by Mark Williams
Why is liturgy important? Words have weight. When we use them in ritual, though not physical things, they are as much a part of that rite as the tools we use and offerings we bring. Indeed, they are tools and offerings. And they are also more than that, because they help to fashion the sacred space, bringing images to the forefront of the mind that allow the soul to open. Ritual words pass through the mind with friction or frictionlessness. A priestess or priest should be able to shape her words to create places where the mind snags and pauses, or where it moves swiftly and smoothly. For example, at a Samhain ritual, perhaps the fire at the centre of the circle will not light. It sizzles damply. People look around, grin sheepishly, realise they are cold, in a wet autumn wood at night. The sense of the sacred and mysterious is dissipating fast. The priestess might then indicate that no further attempt is to be made to light the fire, and say: 'We turn our minds to the flames of the candles that outline this sacred space, like fireflies, like embers. We honour the spirits of fire who burn in them - they have chosen not to burn at the centre of our circle. So we sink into the darkness of winter, the cold, the damp, into the Cailleach's embrace...' By doing so, she redirects the energy of the Grove back toward the sacred. Or in another example, also at Samhain, we could imagine a Grove is in high spirits as they wander towards the sacred space for the ritual, with lots of laughter and gossip. The lighthearted atmosphere persists as the circle is cast. The priestess could call for a period of silence, and make it last rather longer than most people are comfortable with. Then she could say something like: 'Here on this first night of Winter, woven with dark trees, with the smell of decay about us, take a moment to think of this: that each year of your life, you live through, unknowingly, the date of your death...' That eerie thought is guaranteed to bring most people up sharp, spreading seriousness and introspection through the Grove. In each case, a certain register and cadence of language has been used to direct the rite and to hold it.
I think that liturgy is one way for the people involved in a rite to shape its flow, to colour the experience with depth and emotional texture. It also partakes of that great idea of Celtic (and wider ancient Indo-European) culture: the primacy and power of the spoken word. According to this conception, words are things, with physical power of their own; our own word 'poet', for the Greek poietes, means literally 'a maker'. The Welsh word prydu, 'to versify', means literrally 'to shape', and is related to the Irish word cruth, 'shape, appearance'. The Anglo-Saxons called poets word-smiths. In all of these terms you have the metaphor that making poetry is like shaping or crafting a physical object. So we honour our ancestors by respecting the power of words. The poet Anne Sexton captures this sacramental, physical aspect of the poet's craft when she writes:
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Liturgy for me means poetry, or prose-poetry. It is a heightened or elevated form of speech, full of metaphor. I strongly believe that it is essential that each word is considered, each phrase shaped into something beautiful. Even if a ritual involves people expressing their truths spontaneously, in their own words, a frame of thought-out liturgy needs to be in place to keep the energy of those words from simply evaporating. So, for example, in ritual you don't talk about going to Asda's or chattily summarise the plot of a favourite book. (A guest in my Grove once did precisely that. They narrowly avoided being murdered.) Metaphor is the key to poetic speech, and this needs to be handled with some care and sensitivity. I've argued elsewhere that metaphor, by likening two unlike things, has the power to unconceal the being of things. When a poetic metaphor, an image, sharpens and glints in the mind, our limited conceptions can be broken open, and a new, stranger, wilder understanding can be born. With images of nature, such as might be used in ritual, we can shatter our jaded habitual conceptions of the world around us and see with sight suddenly cleansed. And not just see but feel, too, and truly enter in to what it might be like to be a completely different creature, or a place, or a time. Through its strangeness, as poetic image frees us from the burden of having to impose meaning. Instead we have to let the image reverberate inside us, to let its being resonate. This, truly, is at the heart of the bardic arts. Some people may be able to expand their perceptions instantly and at will: the seer, the natural shaman, whose spirit is tethered only lightly to their body. For the rest of us, we need metaphor and simile to begin the process of soul-opening. Hundreds of examples suggest themselves, but here is one. At Alban Elfed, we often recite a poem by Ted Hughes about Autumn, which starts with the verse:
There came a day that caught the summer
Wrung its neck
Plucked it
And ate it.
It's a brilliant, brutal image, capturing half-a-dozen things in four lines. There's the poignant suddeness of the end of summer, that always-unexpected day when suddenly you wake up and summer's gone, as though something had crept up behind it and snaffled its head into a bag... and there's autumnal beginning of the hunting season that sustained our ancestors... and the coldness of approaching winter, like a sly predator's claws... and the satisfied, slightly sinister fullness of Autumn, like a full-fed, unsentimental hunter after a gamey pot-roast. As we recite this dense, playful poem, all these images constellate in the mind, opening us to the season and the spirits of place and time.
However, metaphor needs to be used sparingly. Many extraordinary poems are too shaggy with metaphor for a first-time listener to absorb in a sacred situation. As we're not on the whole an oral culture, it's hard for us to absorb complicated imagery through the ear. We just aren't trained to listen to poems. Images need to go from the ear down into the heart without getting stuck in a backlog in the brain. This is why I will be talking later about the techniques of oral poetry, and why Pagans should use them in ritual.
Pagan Poetry
I'm going to move on now to looking at features of contemporary Pagan liturgy that I personally feel work well or not so well. There are a very few pieces of famous Neopagan poetry that have received wide currency; the most obvious is of course Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess, which remains a staple of coven-Wiccan liturgy, and has been lightly adapted to more overtly countercultural American Wicca by Starhawk. It still holds up pretty well, fifty years on:
Listen to the words of the Great Mother, who was of old also called amongst men Artemis, Astarte, Diana, Melusine, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Dana, Arianrhod, Isis, Bride and by many other names:
Whenever you have need of anything, once in a month, and better it be when the Moon is full, then shall you gather in some secret place and adore the spirit of Me, who am Queen of all Witcheries.
There shall you assemble ye who are fain to learn all sorcery, yet have not won its deepest secrets; to these will I teach things that are yet unknown. And you shall be free from slavery, and as a sign that you be really free you shall be naked in your rites. And you shall dance, sing, feast, make music and love all in my praise; for mine is the ecstasy of the spirit, and mine also is joy on Earth, for my law is love unto all beings.
Keep pure your highest ideal, strive ever towards it; let naught stop you or turn you aside, for mine is the secret door which opens upon the door of youth. And mine is the cup of the wine of life and the Cauldron of Cerridwen, which is the Holy Grail of Immortality.
I am the gracious Goddess who gives the gift of joy unto the heart of man, upon Earth I give knowledge of the Spirit eternal, and beyond death I give peace and freedom and reunion with those who have gone before; nor do I demand sacrifice, for behold I am the Mother of all living, and my love is poured out upon the Earth.
Hear ye the words of the Star Goddess, She in the dust of whose feet are the hosts of Heaven, whose body encircles the universe.
I who am beauty of the green Earth and the white Moon amongst the stars. And the mystery of the waters, and the desire of the heart of man, call unto thy soul. Arise and come unto me, for I am the souls of Nature who gives life to the universe.
From me all things procees, and unto me all things must return. And before my face, beloved of Gods and men, thine inmost divine self shall be enfolded in the rapture of the infinte.
Let my worship be with the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
And you who thinks to seek for me, know thy seeking and yearning shall avail you not, unless you know the mystery, that if that which you seek you find not within thee, you will never find it without thee. Behold I have been with you from the beginning and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
There's the odd bit of unfortunate, clotted diction here. Especially bad is 'the cup of the wine of life (metaphor one) that's also the cauldron of Ceridwen (metaphor two, with a bit of Welsh myth thrown in) that is also the Holy Grail of Immortality', (metaphor three, with the Christian legend of the Grail being paganised, as was fashionable in the 40's, thanks to Jesse Weston's From Ritual to Romance.) There's also the awful, proto-New Age twaddle of 'Let thy innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite.' Er, I would if I had the faintest idea of what it meant.
But what works well in this much-loved text? It has a King James sonority, even if the use of 'thou/you' is all over the place. It's full of parallel phrases ('seeking and yearning', 'Arise and come') which are characteristic of Hebrew poetry and thus seem solemn to us, as we are used to it through the Bible. There are old-fashioned words ('fain', 'unto', 'of old') which again give it a reverent air. It shows a palpable sincerity and flashes of real poetry, such as the gorgeous rhythm, parallelism and alliteration of 'in the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven, whose body encircles the universe'. This can blind us to the fact that not only is almost none of it really original, being an amalgam of Crowley, the fraudulent Vangelo, the speech of Isis from Apuleius' The Golden Ass, with a whiff of St Augustine (!), but also glosses over the issue of why should modern Pagans want such churchy liturgy? For all its counter-cultural content, the style and structure of the Charge is pure High Anglican.
We can take a few things away from this - the Charge works so well on the ear because of its solemn parallelisms, hypnotic alliteration and avoidance of jarringly contemporary words. In its seamless, incantatory segues I find strong rhythmic control. These are some rules of thumb that can be applied to any liturgy we write.
And now from Wiccan High-Anglicanism to pure Edward Lear: bad liturgy. I'll risk a slap and automatically include everything by Silver Ravenwolf and her clichéd, clumsy cohorts. Their lack of feeling for language is everywhere in their trite, tinny lyrics. Here's a shocker:
Nine woods in the cauldron go,
Burn them fast and burn them slow.
Elder be the Lady's tree,
Burn it not or cursed you'll be.
When the Wheel begins to turn,
Let the Beltane fire's burn.
When the Wheel has turned to Yule,
Light the Log and the Horned One rules.
Heed ye Flower, Bush, and Tree;
By the Lady, Blessed Be.
This is riddled with cliché and is stuck in trundling rhyming couplets. Syntax is bent to find the rhyme-scheme ('burn it not or cursed you'll be'). Presumably this is meant to sound archaic and incantatory. The awful, clunky bathos of 'light the log' left me ready to fall down, foaming at the mouth. Best avoided.
Models for Pagan Liturgy
In our quest for models to learn from, where should we go? I personally have three types of material that I find indispensible in writing liturgy, and I should stress that this is not intended to be in any way prescriptive. First, I read a lot of contemporary poetry by Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Oswald, and others, from whom I have no qualms about begging, borrowing, or stealing when writing ritual. It can also give wonderful texture to a rite if you choose to incorporate a long piece of poetry. (In my Grove, the opening of T.S. Eliot's 'Little Gidding' from The Four Quartets has become a standard feature of the Imbolc ritual, for example.) Second, we use works with roots in oral culture, such as Old English poetry, sometimes early medieval Celtic poetry, and especially the amazing Finnish epic The Kalevala, of which more later. Finally, bits of Christian liturgy, especially that of Greek Orthodoxy, by which I am fascinated, if mystified. I propose to briefly discuss a few passages from the above categories, and show how I personally would weave them into a rite.
Let's start with the least obvious influence: Orthodox liturgy. All I take from this is a certain clarity, a control of rhythm and pace, and an ability to use metaphor powerfully but with control. Listen to this fragment of the Byzantine Liturgy, a hymn to the Virgin Mary:
Priest: Rejoice, unfading rose. Rejoice, the only one who budded forth the unfading apple. Rejoice, birthgiver of the aromatic balm of the King of all. Rejoice, O Bride unwedded, the world's salvation.
Congregation: Most Holy Birthgiver of God, save us.
Priest: Rejoice, treasury of purity, through whom we have risen from our fall. Rejoice, O Lady, sweetsmelling lily that sends forth its fragrant scent to the faithful. Rejoice, aromatic incense and precious oil of myrrh.
Congregation: Mostholy Birthgiver of God, save us.
Priest: Rejoice, untilled land which has sprouted the divine ear of wheat. Rejoice, living table which has held the bread of life. Rejoice, O Lady, never-empty font of living water.
It's surreal, dizzying. In enraptured metaphors, the text circles back again and again to these twin paradoxes: the Virgin who conceives a child, and the tiny infant who is also God. It's clear, beautifully mystical, and rhythmic, using refrains and repetition.
Now for a bit from The Kalevala. This long poem or set of poems was collected in Finland in the 19th century by Elias Lönnrot, and it is an amazing insight into an oral culture with lots of pagan roots. Listen to its astonishing, rocking, back-and-forth opening:
There are many other legends,
Incantations that were taught me,
That I found along the wayside,
Gathered in the fragrant copses,
Blown me from the forest branches,
Culled among the plumes of pine-trees,
Scented from the vines and flowers,
Whispered to me as I followed
Flocks in land of honeyed meadows,
Over hillocks green and golden,
After sable-haired Murikki,
And the many-colored Kimmo.
Many runes the cold has told me,
Many lays the rain has brought me,
Other songs the winds have sung me;
Many birds from many forests,
Oft have sung me lays in concord
Waves of sea, and ocean billows,
Music from the many waters,
Music from the whole creation,
Oft have been my guide and master.
Sentences the trees created,
Rolled together into bundles,
Moved them to my ancient dwelling,
On the sledges to my cottage,
Tied them to my garret rafters,
Hung them on my dwelling-portals,
Laid them in a chest of boxes,
Boxes lined with shining copper.
There is extreme purity of image here, a fierce simplicity. This is coupled with a strong rhythm, and a habit of paralleling phrases, as we saw in the Charge and in the piece of Orthodox liturgy; often they are in two sets of two here. Nature imagery is everywhere, richly woven into the pulsing fabric of this essential oral poetry, designed to be sung by two voices alternating.
Finally, a fragment by Geoffrey Hill, from a poem in which the poet sits in his late-summer garden, reflecting on his comfortable life in a world in which there has been, and is, such horror. The smell of bonfires makes him think of Auschwitz.
September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough.
Rich imagery here, coupled with thoughtful reflection. So what can we do with all this? I might put the lessons of all three of these together, and produce something workaday to open an evening Alban Elfed ritual like the following:
We gather at the gate of autumn,
Under eaves and apple-branches,
In this meadow filled with grasses,
In these fields rich with twilight.
Refrain: Year’s sunset, time of harvest.
Day and night are standing equal,
Summer sinking into darkness.
Now the birds are heading southward,
Smoke of fires drifting fragrant;
Now berries cluster in the brambles,
Rosehips glinting in the shadows.
Year’s sunset, time of harvest.
I draw my words from deeps of dewfall,
From honey-depths at harvestide;
In the richness of our gathering,
Here amid the hosts of hazels...
Year’s sunset, time of harvest etc.
I'd use something like that to set the scene at the opening of the ritual, after calling the Quarters and invoking the Ancestors. It could easily be divided up into an antiphonal piece with a Priest and Priestess reciting alternating lines. Then I would use a different verse-form, or piece of prose-poetry, to call to the Gods of Harvest, as the rocking Hiawatha-rhythm of the Kalevala gets rather addictive. Prose-poetry is very good for 'setting the scene' of a ritual, or making an invocation. Here is an example for Imbolc from my Grove:
We are at the very beginning of Spring. Snowdrops are flowering, in bitter cold. The dawns are fiery in the molten sky. The first celandines turn their faces to mirror the young sun. Frost-scoured, the trees bend for Winter’s absolution. The elms begin their purple flowering, hot stamens flare, warm purple-blue, blushing into orange. And the witch-hazel is in full, flagrant blaze. It is the time of Brighid, the Fostermother, the Fire-keeper... Speak to us out of the burning bush, O Brighid. Tell us that the icy world will catch and draw flame under this skin of bone. Work in us your alchemy of spring. Make fire burn on winter water, as the willows draw up the river and distill its grey into the malt of their glow, a scald of gold against the sky.
What you end up with is ritual language that is considered, and a form of offering in itself.
Some Personal Watchwords
I make no claims that the above is great liturgy. But it is evocative, rhythmic, ornamented with internal rhyme and alliteration, and has parallel phrases that have a hypnotic effect. Also it avoids complex and over-contemporary or colloquial words. The latter is crucial when writing liturgy. I once did ritual with someone who repeatedly invoked the 'buzz' and 'positiveness' of the element of fire, which killed the inspiration of the words stone dead. Ritual has to be fashioned of very simple, primordial things: fire, light, water, smoke, earth, bread. The same goes for ritual language. In the same way you don't put your digital camera on the altar, you don't overuse technical terms coming from Greek or Latin in liturgy. In ritual I even avoid the following very common ones: 'solstice', 'equinox', 'inspiration', 'poignant', 'relevance', and 'heritage', which I think get rather overused. Instead of 'Grant us your inspiration!' I'd say 'Burn in our hearts'. It's usually a good idea to avoid complex abstractions and go for things that are strong and physical. A rigorous avoidance of cliche is also vital. Lastly, alliteration and rhyme in liturgy are like chilli in cooking: a few good pinches adds flavour and a 'kick': too much can become a blunt instrument. As always, experimentation is the best way - read lots of poetry, seek what works for you. If you like a line or an image or a rhyme, steal it (though acknowledge it if you publish it.) After a few years, much of my Grove's rites are stored in my head, which means that it becomes possible to create extempore liturgy without 'umms' and with vivid, powerful imagery. To me, ritual framed in supple, living language is one of the best offerings we can make to our gods and ancestors.
