How to Create a Ceremony

Not long ago I conducted a humanistic/spiritual wedding ceremony for a friend. She and her partner designed the ceremony together with me. We conducted it in her parents’ garden in front of her wedding guests. The wedding guest, at first very sceptical about this ‘weird and unusual way of exchanging vows’ were tangibly touched and enjoyed the experience. This reminded me how enchanting ceremonial work can be and I thought I’d share with you how to create a ceremony. 

Creating a ceremony is one of the most beautiful, profound and enchanting ways to nourish your Soul. You can use it to resolve an issue, celebrate something, let go of something or call something in. Ceremony generally helps us to connect with our selves, with the community, the forces within and around us and with something bigger than our selves, which I call spirit. 

Ceremonies are easily created. They don’t have to be elaborate and can involve any number of people. You can create one just for yourself, for yourself and your partner or client, or create it with a group of people. There are two major components to every ceremony or ritual: you must have a clearly defined and stated intent, and spirit must be invited.   

So, here are the steps:

1. Find your intent, alone, with your client or with a group of people

2. Decide how you want to create the ritual. I’ll give you an example in point 7.

3 Define the space: I usually use stones to create a circle. The ceremony takes place inside the circle.  Anything that is available can be used as long as it clearly defines/marks the space.

4 Call in spirit in a way that is comfortable for you and the people you are with. Do this aloud e.g. “I am calling in spirit to help us with the ceremony we are about to do”. You can create a bit of background sound whilst you do that. Use a rattle, drum or Tibetan bells or a piece of music.

5. Transform the space into ‘sacred space’. Cleanse it by walking around it with smudge or use sound in form of a Tibetan bell, a singing bowl, a drum or rattle. Build a little altar. A simple cloth on the floor will do. Then put a centrepiece on the cloth that represents the intent of the ceremony… a candle, some flowers, a stone whatever. When you put it on the altar, speak the intent aloud. Then have every person place an object on the altar. They can speak whatever they want to speak while doing that. Last but not least, put something there to represent the spirits you want to be present. I usually use fire, water, earth and air as well as something that represents ‘spirit in general’. What you use must relate to the intent, the people involved and the spirits you want present.

6. Call in spirit again. State your specific intent and ask for help to achieve the intent.

7. Do the ritual, involving everybody as much as possible. There are many, many ways. Use your imagination. I’ll give you an example. Lets say you want to call something in and let’s say there is a group of you. So, get some wool or ribbons and a few branches. Put the branches in a vase in the centre of your circle. Then have everybody get up, go round the circle to the middle, take a piece of wool and wrap it round the branches whilst calling into their life what they want to call in. It works better when it’s done aloud.

8. When your ceremony is finished, do something to mark the end – e.g. drum, rattle, chant, meditate for a few minutes or whatever else you can think of. Then thank the spirits you called in for being present.

9. Clear the space. In the above example we would burn the branches, sending the ‘wishes’ symbolically up to ‘spirit’.

10. Walk away! It’s done. Go back to normal reality.

© 2011 Christa Mackinnon