What Is The Point Of Ritual When Intention Is More Important?

I’ll preface this by saying that my answer here is going to be similar to that which I gave on the question of material offerings a short while back.  Much which applies to that context likewise applies here.

I’ll begin my excursus here by telling you what contexts I’ve heard statements like this in before, often positively (rather than interrogatively), to wit, “I don’t need to do a ritual today because the Gods understand why I can’t.”  On several occasions, just because a thing or two goes “not-quite-to-plan” the day of ritual, people just say “Well, it looks like the Gods are against me,” and rather than doing divination to see if that’s the case, they just call things off.  Still others have this idea that one can do “a ritual in one’s mind” that is just as effective as a physical ritual.

To the first, I would say:  maybe, but how do you know?  If things occur in such a manner that a ritual becomes impossible for you to perform on a given day, for whatever legitimate or otherwise reasons, then the least you owe the Deities is to go before Their shrines and tell Them why it is you’re not able to carry out your ritual plans, and then see what They have to say about expiation, alternatives, or other things.  This might involve negotiation.  But one’s own fear, insecurity, or other things is never a valid excuse for why one shouldn’t do a ritual.

To the second, I would say:  has it ever occurred to you that sometimes a thing struggled for is more dear than that which comes easily and without difficulty?  Sometimes, perhaps, the Deities are testing one by putting obstacles in one’s way and seeing if you are creative, adaptable, and persistent enough to attempt overcoming them rather than trying to veer you off course and encouraging you NOT to do as you had planned.  (I don’t know of any case in which devotional activities to a Deity that were regularly planned, particularly for Deities with Whom one is already close, refuses or denies the possibility of rituals involving praise, offerings, and so forth!  Delays, perhaps, but not outright dismissals or deletions!)  One cannot be sure unless divination is involved, and that is a great time to see what might be going on via such a means.

On both of these matters, a further issue is at stake, involving one of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard in my life (once said to me several years back by Edward Butler, and which I had striven for previously but had never heard in these exact words):  don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Too often, I’ve heard people abandon the idea of ritual at all because they don’t have a chorus of twelve trained singers to intone hymns, all in authentic garb, in a purpose-built temple…and while it would be nice to have all of those things, sometimes it’s just you, your squeaky voice, a business-card-sized icon of your Deity, and a carton of egg nog…so, get to prayin’!  Yes, the Deities understand that we can’t provide all of those things that might have been their regular due in the past, but that doesn’t alleviate the need to do SOMETHING now, no matter how apparently humble or paltry it is.

As for the third category above:  well, if your Deity only exists in your mind, then doing ritual only in your mind is perfectly fine.  If your Deities exist more widely, including in the thoughts of other people, then it is safe to assume that They have an existence independent of you, and are therefore deserving of a manner of honoring that is greater than what your thoughts can produce.  (And while some people do a lot of work on “astral temples” and such, I remain unconvinced that this is an adequate replacement for actual physical ritual; until and unless my own experiences demonstrate that to the contrary, I will not be convinced of it.  If your own experiences have included that and have been valid for your own practice, I do not dispute that validity in your own case, but it isn’t my case, and it certainly isn’t an adequate replacement or even supplement in any of the directions I’ve yet received from my own Deities.)

Polytheistic religions are religions of both experience and practice; but where ritual and such is concerned (particularly for annual festival dates, etc.), praxis rather than experience must come to the fore.  This is the case in all of the attested polytheistic systems of which I’m aware from the ancient world, and likewise with the polytheistic and animistic religions which have continued to the present time.  In Shinto, it doesn’t matter if you “feel the kami” at a particular ritual, it matters that you do the ritual and do it correctly.  The practices themselves have an impact even if you are not directly aware of it, and whether or not your feelings corroborate such an effect.

To co-opt a cliche Zen koan for the purposes it was never intended for:  it’s the question of a tree falling in the woods making a sound, even if there’s no one there to hear it.  The thing with such trees falling in the woods (with “trees falling” being “doing a ritual”), even if you can’t see, hear, or feel the divine presences Who have eyes, ears, and mouths to see, hear, and receive the things of the ritual, They are doing so, and thus you should do as expected!

Human thoughts and feelings are a fickle thing, and can be easily distracted, kindled or diminished, and so forth.  As our Deities tend not to be omniscient, They have no way of telling whether or not you are thinking a particular thing, and thus a “mental ritual” is of no use to Them.  They are not omniempathic (a new word, perhaps?), and thus don’t know what you’re feeling at all times, and therefore cannot share your feelings in any case.  Think about someone who tells you “But I really love you, and I was thinking about you and how much I love you all day on Sunday,” and you reply, “Yeah, but why didn’t you call me?  It was my birthday!”  The same thing applies with a Deity and ritual:  you can think nice thoughts and feel good feelings toward Them to your own heart’s content, but until you “pick up the phone,” as it were, and do prayers and such, there’s no way They’re going to be able to tell that such is the case.

Not unlike the situation with material offerings, the words and actions of ritual are a way of bringing a Deity’s presence more into the physical world.

What follows might be controversial to some, but I think it’s worth saying all the same.  One must have the approach to divine ritual that is exactly the opposite of what so many people think it is, or should be when things start to get difficult in carrying such rituals out:  without doing the ritual, one has to view the possibility of the world ending because you haven’t done it.  This is something that is often derided about the historical polytheistic cultures (particularly outside of Europe), that the people involved in them were “so ignorant” that they thought the sun wouldn’t come up without their rituals or sacrifices, etc.  While that may be true on a physical level, and likewise it may be true that just because you didn’t do a ritual the literal world is not going to come to a screeching halt because you didn’t (unless, of course, it does…!?!), on a conceptual level, in which one is embedded in one’s own personal cosmology and spiritual worldview, without that active engagement, one’s world does come to an end.  Every act of ritual, offering, and devotion is a process of building that world, brick by brick, and even atom by atom, and the sounds that vibrate them and create resonance between them.  If that does not continue, then one has a partial world at best, and no world at all at worst.  No, the sun might still come up if you don’t do your ritual; but your Deity might not come and be a part of your life for that special few moments, and as a result that good devotional presence will not have the opportunity to resonate out across all of your other activities–devotional and otherwise–because you didn’t think it important enough to take the time and effort on that occasion.

More could be said, but I shall leave it there for now.