Theme

What does it take to feed the communal Clan-fire, and the fire in your own heart? How do the fires of the forge transform you? Step into the story of an ancient clan. Step into the story of community, of the fire that we tend, and the fire that burns deep within us.

Learn more about Brigid and these mythological themes>>

The Diana's Grove style of ritual is a prayer; it is a tool for personal growth, a tool for building community. Participating in this ritual does not require you to believe in any of these archetypes as deities, or to subscribe to any particular religious faith. We will use the basic pattern of a ritual in the tradition of Earth-based spirituality in the inclusive, participatory style of Diana’s Grove. This will offer each participant a chance to be an active co-creator in their own spiritual growth.

Learn to use all your senses to connect to the sacred. Join the energy of your voice and body, to the timeless language of myth. Will you step into the dance of transformation?

"Ritual is a multi-sensorial prayer to lay new patterns in our souls."
--Cynthia Jones, Diana's Grove

Earth-Based Spirituality
Earth-based spirituality honors nature, the natural rhythms and patterns of our world. Ritual honors the natural rhythms of our humanity. Rites of passage such as birth, death, becoming an adult, marriage....the cycles of the land, the sap rising up in the roots of the trees, the flowering of spring, the heat of summer, the fruit of the harvest, and the return of the land to slumber in winter.

Life and natural cycles are sacred. Ritual honors these natural cycles in ourselves and in the land around us. Ritual helps us to connect to mystery, to the unknowable, to the numinous.

Ritual Flow
The basic flow of a Diana's Grove-style ritual includes:

• Gathering--using rhythm, voice, and song, we connect together in community.
• Grounding--we ground into the intention of the ritual, into our bodies, into a sense of the magical. We begin to move away from the mundane world and become present to possibility.
• Casting the Circle--we acknowledge that we are in sacred space, in a safe place created with intention, with community. This is a place between the worlds, where anything is possible, where we can embody myth and step into a spiritual journey.
• Invoking the Elements--we invite the four primal elements of Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and the fifth element, Center, where all the elements meet.
• Invoking Deities/Archetypes--we invite into our circle any deities or archetypes to guide us in our work
• The Work--this is determined by the intention of the ritual. Often there is storytelling, guided meditation, and a chance to embody stepping through a challenge, receiving a gift, and physicalizing your spiritual journey.
• Energy Building--the ritual reaches its peak. Drumming, singing, moving; we each add our physical presence, our energy, to support the work of the ritual. The ritual ends with devoking the deities and elements we invoked, and opening the circle.
• Benediction--with a blessing, we acknowledge what we have done during the ritual.
• Devocations--In reverse order, we thank the energies that have helped us in our work and bid them farewell. We begin to ground back into our bodies.
• Dessert--we continue the grounding process and return to mundane space with dessert, conversation, and the ancient ritual of time spent sharing food in community.

Participatory Ritual Style
The Diana's Grove style of ritual may be different from rituals you have experienced in the past; Grove-style ritual is inclusive, asking for the participation of all.

"Ritual is a container for magic. it is a format, a process, a spell in action. Diana's Grove rituals are based on involvement, on your participation. Involvement gives us the gift of energy. In that circle, we increase our life force by breathing, singing, dancing, drumming, feeling, caring, speaking, dreaming, and interacting."
--Cynthia Jones, from "Myth, Magic, and Community."

In the Diana's Grove ritual style, Air is not summoned with liturgy, but invited in by each of us. Each person in the ritual may be invited to support the invocation of Air....Can you feel the wind blowing? What does it sound like? What are the gifts of Air? Does Air have a color for you? How does Air move? Can you make the motion of Air, or make the sounds of Air? Can you speak the gifts of Air into the circle that they may be present with us for our work tonight?

Stepping into an elemental invocation is a great way to fully participate in ritual; it is a way to more fully and deeply experience any piece of ritual.

Ritual Energetics
When we participate in the ritual, we add our energy. Diana's Grove is an ecstatic ritual tradition, which means that we work throughout the entire ritual to build up energy. We raise energy for the ritual by including every participant in our community. For each ritual, we become a community, a tribe, and we each put our energy forth for to support the intention and the community.

"The ecstatic energy raised by our rituals is for you...Our goal is that you will use the energy that you raise, your energy, in the way that is best for you. Rituals lay new patterns in the soul. They create new pathways in the mind. Magic - the art of changing consciousness at will. The goal of our rituals is to enable you to shape your own consciousness according to your will."
--Cynthia Jones, from "Myth, Magic, and Community."

The ritual will conclude with ecstatic energy raising; our talented energy drummers will drum, we can sing, move our bodies, share eye contact...we share our energy together in community.

“Our intention is that the life force that each of us raises within ourselves can be used to change the repressive patterns of a lifetime. It is that each of us can use our own energy to break the patterns that hold us back and ask us to be less alive and less vital than we can be. Those patterns are held in our muscles. They are held in the cells of our bodies. The energy that each of us raises in ritual moves through us. As it does, we are vitalized. We break free. More life force is available to us to take into the areas of our life that call us. 'That which we seek, if we don't find it within ourselves, we will never find it without.' By growing into ourselves, we have more to contribute to the world.”
--Cynthia Jones

If you have any questions about this ritual tradition, or have never been to a ritual with an earth-based spirituality group, please feel free to contact us. There really are no stupid questions!

Registration details>>

Register now>>