Learning from Ritual

For the past several months, in addition to coordinating and Online Writing Lab and teaching two sections of Introduction to Comparative Religion, I have been teaching a graduate class for Cherry Hill Seminary called Understanding the Ritual Experience.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cherry Hill, it is a Pagan seminary offering several different masters level programs related to the Pagan ministry.  There have certainly been many attempts at creating such a seminary, but what seems to make Cherry Hill work is its ongoing commitment to academic credentialing and its incorporation of e-learning.  Classes are completely online, although there are periodic intensives that Cherry Hill sponsors around the country.

I had been observing Cherry Hill from a distance for years, as members of the project often appeared at both the Conference on Pagan Studies and at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion.  I had expressed interest in teaching there, thinking I would primarily teach some sort of academic writing course, and was told to submit a proposal—but I didn’t have a good sense of what they wanted for a proposal; and with a busy a schedule, I just kept forgetting to pursue it.  Finally, last September, Macha Nightmare, whom I had formed a friendship with over the years, called me and asked me if I would be interested in teaching a “ritual theory” course in the Spring.  I didn’t quite know how much I would have on my plate at the time, and I agreed with little hesitation.

A the core of my motivation, was something more then a desire to assist with developing an institution for the magical community that I considered vital to our growth.  I have, for quite some time, believed that ritual studies still has much to learn from contemporary Paganism.  Ritual studies folks sometime seem a bit winded by all the Pagans that flood their ranks, and I get the feeling sometimes that, while they feel they have learned a bit from Pagan studies, this particular well of inquiry has been exhausted.  As someone both deeply embedded in the literature on ritual studies (and increasingly embedded in ritual studies institutions) and in the Pagan and magical community, I just do not believe this to be true.  Paganism provides a vital, active community that shares its historical culture (and thus its underlying assumptions—what hermeneutics might refer to as a “common sense”) with ritual studies and is actively engaged in constant experimentation with ritual.   Many concepts drift from academic discourse on ritual into the Pagan community and are tested in application, and so I believe that there is somewhat of a common language between the two communities.  So, I was excited.  I looked forward to a class where I would get to dialog with Pagans about ritual, looking at ritual theory together, seeing how it reflected into their experience with ritual, seeing if the academic language worked or not.

Sooner than I expected, the semester arrived; and I was caught up in suddenly having to administer the Online Writing Lab I coordinate on my own (last semester I had a team-member, another OWL instructor, who ended up leaving to pursue her own business), teaching two sections of Comparative Religion, putting together a panel on religion and dissent for Austin Community College, and putting together and teaching this class on ritual.  Honestly, the first month or so was as much about learning how to engage in the completely online learning environment as anything else.  So, as I coast into the middle of my semester, I am only now beginning to have the opportunity to reflect on what I am learning about ritual here.  At this preliminary stage, I’m seeing two things:

1. I probably over-estimated the common language.  I’m finding the students at Cherry Hill are having a much harder time with the conceptual language coming from ritual studies then I had anticipated.  This is, in part, just the fact that many of them, while often holding advanced professional degrees, may not have a specific academic background in either religious studies or cultural anthropology.  As they begin to grow more comfortable with the language, they are making the connections with their own experience.  That said, there seems a deep suspicion that the “theory,” even when developed as an explanatory theory of ethnographic material, is too distant from application.  The challenge for me has been to articulate that link from a literature that is often trying to make sure it doesn’t get accused of advocating any particular religious position.  It’s no surprise then, that they tend to like Ronald Grimes, who has been refreshingly unapologetic over the years in voicing a practical application for ritual studies.
2. I am finding important ideas emerging that don’t seem particularly emphasized in the literature of ritual studies.  A good example that I have been wrestling with is the concept of trust.  During one class chat session, I became convinced that the students’ primary concern for the efficacy of ritual was trust.  To my knowledge, there is little discussion of the importance of trust, aside from Roy Rappaport (and he uses the concept in terms of information theory), anywhere in the literature; and yet here, for practitioners, it seemed extremely important (and I could see hints of its significance, though not recognized, in the wider ethnographic record).

It’s too early to conclude if my intimation was true, if there still is a deep well to plumb here.  I’m enjoying the class and finding it very intellectually engaging, and so I’ll probably offer it again—most likely significantly revised based on what I am learning about what will serve these students best.