The Art of Ceremony.

Ceremony seems to be as old as we are.

Over the last fifteen years, it has become a more significant and powerful part of my own life.

I have been the master of ceremonies at charity balls. I have officiated a wedding. I have run and held ceremonial sound spaces, cacao spaces, psychedelic plant spaces.

What is a ceremony?

We know one when we see one; defining one can be tricky.

What separates ritual from ceremony?

We could start by saying that a ritual is a meaningful, repeatable act. Lighting a candle before you have a bath. The ritual amplifies the significance of the act.

A ceremony is an orientating container. It creates a space to direct intention and attention, and amplify the meaning, potency and significance of the acts taken within.

At a wedding, the exchanging of rings is a ritual; the walking down the aisle, a ritual. The wedding ceremony itself is the container for these rituals to find their expression.

All in the service of imbuing the act of union with reverence, meaning, significance and celebration. Everyone present is orientated by the ceremony.

A wedding without ceremony is a contractual agreement.

A funeral without ceremony is just the disposing of a body.

One of the places where the purpose and impact of ceremony became much more visceral for me was in plant medicine ceremonies.

Because the “stakes are raised,” if you will.

My sensitivity is heightened. The amount of novelty being met increases. There is greater uncertainty, vulnerability and exposure to the unknown.

Inside these conditions, the quality, integrity and necessity of the ceremony become blatantly obvious.

Plant Medicine Ceremony

Over the last ten years, plants traditionally used in indigenous and tribal cultures, such as Ayahuasca (the Sacred Vine of the Amazon) and Wachuma (the ‘San Pedro’ Cactus of the Andes), have been infiltrating popular culture.

The medicinal value of these plants is somewhat different to what we have come to understand as medicine in the modern West. Our perception of medicine is quite strongly rooted in pharmacological, biochemical modalities. Which is to say, the material effect a substance has on our biology.

While there is evidence of biological effects occurring directly from the chemistry of these plants, they are also used for healing through encounter and experience.

By which I mean, rather than reducing the issue down to the level of the cells, plant medicine ceremonies aim to work at the level of consciousness and spirit, that which animates the body. It could also be said that the action is upon the psyche.

The way I would best describe my experience is that these plants loosen some of the constraints we place over reality.

Reality is an incredibly complex landscape. At any given moment, vastly more information is available to us than we can consciously process. We constrain that complexity so that we can participate more easily.

We constrain our reality to determine what we will participate in.

But we also constrain ourselves, to determine how we will participate. How we will relate to life, and who we will show up as.

In this process, aspects of our personal reality can be cast into the shadows of our unconscious. Aspects of our nature can be repressed.

So we filter down the reality around us, and we filter down the reality within us.

These are reasonable functions. The unfiltered world around us would be overwhelming.

My son is six years old. He is learning that he can’t act on every impulse. He may wish to punch his one-year-old sister when she snatches something from him. He is learning to filter that impulse.

We filter the world coming in.

We filter ourselves going out.

So when you enter into a plant medicine ceremony, you can suddenly find yourself flooded with information that would ordinarily be constrained. This ‘awakening’ can be heavenly, or sheer hell, and swing between the two from one moment to the next.

And in this state, the function of the ceremony reveals itself.

The ceremony provides a contextualising framework.

It offers constraints and creates a container.

A structure through which the non-structure can be traversed.

Well held, it provides a sense of safety and established customs to help navigate the encounter. It creates the conditions for the narrative arc of the experience to materialise.

If the holding is “leaky”, if the space lacks integrity, the attention is vacant, the intentions muddy, or there is an egoic attachment to outcomes, this can be felt very strongly and can have detrimental effects.

This applies to all ceremonies. I have held cacao ceremonies, also involving a plant with medicinal value, but without the psychedelic. Sound bath spaces, weddings. The same principles apply, just in different contexts.

Some of the most important ingredients in the recipe of a well-conducted ceremony:

Reverence: To hold a ceremony is to say this is something that deserves special attention, this is sacred. That term may be off-putting to some, but fundamentally, it describes something important enough to require a different kind of attention than that of the everyday moment. Approaching something with reverence is to approach something with respect, gratitude and humility.

Intention: The act of a ceremony calls us to be intentional. It’s a purposeful space; it’s clear that there is a specific reason that you are entering into the space: to sanctify a marriage, to honour someone’s passing, to work with a special plant, to heal, to celebrate. Intention is the primary orientating device that informs the rest of the container.

Boundaries: These are vital to the structure that allows for healthy, organic unfolding.

Some boundaries are geographic:

This is where the ceremony is taking place.

This is where the toilets are.

Some boundaries are relational:

You may kiss the bride.

Please don’t touch or interrupt other participants during these times.

This is a place of non-judgement.

This is a space where you have permission to express whatever you need.

Some boundaries are temporal:

The ceremony starts at 11 and goes for five hours.

The boundaries provide the walls of the container. They create the safety and distinction between what is the ceremony and what is not. They are informed by, and supportive of, the intention.

Presence: To be present is to bring our attention to what is before us. To be with that which is here. If the shaman is daydreaming, he may neglect a participant in need of help. If the bride is thinking about her honeymoon, she might not feel the commitment of the groom.

Responsive Surrender: This may feel like an oxymoron. A ceremony of any kind has a life of its own, and it follows its own path to fulfilment of the intention. It is important to trust, to accept, but not to fall into passivity. To be surrendered to the process, but listening to where you are called to act to support its unfolding.

Intention gives ceremony direction. Surrender allows it to find its path.

Reverence establishes significance.
Intention establishes orientation.
Boundaries establish the container.
Presence establishes attention.
Responsive surrender allows emergence.

Why am I telling you all this?

Ceremonies have emerged across cultures over thousands of years, serving important functions for our species. In the modern world, I wonder if we have lost some of our relationship with ceremony. In some places it has disappeared; in others, perhaps the performance remains, but is disconnected from the deeper function or meaning.

One of the most important functions of ceremony seems to be helping us cross thresholds, transcending what was, to become something else. Going from un-wed to wed, from alive to dead, from being a student to being a graduate, crossing from normal consciousness into altered.

Across cultures, rites of passage have been utilised. These are rituals and ceremonies that help members of the tribe to mature in a healthy way. ‘You are no longer a child, you have transcended into a young man.’ ‘You are no longer a young man, you are now an adult.’

The process is a line in the sand that allows for an embodied and psychological transition from one state into the next, felt internally, witnessed externally.

Without these demarcations, everything blends together and we end up snagged in what was, without fully entering into what is.

Perhaps leaving adults that haven’t fully left childhood.

Perhaps marriages still operating like daters.

Perhaps people having profound altered-state revelations without embodying what was revealed.

We haven’t stopped crossing thresholds. We move home, we enter puberty, we menstruate for the first time, we get sick, we divorce, we change careers, we have children, we migrate, we enter menopause, we retire.

But do we integrate?

Do we heal?

Does all of us cross over?

Or is some of us left in the past?

Until the next time,

Peace and Love
Alex