Creating Rituals from Scratch

This episode dives into the practical, no‑nonsense process of writing a ritual from scratch, breaking down the steps in a way that’s accessible for beginners and validating for experienced practitioners. We explore how to choose your ritual’s purpose, structure your circle casting, decide whether to call elementals or other forces, and build a main ritual body that actually resonates. We emphasize starting with a clear idea, shaping the flow around your theme, and remembering that bullet points and heartfelt intention often work better than rigid scripts. “Today I believe…” is a powerful place to begin when defining your why.

The discussion also tackles common anxieties—fear of messing up, pressure to be perfect, and the myth that rituals must be elaborate or poetic. Through candid examples, we remind listeners that even seasoned ritual writers produce the occasional dud, and that practice, revision, and authenticity matter far more than flawless execution. Whether you’re crafting a simple candle rite or a full moon gathering, this episode reinforces that ritual writing is a living, learnable skill rooted in connection, not performance.

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Transcript

Starting A Ritual From Nothing

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Peg and Coffee Talk. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. I thought we would discuss a little bit more. I know we've briefly talked about it before, but how to write a ritual from scratch.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Okay. We where where you want to start? I mean, I know you said from scratch.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

From scratch. So where do you start? What do what do you do first? Do you do you are are we are we going through the whole thing of are we calling, you know, are we are we deciding first if we're going to call elementals or what we're going to call what we're going to say? Do we start there or do we start with the idea for the ritual first?

Full Moon Versus Sabbat Planning

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, for us in our tradition, circle casting is sort of pre-ritual for us. Yeah, ours is pretty well laid. Right, right. I'm just saying that's that that's pretty standardized. That's what I would just say for anybody. Just pick a circle casting and work with it for a while. See how it feels to you. If it doesn't feel right, then change it and keep on doing it until it feels right. Are you with me? Yeah. Now, as far as the ritual it goes, I I guess it really depends. First of all, we've got to decide are we doing a full moon or are we doing a Sabbath? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So what difference does that make?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Well, for us, typical full moons are pretty short. And Sabbaths are a little bit longer than that, than a full moon. All right. Gotta figure out your timing there. Yeah, you with what I'm saying there, because if we're doing full moons on the full moons, that means people have homework and daycare and kids and groceries and so again, we try to keep it short. Right. And we're gonna stick with ideas and stuff that what, under 30 minutes? I would say so, yeah. Yeah, pretty much. So I I guess that would be the first thing we do is figure out what it is that we would want to do in ritual. Okay. What are we going to do to worship the gods that night?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Alright. Yeah, so what your so whatever your theme for the night is and how you're going to execute that.

Ask Why Create Sacred Space

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Right. I mean, I'm trying to think of an example off the top of my head. It's not going too well. Uh something you might do in a full moon. Something as simple as uh taking a white candle and lighting it from like your altar candle and stating something that you're grateful to the goddess about or to the gods about. And then each person after that that's next to you keeps passing the light to the next person.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Which the whole entire concept here is that whole entire, you know, one drop of rain raises all ships. True. Yeah. All right. That, you know, the light from one person passes to another, and together we're a whole lot brighter than just as an individual to some extent.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So Right. Well, also while also remembering that we are all part of the same light.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I uh too. So again, you got you you can do multiple types of layers there if you want, as part of your rituals. I mean, just something as simple as just lighting a candle like this and passing the light on.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Alright. So you're saying basically start with an idea. Yeah. Figure out how you're gonna execute it, and that's that's your starting point.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

That's that's my starting point.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Because you know, I'm kinda kinda thinking, yeah, I'm kinda thinking we go with this, you know, from the angle of somebody wants to write a ritual, but they don't have anything. They have nothing laid out, they have no structure for ritual whatsoever. Yeah, so so where you know you see what I'm saying? Like, where do you start? Like, because you're gonna have to um you're gonna have to potentially construct your quarter calls if that's what you're gonna do, your circle construction.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Well, well, again, the this starts that this all goes back to that whole entire thing where we've talked multiple times, where you have to sit down and open up a book and write that phrase at the top. Today I believe if you believe that we have to create sacred, quote unquote, sacred space, you you sort of need a why there. Why do you think you need that? First and foremost. All right. And then you're gonna have to decide, okay, to create that space, if we're gonna create it this way, do we need the elementals? Do we need archangels? Do we need the watchtowers? Do we what resonates with you as far as that goes? Okay. To some extent. I mean, and once you've made all these decisions about circle casting, then you can pretty much uh just continuously use that over and over again.

Books And AI As Structure Tools

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Of course you can, yeah. I mean yes, there are there are examples that you can pull from, from any number of books that are out there, from you know, from the old uh Gerald Gardner, you know, Raymond Bucklin. Buckland. Right. Some of the older authors, there's there and some of the newer ones too. I'm sure there's plenty of examples that you can pull from. But you just have to decide what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Nowadays it's a whole lot easier, especially with AI. Just type in just go to an AI free AI and type in there, hey, give me a circle casting using this mythology.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Well, I mean, I hate to be this way. You can, but there's a lot of people who frown upon using AI for things, you know, spiritual.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Well, I I'm just saying, it it if you don't have one, if you're not sure how to write a circle casting, here's you an option. At least it might give you at least it might give you some ideas or a way on how to structure it.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Well, and that's what I was gonna say. I mean, I've I've known some folks who have used AI for various reasons, and it's not a perfect system. You have to you have to prompt it to get what you want, you know, and even then you still need to refine it. So it's whatever it gives you is not set in stone.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Well, I'm not gonna sit here and lie to everybody. I use trust me, I never thought I would, but I've been using AI like crazy. Why? Because I'm dyslexic. It's hard for me to write papers. It's easier for me to sit here and dictate concepts to an AI and ask it to put a paper together showing how these concepts work together or don't work together.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Right, but you're not solely relying on that for the final product. No. That's my point. Whatever it gives you is not set in stone. You still have to do your part on this. Right. Because even again, there's a lot of Well, I was gonna say, even at the bottom of all of all of them that I've seen, can make mistakes, please check your facts, check your sources. It tells you that not saying no.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

It it tells you that, yes, they get things wrong, they lie all the time, the whole night. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah, and they're biased one way or the other, some of them.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Or the other. So some of them are, some of them aren't. But then some are good at writing stuff, and others not so great. It can answer a question, but yeah, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

So I mean it it is a tool that you can use.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

But again, my my my argument's still there. And it, if nothing else, it can at least give you a format to follow or a way to understand it. Because I want to tell you right now, trying to write lecture series and trying to write out circle casting is not as easy as you actually think. It's writing it down on paper because there's so many, well, for us, because there's so many moving parts and stuff like this that it's hard to this step, that step, this step, that, you know, it's not step one, two, three.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Well, I was gonna say we've we've tried that and we've had to go back so many times to revise and revise and revise the revision and revise the revision. And yeah, I mean, it's it's not an easy thing to do, but it is it is possible.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

It is possible, you know. I for the longest time I thought, you know, hey, no, no, writing down circle casting, this is all cursed. Right. It is impossible to do. Every time you do it, you're gonna have to do a rewrite somewhere. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

But at least we finally, you know, we finally came to something that we can all agree. Something. But right, but yeah, so yeah, you do you do need to, it's again, it is a tool that you can use.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

You can use. I mean, again, I mean you can also use it for ritual ideas too. Not actually writing the ritual, but ideas to write ritual. Well, again, we we do themes though. So again, we would I I would probably go to an A AI and go, hey, give me some ideas about you know, 13 full moons for using the zodiac. Right. And I I'm not expecting anything ooh ah or you with me.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, and and and don't get us wrong, you know, when we do well, when we have used AI for an idea or whatever, we don't rely on it to write our rituals. No, because for you, I know for you and I, we enjoy the process of writing the ritual. I mean the ritual itself. We I mean we really do, we enjoy that process. So we're not gonna I mean you and I are not gonna let an AI take that away from us.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

No, but we would but again, we I I would use an AI there to help me if I'm doing a ritual based on a mythology or something to help me dissect the mythology.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Right. And that's the that's the nice thing because it will it will pull the information based on and some of them actually give you sources where the information comes from.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Right, because it it's easy to sit there and go, hey, you know, uh, we're gonna be doing um rituals based on life cycles. You know, birth, death, marriage, the whole nine yards. Yeah, I I could see me sitting there going to an AI going, hey, look up Celtic mythologies that associate with these things where I can use them for where you're using actual myths to illustrate what in the world you're doing. You know, I I hate to be this way, there's too many myths out there and too many different cultures, and when your belief says these are all your playgrounds. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

It's hard to keep track of them all sometimes, so all right.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So we have so we have a way, we now have a way to get our structure structure. Um we have a we have a way to kind of uh organize our quarter calls and whatever else we're going to do or what we plan to do. We have an idea for the main body of ritual.

Bullet Points Over Scripted Reading

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Right. And again, again, when normally when I write ritual, that main body of the ritual is more bullet points than an actual I d I rarely have write a ritual where I have to sit there and read something word for word. Right. You know, I'm not saying that we don't put stuff in there. We sometimes we do have poems and stuff like that in there, and those have to be read, but uh they have a point to the ritual.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, I think for the most part, the most important thing as far as that goes is that it comes from the heart. Right. And so if you're able to freely speak based on bully bullet points, then it it's gonna mean a lot more, it's gonna hit home a little bit better.

Practice And Accept Ritual Flops

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Right. So I I'm trying to think of what else about ritual writing. I d the only thing I can tell you to do is do it and see how it feels. You know, first of all, I'm gonna sit here and tell you, not every ritual is gonna be a grand slam out of the park. Oh no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Get that out of your mind right now, and that's that not only applies to if you're just starting out writing rituals, if you've been doing this for a while like we have, you're still gonna come across those that okay, that was a complete dud. It was a complete dud. It was a great idea, but we didn't execute it in a whatever way, and it just it flopped.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

It flopped.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

It happened, it's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

It's gonna happen. Don't feel bad about it. All right, no, use it as a learning experience. That that's just like, hey, yes, you are going to screw up circle casting.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like everybody does it. It's like we tell our students you need to practice, practice, and practice, and practice, right? And then practice some more. And then practice some more. Because even then, the first time you do it, you're gonna mess something up. You're gonna mess up. It never fails. It so it doesn't don't don't think too much about that. Don't don't try to be the prefer. Don't I was gonna say don't harp onist, but don't I know a lot of people are that way.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And I I know, and and again, when it comes to crafting, people are doing this stuff, everybody thinks everything has to be all I's dotted, T's crossed, and or or or there's gonna be some type of backlash. It's ritual. Just just just breathe is not as I was gonna say not what that couldn't be further from the truth. It's not that. All right, we're we're we're not doing some magical spell work and trying to rewrite the universe. We're doing ritual.

Keep It Simple And Heartfelt

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Right. You gotta remember that the purpose of the ritual is to commune with the gods, to bring you closer to them, to walk with them, right? To sit with them, whatever it is you're gonna do. It's it's that time of communal.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

And it it it's time to take, and it's time to take out to where in the world you can sit around other people that believe the same way you do, that practice the same way you do, and have fellowship with them.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Well, so and even if you're doing it solitary, just just remember it's it's it's still a communal time, but it's between you and the gods. Or it's between you and nature. It's whatever, whatever you're doing, it's that time for you. You and them.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Don't worry about not doing how can I put this? Don't worry about it. It's better for you to do the ritual instead of you sitting there worrying about if you're gonna mess up or offend something. Right. Something's better than nothing. Right. All right. If you're more hung up that you're going to offend a god or something because they don't necessarily your ritual isn't all that in a bag of chips, trust me, it doesn't matter. That's not the point. No.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

No, your words don't do it anyway. I was gonna say your words don't have to be flowery, it doesn't have to be like some, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Wait a minute, what what is that passage from uh the charge of the goddess? Um, I do not need finely worded rights to know my children. Right. Well, we're we're flat out telling y'all this. So again, please get that perfect man uh mentality out of your head.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, and I know it's hard to do, and yeah, we all want it to be we all want it to be perfect.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Trust me, every time I write ritual, I want it to be spectacular and all shaking and just everybody just oh but it doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

No, not always. No, I'd say I'd say probably it's it's a 50-50 shot each time. You know. It depends on it.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Even though we'll never get there, even though we don't always get there, I think it's always good to at least strive for that. Absolutely. And it's funny the mindset.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

I I know we're not gonna get there, but yeah, well, and and for like you and me, like I've said before, we enjoy this process, and it's fun to try to get things in some type of semblance and some type of execution where we think people are gonna really get something out of this. Right. Instead of just and even if it doesn't hit home, we still had a good time writing it. We enjoyed it, we get giggly over it sometimes, you know. And when it doesn't hit, it's like okay, we're still a good rich. We move on. We move on.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I mean, but as far as that goes, it's just just start doing. I I don't know what else to tell people.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

All right, yeah, yeah, because when it comes down to it, it you don't have to have some grandiose ritual with flowery words and all this other stuff. You can have something as simple as you sit down outside somewhere with a with a candle or a lantern or something like that, and you give an offering or whatever. It can be super simple, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

All right. I I again we're not doing Shakespeare here. Oh Lord, no. All right, some of us might like to, but we're not. We're not. I mean, don't get me wrong, yeah. Lord Man was like, hey, always keep a book of William Shakespeare around, especially when you're writing rituals.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yep, because that's exactly who I was referring to.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Yes. He he he would he would literally go through and use phrases from William Shakespeare's to help write ritual. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I'm not gonna stop the guy. I mean, I mean, if that's what you want to do, all power to you, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

So, what else would you like to know about ritual writing? Where where else do you think we need to go? Um, I don't know. I think that about covers it. Like I said, do it. Just sit down one day, come up with a bunch of random ideas and see what happens. Right. All right, let's get some random copies. Let's do that.