Ceremonial Places

[keokutah]

Where is your favourite place to pray, do ceremony, meditate, etc?
I'm aware most religious people go to church, but what do spiritual people do?
Do you have an altar? Do you prefer to be outdoors or indoors? Do you pray in groups?
I'm curious what people from different backgrounds and different beliefs use for ceremonial places.

I'm asking because I feel nostalgic for ceremony right now. I'm more accustom to my native culture, which is very strict when it comes to finding and placing sacred objects, and the architecture has to be very exact and lined up to the four directions and the galactic grid, and ceremonial places are usually outside close to nature, and fire is very celebrated.

I haven't gone to a sweatlodge or a ceremony for a long time, and it's not like I've needed to since I've been doing spiritual work nearly every day, but I still miss it. So I'm thinking of building a ceremonial place for myself.

You know, I talk to my spirit guides every day so it's not like I need some ceremony to pray, but that's not the point of ceremony anyway, the whole point is to acknowledge all my spirit guides and ancestors and have them all complete the circle and ceremony with me, and something about all the traditions and strict rules really makes it feel special. And for the record, I'm not just following rules that people tell me, I'm following rules that spirit tells me.

Right now, I have a room dedicated for all my spiritual stuff, and there is an altar set up in there.

I started to build a crystal lodge outside with my spirit guide who is a native medicine man, but I never got around to finishing it. He's very particular about where I keep my crystals, and how I set up the altar and how I do anything really lol.

But I'm thinking about how I want to build a covered lodge out in my yard, even though can't have fires here in town. He says it's just not the right time or place for that, but that desire has got me really interested in designs and ideas and most importantly wondering what other people do for ceremonies.

You know... for some reason I can't just sit down anywhere and have a ceremony. Because I feel like some places just aren't "right" for ceremonial purposes. And if the area is ugly or not right feeling to me, it just feels off. Even in my own house, I always get the sense that I can't put my sacred objects in certain places. And also, my spirit guide lectures me. Just the other day, I tried to have a mini ceremony in my living room, because of my ceremony nostalgia, and my spirit guide said no, it was better to have it outside.

The last ceremony I went to was a weird one and I didn't get a good feeling from it. He's this native elder who likes to pretend to be a medicine man, but I don't think he really is. He held his ceremony at someone else's house, in the persons living room, and it just felt off to me. And all the people that went were very egotistical. I did not feel comfortable there at all.

I haven't been to many new age ceremonies. I've gone to this white woman's house more than once with a bunch of other people, for a ceremony which I actually got a really good feeling from and had a pretty powerful experience at, and she had sort of adopted some native customs, but it was more Wiccan or pagan or whatever you call it, lots of singing about goddesses. But there was a prayer round, a gratitude round, and afterward we all chose an oracle card. But anyway, she hosts her ceremonies in her house, and even though her house didn't seem to be the right place, it actually felt alright. It was more like she was making due with what she had, and it worked.

Well anyways, I'd love to hear about your experiences with ceremonies, where you like to pray at, etc what works for you... like I said my main experiences have been with native customs so I'm interested to hear about other customs and what not

[linnie]

Hello, keokutah :)

I'm not one for doing ceremony in groups, as a rule. I guess that's because, whatever religion people (who I love and admire) adhere to, there most often seems to be some sort of fixed guidelines re what is to be recited, or at what time or etc, when dealing with group ceremony.

That's fine for those who feel greater comfort with a more directed way, but, to me, communicating with Spirit is intensely personal.

If I had to group myself with any ideology, it would be NA indigenous spirituality with a chunk of Buddhist teachings blended in... If I better understood Druidism it may well be something I could enjoy, too, being an Earth-based spiritual way of being..

But, whatever I call myself, I don't pray at a particular time of a particular day, being happier to give thanks when I'm simply in Nature, and a bird visits me, or the sunset lighting up the clouds fills my heart, or a whale glides past the cave I'm sitting in.

Hawk Littlejohn, Cherokee Medicine Man and gentle wise soul, said "My flute is my prayer", and that is my truth, also.

I feel the energy of places, as you do, and understand that there are places where the energy simply isn't pure and clear to match the intention of ceremony... However, since I've adopted the NA flute as my dear friend and as a tool of healing and prayer, I believe it is almost my duty to flute in places where the energy needs healing... Because, to me, healing is ceremony, and ceremony is healing...

I think that helping to bring about healing, not in a "miracles" way, but through simply creating a peaceful and calm space for those who are finding Life especially challenging, has become my 'spirituality', in a way.

I am not a Christian, and I am not comfortable being aligned with a church or organisation of any type, but from deep down in my earlier childhood psyche a song floated up around my mid-century birthday... "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for him..." I am convinced that it entered my head at Sunday school, before I turned 7 years old, but no-one I've met since knows that song... just me...

Very closely related to that little song is, I think, St Francis of Assisi's Prayer.. Again, seemingly very Christian, but, really, take out the first word, and the rest is relevant to people of any persuasion... and that Prayer, so widely known, feels like it is speaking to me personally ☺

So, I'm not Christian, nor am I happy to call myself anything else that binds me too tightly to any given mass of people, but I think that, when we speak of being the Light, or of bringing that Light to others, its meaning can be as simple as reaching out to people who are worse off than us... who need buoying up...

Those people are anywhere, so it follows that my ceremony can be anywhere ☺

I’ve been invited to play my flute at a friend’s mother’s wake, at a friend’s bedside as he was dying, at a couple of 70th birthdays, at various Peace events, at the opening of a local labyrinth, in a cabaret night shared with 30 beautiful Aboriginal women from the heart of my country, and etc… and every single time I’ve played where others can hear, people comment, and ask for more, and thank me, and want to know more about the beautiful instrument… And there isn’t room for ego, because I’m not a musician… I’m just someone who heard and fell in love with the North American style flute, and now play it with all of my heart…

Beyond that, though, I sit on the rock at the centre of my labyrinth, leaving herbs that I picked on the way in, or playing flute, or chanting… and I smudge with white sage to let that beautiful healing energy flow wherever it wants to flow…

That is a long winded way of saying that I keep it personal, and keep it simple… and wherever there is the need, that is where I do my ceremony… ☺ I hope you can find a place that feels right to you…

Anywhere that's appropriate really.

Yes I have an altar before which I do certain observances. It's very small. It has been used for more active magic and meditation. In my flat it's a small (once-upon-a-time) TV table. At my parents' it's a shelf. I'm no longer big into ritual but like to segregate some practices from mundane life. As the magicians say, psychodrama to suspend (mundane) reality.

♥