As a ritualist, I am quite conservative. Various (occasionally slightly frustrated) people out there can attest to that.

Yet it occurred to me earlier this week following [pic related] [in the course of operations that shall be elaborated upon in due course] that despite ritual, fundamentally, entailing the ability to ‘follow a script’ … the ability to think laterally and problem-solve on the fly is also pretty useful for a ritualist.

Why?

Because we suddenly hit a stage in a protracted rite wherein the libations required Honey. Liquid honey.

Which I didn’t have. The temperature having gotten down into the single-digits range, it’s perhaps unsurprising the honey was solid at that time.

So what did I do ? Grabbed a spoon and started heating the contents with a (Ghee-powered) flame [note: NOT the Diya lamp used for the Aarti in case one is worried] …

… and then realized that i had somehow wound up quite literally co-opting conduct most usually evinced by persons with intravenous hard drug addictions , for religious operative purposes.

That ‘Meath of Poetry’, indeed.

Yet thinking about it a bit further as I waited for my honey to liquify upon this spoon – it occurred to me that there’s actually a rather broader skein of truth to the notion, as well.

Rituals are scripts – and that’s fine, right up until something that’s ‘not in the script’ (or, at least, the script you’ve got immediately to hand) happens. Then what do you do
Well, in various cases, you probably switch over to a previously developed (sub)script which can cover the situation you’re grappling with. It’s partially why we have them extensive ritual manual / commentary texts – to provide such things in the first place.

Yet I suspect that it’s also pretty positive to be able to make use of ‘outside-context’ perceptions and rememberings so as to get things back moving onto an ‘orthodox’ [ish] track where possible, as well. Or, perhaps, even to augment orthodox understandings and operative essences as well, where things haven’t gone sideways first, in earnest.

And yes, yes there are certainly much much better examples with which to illustrate such a notion than me looking like i’m putting the ‘opiate’ back in ‘opiate of the masses’.

But that’s what sparked the thought that evening earlier this week – even if there were also, most certainly, much more impressively innovative (yet conservative and orthodox as to ‘essence’) developments to be observed around it, instead.

More on some of those, perhaps, some other time.