Why We Need Ritual
+ an invitation to the Reading Group 4/25/24 6pm PST
“Ritual is called for because our soul communicates things to us that the body translates as need, or want, or absence. So we enter into ritual in order to respond to the call of the soul.” — Malidoma Patrice Somé
I think so many of us feel the call of ritual because we intuitively know that there is more to life than what we see. In fact, what we “see” is often determined by what we are shown or what we’re encouraged to notice.
At our Full Moon Ritual on Sunday, some of you mentioned that our experience of the world, how we feel, our mood, our opinions, are often determined by social media. In other words, our experience of reality in contemporary life is often determined by what we consume.
But in ritual, we experience reality as something we create.
Not even something we create alone, as auteurs, but something we create in collaboration. Collaboration with water and earth, with breath, with the winged ones and the ancient ones, with Spirit.
At our Reading Group tomorrow night, Thursday April 25th at 6pm, we’ll be reading…
…Malidoma Patrice Somé’s book, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community, where he makes a convincing argument that rituals are a necessary collaboration between humans and the world of the unseen.
I KNOW y’all out there are ritual lovers!
For tomorrow’s Reading Group, we are reading Chapter 2 “Ritual, Ceremony, and Us.”
It’s only 10 pages long and the reading is easy.
Scroll down for the links to the text.
If you get a chance to do a little journaling on the questions below after reading the chapter, great. It will help you process and remember what you read. If not, NO WORRIES.
Even if you can’t finish reading the text, it will still be fun to get together and talk about it.
Questions for closer reading:
According to Somé, why do we practice rituals? Is his reasoning in alignment with your own? Why or why not?
Somé suggests that humans and spirits are meant to interact with each other. “Spirit,” he says, “plays a life giving role.” Whereas, our role in ritual is “to be human.” What do you think he means by that? What then is the role of humanity?
How does Somé identify the purpose of sacrifice? Does his understanding of sacrifice make sense in a contemporary Western context? Why or why not?
Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at 6pm PST!
Literary Witches, Unite! XO,
Amanda
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