|
The use of ritual is one of the most complex issues facing organisations such as the Rosicrucians in today’s skeptical age. So let’s take this one on the chin. Yes, in our affiliated bodies (Atrium and Pronaos Groups, Chapters and Lodges) we use ritual. But let’s take this right back to basics and explain what and why.
When you get up in the morning and have that first cup of tea or coffee, that’s ritual. You may not have thought about it this way but that life-restoring cup of hot liquid tells your body, and more importantly, your mind, that the working day must begin and you’d better be about it or you’ll be late. This may seem a trivial example but it illustrates the main purpose of ritual which is to signal to some deeper part of yourself that you’re about to do something very important and you want the full faculties of your mind and body to be in readiness to support your endeavours.
The singing of “Happy Birthday” to one of your relatives or friends is another example of ritual. This time the enactment is usually across a group of people, all of whom know their role - in this case to support the giving of love and affection to someone very special on the anniversary of the day they came into this physical world. It’s a ritual we know and love; and one we were happy to learn because we could see the good it did.
When two Rosicrucians who know each other meet they will greet each other in a way that acknowledges their mutual and high purpose. When they meet in the sanctuary of an affiliated body, they do so to expand on that loving feeling they get when they carry out their home study in a private and special place they have laid out (albeit it temporarily) in their own home. As such, they need a process that will “amplify” that loving and purposeful feeling they had at home. The ancients understood this well, and designed beautiful rituals that worked because they were built on nature’s laws of harmony and natural power. Today we perpetuate this in those parts of our meeting rooms set aside for such temple purposes. But a Rosicrucian temple is not a place where dry dogma is followed by rote, it is a dynamic model of man’s contact with the Cosmic forces of love and creativity.
Try this once and you may find that it provides a depth of group experience that you have never had before, and your life will be the richer for it.
Next topic or select from menu at left.
|
