Ritual is a time out of ordinary time. There are varying types of rituals, large group rituals, long intense rituals and then there are the small, everyday offerings that are also rituals, and these are the most common in this work. When I offer milk on my shrine for the grandmothers, I consider that a ritual. When I walk to the water and make an offering for a person in need, that is a ritual. When I pour water to the Earth, asking for conflict to be cleared and communication to be eased, that is a ritual. Ritual is so common to human experience that most of us don’t even notice how many we participate in within the span of one day.
Do you call your children or your parents often and regularly? This too could be seen as a ritual: special time set aside just for them. Do you pray or say affirmations, engage in gratitude thinking? These too are rituals. Do you visit a place regularly to commune with nature? This too could be seen as a ritual.
For me an important component of any ritual is clarity and focus of intent. Ritual allows us to sequester sections of the quotidian to focus clearly and with intent on something sacred or meaningful. The ritual space has power because it allows us to interact with other dimensions and in that space leave ordinary time and have access to all time.
Carving out room in our busy days to focus and make offerings, send healing energy, or offer gratitude creates vortices of intention which concentrate our energy in powerful ways. The more we do it, the more palpable it becomes. Ritual allows our energy to coalesce and create a more coherent form of energy.
Rituals interacting with specific beings in the spiritual dimensions, when done purposefully, pack an extra potent punch. Because we are entering into and growing this relationship with each ritual, our lives expand beyond the usual parameters. We feel ourselves to be part of a larger and more expansive reality. Our souls widen and we feel supported in ways not felt before.
The best thing about ritual is that often there is a powerful response. Rituals are meant to be interactions and communications and those are meant to garner a response. The response deepens as we continue to carry out ritual and we begin to experience the reciprocity of the world and universe we live in.
Strega Tree Apothecary’s product line is ritual based. Each product comes with the ritual designed for the intended effect. Protective balms offer rituals to protect from the evil eye, to nourish caregivers, to reconcile experiences in which one was hurt and unprotected: violated.
Inner Earth Blends are remedies with rituals to balance the light within the body so that one’s energy system is attuned to the Earth and her healing frequency.
Wedeme Heart Blends are more in depth ritual packages created by the wedeme (elemental beings of the wild) to support humans in living centered in their hearts. The wedeme see the heart as the jewel in the cosmos and want us to understand that we can restore the heart to its original pattern.
The Medicine Jewelry, Celtic Knotwork and Star Woman Elixirs have been created ritually and infused with medicinal properties and energetic intentions.
Rituals do not have to be complex. They can be simple and they are so subtle. But getting quiet and focusing is required and that, in the times we live in, in and of itself is a healing and a gift.
~Theresa C. Dintino
©Theresa C. Dintino 2019
Theresa C. Dintino is an ancestral Strega (Italian wise woman), Earth worker, and initiated diviner in the West African Dagara tradition. For more than 20 years Theresa has studied and practiced an Earth-based spirituality. She currently helps others reclaim their personal lineages through her divination work. Theresa is the author of seven books which include her Tree Medicine Trilogy. Learn more about her books here.