My tradition of Wicca is eclectic, but when I was initiated to the first degree I was told that our lineage goes back to Gardner through Pete Pathfinder Davis of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church and Raymond Buckland.  So being of Gardnerian extraction, we do have a degree system.  I got my 1st in January of 2003, a couple of weeks after I started this blog, incidentally.

So I've been at the same degree for a while.  My High Priestess started a second degree class in the spring of last year, but the classes started sporadic and soon went into hiatus when she finally got her insurance settlement and had to move out of her Katrina-damaged home for renovations.  I was kind of disappointed about the hiatus, since the classes I was able to attend were fantastic, the most hands-on, practical formal instruction in the craft that I've gotten.

There have been occasional rumors about when the classes might resume; the most recent I'd heard, back in September, was that she would pick them up again after the Goddess conference in October.  So when I got an email this weekend with "2nd degree" as the subject line, that's what I was expecting to hear about.

Instead, it was an invitation to come to New Orleans next week for the second degree to be bestowed on us.  She says we've earned it in circles, classes and life.

I'm still a little gobsmacked by the suddenness of it, but at the same time, it's something I've been waiting on for almost six years.  So yes, I think it's time for me to take that step.

When my circle put me in charge of writing a ritual for our public Midsummer this June, my first reaction was to hit the bookstores.  I bought Ritual Craft by Amber K and Azrael K, Neopagan Rites by Isaac Bonewits, and Creating Circles and Ceremonies by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, and tried to absorb as much information about good public ritual design as I could in the time that I had.

Our public Litha was a disorganized mess.  I took so long writing it that nobody had time to actually learn their lines, and we didn't have a rehearsal.  The only time we got to go over the ground we were having the ritual on was when we got there an hour early to set up.  It had been poorly advertised and was poorly attended, exacerbated by our announcement, almost as an afterthought, that it would not be a child-friendly ritual.  Our priest got his lines out of order, but we just forged ahead anyway.

Next time, try again, fail better, yeah?

I've been to three or four public rituals since then, put on by various groups.  The ones at the Goddess conference at the beginning of October were stellar, as you might expect from people who've been witches for 50 years and leading public rituals for at least 20.

Others not so stellar.  The public Samhain was beautifully set up, with an ancestor altar in the middle of a labyrinth marked out with luminaries.  But the High Priestess is a kitchen sink kind of ritualist, as in "everything but the--" and her ritual was 18 pages long.  It started over an hour late, and two of the readers called the quarters in the wrong order; perhaps coincidentally, the temperature dropped dramatically right after that, and we all shivered through the two-hour ritual.  There was a long stretch when participants could individually walk the labyrinth and spend at moment or two at the center, and everybody else just waited and fidgeted by the firepit.

I've also seen the opening and closing rituals of a different event.  These both highlighted why my group generally chooses to exclude small children; 2-year-olds are needy by nature, and don't like it when both parents are trying to do something else.  They also get tired early, which delayed the already-late closing ritual. 

And I have nothing against song as a major component of ritual; I quite enjoy singing, and I've been in (and once led) private ones that were nearly all sung.  But for a public ritual attended by people you've never worked with before, don't pick a song that nobody knows...especially when you can't carry the tune well enough for people to pick it up as you go.

Anyway.  I made sure to mention the mess I was partially responsible for up front so that it wouldn't sound like I was just bitching cluelessly.  I know how hard it is to do this well, and I don't claim to be good at it myself.  My only point is that my local Pagan community is trying to be more visible and cohesive, and we all need more practice at this stuff before we can really present ourselves well.  I think it's good we decided against trying a full-blown Pagan Pride Day event this year.

Maybe next year.