How to use shamanic rituals in writing
Writing fiction is usually a choice between outlining and pantsing (that is writing by the set of your pants with no outline). We are always concerned with muses and other sources of inspiration, plot structure, character arcs, setting, dialogue, and other technical aspects of writing. You can use a variety of techniques and tools to gain inspiration and draft and revise your text. This post is concerned with how we can also use shamanic rituals as a tool in writing fiction, primarily as an added set of tools for inspiration.
You would use shamanic journeying or shamanic dreaming to perform the rituals described, and would work with helping spirits, spirit muses, spirits of creators, other specialist teaching spirits, the spirit of your creation, and spirits such as those of the characters in your stories. These are suggestions, you can of course design your own specific intentions as you become proficient at using shamanic rituals for this purpose.
I will describe different approaches that you can use, for each of which I will give examples for relevant journey intentions (which of course could also be dream intentions). There are five broad categories that we will examine:
Removing creative blocks
Getting inspiration
Research
Detailed design
Magical empowerment of your creation
To remove creative blocks, you can consider these journey or dream intentions:
Journey to find out why you have creative blocks and what they are
Here you journey to a relevant helping or teaching spirit (or ask one of your helping spirits to take you to such a spirit if you do not know a suitable helper or teacher). You can use the input from this journey to confirm or tailor the intention for the next one.
Journey to remove creative blocks
In this journey you ask for the creative blocks previously identified to be removed. This may involve action(s) on your part of you may participate in a ritual where one or more spirits take action on your behalf. You may see blocks as symbolic objects such as rocks, anchors, ropes, chains, or similar such items that are holding you back. Removal of these blocks can involve a suitable action for the type of object concerned.
Journey to get a ritual to use if you get stuck in future
The intention here is to ask for a ritual (either another journey or a simple ritual that you can do in physical reality) which you can use if you become stuck after you have started writing your piece of fiction (rather than staring at the blank page). This should enable you to resume writing quickly without wasting too much time. The act of performing such a ritual is of course healing in and of itself.
For inspiration, you can consider these intentions:
Journey to hunt a story (or a story hunts you)
This journey is based on the idea that stories exist independently of their authors and that you can hunt these stories (or indeed that the stories can hunt an author). In this journey you may find a story (or it may find you) and you can then ask it for input, or you can even integrate with the story, if you feel comfortable doing this.
Journey to meet a spirit muse(s)
These can be classical muses, spirits that a helping spirit introduces you to, or ones you find yourself. The intention is to find a muse(s) who will provide you with relevant creative input. You should consider what you might do for this spirit in return, such as making offerings to them or even acknowledging their help publicly.
Journey to a spiritual reality studio
Here you either go to a studio that you use in journey to get creative ideas for your work, whether this is big picture ideas, outline input, or more detailed design elements. This is the equivalent of what you do when you are staring into space or meditating; if you do this in a journey or dream it allows you to obtain other input, such as a high-level outline that you can assess and revise. You can also call other spirits into your studio to help.
For research you can use the following intentions:
Journey to a spiritual reality library
Here you go to a spirit library to do research. This can take the form of reading books, watching films, or seeing or even taking part in a scene where you see the dramatic elements you have in mind enacted for you to review and consider revisions. You can also do background research or even ask a librarian for advice. Who are the other people in the library or school? What advice or other help can they give you?
Journey to a spiritual reality school
In this journey you go to a school (or similar) to take part in a teaching session or seminar with teachers, or other writers (alive or dead). Here you might get input or advice on a particular writing technique, such as how to use multiple points of view in your work. Who are the other people in the school? What advice or other help can they give you?
Journey to the spirt of a dead author
The intention this time is to journey to meet a dead author (or to ask a spirit to take you to them) to ask for general (or specific) advice relevant to the creative work that you have in mind. This could be an author that gives you advice related to the specific genre that you are going to be using, or other aspects of the creative process that you can adopt, based on their experience or recommendation. This would be an author that you like, and you can of course take the opportunity to praise their work and learn more about them in the process.
For detailed design of your work, you can consider the following intentions:
Journey to meet a character
Here you intend to go to meet the spirit of one or more of your characters to get their input into their backstory, characteristics, aims, and concerns. This allows for you to receive input that you would not have considered, or for you to explore ideas with your characters in a series of journeys.
Journey to confirm settings and locations
In this journey the intention is to journey to visit settings and locations that you intend to use in your story. This allows you to get information on locations that you may not have visited in real life, or for genres such as science fiction or fantasy to obtain extraordinary input into their design. You can also intend to enter a scene that you have written to explore details that you can then incorporate into the scene.
Journey to find out about your finished work
With this journey you intend to go to see your created work (to read it for instance), to read critical reviews of the work to see what you could improve, or to find out what revisions you need to make to the work to improve it. If you consider that this is cheating, remember that you created the story in the first place!
For magical empowerment of your creation, you might want to consider the following:
Journey to find out how to embed healing (or wisdom) in your work
What you are trying to do here is to find out how in what way(s) your work may heal those who read it. Some ways in which this can be done are by including healing symbols in the story that are empowered to heal the reader, by having characters in the story state affirmations or blessings that are aimed at the reader (by being in the second person), or by showing ways in which a problem can be solved or a goal attained in a unique way, or another construct that acts as inspiration to the reader. Of course, you then include this input in your work. The other intention you can use here is to embed widsom in your work using a similar approach.
Journey to make your work talismanic
A talisman attracts things to a person and the intention here is to make your work talismanic so that it attracts people to it. One way of doing this is to perform a ritual where you place such an intention into the work or ask a helping spirit to do this for you. Authors may make physical books talismanic, often published in limited edition form. Another way of proceeding would be to use a virtual representation of your work as the basis for a ritual, for instance am image of your work on the internet.
One issue with both approaches is that of ethics. Do you have permission to act in such a manner and potentially affect readers in ways that they may not be aware of? There is not a right or wrong answer to this, it is a question of personal perspective. You can of course qualify an intention, such as making a book talismanic to those people who would receive help from reading it. I leave it to you to consider how you might work.
I hope this post is of help to you if you are writing fiction. Please feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions that I can help you with. I wish you good luck with your writing!
The header image for this blog post “Raven” by H. Koppdelayney, is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.