Coping With Adverse Responses To Ritual

[Selene]

I thought this article was interesting. Comments, anyone
Have you had adverse reponses yourself?

Coping With Adverse Responses To Ritual
By Ivo Domínguez, Jr. - Panpipe
Appeared In Green Egg, May/June '97, No. 119

Overview
This essay offers a frame of reference for assessment and intervention in cases of unbalanced or abreactive responses to ritual and ceremony. It provides useful pointers and techniques, but does not pretend to be comprehensive. This essay is not a substitute for training. It is written with the assumption that the reader has at least an intermediate level of magical experience.

When To Intervene — Assessments
After a powerful ritual it is not uncommon for a significant number of the participants to take some time to fully close down their psychic centers and return to normal. Depending upon the nature of the ritual and the emotional/psychological state of the individual there may be outbursts of energy and/or emotion associated with the ritual. It is important to help those that are having difficulties in returning fully to the here and now. It is equally important that you allow people to complete their own process— which you may interrupt if you drag them back to normal consciousness too quickly. It is important to allow others to have their own experience. Magick, ritual, and ceremony can encourage healing and spiritual evolution. Often healing and growth are not without a certain amount of turmoil and discomfort. It would be more than a shame to help someone get stuck again after having a breakthrough in ritual.

So when do you intervene?

Read more here:
http://www.ladyoftheearth.com/rituals/a ... ritual.txt

[ThelemicMage]

The majority of Magick I've done lately has been by myself.

But I would chance criticism of a generic answer by saying that when they are sure to hurt themselves or others, it would be a great time to intervene.

You would have to have someone that knows that person closely intervene, if anyone. Someone who knows them in ritual and ritual ecstasy and the mental and physical musings of such ecstasy with union with the divine and with higher consciousness would be able to tell if they are too "far out" and need a talk down or something to suggest grounding to them.

What would you think, Selene?

[Skia]

If someone was deep in a vision or meditation, I surely wouldn't want to pull them out or disturb them. Depending on the severity of what was happening, I likely wouldn't do anything to directly effect them or their concentration during a ritual. If things are obviously, physically bad, I might be more open to intervene. It's hard to tell how people, even people you know well, will react emotionally to every "scenario" that could pop up.