Dreaming and Waking

Last night, Silver Spiral ran our first "public" ritual in quite some time. It was Fringe's Imbolc. I conclude that it went well.

The labyrinth was even more beautiful then I had imagined, thanks to Russ' help with the placement of electrical cords and everyone's help untangling the Christmas lights and crawling on the floor taping them down. I hope Cin's digital pictures came out OK so they can be posted (hint-hint). And we only lost five or so bulbs - a couple during set-up, a couple during the ritual itself, and one during clean-up - not bad, I figure, for delicate bulbs being strung out on the floor and having people walk right next to them.

The crowd was pretty small. I think we counted twenty people outside of Silver Spiral and those we had recruited to help. But it turned out to be almost the perfect size for the space involved, and it meant that the labyrinth walks didn't take forever.

The room was nice and dramatically dark for the parts where it was supposed to be, the labyrinth shone, the drums echoed beautifully, the chanting was gorgeous, and I think the energy flowed beautifully.

There were some rough spots, but nothing the participants probably really noticed. Certainly nothing that really hurt the ritual. And we all recovered nicely from some unintended dramatic pauses.

The funny thing to me is that I don't think people quite knew that the ritual was over. The problem with running an unconventional ritual is that people aren't quite sure what's going to happen next, so they are afraid to assume anything. Even when we turned on the lights, people were sort of standing there, unsure of what to do. Since we had intended to keep everyone on their toes a little by deliberately not following the normal "script", I take the still silence at the end as a sign of success, at least in that goal. No one really moved until someone who was in the ritual spotted Lisa, a late arrival, lurking in the kitchen window, squealed and sprinted out of the ritual area. Though it wasn't quite the end we had planned, it was effective!

Silver Spiral folks: Did anyone get any feedback? I would love to know what people thought of the ritual. Did they "get it"? Was it too weird and abstract? Not weird enough? If you got any feedback, good or bad, please post it so I can work the suggestions/thoughts into future rituals... I've got ideas (... be afraid, be very afraid...).

And, there was drumming and dancing and catching up with people I don't get to see very often, like Alex, the atheist doctor of philosophy who likes hanging out with Pagans, including participating in rituals, because we are more fun. So I call the evening a success.