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We (me and the magic folks up here) managed to get Mot’s Mass done.
It was a fairly interesting step in my own personal path since I had conducted some group rituals before, but frankly trying to teach the classes and such really emphasized the need for putting the dramatic into “dramatic ritual”.
Practical notes:
- Incense is almost useless outside. I live in a wooded area, on a hilltop, next to a creek, and the wind just carried the stuff off before anyone could smell it, including me.
- Tiki torches are great, and kerosene burns slightly orangey red with a great plume of smoke. Kerosene is so great that it’s impossible to put out when one of the torches leaks fuel down the stem and burns it to the ground. The smoke however really contributed to a ground-fog effect.
- My neighbors probably think I’m insane. That’s OK, they couldn’t really see it, but they might have heard it. They probably thought that we were joining a fraternity with the muffled command to “DRINK”.
- We need to build a better henge.
For the incense, it’s probably worth it to have the actors carry several small pots of it. The giant bowl I had prepared didn’t work simply because the wind was blowing the wrong direction. If the performers had carried their own small incense burners, it would have been possible to clandestinely move with the wind to keep the participants in the zone.
For the henge, one of the things I would like to do is put up planetary banners. Just testing the tiki torches, the colored construction paper wrap wasn’t visible with the planetary symbols on it so I omitted it. The point was to have the alchemical symbolism present in the performance, which was accomplished with the large banner over the altar, which was dressed with three candles on top of three lead ingots, and under all that a black cloth. It might have been good to have at least a torch dedicated to Saturn and, given the seven points of the circle, either the Sun or Mercury next to the altar to work with Saturn. (I would have picked Sol).
The circle was setup to the participants looked to the west for Mot’s entrance. Just on the note of tiki torches, the plan is still to put up plywood forms (or cardboard) and cover them with spray on foam. One of the folks here has some stage experience and tipped me off that fake rocks like that are done with spray on foam. It sounds really doable and could be cheap and easy for a good effect.
The actors were all top notch, and I couldn’t have asked for better people to participate! That is one thing we did get correct – the folks we’re working with here are amazing.