Taking Sacred Back: The Complete Guide to Designing and Sharing Group Ritual

"If you want a powerful ritual, either include a nude person or burn something," begins this useful handbook for creating and leading effective, experiential community ritual from "ritualistas" Nels and Judy Linde. The authors display the kind of practicality that comes only from years of experience. They advocate advance planning on the practical level, including evaluation of physical spaces and rehearsals with full ritual teams, as well as on the spiritual design level, including choosing symbols, myths, and sensory cues that will support well-articulated ritual goals and intuitively lead people into individual "encounters with the mysterious." They offer solutions to the most common challenges of large public pagan circles, such as getting people into the space, communicating effectively, moving people through pathworkings efficiently, and refocusing energy after a chaotic "all dance". Over a dozen meticulously detailed full ritual scripts, all successfully executed at large pagan events such as the Sacred Harvest Festival, show the often quite theatrical working parts of ritual and highlight the richness of experiences that can be offered. A final section on prop making shows how to build gates, mirrors, and effigies. This is an eye-opening book for public ritual attendees curious about the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes, and a desperately needed compendium of useful ideas for community leaders. (May)