Writing your own rituals sounds like a scary prospect, I know. It terrified me when I was a newbie. I was so afraid to screw up... to do things in the wrong order, or forget something, or flub my lines, etc. I didn't know what to write, or where to put things in the ritual. I was convinced that there was One Correct Way to do things, and if I didn't do them in that order that I'd get blasted with heavenly lightning or something. Do you feel the same?
Well, there is no One Correct Way to write ritual, so relax. I can also tell you that if you screw things up, the Gods will not drop a large, Monty Python-style foot out of the sky and stomp on you. I've messed things up plenty of times, and I'm still standing. Unfortunately, I can also tell you that writing good ritual takes practice. Your first few original scripts are probably not going to be your best work. They may feel disjointed until you get a feel for the flow of ritual. They may not be full of the flowery language you've seen authors use for invocations. This article will walk you step-by-step through creating ritual, though it isn't going to be an outline that you can just "drag and drop" bits and piece to create ritual scripts. Rather, I'm going to explain the mechanics of writing ritual, and share some tips and advice from my own successes and failures. This, in the long run, will serve you better than any generic "ritual outline".
So let's start at the beginning... what sort of ritual do you want to do? Will this be a Sabbat? If so, which holiday? Or is this a moon ritual (a.k.a. Esbat)? If so, in which phase of the moon will the ritual take place? Does it matter? Do you want to raise energy during ritual, or will it just be something celebratory? The type of ritual will drive what sorts of activities you can incorporate, and what supplies you might need. What you plan for a Yule ritual will be different than what you plan for a regular full moon ritual where you want to work a healing spell. Try to keep the focus of your ritual down to one or two things, to keep the length down.
