Ceremony is a core art and skill of the priestess, and it’s something that she is bringing back into our culture. But what does ceremony do? Why is it important? And why is this a priestess skill?
Let’s explore and learn all about Ceremony on the Priestess Path!
You have two forms of priestess:
💙 A devotional priestess, one who has claimed herself as devoted to the Goddess, or a particular goddess, and works and lives in reverence to Goddess and her spiritual path….
❤️ … and a public priestess, one who offers priestessing services to the public.
So what are the core services of a public priestess?
Ceremony and Presence.
The priestess is one who is skilled at creating ceremony for and bringing presence to her community. She creates pockets of presence for her community to experience and live within, which is often created through ceremony. This is how she connects her community with the Sacred.
What is ceremony?
Ceremony is a powerful container where the Sacred is called in to work its magic in the lives of the attendees through being present for what is. This sacred presence has the power to transform, shift and change lives.
Ceremony is an important part of human life, and even though our current culture has forgotten and lost most of its rites and passageways, humans have always created ceremony. I always think about ceremonies like life anchors – places along the thread of life that have been pinned down so you know where you are and feel connected to some purpose or progression. Those pockets of ceremonial presence become the markers of our life.
What does ceremony do?
Ceremonies can mark moments of change and choice and they can also simply serve as portals into presence, becoming anchors of the sacred in our lives.
Life passage ceremonies mark the transitions and changes of life and are important for our psyche. They provide a powerful whole-bodied and whole-brained understanding that something new is beginning or something old is ending so that we can move forward with clear intent and knowing of where and who we are.
These subtle transitions can be anything:
️ ⚡️ a relationship ending
️ ⚡️ the birth of a new business
⚡️ becoming a mother️ your kids leaving home
️ ⚡️ receiving your first moon blood
️ ⚡️ stepping into adulthood
️ ⚡️ completing a project
Without recognising, honouring or celebrating these moments, without calling in presence and the sacred into these transitions, we often get stuck in them and unable to move on.
Something that should be a simple graceful step from one phase of life into the next becomes a strange gummy limbo that lasts for months or even years as we try to move on without integrating what has been while feeling unseen and unsupported.
A Ceremony is always Witnessed.
That witnessing quality of a ceremony is important – it cements this change.
There is a very different quality to a witnessed ceremony than there is to a solo rite. There is also a hugggge difference between a ceremony that you make and perform just for yourself, and a ceremony that someone performs for you. When someone else is holding that space, structure and presence for you, you can have a deeper experience and a more powerful moment of transition in the ceremony because you don’t have to be all things.
The Priestess provides this service of ceremony – she holds the space, brings her deep presence, and creates the ceremonial container to hold your transformation within.
Ceremonies in the modern world
Usually the more secular among us only get two major ceremonies in our lives, Marriage and Funerals – and since we are only alive for one of them, we go freaking nuts over weddings!
Folks from religious backgrounds tend to get a few more as they grow up – baptism, confirmation, bat mitzvah etc – but they tend to stop as soon as you pass the Marriage threshold.
In western culture we don’t have many ceremonies that honour transition through life and we have to make do with the cultural markers of what it means to progress as an adult – get a job, get a partner, buy a house, get married, have kids. It’s kind of what we have instead of ceremony – expectations.
These are all outer-focused milestones, and an outer milestone does not a ceremony make – doing something is not the same as celebrating something or deeply integrating something or crafting ceremony to fully receive and be with what has happened. You can totally buy a house, graduate college, have babies, and start a career without spending a single second being present for or celebrating ANY of it…
…and our world is so future-focused and so scarcity minded, it’s totally usual to meet one milestone and just keep careening onwards without recognising it, feeding the ever present hunger of more and not enough.
Many modern adults (myself included) don’t have a life that abides by those outer milestones anyway.
But life isn’t actually lived on the outside. Our lives are a rich story lived through our inner world – our inner choices, feelings, emotions and decisions.
So what about the inner milestones?
🦋 Letting go of an old dream?
🦋 Stepping into your identity as a mother?
🦋 Grieving the loss of a family member?
🦋 Shifting from teenager to adult?
🦋 Letting go of your baby-making years?
🦋 Making a commitment to something?
🦋 Choosing a new start?
Our modern world isn’t so much about recognising our inner lives, so there isn’t really a ceremonial place for them in our culture. Generally we are supposed to get on with it without making a fuss.
Enter the Priestess.
The modern Priestess is here to bring ceremony to the world. She’s here to create powerful ceremonial space and midwife people through those transitions, to hold that flame of presence, and to celebrate and honour the lives of her community.
She’s here to honour the red thread of life and bring the Sacred in.
Her job is important as this celebration and honouring is so easily forgotten by our culture. It’s just not a priority. We need someone to remind us all to be here now in our lives and acknowledge how magical and important they are – to remind us that our experiences in life are valid, that our grief is heard, and that our commitments are honoured.
This is such a core part of what it means to priestess for the community that the priestess’s role is often thought of as just a ceremonialist… but of course, there are many other kinds of Priestess. Ceremonialist and the work of the public priestess is just one path.
Who does she serve?
I honestly believe that the modern day Priestess is here to serve everyone. She may come from a goddess-honouring background, or a pagan faith, but her ceremonies are open to anyone who wants to deepen into the sacred.
🌹 Red tents are run for women who want to connect with their bodies, not just for women who like the goddess.
🌧Grief ceremonies are performed for folks who need it, not just for goddess-folks who need it.
👑 Queening ceremonies are created for women who are bold enough to decide they want their next phase of life marked and honoured, not just for goddess women.
As magic, astrology, ceremony, manifesting, moon stuff, goddess and all these juicy pagan-rooted things become more present in the everyday cultural consciousness, people begin looking for a way to connect with something deeper.
They know there are more forms of spirituality than just praying in a church these days, and they are curious. I am sure many folks have their own opinions on who a Priestess serves, but I personally believe that this work needs to touch as many lives as possible, not just the avowed goddess folk pagans amongst us.
What do you think?
What do you think of the role of a priestess as a ceremonialist? Is it something you are called to, something you perform? Is it something you would like to learn how to do with mastery? Let me know in the comments, I always love to hear from you!
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