RITUAL


During ritual, the network of concepts, symbols and mental maps 'come alive' and the direct experience produces a change in consciousness. Ritual involves sidestepping the everyday world and creating a bubble where all limitations are suspended, and the power of magick flows unhindered. A well-tuned group can act as a silicon chip within the biosphere (we like to think of Gaia sometimes as 'the motherboard'), accessing and interfacing with other subsystems via the code of symbols gnoses and imagination, allowing change to manifest at all levels possible in the system - Aeonic developments, seasonal rhythms, psychic development - As here, so everywhere.

The increasing use of computer metaphors within L.O.O.N. cells has influenced our style of ritual. We have abandoned the traditional form, with its quasi-religious format and monkish robes. The current trend is white boiler suits, black pumps and gloves, and wraparound shades. This, together with robot-bopping and electronic shriekback gives us a distinctive style. Granted, it does look a little out of place at Glastonbury. Dances can reflect the spiral energies of the universe, manifesting in the DNA and other forms. The formation of a Gestalt group mind allows a group to work ritual whilst temporally or spatially separated, if need be.

Ritual creates Order out of Chaos, a sphere wherein everything (even our mistakes) is an expression of will. When invoking the Chaos Current one is identifying with the unfolding aeonic shift, so that one literally becomes the current, as a physical locus.

Armed with this awareness, a seasonal rite can become a powerful focus of change, as the seasonal pulses are directed both inwardly (personal change) and outwardly (environmental change). Traditionally, these festivals are cross-over points between the worlds - and awareness of the internal/external dimensions seems to have been largely forgotten by westerners, shielded as we are from the elements by our centrally-heated boxes.

The scale at which a ritual act manifests is dependent on the will of its participants - anything from scrying the ripples and eddies of Chaos to warping the very fabric of space-time. The format of the working is that which the participants perceive to be appropriate to the intent - invokation may be verbal or structured from an arrangement of bells and gongs of different tone. A sequence of dances may be arranged to reflect the transformation of force into form, or the energisation of astral machines or circuits. A ritual, begun physically, may be re-enacted or continued in dream.

We have found that generally, it is simply structured rituals which have the most effective result. Will is the feather-touch which can move mountains.

As with anything else, someone else's ritual will only be effective for you up to a point - look at other peoples' rites as learning devices. Ritual for its own sake is rarely effective, but when powered by will/intent, is highly so. However the condition of mind that must be mastered is to stop thinking about whether or not the rite will be effective. Lust of result must be replaced by a cellular certainty that once the arrow of desire has been loosed, it will strike its target. By all means discuss experiences, technique, and how it can be done better next time, but let the intention/desire vanish from conscious concern.