Never Mind the Bollocks
All rituals are rites of passage.
The ethnographers of the early 20th century went looking, like all men of science, for a unifying theory and this was their conclusion. Ritual, a slippery idiosyncratic art form of inspired action, has one common feature, across cultures, across time: tripartite transformation.
There’s a beauty in the simplicity of this answer to the riddle of ritual. It suggests a deep order and harmony to the world that we addled post-modern beings crave. There is a formula. Separation, transition, incorporation.
I see ritual everywhere. In mindless moments I feel like an instrument played by the unfolding patterns of habit. When I’m present in my movements and the incense rises steadily, I feel a connection being made within me between the invisible and visible worlds. The contents of my consciousness meeting matter through cord, dice and stone. And when I’m desperate, ritual holds me and rocks me through moments of catharsis. Since beginning my personal inquiry into ritual something fundamental has changed about how I apprehend and engage with the world— ritual is ubiquitous. I see it in the non-human, in the genesis of life on earth, the formation of the moon and the dialectic. A constant churning of transformation.
So admittedly I am not an objective observer. I can’t pretend (at least not convincingly) to the idealised impartial pose that my intellectual ancestors adopted. I’m knee-deep, face painted, voice raised in chant or song before it occurs to me to document the whole debacle.
This is a different kind of scholarship. Sloppy, seditious, seductive. Some might say it’s not scholarship at all, just wild flailing for meaning and mostly I’d agree.
When wandering the Staked Plains of Texas with a woman I had met only hours before at Austin Arrivals, a mesquite bush snagged the hem of her dress. We were both inappropriately attired for a spontaneous pilgrimage and looking for signs in everything. What message could we infer from this accostment? The same answer came to her tongue and mine in different languages: opletten. Pay attention. The tree, apparently, agreed. We hiked our skirts higher so the shrubs could have their way with our bare shins and continued our quest. The ethnographers saw initiation in every ritual because one is there—if you pay attention—in every moment.
We were different women when we completed our ordeal. But we were different women with each step along the way too.
This isn’t just a model of ritual, it’s the fractal rhythm of existence.
The alchemists found the beat of this rhythm too. They illuminated it in colour: Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo. Dissolution, purification, revivification. The phases of the Great Work. To transform any matter into its most perfect form, you must first subject it to destruction, then to ablution and finally resurrection. It’s how we make wine: crush, ferment, pour. It’s how we make love… or at least it is the way I do it. They, the alchemists, saw the process in nature as matter rots, rests and returns, and supposed it could be enacted in metal and the human psyche. They were right on at least one count.
I really am trying to abstain from model-making. I know how tempting it is to draw a neat diagram and trim the world to fit. Like a vampire distracted by grains of rice I can become hypnotised by patterns real or imagined… But I just can’t shake this one.
So, this is my advice; if you want a deeper ritual engagement with the world, if you want to create your own ritual art or recognise the ritualistic qualities of your experience, then attune to this rhythm. Reading will not help. Another YouTube lecture won’t do it either. You need to embody the pattern to recognise it and then, like all art forms, you must forget the rules and go with the flow.
What follows is a simple initiatory ritual for witnessing or provoking transformation. Enact it. Improvise. Rinse and Repeat. Let yourself be moved.
You Will Need
A pen
Black origami paper and red origami paper (you know the stuff: square, with one side coloured, the other blank)
A lighter or matches
Water (ideally from a natural source, the pilgrimage to collect this water could become an important part of the ritual itself)
A singing bowl (or recording of singing bowls, or other meditative instrument)
Music that helps you enter a flow state
Preparation
Choose an animal to represent yourself and find an origami pattern for that animal. Practice folding your paper avatar until you can do so without referring to the instructions. This will probably take quite a long time, but it’s necessary.
Take your ontological bearings. Do you expect to transform yourself through enactment of this ritual or is it intended as a celebration of inevitable change? Rites of passage can be approached from either direction either as transformative psychotechnology or ceremonial vessels.
If you’re not in the market for radical personal redesign then consider enacting this ritual with the same spirit in which sand mandalas are drawn and allowed to disperse: as a way to acknowledge the shifting grain of impermanence that our lives consist of.
Nigredo
Separation·Dissolution·Rot
In this phase something is abandoned or annihilated. An old identity or form is destabilised to create space for the new. The old must be witnessed, then destroyed. The sacrifice proposed here is minor, symbolic and voluntary. I’m sure you realise, it's not always this way.
Write
Get comfortable. Turn on some music that helps you enter a flow state and start writing.
On the blank side of the black piece of origami paper pour out your unedited thoughts and feelings. Don’t stop moving your pen until the paper is completely covered.
If you are approaching this ritual as transformative technology then write about the things you want to change. If you are enacting it as a form of witnessing of impermanence then just write, stream of consciousness, whatever is on your mind in that moment.
Once the paper is covered, turn it once anti-clockwise, take a deep breath as if you are coming up for air, and cover it again.
Go deeper this time. Rawer.
As your words become illegible, allow yourself to breach any barrier of respectability or reserve.
Write it out, no matter how weird it gets.
Turn the paper again and go even deeper.
And once more. Write as if no one will ever read this, because they probably won’t. Write as if your life depended upon it even though it doesn't, probably.
Fold
Smooth the paper out and slowly, mindfully begin folding.
Fold the animal you have chosen to represent yourself as carefully as you can. Take your time. Try to infuse your movements with care and affection.
Once your little avatar stands on the table before you take a moment to admire him or her.
They are representative of who you were a moment ago when you were freewriting. Already there is distance between you and your past self. Can you look upon them and their concerns with the same compassion you’d grant to a stranger?
You might want to speak a few words aloud to your avatar, I like this quote from Plato:
Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.
But use whatever words feel appropriate to you, be they spontaneous or prepared.
Burn
Take your paper persona and feed it to the fire, watch that past version of yourself ignite and drift away in wisps of smoke and fragments of white ash.
If you are hoping for transformation, reflect on the state of mind you were in when writing. It probably seemed all consuming when you put pen to paper and now it is changed. It is gone. As surely as the you of a moment ago is gone, as surely as the you of this moment will be gone.
We can try to harness this constant cycle of annihilation and awakening or let it slide past. Either way, it’s happening.
Right now.
Albedo
Transition·Purification·Rest
In this phase we are suspended in the inbetween. We must submit to ablution in some form whether through my gentle suggestions or a more dreadful ordeal. This stage could be over in minutes or may take days of abstention, prayer and wandering. Choose your own adventure.
Wash
Take a bath, shower or just wash your hands and face. Be aware as you do so that you are rinsing old skin cells away.
I recommend using water gathered from a natural source. If you can take a dip in a river or the sea or dance naked in the rain even better. Water has long been used as a metaphor for rebirth; it echoes deep in our consciousness when we emerge from water we are made new.
Even if you only wash your hands and face, change into a fresh set of clothes.
Vibe
Spend some time in meditation either playing or listening to the sound of a singing bowl or other meditative instrument.
Let the sound vibrations resonate throughout your body. Keep your attention on the sound when it drifts away, bring it back. Let it rinse your mind the way the water rinsed your body.
Cense
Intoxicate your senses with a scent. You could rub an aromatic herb between your palms and breathe it in, light an incense stick and waft it around your body or simply go outside and take several deep breaths of fresh air.
This third cleansing is intended to launder your spirit through the medium of breath.
Rubedo
Incorporation·Revivification·Return
In the final phase shit gets really real. Something new emerges and is made manifest in all its clumsy newborn glory. Whatever comes back must be acknowledged and welcomed into life. It’s an excuse to party, a birthday, a reunion, a Friday night. You know what to do.
Write
Return to the comfortable seat you were in before and press play on your flow playlist. Take a few deep breaths.
On your red sheet of origami paper write the date and time.
Then, in one sentence, encapsulate your current state: I am…
Write in capital letters take your time, you will only be here, in this moment writing this one sentence once.
Fold
Fold the paper into your animal of choice. Remember to stay mindful as you fold.
Once the new animal is complete, spend a moment studying it as you did with the previous one.
Speak to it, repeat the words from Plato or improvise. The important thing is to remind yourself via your paper avatar that they too will one day cease to exist.
Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.
Then put the origami animal somewhere you will see it everyday, a windowsill, mantle piece or desk where it will serve as a reminder of impermanence.
Party
In whatever way that does it for you; put on three tracks and dance, open a bottle of something special or light up. Go out with friends… the possibilities are endless.
I can’t tell you exactly how to party, but it’s important that you do. Initiation should end with joyful celebration. This is not an after party, it's part of the ritual so don’t short change yourself.
And one day, when the time is right, take that red animal and burn it.
And fold another…
I get it. Ritual is silly.
It’s difficult to submit to anything, let alone anything arcane. Aside from our contemporary fetishiation of freedom; who has time? Light a candle? I could be scrolling… I mean, saving the world. I mean, making money. I mean, staring into space frozen in the headlights of mortality.
But that’s the move you have to make to experience ritual. You step aside and your actions, thoughts and movements become, in some important way, not your own. Even if you designed the ritual yourself and are occasionally glancing at the index card in the pocket of your dressing gown. Even if you’re skipping steps or improvising. Like a dancer, you submit to the discipline of that ancient rhythm: separation, transition, incorporation. That’s why the old rituals work so well. Because people have been treading the steps for centuries, there are knee prints on the hassocks and you are just another sinner seeking grace.
And the idiosyncrasies, the gurning gargoyles and gaping vulvas carved in stone, the calligraphic hand gestures and choice of scent. All mysterious. At least to your average penitent. They don’t need to be explained or understood; there is power in their inscrutability. Good ritual isn’t amenable to bullet points or flow charts.
You can’t reason your way into ritual or into love or into meaning or, maybe, into anything that’s worth having.
That’s why I’m so hesitant to share this formula with you. Although I believe it is the most useful model of ritual available, it is a model. And models are bullshit.
Ritual is a way out of models, a way into the real.
In the Texan desert that time, after a day of silent fasting and wandering and wondering, we gathered to enact our Albedo. And the focus of our ritual, the brave woman to be staked out at dusk and submit to ablution, emerged wearing a wedding dress, the only white gown she possessed. I laughed. Hysterically and silently for what felt like forever. Writing about it brings that mad rapture back and it feels like I am seeing her again. Radiant and completely incongruous. This was not intended as a love ritual, a union or a commitment. There was no groom averting his eyes before this ceremony.
I was laughing at the absurdity and perfection of it all. I wrote this ritual. I flew to America to help make it happen. I thought I was the architect. After all I had the index cards tucked into the waistband of my white leggings.
My hubris was absurd. That’s why I can’t stop laughing. The ritual had its own volition and apparently a sense of humour. When we were in it, weird shit happened.
These mysteries serve their own mysterious purposes and one less occult: they freak us out. And that cognitive disruption serves to open some inner gates to allow entry to the sublime. Like a dream no matter how you interrogate the details they remain oblique. The Wedding Dress. The Blackthorn. The Worm. Inscrutable symbols that moved us because we couldn’t understand them.
A ritual script is not a ritual. If you have read the ritual above you have not experienced a ritual. The only way to experience ritual is to enact it. If you do and the gates open for you and you witness something you don’t understand. Well, I think you’ve stepped out of the model for a moment, and that’s where the real is.
The ritual in Texas took place over three days, although it’s hard to say when a ritual begins or ends, as every rubedo eventually folds into nigredo. Three days is a long time for weird shit to happen. The ritual I’ve outlined here could be achieved in thirty minutes, but, if you pay attention and submit to the rhythm, I think you’ll find: every moment an initiation.
