At the beginning of October I had the privilege of leading the opening ritual for our local Pagan Pride Day celebration. Despite being rather frantically stressed at the time I think we managed to pull off a pretty decent ritual for building the local community. Though the actual words we spoke on the day were a little different than what I originally wrote, you'll get the gist from the transcription below.
Feel free to use this ritual however you please, but if you're going to use it wholesale in public please do give me credit.
Pagan Pride Day 2013 - Opening Ritual
Opening remarks:
We’ve come together today to celebrate Pagan Pride Day. In this ritual we celebrate coming together and supporting one another and we will pledge to continue to create and strengthen our local community. We will not be casting a circle because our work today needs none. Our working is about the magickal and the mundane coming together without barriers.
Have everyone stand in a rough circle.
Call elements (earth, air, fire, water, spirit)
Invite deity:
We stand together as people of many individual faiths. We are witches, druids, magicians, seekers, curious onlookers, supportive family and friends, and many other variations. I invite you all to silently call on your deity to stand witness to this rite. If you know your deity doesn’t play well with others use your judgment on whether to call them or not. If you don’t work with deity call on whatever it is you cherish. This ritual is for all of us.
(take a moment for everyone to do so)
Statement of Purpose:
Today we celebrate coming together. This morning we all took the heroic action of actually getting out the front door and coming to a public gathering. In this age of twitter and tumblr it’s actually a big deal. We’ve all taken the risk of leaving the safety and comfort of our homes to interact with people we don’t know. People we hope we have something in common with. And we do. Just by being here we’ve made a statement. We are proud of who we are and we support each other.
With all of our differences and all our variety we have come together. We are not alone. There are many of us, across the county and across the world. We believe that there is still magick and mystery in this world and we want to know it. We may each come to that mystery in a different way, but we all want to know it, to delve into the depths and find our joy. That we can see past our differences to the heart of the matter shows great spirit.
We all have our own reasons for coming here today. Perhaps some of us will share our hopes for this day.
(popcorn people saying something the want to get out of the event)
(Thank everyone that said something)
Working:
We are all stronger for having this amazing community available to us. We are all better off when we know there are people near us that we can go to for advice and aid in times of need. Let us all pledge to build and strengthen this community. A little effort can go a long way. It can be coming to local workshops and rituals, supporting our local merchants, or even as little as trying to be a little kinder to those who take a different approach than you do.
What will you do to support our community?
(popcorn and have people say what they individually will do - make it clear that no one has to say anything if they don’t want to)
And so we are pledged before that which we each hold dear. We will be brave. We will be patient and we will be kind to each other. We will do our best to create the community we want to have and we shall. So mote it be.
Dismiss deity:
Let us each take a moment to thank what we cherish for witnessing our pledge.
(take a moment)
Dismiss elements
Closing:
Take the energy we have raised with you throughout this day and make it a little brighter. Blessed be.
People had a great time at that ritual, I think you hit a lot of right notes with something simple.
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