In my shamanic healing practice, I teach clients how to create a ritual on a regular basis. My helping spirits urge me to create ritual as often as I can. They prescribe ritual for me in my own life as well as for my clients. Rarely does a client get away without having a ritual prescribed as homework designed to help integrate their healing. A ritual can involve only you and your helping spirits, or a whole group of people and all of their helping spirits. As you can imagine, group ritual can sometimes be more powerful than a ritual involving only yourself. Therefore, you may want to find friends who are interested in participating.

Why should I create a ritual?

In my view and in the view of my helping spirits, one purpose of creating a ritual is universal communication. Communication with the helping spirits, the Universe, Source…whatever you call it for yourself. In my experience, the helping spirits can be VERY LITERAL when interpreting your prayers and affirmations. English is not their preferred language. It seems like symbolism is the better way to go when communicating with the unseen energies.

Ritual is important because it creates a physical, tangible marker in our lives. It is such an amazing tool for daily use and in times of transitions such as birth, death, marriage and coming of age. It is a way of letting go of the old and calling in the new.

Ritual can help us integrate healing and new energies into our lives. It is a communication of who we are willing to be NOW in our lives.

How do I begin to build a ritual?

As with most spiritual work, it’s an intuitive process and impossible to get wrong. What works for one may or may not work for another. There is no one-size-fits-all ritual.

The first component of building a ritual is identifying a need. What are you trying to create in your life? Which passage are you marking? What energy are you calling to yourself?

Once identified, it is best to journey or sit in prayer/meditation and ask your higher self or Source: What is the best way to communicate that need or change? You’ll get information in whichever intuitive way you normally do. If you don’t know how you receive intuitive information, see the Clair series.

Ask your higher Self what groundwork needs to be done before this ritual can be effective. It’s important because if we are lacking something, there is usually a reason for it…an underlying energy keeping us from getting it (unworthiness, fear, some sort of block).

If we don’t attend to the underlying energies in our lives, there is a good possibility the ritual won’t work or you will attract something undesirable.

Once you receive guidance, work on healing those things.  It may be as simple as asking for a healing in that area and receiving it on the spot from your helping spirits. It may be a deeper issue that you will need support with.  You may need to get a therapist or see a healer. Whatever it is, don’t rush the process.

After laying the groundwork, slip back into meditation and ask your helping spirits what your ritual should look like.  You may get small snippets of ideas that you piece together in your own intuitive way.  You may get a whole novel with specific instructions.

Set your space

Prepare to execute the ritual by gathering the items you intuitively know you need. If it should happen in a specific place, bring your items to that place. If you saw fire or water, be sure to have that element with you. You may not need any items at all. Whatever it is, it is right for you.

Once the time and space is right to start, center yourself and call in your helping spirits. If you don’t know specifically who your helping spirits are, you can call to the benevolent angels or the highest vibrational aspects of your favorite ascended master(s) or to Source… whomever you feel comfortable calling to.

Perform the ritual you are guided to perform. It may be simple or it can be complex. Again, it’s YOUR ritual and you cannot screw this up.

Be sure to mark the ending of your ritual with prayers of love and gratitude. Love and gratitude are the highest vibrational feelings we have and are great for attracting what we want.