On the Meaning of Ritual
The Ritual Meaning of Tea and What The Wellness Industry Got Wrong
What is the definition of ritual? Ritual, at its core, is a set of actions performed in a specific sequence, within a defined container, that carries symbolic or sacred significance beyond the actions themselves. To define ritual accurately is to distinguish it from habit or routine, and that distinction lives in the orientation of the person performing it. Ritual is consciously directed toward something outside the ordinary, whether that is a deity, a spirit, a natural force, or a state of heightened attention. The ritual meaning of any practice is not located in the action itself but in the coherence of the container it is held within, and the awareness brought to the threshold each time it is crossed.
I am finding these days, the word 'ritual' is used as a metaphor that is meant to add glamour to something that otherwise would be too ordinary. The 'ritual' of movement, the 'ritual' of people gathering together, the 'ritual' of washing your freaking face (today, I also saw an IG post that called their sales funnel a “Funnel Ritual”). Like how other words, such as 'community', 'feminist', 'sustainable', 'magic', 'anti-whatever-ism' you want to insert, get extracted as commodity, 'ritual' has been fracked and sold back to us as cheap goods.
The 'ritual' of tea is another one.
When I use the word ritual in the context of Tea, I mean ritual. The five Daoist elements are invoked: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. Water is the first condition, the medium through which everything else becomes possible, the temperature, the mineral content, and the quality of that water is all part of it. Wood is the generative quality of the plant itself, the tea bush that grew in a specific soil, at a particular elevation, tended by knowing hands, carrying the memory of soil moisture, rising humidity, mist to cloud, cloud to rain. Fire governs heat, the transformation that happens when water meets leaf. Earth is the clay, the vessels that hold and shape what passes through them. Metal is discernment, the aged knowledge of timing that gong fu cha demands.
What also happens in a sitting with me is this: I prepare the Tea, and I listen. The Tea plant is a being with its own communicative capacity, and in the container I practice within, the spirit of the plant is felt, along with the elements- their correspondences of directionality, of sensibility, of materiality, get expressed through Tea. I hear them, and I mean that without metaphor, and what they share with me about the person sitting across from me, is often described as what the person needed to hear.
People sometimes ask me what makes a sitting with me different from making an attentive cup at home. The answer is that an attentive cup at home is valuable, and I wouldnt want to diminish it. But in a sitting with me, i act as the medium and interpreter for Tea to speak through.
That is what I mean by ritual.
Two special Magick of Tea events are coming soon.
Save these dates!
Saturday, May 9 afternoon for a Scent Salon in collab with another brand
In-person on Bowen IslandSaturday, June 13 for a 6-hour day retreat: The Self You've Outgrown
Live-stream and in-person out of my home in Richmond, BC
More details coming.
Following the spirits,