Clasping my hands together. Muttering words filled with meaning I don’t consider, as I chant them as fast as an army recruit doing push-ups. Walking in a circle, my hands linked with others as we move together. Singing the same words I chanted in a chamber, where they echo, looking up at art, meant to express the divine. Offering any number of things on an altar as an act of sacrifice.
These are just a number of things which can be part of a ritual.
Rituals offer insight into a person, a place, or a culture. Rituals re-imagined can develop a particular individual, or an entire world.
A ritual I create reveals a lot of my characters performing it, or the world blossoming in my imagination where the ritual takes place.
Rituals can design and focus magic. Rituals can shape a person’s life. I often find myself falling back upon ritual as I stumble, unable to move forward.
Rituals can also trap people, leaving them unable to act beyond the boundaries of a ritual. This trap, how I react to it, how my characters react to it, offers a curious form of inspiration. Such a trap makes me question the ritual, wondering how it became a trap.
There are richly beautiful rituals, as well as fun ones. Parties or celebrations have expanded from rituals. Scary rituals may fill us with a measure of dread, or dull ones we cannot get away from.
Within any of these rituals, we may find a poem, a story, or a comic skit coming to us. We may find comfort, beauty, a feeling of elevation, like we’re part of something greater. We may find ourselves trapped in a rhythm, unable to free ourselves, until we take a closer look at the ritual trapping us.
Have you ever found expression within a ritual, dear reader? Have you ever been stuck within one?