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The Place of Ritual


If we understand the where of ritual we are closer to understanding the why of ritual. That is, understanding where ritual takes place is a key to understanding the place ritual takes. The intent of this essay is to explain both of these; the why in terms of the where.

Obviously a ritual is celebrated in a physical location, which has certain physical characteristics. It has shape and size, it is oriented in a particular direction (or not), it contains and may be marked out by objects. None of this is an accident, or, if it is, it is an accident with some serious repercussions. The material has its own importance, and the physical aspects of ritual space affect the meanings of that space as well.

There are other aspects of sacred space, however, and they include the ritual and the cosmic. The ritual aspect is made up not only of the acts and words by which the physical space is made divine, but the ways in which the physical aspects of the space interrelate. Each physical aspect has a ritual effect, and each of the relationships between physical aspects has a ritual effect. The physical aspects of a place interact just as much as the ritual’s participants do.

The cosmic aspect might also be called the mythical aspect. It addresses the way the physical and ritual aspects relate to the mythical organization of the universe.

When seen as an organized whole, the Universe (at least the ordered part of it) is called the Cosmos. The great Cosmos out there is called the Macrocosm, the "big Cosmos." It is common in many religious and magical traditions to also posit a Microcosm – the "little Cosmos." This is the essence of each human being, the soul if you will. Microcosm and macrocosm are generally seen to be the same thing in some way. In some traditions, such as Upaniṣadic Hinduism, they are believed to be identical.

Indo-European Paganism, though, is about relationships rather than identity. From the Indo-European (IE) point of view the elements of the microcosm are not the same as the macrocosm, but they correspond in a one to one manner to them. In mathematical terms, the microcosm maps onto the macrocosm. For those who are mathematically challenged, a more literal image might help. A map (at least a good map) relates precisely to that which it represents, but its ink and paper are not the stones and soil of the land mapped. A map thus both is and is not the thing mapped. The two stand in relation to each other.

Besides a macrocosm and a microcosm we can define a mesocosm -- a "between/middle Cosmos." The exact nature of this will vary with our needs; it can fall anywhere between the two extremes, and there is a whole lot of room between them. Just as microcosm and macrocosm map onto each other, the mesocosm, lying between them, maps both ways. What I will be arguing in this essay is that ritual space is a mesocosm, mapping onto the microcosm (us) and the macrocosm (everything), and that this is at the very heart of ritual.

How is sacred space laid out, and in what way does it fulfill its role as defining a mesocosm in which ultimately meaningful acts might take place?

The first characteristic of sacred space is that it is sacred. To be sacred is to be cut off. Most IE words used to describe sacred space derive from roots conveying the meaning "to cut" – templum, temenos, ve -- the sacred is that which is cut off.

Cut off from what? If a sacred space is to be a Cosmos, it must be cut off from Chaos. Not only is it ordered, but this order is defined in relation to disorder. An essential act when we mark out Cosmos is defining it by what it’s not.

The physical space of a ritual is, in IE religion, generally square or rectangular – the Romano-Celtic temples and Celtic Viereckschanzen, Roman templa and Greek temenos, Zoroastrian pawis. A square or rectangle is oriented towards the four spatial directions; it maps the macrocosm, which is oriented in this way. It is also oriented towards the four personal directions (front/back, left/right) -- it maps the microcosm. The mesocosm of space ordered in this way thus maps in both directions, forming a link between them. This linking is expressed in language, as in the etymological connection between "right" and "south" -- compare Latin dexter, "right," with Sanskrit daḳiṇā, "south," both coming from Proto-IE *deks-, "right." Microcosm and macrocosm are here defined by the same terms.

A square space clearly represents the balance expressed by this connection. It is the same in each of the four directions. But what of a rectangular one?

First, rectangular ones offer a practical advantage, and even the most important of symbols must sometimes bow to practicality. A temple (a house for the gods) can be built at one end of a rectangle with room for people to gather at the other.

I would like to suggest a symbolic meaning as well. IE cosmology includes an axis mundi, a center of the universe about which all is organized. This is expressed mythically in the image of the Well and the Tree. The Well extends downward and the Tree extends upward, forming together the axis mundi, the pillar about which the Cosmos turns. The world extends out from this point of joining.

Ritually one would expect to find the same thing. It’s rather difficult for a physical well and tree to literally exist at the same spot, though. But for either of them to be in the exact center of the space would be to make it look like it was the one that was really the axis mundi, exalting it at the expense of the other. The physical representations of the axis mundi must therefore be separated, with the Tree’s representative on one side of the center, and the Well’s representative on the other. They will retain their status as centers if they are on one of the space’s centerlines. The connection between "south" and "right" shows that the standard IE orientation is towards the east, so the east/west axis is the one that would be appropriate; facing east would be to see the Tree and Well as if they were in the center together. Choosing that axis also allows for some additional symbolism -- the tree in the east (where the sun comes up) and the well in the west (where the sun goes down). Although not physically in the center, these two, balanced about that center along the primary central line, are ritually in the center.

I will talk more about the center and what goes on there in a physical and ritual sense later. I would now like to turn back to the sacred.

Since the sacred cuts off, it is a border. It defines the distinction between that which is inside and that which is outside. Borders must be defined. A sacred border must be marked physically, established ritually, and reflect a mythical reality.

The mythical reality is first that the Cosmos is itself bounded. (Interestingly enough, the current scientific view of the universe is that it is infinite but bounded.) As implied before when discussing the nature of the sacred, the bounding, the border, is between Cosmos and Chaos, between the Macrocosm and Disorder. Everything that does not fit the pattern is kept out.

Second, this border is conceived in IE thought as formed of water. This water is one of the three worlds -- land, sky, and sea -- which compose the IE universe. Cosmos is encircled by, contained within, the unordered waters of Chaos. "Beyond here there be dragons" -- and dragons are spirits of Chaos, lurking in the depths.

A similar division is found in the microcosm. A person is clearly bounded. This bounding is done with skin and air rather than water, of course, but there is plenty of history of the metaphor of "the ocean of air" which shows a connection in thought between air and sea.

With these two mythical aspects in mind -- the Cosmos is bounded and it is bounded by water -- we can now turn to the ritual and physical aspects. How is such a border between sacred space (Cosmos) and non-sacred space (Chaos) established?

When researching IE rituals for creating sacred space, I was surprised to find that they were in one way similar to those found in Wicca and Ceremonial Magic -- they involved cutting. I suppose I should not have been too surprised, since the symbol is, after all, pretty obvious. Emain Macha was marked out with a brooch pin. Zealand was ploughed around to separate it from the mainland. Romulus created the sacred borders of Rome by ploughing. Temporary pawis are marked with a knife. The Vedic sacrificial ground is laid out by ploughing. Sacred space is literally cut into existence.

The evidence suggests ploughing as the canonical method in myth. This is not always possible in ritual, so substitutes are found, such as the Zoroastrian knife. What matters is that the implement be sharp and metal (the better to cut with). I myself use the shovel with which I turn over my garden in the spring -- my plough.

All of this leads us to the physical aspect. You have to be able to see where your Cosmos ends, in this way bringing the visual sense into the ritual. In a permanent sacred space this would be quite simple. Walls of earth, wood, or stone could be built, or pillars placed at intervals, perhaps with a rope or chain between them to enclose your space.

Temporary space is not that much harder to mark. Its corners can be shown with poles or rocks, which might also be placed at intervals along the border. For added definition, cord or ribbon can be strung from pole to pole.

Walls and cords are hard to pass through. That is the whole point. The border of sacred space is itself sacred. It is a dangerous thing, not to be crossed with impunity. Remus, to show his contempt for the walls Romulus had made, jumped over them. He was struck dead. If you cross sacred boundaries, will you be struck dead? Of course not. What will happen will be worse. You will have undone the border's sacred nature. You will have dissolved the sacrality of your space and the rest of your ritual will take place in mundane space. You will have left the mesocosm.

This is not to say that IE sacred space is sealed tight. We are not talking here about a Ceremonial Magical or Wiccan circle, a bubble separated from all around it. To return to the story of the founding of Rome, when Romulus ploughed the borders, at each place where a gate would be he lifted the plough. Since the gates would be crossed constantly, they had to be non-sacred. The space they occupied was therefore not defined by cutting.

This seems to counter the idea of separating out a space, it seems to create a leak through which Chaos might enter and Cosmos escape. And that is exactly what it does. It must, or ritual space would not map to either microcosm or macrocosm.

There is a peculiar but beautiful thing about the IE Cosmos. It is not completely separate from Chaos. Take the Norse cosmology, for instance. The World Tree stands at the middle of the Cosmos. At its foot is a well (or wells) from which it is watered, and from the Tree honeydew drips down into the well.

The well is Chaos. Water is unordered, and the well connects with the underground and surrounding sea in which Chaos dwells. This means that Cosmos is fed by Chaos. In turn Cosmos feeds Chaos (honeydew drips into the well). There is an influx of Chaos into Cosmos, and that influx is necessary. Chaos does not overwhelm Cosmos, though. Cosmos orders the inflowing Chaos in order to continue living.

In the microcosm we have an even more obvious example. We quite literally have openings in our body. Through one Chaos enters in the form of killed life. Without this influx we would die. It does not overwhelm us, though. In fact, we transform it into the energy with which we operate and the very structure of our body.

Think for a second again about the directions. If the south is to our right, what is to our front, where our mouth is? We face east. Indo-Europeans "orient" themselves when they pray; the gods are spoken to while facing east. And east is just where the gateway is in our physical sacred space. When we pray to the gods, facing east, we face the gateway. Not a bad idea in a very obvious sense; you don't want to turn you back on danger. In a more subtle sense, though, notice that the gods are seen as being in the same direction from which Chaos might enter. They are not chaotic, of course. Then why do we face both Chaos and divinity in the same direction?

Like the Cosmos, the gods are fed by Chaos, transforming it into order. They might be said to ride Chaos into sacred space, keeping it from overwhelming our mesocosm. They protect us from Chaos by mediating it. By placing the entrance of our sacred space in the east we put our opening into Chaos in their hands.

Ritual space is not only sacred, it is holy. Edgar C. Polomé (1982) has shown how the distinction between these two plays out in Indo-European thought, even to the extent of different words for the two (Latin sacer and sanctus, for example). We have already seen that the sacred can be dangerous, and well it should be -- it is on the border between Chaos and Cosmos, where warding power is need. By being dangerous, it can serve as a guardian for the holy, which resides within the space the sacred marks out. The holy is unreservedly benevolent, with nothing of the dangerous about it. One of the major intents of ritual is to make contact with the holy and absorb its blessings. Sacred space provides a place where it can pour out, filling the space and bringing with it the blessings of the gods.

The sacred must be crossed to get to the holy. The sacred is wild power, dangerous and difficult to restrain, but necessary for the establishment of microcosm and macrocosm. It is the border, the surrounding water. The holy is not dangerous to anything. In fact, it is necessary if anything is to exist at all. The holy is the center. It is fire.

In the center of the microcosm, fire is the spark of life within us. It is the body's furnace which transforms the chaos that is ingested into the cosmos of the body. It is the altar on which the offerings given by the world are burnt and shared with the divine life.

The place of fire in the macrocosm is harder to see. That is because its equivalent does not exist in a clearly fiery form. It is, rather, the point where the Tree and Well unite, it is the instrument by which the Chaos flowing from the Well is transformed into the Cosmos which is the Tree. The water from the Well pours through the fire, forming the fiery water that is one of the central mysteries of IE religion. (See Puhvel, 1987, 277-283 for a short discussion of some aspects of this.)

In ritual space the holy is represented by a fire in the center. Remember how I said that the representatives of the Well and the Tree could not both be physically in the center, even though they were mythically there? The two are equally important; since both can't be there, neither can be there.

Fire, though, is the most important thing in the ritual. Remember that in the microcosm it is the animating principle itself, and in the macrocosm it is at the most central point of all, both on the vertical and horizontal planes. It is found at the exact point where all six directions meet. That is the ultimate center. We therefore put the fire both physically and ritually at the center of the mesocosm (our ritual space and actions), just as it is mythically in the center of micro- and macrocosms.

The central physical fire is square. In this way it equates to the four directions of the micro- and macrocosms. It also reflects the four-sided sacred space. It is the space writ small; the space is itself a container with a fire at its heart. The fire and the space map onto each other.

From the fire, from the center, the holy ones enter the world. Although we may call to them facing east, it is through the center that they come. We call to them in the direction of the rising of a macrocosmic fire (the sun), and they come to us through our mesocosmic fire, that in the center of our space. The fire serves as a gateway, which opens both ways; through it the gods come to us, through it our offerings go to the gods.

The space where the fire burns is an altar. Many Neo-Pagans think of an altar as a table to put their ritual tools on. But that is not the Paleo-Pagan view. An altar is two things. It is the place where the gods sit, and the place where offerings are made. It is a table, yes, but it is the table at which we sit down in fellowship with the gods and eat a communion meal.

In an Indo-European Paleo-Pagan sacrifice, the gods were given small parts of the animal. The rest was cooked and eaten by the people attending the rite. Some of the meat was thus transformed as a gift to the gods, born on the rising smoke of the fire. The rest was transformed into a gift from the gods -- their divine fire transformed the animal into something holy by cooking it. The fire is where the miracle of an exchange between the divine and the human takes place. In the mesocosm, then, the divine transforming of food into body (in the microcosm) and Chaos into Cosmos (in the macrocosm) is performed ritually by the transforming flame in the center.

There are actually two fires in Indo-European ritual space, though. There is the fire of offering, the square one, and there is a round one. I have been talking about the square fire, the one in the center of the ritual space. This is the public fire of offering.

The round fire is the domestic one. It is the representative of the home's hearth, the original offering fire. There are examples of it throughout the IE world. In Vedic ritual, for example, the round gārhapatya fire is lit by coals taken from the hearth of the person for whom the sacrifice is being offered, and is tended by his wife. It is the source of the fire lit on the āhavanīya, the square altar fire.

This is very important. The round hearth fire is the source of the square public one. Not only is the square fire lit from the round one; if the gārhapatya fire goes out there is a specific ritual for relighting it before the rest of the ritual can continue. Thus although the square fire is the focus of public ritual, it is the round fire which is primary.

So where does this round fire fit into the micro-, meso-, and macrocosm model I am proposing? Ask yourself where it comes form. It comes from the home.

Home and world are equated in many traditions. In his The Sacred and the Profane Mircea Eliade covered this far better than I could, but just keep this in mind: the home mediates between the family and the outside world. It is, then, a mesocosm. In our everyday life we live in a mesocosm, and now in our ritual we are living in another. From our daily life we bring the fire to empower our ritual life. Our ritual life will then in turn empower our everyday life. The round fire represents our everyday life in our ritual space, providing the connection through which the interchange between the ritual and our home can occur.

Physically, the round fire is, of course, round. It is best if it is in a container, such as a cauldron, which can be carried into the space from the home of the sacrificer. Practically, this was how it would have to have been done in pre-match ancient times. Religiously, a flame which is brought, either symbolically or actually, from a hearth makes a fire lit from it an extension of that hearth.

The round fire is located between the square fire and the gate. It is thus a stage on the journey from the everyday to the divine, from the world outside sacred space to that space's center. It is firmly established within sacred space, but since its mesocosm is of a different order than that of the public ritual it has is own center and is not in the center of the ritual space.

A question immediately comes to mind -- from whose hearth do we bring fire for a public ritual? In ancient communities this would be no problem. The king or chieftain was the ritual center of the group; his hearth was the group's hearth. Our current social structure does not admit this.

A public hearth must therefore be established, belonging to the people attending a ritual as a whole. This has fine Indo-European precedent; the temples of Vesta and Hestia, as well as that in the convent of St. Brigid at Kildare, were such hearths. A group which meets regularly can follow this tradition, with an eternal flame burning as a candle or oil lamp either in the home of one of its members, or being transferred regularly among their homes. Alternatively, a group hearth can be established as part of the creation of ritual space. This can be a simple as lighting a candle or oil lamp with a ritual identifying it as such. Or a fire can be lit some time before the ritual, even the night before, and then tended until the ritual, when coals would be taken from it and carried to the ritual site. After the coals are taken the group hearth can be extinguished or watched over by someone during the ritual.

As the heart of the mesocosmic house, the round fire becomes, when brought to the sacred space, the representative of the microcosmic family. It is a physical representation within the ritual space's mesocosm of the microcosm. It is a spot where all the ritual participants can be said to co-exist. It is a shared microcosm; through it we are identified with each other, and since from it comes the square fire of offering, through the round fire we approach the gods as one people, the round fire, the hearth, giving us one home.

Both the microcosm and the macrocosm are present in ritual space and fires, then. And ritual space is a mesocosm that mediates between the two.

The idea that ritual space can be mapped onto both the microcosm and the macrocosm is not new. And of course the equation of microcosm and macrocosm is a commonplace. What is not usually realized is that 1. ritual space is a mesocosm, 2. this mesocosm maps in both directions simultaneously, and 3. it is not only the space which serves as a mesocosm, but also the actions within it. This is obviously true of the ritual acts which create sacred space, through which the identity of the microcosm and macrocosm is established and strengthened. But since ritual actions take place within sacred space, all ritual acts are mapped onto both the macrocosm and the microcosm, affecting both. All actions taken within sacred space have an effect on both worlds. All ritual acts are effective acts.

What is scary is that all seemingly non-ritual acts, performed in sacred space, are also effective, “seemingly” because all acts in sacred space are ritual acts. Since ritual space maps both ways, it is, in a religious sense, the same thing as both worlds, and what happens in ritual space happens in both worlds, whether intended or not. If there is disorder in actions performed in sacred space, there will be disorder both in the people performing and attending the ritual and the Cosmos as a whole. If, on the other hand, the actions are performed with grace, beauty, and order, the individuals and the Cosmos will be imbued with those qualities.

This puts a huge responsibility on those who attend ritual, and especially on the celebrants. The latter are the ones responsible for ensuring grace, beauty, and order. If mistakes are made -- a bowl is tipped over, words are misspoken -- they will, if not dealt with, have negative repercussions on attendees and the Cosmos. A misspoken line, a missed cue, the spilling of a bowl -- each action is seen as an irruption of disorder into even the most carefully controlled mesocosm. This is in the nature of things; order is always threatened by disorder. If such mistakes are made, it is the responsibility of the celebrants, especially the chief priest(s) to weave them into the ritual so that they appear necessary, so that what is originally an error is instead shown to be a meaningful part of the ritual.

Where the celebrants can shine is by transforming the disordered act into a constructive one. The misspoken word is gently made right, the person who misses a cue is brought to say their words, the bowl is righted and refilled without fuss or cursing -- the fixing of mistakes in the most graceful, beautiful, and orderly way possible becomes a ritual act. Performed in sacred space, it becomes an act which fixes some of the disorder in the attendees and the Cosmos. Because of this, mistakes can actually strengthen a ritual, provided they are corrected properly.

Ritual space, then, is the border (sacred), the center (holy), and the space between in which we perform our rites. Protected by the sacred border, blessed by the holy center, both we ourselves and the universe about us are brought into alignment. By ordering physical space to create sacred space, both microcosm and macrocosm are similarly ordered. We and the Cosmos are made perfect, complete, and ordered.

Further, our actions in the mesocosm, which is so intertwined with the micro- and macrocosms, affect them, extending out into both directions. If we work our rituals with order and beauty, so will our micro- and macrocosms be. If we work our rituals in a disordered and slovenly manner, so will they be.

Since by performing certain acts within the mesocosm, we can create certain changes in the micro- and macrocosms, ritual can be performed for simple acts of material magic. Prosperity can be attained, healings can be done. In Paganism, there is no good/bad dichotomy between the spiritual and the material, so this is not a wrong thing to do.

But ritual can be so much more. The acts performed in sacred space (and time) not only link the micro- and macrocosms, they are them. Through the mapping both ways the ritual is identified with that which is on either side. Ritual in this sense might be thought of as an artwork. It does nothing but express a truth.

Seen this way, ritual becomes its own reward. Such a ritual is not goal-directed, but a thing in and of itself. It inspires in us a sense of beauty, and awe, and aesthetic appreciation of the way things are. By presenting to us in an apparent way the inner secrets of the microcosm and the outer secrets of the macrocosm, ritual allows us to observe the deepest realities of the Cosmos. By taking part in a properly constructed and beautifully performed ritual, we become ourselves participants in the very nature of the Cosmos.

Not a bad way to spend some time.

References:

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