Please feel free to adapt this template, and all others in these notes, to suit your circumstances.

GROUP HEALING RITUAL

To prepare for this ritual, the leaders and remaining members of the group should meditate on the things which they value about each other and about the group as a collective whole. Members might wish to select and bring along tokens and decorative materials which they could add to a representation of the group’s collective identity – these might be pieces to be added to a coven banner, or objects for a kinetic sculpture such as a webwork.

     Invite all of the remaining members of the group to participate. If one or more of the group’s leaders were among the people who departed, the group’s direct Grandparents should be invited to participate. In cases where the group has been ‘decapitated’ by the departure of all of its leaders, the Grandparents should facilitate this rite in consultation with any remaining elder members.

  • Create sacred space or open the ritual according to the group’s usual customs.
  • Hold discussions in rounds, using a talking-stick or similar object if you wish. 
  • The first round should be of feelings and recollections surrounding the departure of the former members; not everyone may wish to speak to this in the first or any round, and some members may have a great deal to say. Allow time for them to speak fully; repeat this round if need be.
  • The second round should be of the members’ sense of group value, encouraging frank statements of the strengths and weaknesses of the group’s process; repeat this round if need be. 
  • The third round should be of the members’ sense of the group’s future, and its ongoing collective identity. 
  • Ritual blessing and sharing of food and drink together. This might best be done in silence.
  • Open discussion and sharing of ideas, including lessons learned from the preceding events.
  • Work together on creating (or recreating) the group’s collective symbol. If a previous symbol was in use, this would be a good time to deconsecrate and retire it, taking care not to focus anger towards symbolic components that betokened departed members.
  • Joint blessing and empowering of the group’s symbol.
  • Whoever opened the ritual should close it in their usual way.

go back to Early Departures

The address of this page is http://www.proteuscoven.org/proteus/endings/grpheal.htm
Last modified February 7, 2002