Sharing Our Light in Community Ceremony

In my last article I talked about co-creating ceremonial grids and altars as containers for intentions and prayers. After being inspired by a despacho ceremony from a Peruvian paqo and elder Wilbert Salas Atasi, my spirit team came to me and nudged me to make these ceremonial offerings regularly as part of my personal practice. 

Bringing these ceremonies into my personal practice has been life changing.  And I feel the energy in turns anchoring what it needs to anchor and also rippling out to where it needs to flow.

But like the despacho ceremony Wilbert created, when we come together in a group with focused intention, its effect is felt far and wide. It makes an impact on the collective energy of the world. I felt the energy of our ceremony that day wrap around the earth like a beautiful ribbon.

In some ceremonies we may be called to attend and be an active participant. That is  when we may be speaking intentions and prayers, sharing in singing songs of power, holding objects and energy. 

My dear friends Gayle Mair and Roger Wheelock are ceremonialists, and I have been fortunate to be part of many of their ceremonies. I recorded an interview with them
about what they do which you can find on Spotify here. As well as despacho, they have been creating crystal grid ceremonies for community.  Their ceremonies always invite participation. 

Before attending they ask that we bring a personal intention that we can align with the overarching intention and theme of the ceremony. Then they provide the time and space for us to speak and share what we are bringing. In the crystal grid ceremonies we each take turns choosing crystals and items which we place on the altar space where we feel called. Roger then listens to the stone beings and spirit helpers and moves key anchoring crystals around accordingly to focus and attune the energy patterns we create as they build and blend. I feel the energies flowing like an energetic tapestry we have woven together, wrapping around each of us as participants, and also flowing into the collective energy of the community and the environment.

The active co-creation that Gayle and Roger facilitate in groups is purposeful and powerful. But we don’t even have to take involved roles in the ceremony for our participation to be meaningful. Many times our presence is enough. We bring with us our unique energy and soul’s purpose, as well as all of our energetic and Spirit connections. 

Chingiz Kam, a shaman from the republic of Tuva in Siberia came to Corvallis recently to perform ceremony and songs from his tradition. It was held at the museum and open to anyone, and at least fifty people attended, a big turnout for a weeknight in a small college city. My ancestors nudged me to go as soon as my friend told me about the event.

My ancestors told me then that the shaman would sing a song for them. It would seal all the tending I had done for them over the past year and enliven the lineage moving forward. Sitting there in the crowd, as a passive observer, I could feel that the room was full of ancestors that each one of us had brought with us.  And I realized that was our part of the ceremony.  His songs and drumming, his Spirit allies and ancestors wove a tapestry of alignment, healing and blessing into the strands of all of our lineages. All of us were called by our ancestors and Spirit guides to have our presence there to be part of the ceremony.

I sometimes see each one of us as crystals on a collective grid,  sacred objects on the altar of our planet, Mother Earth. Where each place we are called to live, work or visit creates an energetic thread in the ceremony of everything. Our intentions always flowing, creating, interweaving with all the other beings to co-create our lives, our timelines in the multiverse. 

What if every breath, every thought became a strand of fiber in those energetic threads. Would we know what kind of world ceremony we are creating as we go about living our lives?

Crystal grid for Resilience created by Gayle and Roger and their community in Asheville, NC