by Claire Palermo

At the time that I received this book, I had reached a crossroads in my pagan practice. I am in college, and the student witches’ group that I have helped organize for the past three years was disbanding as graduation approaches. During our time together, I didn’t feel very confident in the effectiveness of my rituals or my leadership skills. This seemed like a good time to dig deeper into the craft of ritual creation and reclaim my priestess power, but I wasn’t sure where to start.

As cliché as it sounds, Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries by Ruth Barrett is exactly what I was looking for. It functions as a theoretical introduction to the Dianic Tradition and a practical guide to ritual craft, at the same time. If you’ve ever felt an itching need to create a spontaneous ritual, but couldn’t think of a specific intention, this book provides extensive lists of ideas. Have you ever honored your choice to have or not have children, your sexuality, your career, creating a work of art, or your activism with ritual? This book explains the power of meeting your personal needs through ceremony, and gives you a toolbox to work with.

Ruth encourages her readers to question their judgments about what makes certain occasions more important than others, and whether we have learned to celebrate them in ways that are empowering. The first chapter de-constructs traditional rituals and holidays -- such as milestone birthdays, baby showers and weddings – to expose the subtle layers of social conditioning and oppression that underline how most people celebrate them. Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries includes rituals that have disappeared from modern life. Ceremonies to celebrate menstruation, coming out, remaining childless, or old age represent a profoundly different view of “special occasions”.

The only thing that I disliked about this book was its exclusion of some experiences that have a different relationship to the Dianic cosmology, such as coming out as bisexual rather than lesbian, or the fact that some women have hostile relationships with their mothers, which makes open mother-daughter interaction more difficult. However, no author has the time to cover everything.

Ruth walks the reader through each step of crafting a Wiccan ritual: setting up the altar, circle casting, invoking the elements, writing invocations, visualization and working with energy. Exercises and sample texts are provided in each section. Ruth uses three modes of learning (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) as a framework for the creative process, and suggests ways to incorporate all six senses into your ceremony. For example, during a banishing ritual, a witch can burn an object (visual), untie knots in a consecrated cord (kinesthetic), or speak a banishing chant (auditory) to act out her intention.

The second half of the book covers what I would call priestess training – what a priestess is, vocations, the meaning of service, and group facilitation. These chapters really spoke to my heart, because they vividly describe and outline the kind of witch and priestess that I would like to become. In the process of looking for a new coven, I knew that I had found the right one when I mentioned this book and all of the other women were joyously raving about how it had opened their eyes to a new way of understanding what it means to be a Witch.

Just as the book begins with a breakdown of disempowering ritual traditions, it ends by re-visioning new rituals for women’s life cycles. I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to become a better ritual maker, priestess, feminist, witch, woman or all of the above!