Storytelling in Ritual.
By Blayze

The word Storytelling conjures up different images for different people. For some it may recall childhood bedtimes stories, for others memories of Aesops Fables or parables and bible stories at Sunday School. Still  for others the word may conjure memories of campfire ghost stories or bardic circles complete with drinking horns full of mead, with everyone endeavouring to tell the tallest tale, or maybe to you a storyteller is now your favourite film director, transporting you into a world not of your own, setting your emotions and your imagination free. These are all perfectly valid examples of story telling in our modern world. 

But, with the rich variety of stories out there, it is suprising that the art of telling a story is somewhat overlooked in our pagan rituals. As pagans we have access to huge amounts of myth and legend that mean more to us than just words on a page. The old myths are often poems and songs, they were meant to be spoken, to be heard rather than read. Maybe in our literate and literary society we have lost the ability to listen.

So today I would like to explore how we can reclaim the art of the story for our own rituals. 

But why tell a story in the first place? Well some of the most memorable rituals that I have attended have woven myth and storytelling into practical and physical rituals. Those stories brought to life tales of the Gods that we were worshipping, they put the festival in its place by providing a context, a history and a link to the surrounding festivals or allowed one to dip into the mystery of a mythological or seasonal cycle. In the grand scheme of things, those stories took the participants from their everyday world and allowed them a chance to listen and experience the pure pleasure of a story well told.

In ritual, we use the art of storytelling in many different ways, all of which serve their own purpose. As an introduction to ritual a story can be used to set the scene, to give clues about what is to come in the ritual. It can give participants a key into the celebration, serve to bring them into a ritual frame of mind and ready them to experience the mystery at the heart of the ritual itself. This can be a very useful technique if the participants are unused to working together and follow different traditions. By telling a story at the start of the ritual, all of the participants begin with an equal and shared knowledge and vision of what is to come.

It is a good idea to keep an introductory story quite simple. You will not have the time before the story begins to get everyone into a receptive mode, so the story needs to be easy to listen to but not boring. It needs to impart a sense of awe and excitement, whether through beauty or mild fear depending upon what comes after. The storyteller should also not talk down to the listeners, they will resent this and you will lose them as active participants within the ritual itself. Also when telling an introductory story it is wise to use symbology that will occur later in the ritual, this will allow participants to identify the symbolism in context of the ritual, to recognise it and experience the thrill of that physical recognition. Storytelling is a key ritual tool for enhancing and linking the overall theme.

As an example of this, a couple of years ago our group ran a large Imbolc ritual that contained 4 separate mini-rituals from the perspective of four pagan paths, being Greek, Norse, Irish and Wiccan. These rituals were self contained and in different parts of the site, but to link them together we used a story which was then continued on a physical level. We began with a tale about The Maiden and the Young Stag. 

The darkness has been upon us for some time now, as the wheel of the year has brought us through Midwinter and beyond; but now hearken your senses to the fertile Earth beneath us and you may sense the very first signs of life.

Small seeds have sprouted shoots which are reaching towards the surface and the light of day. Creatures emerge from their deep slumber to a changed world.

The Goddess shall also venture out in her aspect of the Young Maiden. Her energy is wild and free, untamed and new, her raw untested sexuality exuding from her as she cautiously explores this landscape full of new mysteries and adventures.

The long darkness is slowly dwindling as the nights become ever shorter. In the deep primordial forest, other things have awoken too. There is a stirring of leaves and bushes, from where emerges the Young Stag, born of Midwinter, innocent and full of wonder at this new world he is exploring. As the wheel turns, his power strengthens, and so the days grow longer as each one passes.

This then led to a meditation and when the participants opened their eyes, the Maiden and the Young Stag were standing before them. The Maiden ran off, and the Stag made to follow her. He was told: 

		"Hold. The Maiden is free and you are young yet. This is her time, let her run where she will. To gain her trust you will need to take within yourself the essence of Spring. Only by doing so will you come into your own power. She has many things to teach you about this season. Now follow and we will bear witness to your journey.."

The Stag now followed the Maiden to the next ritual site and the participants joined him as he experienced the four different Imbolc Rituals. After each ritual he and the participants would follow the Maiden to the next ritual site. Finally it was the Maiden's turn and she led the last part of the ritual which ended with her being crowned by the Young Stag with a crown of Candles. So the opening story, though short, provided the framework for the rest of the rituals.

So we can use an introductory story to set the scene of a ritual, but what about a story as the main focus in the ritual itself? Stories used in this way need to follow the internal logic of the ritual. Just plonking a story into the ritual because you feel like it, doesn't always work. The story requires a purpose. It needs a time and place and should not interrupt the flow of the energies. You can however, use the story to change the flow of energies or as a focus for the energies themselves. If you are trying to build up energy slowly within the ritual via a series of chants or dances, suddenly stopping to tell a story will generally bring the energy level back down again. Now this could be what you want to happen, and can be used to great effect. But first lets explore the story as the main energy focus of the ritual.

So you have spent some time building up the power, you may have used chanting and dancing to raise the energy, or invokations to work with deity, and now you wish to have a story to illustrate the point of what has gone before. You want the story to bring about an understanding of mystery and focus. But you want the energy to be part of the story too.

To do this you have to have the story occur naturally, to subtlely take the place of the energy. One technique is to have the storyteller take the role of seer. The energy is built up to be released by the story itself. For example, for a Midsummer ritual we started with all participants making a brew of seeing that was dedicated to the fae. We had lit candles from a brazier and then placed a cauldron upon the flame. Herbs and juices were added to the brew and the particpants chanted over it When the brew was ready, everyone drank. The uplifting qualities of the brew were transformed into a dance as Gold, orange and yellow ribbons were collected from the trees and looped to form a wheel over a copper mirror. Everyone sang and danced  and then when the energy reached its peak, they dropped the ground and laid the ribbons across the mirror, still maintaining the wheel pattern. The storyteller, or seer, then looked into the mirror and told a Midsummer story as if they were seeing it in the mirror. The participants, still holding onto the ribbons, looked into the mirror also and the story unfolded for them in a personal way. 

Part of the story involved energy being sent along ley lines from a spear planted in the top of  a hill. The storyteller was drawing down the Sun whilst reciting and the participants felt this energy through the ribbons as it was described in the story. Each person took from the story their own version of the mystery of Midsummer, but they also felt and saw the story unfold. By having the storyteller take on the guise of seer, the flow of the ritual remained unbroken and the energy flowed accordingly. 

As the story featured the Sun King defeating his Shadow, and paying the price, the next stage of the ritual included the toasting of the King in the story. As the participants had witnessed his struggles and his battles, they truly understood the nature of the toast. This also served as both a celebration and a grounding.

We continued the storytelling theme for the next sabbat, Lughnasadh. But this time the focus was on sacrifice and personal harvest. So instead of raising energy, the participants were given a seed, blindfolded and sent to walk a labyrinth. As they walked, they were to contemplate the mystery of the seed and the cycles of birth, death and rebirth. When they reached the end of the labyrinth, the seed was taken from them and they were given a stalk of wheat.  Still blindfolded, they contemplated the mystery of the grain and the harvest. The storyteller then recited a tale of the harvest.

I would tell you of the grain, of growth and harvest... the soil rich and dark , the rains sweet and clean, gentle breezes and the warmth of the sun. 

It is midday and a woman stands at the stone boundary of a large field rippling with ripened grain. Beside her is a man stripped to the waist and painted with symbols of grain and mystery. The remains of last years harvest is woven into his hair and binds his wrists. The woman carries a shining sickle which glints in the overhead sun.

Gently she kisses the man on his feet, knees, groin, breast and mouth and then he in turn kneels before her, facing the ripened fields. With her sickle she cuts his throat and he falls to the ground. His blood soaks into the earth and the woman lets cry with a mighty keen. At her cry the grains bends as before a wind... and the spirit of the sacrifice moves through the field, gifting each stalk with its power and mystery.

The woman enters the field and begins to harvest the grain... the sickle moving in a blur as she moves from row to row following the path of the rippling grain.. As she works the sun moves across the sky.

As the last light of the sun shines upon the stubbled field.. she arrives at the farthest corner. The wheat here is still dancing in the breeze... touched with the blood red glow of the setting sun. The woman takes up her sickle and cuts a lock of her hair. She uses the strands to bind the grain in the furthest corner into the last sheaf. 

She kneels before the sheaf and echoing the earlier rite with the man, she kisses the sheaf at the five points. Again her sickle glints in the light of the sun... but like the grain bound before her, the sickle is now as red as the dying sun. Quickly she cuts down the last sheaf where the spirit of the sacrifice has come to rest.

She takes up the last sheaf and walks the boundary of the field, tracing the path of the sun from east to north to west and then to the south in darkness.

John Barleycorn is cut down dead
It is his time to die
The sun that warmed our summer days
No longer is so high
We thank him and the Goddess fair
We thank them for the Corn
We gather in the harvest now 
And leave the fields folorn.

At the end of the story, a lament was sung. When the last notes had faded away, the participants were asked to removed their blindfolds, sitting before them was the Harvest Lord, painted white and decorated with sheaves of wheat. He said: 

I am the spirit of the harvest and I move between worlds. I am the seed and the grain, the harvest and the renewal. I am the last sheaf taken from the fields and I give to you one last gift - a glimpse of the world that this harvest has brought into being.

He performed an ogham reading for the group and then dropped to the ground. The sheaf was cut from his body and the fruits of the harvest were eaten. 

In this case, the story occured at the end of a personal journey. The story delved into the mystery of the journey and ended with a physical manifestation of the final gift. Tying the story into something phyisical, almost grounds it in reality whilst still engendering the sense of awe. In fact it can bring the story into the realm of the five senses.
Telling the story in a descriptive and sensory way allows the listener or ritual participants to almost experience what is actually happening in the story, or to at least follow on the same journey.

So we can see that how a story is placed within a ritual, really contributes to the impact that the story will have. You need to work with your audience, judge the mood, or if you are running a ritual, create a mood appropriate to the story. Also try to work out what emotions you would like the listeners to experience at the end of the story or the ritual itself. If you would like them to be happy and joyful and the story echoes a celebration, well then end the story on a happy note. If however, you wish to have a sombre, more contemplative mood then end the story that way, and particpants can then go away and think about what they have heard, or maybe dream and divine for themselves. It is important to not break the mood, or if you need to, then give the listeners time to aborb their journey and bring them out gently. 

For an Ostara ritual that we ran recently, a story was told of the Young Stag's rites of passage into manhood. He was led through the rite by the Spring Maiden who awoke him to call of the land and the sacred flame, he was then crowned with the power of the Sun. The Maiden and the newly crowned King kissed, and as the Sun sank into the west he found that he was holding a silver spear in his arms, and so he sank to the ground and still cradling the spear in his arms like a lover, he wept in both joy and sadness, in loss and power and waited for the dawn to arrive.

When the participants opened their eyes, the King was standing before them holding the spear. He recited a Charge and then gently spoke words to each person as he carefully helped them from the ground and led them back to the edge of the circle. This allowed each person time to stay in the thrall of the story, but as they moved they gradually and gently returned to the present and the physical world.

There are however, times when you want to change the mood abruptly, sometimes shock is the only way to experience a mystery. We have done this when we wanted the focus to shift from one set of characters in a story to the other perspective, for example, a story of Yule focusing on the hunters, then the hunted and back to the hunters again. This does work really well, but it needs good timing and should not be done for shock value alone.

So how do you tell a story? There is a difference between someone reading the words from a page, and reciting the story with power, just like there is in other aspects of ritual. But learning a long story is a very difficult thing and not many of us have photographic memories or are trained stage actors. As I said before, with ritual storytelling you want to involve all of the senses, so you use descriptive language that speaks to those senses. Instead of memorizing the exact words, you can visualise the story unfolding in your head, and what you speak is describing what you see, hear, touch, taste and smell. I start by working out the basic outline of the story, a comes before b comes before c. I can then work out what are the key symbols that I need to be present in the story, if an object is mentioned as being used at the end of the story, I must remember to describe that object as being in the scene. Telling a story of someone being crowned when you have failed to mention the crown being there can get very confusing... saying "Oh did I mentioned that such and such was carrying a crown", really halts the flow of the story. 

So what you memorise is sequence of events and what storytelling props or other devices you need to include, such as the errant crown, or the sun being at a certain point in the sky. If a character pours liquid from a flask that they are carrying at their hip, then when you first decribe the character mention that the flask is there.

Everything else, the filling in of the sequence, is the sensory descriptive language. I practice telling the story over and over, usually as I am walking to work. I find that as I recite the story, there will be some aspect of it that I have missed, so I make a mental note that I must include that aspect, that prop, that moonrise or sunset. I keep doing this until I can get through the story and not leave anything out. If the story has internal logic, then this is not that hard, as there will be a natural progression to follow from the introduction to the conclusion. Then when I come to tell that story in a ritual, I can then embellish it, tweak the decriptions and channel the power into them, creating feedback between the listeners, the story and myself.

But practicing and learning the story is only half of it. Telling a story is a performance, you must believe in the story that you are telling, your truth is the audience's truth. You need to speak slowly and clearly, audibly and with inflection in your voice. Speak in a monotone and your audience will be asleep in moments, that is fine for a bedtime story, but not generally what you want to happen in your ritual.

So since we are fast approaching Beltane, I though I would conclude this lecture with a Beltane story.

Tell Beltane story.