This is part of an ongoing series on a Ritual Template. Check out my introduction post, and my posts on Preparations, Creating Sacred Space, and Invocation!
We’ve now arrived at the heart of the ritual: your Purpose. This is the Why – the driving force behind your ritual.
There are a few major categories of ritual purposes (which can absolutely overlap):
- Holy/Sacred Days
- Honoring the Divine, including deities, spirits, elements, and other energies
- Working Magick
- Performing Divination
- Receiving Messages from the Divine
- Communing with the Divine
Holy/Sacred Days
Sacred Days can take many forms. It could be a major Sabbat in the Wheel of the Year, driven by the sun and seasonal cycles. It could be a full or new moon, following the ebb and flow of the lunations. It could be a dedicated festival for a particular deity, like Aphrodisia or Veneralia. It could be a day of the week that was historically sacred to a specific deity. Or it could be a sacred day holy to you in your personal life, like your birthday, an anniversary, a secular holiday, or a rite of passage.
Rituals for sacred days could include traditional observances (like dancing around a maypole for Beltane or charging holy water on the full moon), something unique to that one ritual, or some combination of the two. You may also have a personal practice that becomes a tradition for you over time.
Here are some of the sacred days I celebrate involving Aphrodite:
- Beltane
- Spring Equinox
- Summer Solstice
- Full Moons
- Fridays
- Aphrodisia
- Veneralia
- New Year’s Eve
- New Year’s Day
- Valentine’s Day
- My Priestess Initiation Anniversary
- My Birthday
- My Partner’s Birthday
- Our Anniversary
You are by no means limited to this list! You may have other days that are important to you and your practice. Do what works for you and the Deity/Energy/Spirit you are honoring.
Honoring the Divine
There will also be times when you will want to honor the Divine outside of a specific calendar context. Our love of the Gods isn’t limited to a particular season or moon phase! You can honor the Divine as a way of strengthening your relationship and connection with that energy, as a way of giving thanks for blessings and guidance, or just because! The intention you have for honoring the Divine will inspire the other elements of your ritual, and your purpose here could be as simple as making offerings, singing a devotional song or chant, performing a dance, praying, lighting a candle, reciting a poem, or anything really.
Working Magick
This is a huge purpose for performing rituals for many Pagans and witches. For me, magick is an inextricable part of my being, so it often interweaves with the other aspects of my spiritual practice. There are times when I am a bit more organized and intentional about it, and I will craft a spell for a specific purpose with proper correspondences and timing. Mostly, I just do magick when I need it. If it happens to line up to a moon phase or seasonal cycle or day of the week – Fantastic! But I’m not waiting around if I need something.
(I’ve been meaning to write a post on my philosophy of magick for a while, and hopefully I’ll get around to that soon.)
Here are some types and themes of magick that I regularly invoke Aphrodite for:
- Love
- Relationships (romantic, friendship, family, et cetera)
- Communication in relationships
- Emotional healing
- Cultivating and appreciating beauty
- Confidence
- Courage
- Harmony
- Fighting for what I love and believe in
- Social justice (particularly in recognizing and celebrating the inherent worth of every person, reproductive rights, equity in general)
- Compassion
- Self-esteem
- Sex
- Creativity
- Intuition
- Connection
Again, you are not limited to this list! Aphrodite shows up in different ways for different people, and you may feel called to perform a different type of magick with Her.
Performing Divination
We all need a little guidance now and then! What better way than to reach out to the Divine? Divination can be performed for any and every area of life. There are some tools that you might use to help you with divination: tarot cards, oracle cards, a pendulum, fire/water/smoke for scrying, runes, and many others.
What tool you choose will depend on the nature of your question. Different card decks often have different personalities. My rose quartz pendulum is probably the sassiest and most opinionated magickal tool I own! (Which I did not expect because rose quartz is typically a more gentle stone, but the pendulum has its own ideas.)
My divination tool that I most associate with Aphrodite is my Cosmic Dancer Oracle Deck by Tess Whitehurst and Sedona Soulfire, with lovely art by Elinore Eaton. When I first opened and blessed the deck, I included language in my ritual about “whichever Divine voice wants to speak through this deck” and the very first card I drew looked like Aphrodite. The second card I drew was a lesson that Aphrodite has been continually teaching me. And so, the deck became Hers.
Receiving Messages from the Divine
Of course, messages can be received through Divination, but there are also other methods of communicating with the Divine. Probably the practice I do most often is what my friends and I just call “listening.” It can be a form of meditation or journeying where the intention is to actively listen for messages. You can invoke a particular Deity (or multiple deities), ask about a specific situation, or something similar.
I have friends that practice automatic writing and some that are intentional about receiving messages in dreams. I have channeled Aphrodite a few times as well to write rituals for Her or receive messages. There are many methods that could take place in a ritual context that would work here.
Communing with the Divine
This one is similar to Receiving Messages, but I wanted to put it in its own separate category because you don’t always need a specific intention to receive messages. This could be a guided meditation, attuning with the energy of a particular Deity, or – as one of my friends likes to do – light a candle and chill with the Universe. Just spending time in sacred space can be incredibly healing, as can simply being in the presence of a Deity. You don’t always need a specific goal or aim.
A Concluding Thought
As with the other steps of the ritual creation process, intention is essential to your purpose. Your intention funnels energy into your spellwork, drives your prayers forward, and forges that connection between you and the Divine. When you think about your ritual purpose, you should feel it with your whole being and let that energy radiate outward to whatever you are doing.
Priestess of Aphrodite 