Celtic Women's Spirituality: Accessing the Cauldron of Life - Edain McCoy 1998

Basic Ritual Format
Appendix

The following outline can be used to help create your own rituals. It is a framework only, which combines the accepted general practices of both eclectic Wiccan and Celtic traditions. Within this framework there is always room for individual interpretation, alteration, deletion, and augmentation.

1. Know the purpose of your ritual. It need not be a lofty goal, but you must know why you want to do a ritual in order for it to be meaningful and successful.

2. Have all items you will need for the ritual, or for any spells you wish to do, with you before the circle is cast. This includes ambiance items such as music and decorations. Make notes beforehand if you need to, and check them over. If you do forget something, decide now whether you want to improvise without it, or stop the proceedings, cut a doorway in the circle, and go searching.

3. Ground and center your energies, both mentally and physically preparing yourself to be inside sacred space. Personal meditation, purification rites, and so on are encouraged.

4. Cast your circle. (See Appendix C.)

5. Call your quarters. (See Appendix C.)

6. Invite, but never command, any friendly spirits, faeries or other elementals you wish to have join you. In Celtic traditions it is common practice to invite ancestor spirits to join you as well, especially during the dark days from Samhain to lmbolg when it is believed that the portal between our dimensions is at its thinnest.

7. Invite any deities you wish to have present. Many traditions light a candle to honor the presence of each one invited.

8. It is customary in Celtic traditions to feed beings you call from the Otherworld. Feed them with energy, offerings, food, or drink. At the end of the ritual, these items should be buried or left for animals, if the items are safe for them to eat and will not draw unwanted critters to your home. They generally are not eaten by those who performed the ritual.

9. If you wish to cast an inner circle-a figure eight, a triskele, or other variation-for a special working, do so now. (See Appendix C.)

10. State out loud, or write out, the purpose of your ritual to help your energies align with your goal.

11. If you are working with invoked energies—those that you draw into yourself—invoke them now.

12. Begin the body of your ritual work. You can improvise here as much as you like. The words, gestures, tools, drumming, dances, drama, messages from the invoked deity, rites of passage, sabbat/esbat enactments, and so on can be uniquely yours, or those of your group. Celtic ritual dramas are nice to do with groups.

13. If you are planning on working magick during your ritual, do so now.

14. Raise and send magickal/healing energy.

15. Release any invoked energy.

16. Close any inner circles that have been cast.

17. Thank and bid farewell to any deities you invited, and extinguish their candles.

18. When you are ready to close the circle, thank the elementals and spirits who have joined you and release them in the opposite order in which they were called.

19. Close the circle. (See Appendix C.)

20. Ground your energy and record your experience.