by Jehana Silverwing

Yes, online ritual can work

• Is it going to be a Working Circle?
  Examples of the former include healings, protection workings, and/or other forms of magical workings where the point is to accomplish some goal, for individuals or for the planet as a whole.

• Or a Celebratory Circle?
  Examples of the latter include Sabbat celebrations, Handfastings/Weddings, Wiccanings, Passings (and other Rites of Passage).

This is a good question to ask oneself whether one is meeting online or off. Having a purpose helps intensify focus, and gives direction to generated energies. Seldom a bad idea.

• A beginning.
• The celebratory portion, or the working portion. (Sometimes, it can have both)
• Closure.

On the face of it, this seems pretty self-evident, and I wouldn't have bothered mentioning it, except that sometimes it just hasn't happened. The part that it seems easiest to forget to do is closure. (This seems to be a particular hazard of real time festival rituals -- if you find yourself at a festival ritual, and feel you need to make closure, make your own closure. This need not be more complex than mentally thanking the divinities, and mentally making the circuit to release the Circle.) If you are online and have to leave early (or get bumped off by electronic vagaries), do your own personal closure. (Of course, you will try to stay in Circle until it is officially over anyway; I'm talking about unavoidable departures.)

• Lasting too long. Words typed scroll by without inflection and little in the way of speed, and this will influence what can and cannot be done (effectively) in online ritual. Poetics are fine, but keep it short and sweet. A half hour just to cast Circle is too much. Most online rituals can be adapted to take place in the span of about an hour or less. More than that is too long in my opinion, due if nothing else to the lack of inflection in this media as it currently stands.

• Scrolling too fast. Some folks upload what they want to say without hand-typing, which is often a good idea in and of itself. But speed-reading as the words sweep by doesn't get one into the spirit. Adjust your sending rate accordingly. (This may involve trial and error -- don't hesitate to practice before ritual.)

• Invasions. The innocent person who pops in unaware and asks questions or tries to start conversations can be talked with (privately) by someone assigned to the task. It's sometimes a bit discombobulating, but not half as much as the active proselytizer for some other religion who won't take your disinterest with anything but rudeness. If you are on a system where the offending party can be kicked out, this can be a good idea if they are not amenable to taking hints. And, it is just as disruptive if everyone gets into the act hissing at the proselytizer -- thus it is doubly important to assign one person to deal with the situation.

• System hiccups. Right in the middle of the blessing of the cakes -- suddenly, the facilitating people get ditched by whatever system they're on, and spend the next five minutes frantically re-connecting. There's not much you and I as casual users can do about this other than appeasing Eris, Loki or Coyote. Perhaps avoiding the shakier chat channels may help.

• Comfort levels with participants. Although you may have the same number of participants in an online ritual as you have appear at your typical real-time ritual, you are likely going to know them less well. The level of closeness you can feel is obviously going to suffer. Be aware of this, yet work with the connections that do exist, in order to highlight and accentuate the positives. For instance, for some participants, being on line is the only time they can actually get together with other folks for ritual -- some live way off the beaten path, or are essentially solitary by nature, or there is no local compatible group for them to join. Be aware, and work accordingly.

• Remember that your best ritual tool is your mind, and your connections with Goddess, and with those others sharing sacred space with you. This is how, when online rituals work, that they can do so. You likely own a variety of Craft tools if you do ritual to begin with -- an online ritual, if the proper connections can be made, is a way of demonstrating that you do not really, ultimately, need those tools to experience the Divinities, Goddess, or the sacred selves you will be touching. The circle one casts transcends the physical space one sets up to perform one's rites within.

• Involve participants. Just as the best real-time rituals mean you are not merely watching events that occur on a stage removed for oneself, it is doubly important (since we online cannot physically "see" one another) that we all have the opportunity to feel and be connected via action. Be open to experience, and allow all participants this chance as well.

  You can go about this a couple ways (combining accordingly). Preplan portions of this ritual with a working partner or two. Say, as a priest and priestess. Or a priest and priest, or priestess and priestess. Whomever feels comfortable to you. It comes down to finding a good collaborator who has time and whom you can work with, over and above the "correct" collection of X and Y chromosomes. Line up people to call quarters, or if you are a group used to working with each other on a regular basis, ask for quarter volunteers just before the ritual. (If this task threatens to become an exercise in pulling teeth, work out contingency plans in advance. Or do something even simpler, without quarter invocations, until people grow more comfortable and close-knit.) If you meet regularly, don't fall in the trap of the same person always filling the same role. (In my experience, everyone wants to call South. Share and spread the wealth. You stretch and learn more that way, anyway.) If you get really close knit, far less planning than the above may be necessary. (Frankly, that's the type of ritual I generally prefer, and cuts to the core of why I'm doing far less online ritual these days. I want to concentrate on the energies, and their synergizing, and on the connections, and on Goddess -- and the parts of a ritual that I plan will typically be there to facilitate this process.)

  Leave places in the actual ritual where all participants can speak up extemporaneously. (What they are grateful to the gods for, what they want in their lives, what kind of energy / good thoughts they are sending towards a healing...) Once you get a rapport going, in rituals down the road you can open things up to even greater levels of spontaneity. (Don't lose Focus, however -- scattered energies are defeating -- if this starts happening, you might have to tighten up the ritual plan for awhile. Explain why you want to do this -- some people seem to be more oblivious to energy in general and/or energy problems than others. A LOT of people, I am growing aware, have had little or no training in energy dynamics, despite having years in the Craft.

• Newcomers. There's always going to be someone new (either to being online, or to being a Pagan or Witch). Don't insist that everyone has to participate. But especially let the new folks know that they are welcome to participate and say things at the places in the ritual where others are being encouraged to do so, if they wish. Being new doesn't keep one from being able to have and express a valid viewpoint, thought, gratitude, or desire. Talk about what ritual is, and what it means to you, before the Circle, if appropriate and there is time. Build a few phrases into the ritual plan which will at least telegraph some idea of the purpose of some action or invocation. After the ritual, if it is possible, one or two people can remain to answer questions, or interactively discuss the ritual with the newtimer. Let them know where some introductory files are they can go and download. (A recommended booklist is fine, but files are more immediate.)

• Set the stage. Use visuals and/or metaphors in your description of the ritual space. Don't go overboard on this, either, as you probably would offline. Each participant will take your concise portrayals and bring in her or his own mental scenery. What you are providing are trigger words to reach other people's inspirational states so you can all be in a similar (yet not identical) space. Wordy online rituals are dull recitals/rituals. Dull rituals raise about as much energy as a wet match, no matter how much the author pats hirself on the back for doing the whole thing in sonnet/iambic pentameter form with -- monotone -- choruses in ancient Theban. Sorry. (I cannot emphasize this enough.)

  Setting the stage can also be done with tools -- virtual, or ask participants to bring certain simple everyday supplies to their computer-space before Circle begins, if they can. While once a few of us coordinated our ritual musical background, that was a lark, as it is not common for everyone to own the same music -- thus I prefer not to have music going in my own background during a ritual unless there is too much extraneous noise going on elsewhere in the house.

• Check out the details. Remember that your participants are likely to come from a wide background of Craft traditions. How you do something isn't the only way something can be done effectively. While East=air, South=fire, West=water, and North=earth is pretty standard, I have run across trads that operate on different quadrants. Be sure, before you begin, that you are all talking a similar language for a given ritual (ie, "today East is water because this is what our group always does, since we live on the Atlantic ocean and see it when we face east -- and this ritual we'd like to come together for this hour and agree to do it together this way today"), to forstall any confusion if it seems possible.

Over on CompuServe, back in 1987, a small group of us did our first online ritual. As I recollect, it was a spontaneous decision to do a healing for one of us who needed it. We were more than vaguely surprised when we were able to pull it off. None of us had ever physically met any of the others at the time. But we were all able to tap into, and focus, our Will and Intent; and the results startled us into continuing ritual and Circles both for healings, and as celebrations. (We later discovered we were not the first on CompuServe to do online ritual, although we wondered about this at the time -- evidently that first group had pretty much disbanded by the time we arrived.)

I've noticed that reading the transcripts of online rituals is not the same as actually being there, and participating. There is something about putting oneself in that space, and experiencing which does the trick. It is the active, not passive, act of Connection which stirs energies -- and while close proximity, all other things being equal, helps, it is not entirely essential, as we have discovered to our delight. (Some of those old CompuServe transcripts have apparently found their way onto the Internet proper; I don't include any at this website.)

I mentioned at the outset that I'm currently not doing online ritual. And yet I call good ritual, online or off, a delight. My sense is that it has often (not always) grown too formulaic and/or wordy, and that as a result focus, imagination, and energy levels are beginning to suffer. For me, ritual needs to be reasonably focused, organic, internally challenging, and flow as a motive force from the interconnections of the participants whether there is a script or not.

If you choose to participate, allow yourself to step through the Gate, into safe, Sacred Space.

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Last Updated: May 1999 ce