Ritual at Spring Equinox

Last Friday morning I stood shivering on an exposed, windy hilltop with nine other very chilly adults and three small children as we waited to greet the rising of the sun on the Spring Equinox.

As dawn unfolded, Tomas, an initiated shaman in the tradition of the Huichol people of central Mexico, led our small group in a simple morning song ritual. Each of us held our “life arrow”: a small twig wound with different colors of yarn. Each twist of the yarn represented a prayer or intention placed into the stick for the new seeds we wanted to grow and blossom in our life in harmony with Great Grandmother Growth – Tatanakawey in the Huichol language. Later each of us would “plant” our stick, symbolically sowing these seeds to sprout in the warming days to come.

I thought of how people have been doing ritual for millennia, elders teaching the new generation; they, in their turn, passing on the teachings. And how much ritual – even the very simple ones – feed our hunger for community and connection.

Ritual helps us reconnect with the blessings of life that we often overlook in the midst of hurry and worry. And it reconnects us to the Great Aliveness called by many names in many tongues – God, Goddess, Yaweh, Allah, Buddha nature, Tatanakeway are only a few.

How do you incorporate ritual into your life to feed your soul?