by Rev. Michael J Dangler, originally published on his Patreon
There are actually two videos in this update once again! The first is the video above, which is all about the historical examples of cleansing magic that I considered when working to create the ritual I ended up making, and the second is the ritual itself!
Because I decided to record this using three different cameras in three different places, this one took even longer to put together than the last two workings did. I got to run part of this on my Sony ZV-1, part of my Insta360 One X2, and part on my integrated MS Surface webcam. It was a bit of a technological marvel that it all came together.
I also got to bless and cleanse a part of the new shop, which was really nice.
Doing this twice was pretty important to me; everyone’s space is different, and I didn’t want to imply that there was only one way to do this work, or that you needed to have land, or a single-family house, as I am lucky enough to have. I wanted to make sure to show both an open space and a small space, and provide some balance.
Magic for Priests, Practicum Question 3: Historical
As we did with the previous Practicum questions, we’re going to work something a little different. Today’s video comes in two parts. The first, which you’re watching now, is concerned with history. The second is a practical ritual you can do at home, and follow along, whenever you need it. The question prompt for this working is:
Cleansing Work – Provide and explain one example of purification magic from an Indo-European culture, and write an ADF-style purification working based on that example.
What does the question mean?
So today we’re going to do the first part of this question: we’re going to cover three or four different types of cleansing magic from different cultures, and then I’ll be recording a second video, and you can go watch that to follow along and see how I took the practice from historical example to modern rite.
So, what’s the question asking?
This question is, like all these practicum questions, at its most basic, “How do you translate historical methods into modern magic?” Again, there’s no wrong way to do this. Most ADF members doing this will use some version of the Core Order of Ritual, but some might get more ceremonial or dive into their background for a different way of looking at it. Your magical style is yours, though, so you get to decide how it goes. The trick is to look at the boundaries of the Core Order of Ritual: to make it an “ADF-Style rite” mostly means to craft a ritual that deals with a tripartite cosmos, relies on relationships with the Spirits, and involves some dialog with them, all while avoiding being crafted with features from the list of items ADF rituals do not include.
Strategies for Answering This Question
In most of the questions, we’ve had the opportunity to attack the question in different ways. Here, however, we’re going to have to study up on a cleansing process, and work from there. All the practicum questions are like this, so this is just how I’ve decided to manage it. I’ll outline several different options from different cultures before I settle onto one type of cleansing to discuss and develop a ritual for.
Terminology
To preface this discussion, I have to talk about my own feelings and the general academic study of notions of purification, and provide context for my own terminology here.
The opposite of purity for most religious scholars is pollution; inevitably, conversations around purity, purification, and essential criteria for accessing the sacred revolve around how things get dirty, and how they become clean. Indeed, the Encyclopedia of Religion pairs these two together strongly, saying:
It is impossible to understand religious pollution and purification as separate phenomena; these two inseparable categories of religious experience are locked into a dynamic complementarity. (“Purification: An Overview”)
But there are other problems with “purification” that echo social and ethical concerns as well: ideas of essentialism around gender binaries, or of racial or national origins are pathways to extremism and exclusion. When there are rigid notions of what is “pure” (and thus also what is “polluted”), we all lose. “Purification” drives conversation, in an explicit or implicit way, to exclude others; when combined with the dichotomy of sacred and profane, participants can easily understand themselves as starting from a position of pollution and unworthiness. I think this creates deeper issues in our practice.
As a result, I have preferred the word “cleansing” for some time to the word “purification.” To be clear, a cleansing is a purifying act, but in English, it provides a different context: it is the act of cleaning something that is already worthy, rather than changing something to an acceptable state. A home that needs cleaned is not polluted, it’s just something that can be improved with work. Your grandmother’s silver is not damaged or beyond use if it is tarnished, but you may enjoy using it more if it is polished. A child is not to be abhorred when it becomes dirty, simply bathed in the evening before bed.
Cleansing, to me, is the act of setting things into harmony with your consciousness, not crafting an ideal or affixing an essential notion. I find this wording more broadly encompassing, welcoming of diversity, and more likely to meet people where they are and encourage them to find paths toward connection, instead of discouraging them from participating because they don’t know how to meet the strict requirements.
Some may call it a semantic choice, and I am sympathetic to that notion. Still, I think it is important that our language seek to find worth and inherent dignity in all humans where possible, so you’ll hear me speak of cleansing throughout, even though the examples, especially ancient ones, are often quite properly referred to as a “purification.” Where appropriate, I’ll detail where notions of racism, colonialism, or misogyny come into play in the original source material we’re discussing, to clarify these points and make them visible.
Cleansing Magic Technique 1: Cleansing by Fire (Celtic, Indo-Iranian, Roman)
To speak first of cleansing through fire, it would be out of place for me not to mention the tradition of kindling two bonfires at Beltaine and driving cattle between them to protect them from disease, and of folk jumping over the flames to cleanse and bless themselves. While this particular practice may not be attested before the 16th century in Ireland, it likely has some pagan reflex that we can work from; indeed, to this day and in our own Beltaine rites, sometimes we walk between flames as we process into the space.
Modern Zoroastrianism cleanses the world through the truth and justice of fire; there’s a parallel example of fire-leaping as a cleansing there, where seven small bonfires are lit and kept overnight, and people take turns asking that the leaper receive a “ruddy complexion,” and have god and six arch-angels take away their “sickly pallor.”
In Rome, purification for transgression against the vows of a Vestal Virgin was available only by burning the offending Virgin alive. Equivocating female chastity with “purity” in this case provides significant problems, of course, particularly in the modern world, so we’re not going to be using that as an ancient example to work from today.
Cleansing Magic Technique 2: Cleansing by Water (Roman, Greek, Gaelic)
Around the Ides of May, a Roman festival would take place where they would carry argei, or bundles of rushes resembling people bound hand and foot around the shrines in the city, until they were thrown into the Tiber River at the end of the procession. While the Romans themselves didn’t have a good idea why they did it, the disposal of these figures into the water is likely an example of the waters washing away evil or danger.
In the Greek Magical Papyri, there is a spell whose purpose is to “restrain anything, even chariots” (PGM VII. 429-58). Here, you do the work of binding someone or something with a lead tablet, and when you are done, you walk away without turning back, and speak to no one until you come home; then, you wash yourself completely from head to toe (the instructions indicate that you should “immerse yourself”), then rest and eat a vegetarian diet.
In the Carmina Gadelica, which carries forward pagan traditions through a Christian lens, there is a lustration, where the instruction is to bathe your face in the sunlight, as Mary bathed Christ in milk, calling on sweetness and sense to be the result.
Cleansing Magic Technique 3: Cleansing by Detergents (Gaelic, Greek, Roman, Indo-Iranian, Anglo-Saxon)
Sometimes, you need to add something to the water, or burn something special to obtain additional cleansing properties. Our tradition in ADF of hallowing the well with silver comes from the Carmina Gadelica, in a section on birth and death, where it says,
“The first water in which the child is washed after it is born into the world, the bathing-woman puts a gold piece or a coin of silver into the vessel of water in which the child is being washed.”
Silver has well-known cleansing properties in science, and placing it into the water the child is bathed in would have some minor anti-microbial properties.
In Homer’s Odyssey, after Odysseus kills his wife’s suitors, he seeks to “disperse the bad air” by burning sulfur (Odyssey, 22.481), cleansing his home of the literal and figurative stench of death.
In a Zoroastrian Pādyāb rite, ablution is first done with dust or urine, then three times with water (though these days most Zoroastrians simply use water). The evil eye can be cleansed through the burning of espand, a dried seed of peganum harmala, from the caltrop family: the seeds are set onto hot coals in a censor and passed seven times over the head of the person being cleansed.
Blood is a clear cleanser in the ancient world: our English word, “bless,” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for “blood,” and it implies the sprinkling of blood upon that which is to be cleansed. It is, however, also a clear driver of impurity, particularly when involuntarily shed. There are examples too numerous to name of menstruation causing an unworthiness or uncleanliness that impacts the ability of a person to approach the divine; none of these make sense in a modern context, obviously, but the two sides of blood, as cleansing agent and introducer of impurities, must be mentioned in discussions of purification in the ancient world, if only to highlight the misogynistic nature of some notions of purity: when natural processes of the body create pollution, and that pollution is unavoidable for a specific subset of the population, there is an issue both with the notion of the pollution, and with institutional requirements surrounding the expiation of that pollution.
Cleansing Magic Technique 4: Cleansing by Purgation (Roman, Celtic, Greek)
The active removal of impurities was a useful method of cleansing as well. Sometimes, this was done by affirmative magical action, and sometimes by passive abstention from things seen as impure.
Lustration was a common practice in Rome, where a ceremony would be conducted, called a lustrum. Here, a sacred object or a sacrifice would be paraded around whatever was to be purified: a person, a space, or an entire town. During the (often slow) procession, there would be stops for sacrifices or prayers along the way at appointed places; the point was to see and recognize the thing that is sacred, and reinforce that sacrality. Children were purified at 8 or 9 days old via lustratio, and are given their name. You can find modern reflexes of this in the English tradition of “beating the bounds,” where boundary markers are smacked by sticks or bundles of woods to set the memory of the physical boundaries into place among the folk, or in any one of the modern religious processionals in Europe, including Krampus parades. Similarly, the Roman festival of Terminalia set the boundaries, and offerings were made to the stones and posts that marked the spaces between properties, with song and dance. We’ll be taking this as our ancient example to create a modern cleansing of our space.
Caesar describes a scapegoating ritual in his Commetaries on the Gallic War, where a Celtic warrior shows up to a war council in poor physical shape, and he is put to death cruelly. As a result, this transfers the poor condition of other warriors who showed up onto a single, representative warrior, who is then removed, and with him, all the impurities he brings with him.
Encountering death was a common trigger of pollution in the ancient world. The Romans set their cemeteries outside of the pomerium of towns, which is why so many are at roadsides, or out in the countryside; this kept the dead from impacting the purity of the community. Bruneaux (p. 62-64) suggests that the Druids of Gaul were likely required to be at sacrificial events, but were perhaps unlikely to be the ones who actually killed the victim, whether animal or human: their presence ensured the sacrifice went right, but their station and purity prevented them from doing the polluting work (but allowed them to purify the sacrificer after the event was concluded).
Hippocrates tells us in On the Sacred Disease (1-4) that it was fashionable among the magical set of itinerant priests and magicians (and, of course, charlatans) to seek to cure epilepsy, known as the titular “sacred disease,” through abstinence from certain fishes, meats, poultries, and herbs; and also to abstain from wearing black cloaks and even bathing. Hippocrates is rightfully incredulous that deities might visit this sacred disease upon their folk, though: for him, as for me, purification is best understood as a process of cleansing, rather than inherent pollution or godden-crafted curse.
Abstinence occurs again in the Greek Magical Papyri several times: fasting and abstaining from sex is prescribed repeatedly in the Spell of Pnouthis (PGM I. 41-195), for a rather unclear initiatory rite (PGM IV. 26-51), the uttering of Aphrodite’s secret name (PGM IV. 1265-74), or to obtain a dream oracle (PGM VII. 740-55).
The things one must abstain from are often laced with explicit or implicit notions that contact with certain things was unclean by nature: when men, who assume other magicians will also be men, suggest that abstention from sex is necessary because it is inherently polluting, we can infer that women are seen to be the impure actors. Abstentions from certain clothing are often ways to subtly infer that the sorts of people who wear those clothing (often foreigners) are inherently impure. There’s much to be said in these abstentions about the seduction of the material world, and the impact that has on us as actors within it, as well: most of it boils down to the notion that the physical and the different are problematic.
Cleansing Magic Technique 5: Cleansing by Initiation (Hellenic)
Initiation into the mysteries (Eleusinian, Dionysian, Orphic, or Mithraic, for example) brought a sort of purification, where the person was “made new” during the process, much as the modern mystery tradition in Christianity of being “born again” might offer a similar new beginning in purity, stripping away the pollution of your old life. This process set one aside from their past entirely, offering them a clean slate moving forward. And ritual purifications were often a part of the mysteries.
At Eleusis, candidates would bathe in the sea with the sacrificial pig. The Bacchic mysteries assumed that the candidate was too unclean to enter into a relationship, or even manage his own purification: a priest was required to administer the cleansing. Orphic mysteries were gateways to a new life, different from the old, of continued ascetic life.
I speak from the far side of initiation, myself, and can say that the process of becoming an initiate is often just that: a process of stepping out from an old life and into a new one. What I truly like about our initiatory process in ADF is that it has a strong thread of consent and an emphasis on understanding: the work that we do as initiators is inherently a collaborative process, and we tend to earnestly believe that anyone can participate and complete the work.
Crafting the Ritual
Now, with all those options, I get to craft a ritual, like I did for other questions.
In order to create the ritual, I have to decide what the purpose is. In this case, it’s not hard: the assignment is to take a cleansing practice and create a cleansing rite from that ancient practice. So, that bit is done.
Next, I want to think about my audience: how will people connect with this ritual? I’d like to create a ritual that anyone can do at home, from wherever they are, which means that it should be something simple, using normal tools they can obtain quickly and easily.
So, thinking about what people have access to, I’ll have to create a short list of items needed, and craft a ritual that meets my ritual participants where they are. Then, I’ll need to provide instruction, and a petitioning prayer, and guide them through it in the video I’ll be creating.
With my healing rite, I wrote the prayer first; with the warding rite, I crafted action before the prayer. This time, I’m starting from a semi-modern practice and re-paganizing it, as I’m working off the idea of the “beating of the bounds.” You recall that bit, where the folk would go out to the markers of boundaries and hit them with something? We’ll be doing something similar. To make things complicated, not everyone has land markers and boundaries, so we’ll have to make our own.
Our Working to Sanctify Space will look at the modern template of the English custom, review it in light of the Roman Terminalia, and craft something a little more Druidic than either. There will be two versions of this working: one for home owners or renters who have land to work with, and one for apartment dwellers or people with non-pagan roommates who cannot claim and cleanse a whole space.
So, for this working, I’ll have to provide working that can be easily altered on the fly to fit the magician’s living situation.
I’m also taking some of this off of work I already do with my Grove; when we created our cycle of Druid Moons, we crafted a ritual that was devoted to the god Sucellos, the good striker, where stones are brought to the ritual and struck with a hammer. You can watch a “work from home” version of that rite on our Grove’s YouTube page.
This rite will also require some more creative filming: I can’t just leave a stationary camera on a table and do it all in one sitting, straight through, so I also have to plan the shots and the work as I prepare to do it.
The central working of the beating of the bounds is to find the boundaries, physically go to them, and fix their location into memory through ritual action. A slow processional of many people is common, but we are, again, meeting people where they are, and my assumption is that folk will do this work as a solitary. I also assume that most people may not want to do flashy things that would out their weird pagan nature to their neighbors, so we’ll do our best to make this simple and unobtrusive.
For folks who have only an apartment, or even possibly a single room that can be cleansed, I want to provide a simple option for that work. I’ll also want simple tools: for this, because it’s a cleansing, we’ll use a regular old broom.
I want the prayer to be simple, and straightforward, something that a person can remember. We’re going to be saying it while we hit things, after all. So, as I thought on it, I came up with something like this:
I bring my center to the edge of my space:
Where I fix this marker, I fix my memory.
Let the known and the fixed cleanse this space,
And hold the boundaries firm.
If you learn nothing else from my examples, I hope you learn that being a great poet is not at all required to do work that has meaning and power for you.
As you speak the prayer, you will strike the boundary marker with the broom, or sweep a stone into the corner of your room or dwelling.
Now, I want to wrap this up into a working that is unmistakable as an ADF-style working. To do this, I’ll want to provide some additional structure. Because this is a cleansing, and I want it to be applicable and useful to the largest number of people possible, I don’t think it should be too structured, and it should invite people to lean on their personal relationships with the Spirits, rather than try and box them into working with someone they either don’t know, or aren’t comfortable with.
So, to that end, I’ll ask folks to visualize a Spirit, known to them or unknown, who can connect with their needs and offer them a path toward cleansing. And then, once the rite is done, we’ll offer to the Spirit, and thank them.
Conclusion
So, that’s the basics of my ritual, and I hope that you’ll find something to inspire you in this work as well. Pop over to the working video, and see how it all came together. And, of course, maybe cleanse your space, while you’re at it.
Magic for Priests, Practicum Question 3: Practicum
Welcome to a part of my study guide for the Ár nDraíocht Féin Clergy Training Program’s “Magic for Priests” course. Today’s video comes in two parts. The first, which I’ve prepared initially for folks who are subscribed to my Patreon, is concerned with how I wrote this. The second, which you’re watching now, is a practical ritual you can do at home, and follow along with for cleansing your home space. The question prompt for this working is:
Provide and explain one example of purification magic from an Indo-European culture, and write an ADF-style purification working based on that example.
What does the question mean?
I’ll be using the word “cleansing” in place of “purification” for reasons I dove into in the first video.
So I spent a whole video going over various kinds of cleansing magics from the Indo-European world, and I settled on a working based on one of them to work from. In that video, I dove into the Roman Terminalia and the modern English beating of the bounds, and decided to use information from ancient rituals to re-paganize a modern, mostly secular ritual.
So, onto the ritual, and the important disclaimer
What I’m going to do is guide you through a ritual designed to cleanse and sanctify your space. Of course, cleansing isn’t a one-and-done event: you should re-do this work, and make some sort of regular commitment to physically cleaning your space as well. No one relies on magic alone, and finding strategies to keep your space cleansed in a physical sense is important to go along with this work.
What supplies do I need?
This rite will require some items. You’ll need:
- A candle and some matches.
- A vessel or bowl of water.
- A broom, brush, or similar cleaning implement.
- Stones, posts, or something to mark the corners or boundaries of your space. These can be stones with meaning to you based on magical properties, or simple gravel or stakes. Something generally natural and unlikely to be removed or blown away is best.
- An offering or something of value. Usually, this is a coin or stone that has some meaning or value to you.
Arrange your altar and space simply: the candle before you, the offering and your within easy reach.
What will we do in this rite?
The focus of this work is cleansing, and so we’re going to be calling out to a Spirit and asking for some help. Unlike my healing rite, this is designed to be done on a somewhat regular basis, to re-set the space in your mind, and it’s important to know that you can come back to this video should you wish to do so this work on a cadence that works for you.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a personal relationship with a Spirit: we’ll be seeking out, specifically, a spirit who is interested in helping you, and in your personal security and protection. Even if you’ve never sought a connection to or built a successful relationship with a Spirit before, you can do this work. It doesn’t matter what culture your connections come from: those connections might surface here. And that’s awesome. We’ll be calling out in a way that is both generic and specific: to a spirit whose title we will call as, “The Spirit Who Helps Me.” It sounds general, because it could be any spirit. And it is. But to the Spirit who knows that they will help you, it is the most descriptive name you could use, short of their actual name.
We’ll begin by establishing our space as sacred, sanctifying your space as secure and protected, and calling out to the Spirit who will aid you in this work. Then, we’ll speak a charm and go to the edges of our space. Then we’ll thank the Spirit who appeared to help you.
I’m going to do two versions of this rite, in a departure from previous videos; because not everyone owns a large space with land to walk and stones placed at the corners, I’ll do this rite in both an outdoor space, and also a small space: one of our Reader Rooms in The Magical Druid, which I hope can demonstrate how you can bless even a small, transient space like an apartment or office with this rite.
Despite the exotic locale for my small space demonstration, all you need to do is follow along at your own hearth shrine. Let’s get started, shall we?
The Cleansing Rite
Begin by taking a moment to find your center. Seek it within you, wherever you typically find it. You may want to watch your breath for a moment: in, and out. In, and out.
Setting the Cosmos
Here at our center, we kindle our flame. [Lights candles.] Here at our center, we brighten the Waters. [Passes hand over the vessel.] Here at our center, holding ourselves between land, sea, and sky, we open ourselves to the cosmos about us, as we seek to ward that which is ours.
Calling to the Spirit
Take a moment now to reflect on your connections to the cosmos: think about how you are a part of the larger world, and how connections have come to you in the past. And if it helps, take a moment to close your eyes and breath once again.
Now, let us call out to the Spirit who will work with us.
Spirit Who Helps Me, I call to you. You who have come from the mists to be here for me, who have opened the paths: I see you now and I hear your call.
Step into the Center with me, O Spirit: parting the mists of magic that flow, welcomed by the light of my fire to the edge of these waters.
Guide my hands, Spirit. Make them bright. Spirit Who Helps Me, stand beside me as I work.
I invite you now to take up your broom or brush.
Charm of Cleansing – Outdoors
First, we will cleanse the outdoor corners of my home. My home has five corners; at four of them, there are corner stones that mark the boundaries. At one, there is a streetlamp. So, I’ll beat five rocks and a lamp in my example
As you beat the markers in each corner of your home or yard, speak this charm at each, as you will.
I bring my center to the edge of my space:
Where I fix this marker, I fix my memory.
Let the known and the fixed cleanse this space,
And hold the boundaries firm.
Charm of Cleansing – Indoors
Next, we will cleanse the indoor corners at the shop. There are three main corners to the Reader Room, and I will set stones in each corner during the work.
As you speak the charm of cleansing, beat the stones, and set a stone in each corner, as you will.
I bring my center to the edge of my space:
Where I fix this marker, I fix my memory.
Let the known and the fixed cleanse this space,
And hold the boundaries firm.
[repeated at each corner]Listening for the Spirits
Finish your round of beating the boundaries of your space, come back to your center, and speak something like this:
My center to my edge,
My markers and memory fixed,
The known and the fixed have cleansed this space,
And hold the boundaries firm.
Now, take a moment to listen to all that is around you. Listen to yourself as well. Feel your space cleansed and claimed, and hear the voice of the flame in the candle wick, or the voice of your space surrounding you.
The Offering
As is right and proper, for the work we have done today, and the aid of the Spirit Who Helps Me, I make this offering. I place it in these blessed waters, to return to the earth when I am able. [coin placed in the waters]
Thanking
Spirit Who Helps Me, I call out to you: For standing beside me, for making this spaced cleansed and mine, and for guiding my hands in this cleansing work, I thank you. I know that you will be there, should I call again, to deepen this relationship over time.
Now, in your mind’s eye, see once again this Spirit: standing here in your space, preparing to take their leave of you. As they turn to go, see their smile, and watch them slip once more into the mists of magic around you.
Closing
And here at my center, with space cleansed, a bright flame kindled, and the boundaries marked into place, I seek now to return this space to what it was before. As I extinguish this flame, may the mists roll back, and all be as it was before, save the blessing, and the protection I have received.
And with this work done well, this rite is ended. So be it.
After the Ritual
Cleansing work can be simple and effective, and sometimes just doing this once is enough. Still, the beating of the bounds this is based on takes place on regular intervals: usually once a year, or more or less often. It could be a fun tradition to start for yourself, and even to do with your kids, if you’re so inclined. I loved crafting this process, and maybe you have developed your own instead; no matter what, you have a space that is yours, claimed and cleansed.
If you ever feel your space needs once again to be cleansed, or you want to add some magic to your regular cleaning, you can reactivate and refresh the stones or markers at any time by speaking the last line of the prayer while you sweep:
The known and the fixed have cleansed this space,
And hold the boundaries firm.
Conclusion
So, that’s my example of an ADF-Style cleansing ritual, and I hope that you’ll find something to inspire you in this work as well. And, of course, I very much look forward to the final question in this course, which is all about introspection and reflection. If you want to be the first person to catch that video, consider subscribing to my Patreon.
Once the whole series is done, I’ll be scheduling a release of the entire course to the general public, and particularly to ADF members; then, I’ll get to decide what course to work on next!
Thanks!
