind. Just read it, and then read it again.
“In “The Little Prince,” the fox wants to be visited by the little prince always at the same hour, so that his visit becomes a ritual. The little prince asks the fox what a ritual is, and the fox replies: “Those also are actions too often neglected… They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours.”
Rituals can be defined as temporal technologies for housing oneself. They turn being in the world into being at home. Rituals are in time as things are in space. They stabilize life by structuring time. They give us festive spaces, so to speak, spaces we can enter in celebration.
As temporal structures, rituals arrest time. Temporal spaces we can enter in celebration do not pass away. Without such temporal structures, time becomes a torrent that tears us apart from each other and away from ourselves.”
Spellcasting is a form of ritual
In Poetry as Spellcasting, authors Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White define:
“Spellcasting as a direction of intention and energy to call in forces beyond ourselves: spiritual, ancestral, and earthly allies. We conceive of spellcasting as a concentration and alignment of energy and language in a ritual. And, by ritual, we mean putting our bodies into ceremony or practice as a means of understanding and encountering different knowings and forces beyond what is easily available to most of us outside of ritual space.”
What is ritual: eight definitions from people I respect
I considered each of these delicious definitions during my discovery of ritual. From poet and mystic Mary Oliver to ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, these people express the potency of ritual:
- “Through ritual, we enter sacred time and space, reenacting events from the mythic past to renew and reconnect with our origins.”—Mircea Eliade
- “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. By participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”—Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Michael Toms, New Dimensions Radio
- “Ritual is a way of organizing human experience to respond to mystery. By acknowledging the mystery, you learn to live with it and to honor it.”—Terence McKenna
- “Ritual is the way we heal, the way we transform ourselves and our communities. It is what brings us together as human beings.”—Malidoma Patrice Somé
- “Ritual reconfigures identity. It’s a way of creating a new map, a new story. And in that way, ritual is deeply subversive; it has the power to dismantle and reimagine societal constructs.”—Marina Warner
- “Ritual creates a container where we can confront our unconscious, where we can transform our wounds into something meaningful. It is a spiritual practice that invites depth into our lives.”—Thomas Moore
- “The moment of change is the only poem. Rituals are designed to capture that moment, to bring change into conscious awareness, and to ritualize the act of transformation.”—Adrienne Rich
- “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. Rituals help us pay attention, to the world and to ourselves, teaching us reverence in our daily lives.”—Mary Oliver
It is not overly prescriptive or punishing
My friend Amy Lynn and I practiced an egg ritual near a fast-moving mountain river. I intended to smash my egg and symbolically “let go” by throwing it on a rock. When my egg did not break but bounced off the rock, we watched with breath held as my intact egg glided along the river floor. What does it mean? Will my spell not work? Will I be punished for doing it wrong?
I asked Amy Lynn if my egg broke, knowing it didn’t. She paused in a moment of internal alchemy and said, “You don’t have to do this alone. The river will break it for you.” On the walk back to the car, we laughed so hard.
Ritual is a convergence of the mundane and sacred, meaning it is entirely specific and dependent only upon you—your resources, time, desires, imagination, ancestry, and ideas. You cannot do ritual wrong.
To emphasize, it is not a thing you must do at the same time every day for the same amount of minutes for a specific number of days. It isn’t something you have to pay a healer hundreds of dollars to do on your behalf. Yes, perhaps sometimes you need a routine or a guide. Maybe you’ll need to start your 10-day candle again. Yes, there are degrees of formality. But, being overly prescriptive and punishing about ritual is counterproductive, potentially a symptom of trauma, and creates the conditions to outsource your power to others.
It changes with you: slow down
My practices changed when I became a mother. I could no longer commit to specific practices at exact and repetitive times with prescribed lengths. At times, I felt frustrated and ashamed about this, like I was doing my spellcasting “wrong” and that the inability to keep my commitment to my luxurious rituals made me fail in my craft. When I slowed down, I saw ritual opportunities everywhere, from cooking with love to blessing the water during my showers.
Infinite opportunities for reenchantment through ritual surfaced when I tuned to my child’s perspective. Everything in his world is enchanted. It was me who needed reminding.
They are available all around us—all we have to do is slow down, invite the sacred with presence, and be open to shifts in consciousness.
What constitutes ritual: you decide
Ritual practitioners may use symbolic gestures, objects, or spoken words to set the stage or create sacred space for transformation. But what makes a space sacred?
In The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, Casper ter Kuile states that everyday things can be ritualized and sacred. He believes we can take “things we do every day and layering meaning and ritual onto them, even experiences as ordinary as reading or eating—by thinking of them as spiritual practices.” And I loved his reclamation of what is sacred:
“The word “sacred” itself comes from the Latin sacrare, which means to consecrate or dedicate. And to consecrate means to declare or make something holy. So the sacredness is in the doing, and that means we have enormous agency to make “sacred” happen ourselves.”
So, sacredness is in the doing. Meaning you decide. In ritual, the specific gestures, objects, spoken words, and their order are at your discretion.
Even casting a circle may not feel meaningful to some practitioners, who feel that sacred is abundant in nature or at home and that words alone do not a sacred circle make.
A ritual may be a repetitive practice or a circle ceremony under a specific moon, with a one-of-a-kind person with a setting of plant guides and stone recordkeepers you’ll never see again. It can even just be drinking tea in the sunlight.
How to dream up a ritual
Sometimes, ritual making is fluid, organic, conjured, or divined. Delivered upon you in a dream or through a whispering rock on a wooded path. Sometimes, you design a ritual, perhaps with allies unseen or invited, to move consciousness. There is an intention or threshold that needs to be marked or a stuckness that needs shaking free. There is a restoration or witnessing that needs to happen in community.
Learn how to weave a signature opening/closing for creating sacred space on Spellcast.
Elements
- Intention: create or invite an intention for your ritual and consider what you intend to shift
- Presence: practice presence and awareness. Even if it is a challenge, find practices that bring you back to the present
- Intuition: tune in to what is calling you and pull words and gestures from deep within—there’s no wrong way
- Co-creation: open to the magic with your environment, ancestors, nature, other people, guides, and beyond. Consider exploring wisdom from your ancestral lineages
- Gratitude: open-heartedness and gratitude create the conditions for moving rituals
- Opening/closing: the opening and closing are helpful constants
- Practice: it may be spontaneous or repetitive, but the frequency with which you practice is related to the enchantment you experience
Inspiration questions
- What is your intention?
- Are you marking a threshold or liminal space?
- How and why do you want to shift consciousness?
- What needs shifting or integration?
- What are the elements that desire to be activated?
- What objects, forces, elements, energies, or guides are you inviting or are showing up to support?
- What is your desired outcome?
- What is possible if you are open to co-creation with your environment or community?
- How may you practice gratitude before, during, and after?
Ritual is wonder, initiation, communion with the unseen, and more. Its most profound sense invites renenchantment, magic, and transformation.
