An orientation to the Community Sacred Fire Ceremony
Sacred Fire Welcome Information
I would first like to share gratitude for all that supports life and for us to live fully in the moment. I am grateful you feel called to join us in this opportunity to come together in a good and healthy way to deepen our connections with life, community, fire and all that sustains us.
“We can activate healing in ourselves and our communities and start living towards right relationship right now”
(Pat Maccabe)
Sharing some of this information before you arrive supports us making the most of our time together in the connective experience. We will take time to orientate ourselves to the ceremony in person too and there will be time for questions and clarifications.
Fire is Sacred. Water is Sacred. This Earth and all its beings are Sacred.
Sacred in its truest meaning is about connection, those things that are connected.
What makes anything sacred is how we interact with it, how we offer ourselves to it in relationship and with offerings, the respect we show it, how we dedicate ourselves, together, united in hearts and minds for a shared intentionality. This creates a potent field generation and amplification.
In a plain, simple, orderly and sincere manner we create an altar with fire, water, earth, air, acknowledging our ancestors and the future generations with a shrine in the West. We recognise our connection with all of Life and acknowledge all of the connections of nature and the cycles of Life in our altar. We recognise the polarity of masculine and feminine energy that allows Life to exist within it. We call for a healed and healthy relationship of the Sacred Feminine and Masculine energies so that we might be in healthy relationship with these forces within us and that they might be in healthy relationship with each other, within and without. We connect our hearts and minds in a good way bringing our shared longing for Life to thrive into the space and our sincere desire to be in healing. And we begin.
The most significant thing you can consider as you prepare is what would you like this ceremony to mean for you? What is moving in your life and what needs attention?
What do you need or want to express your thanks for? What seeks movement in your life, what guidance might serve you, what prayers for yourself and your relations might you want to offer? What grief in you might need tending? Have you recently lost loved ones? Do you have ancestors from further back that you seek to grow connection with or support healing for? How might you deepen your relationship to the future generations and all of life?
As a dedication we always make this Community Fire about healing and happiness for all our relations. We each bring our own personal need to this motivated around moving what is stuck and out of balance and in grief back into the healthy flow of Life. In this case we dedicate our fire to support the questers and for cultural regeneration so that we and our relatives can fully live.
Connecting with fire transcends a particular culture or tradition and there is an opportunity at this ceremony to deepen your own relationship with this primal force that is at the heart of all transformative processes on earth. My teacher Sal says that if we want to be connected, connect with something that is very connected.
Fire is at the heart of human culture since the dawn of time and almost every life process is connected back to it. It is said that all knowledge comes from fire. In this understanding, being in healthy relationship with fire is imperative and part of the chaos and disconnection of this time can be seen as a reflection of how we have come out of healthy relationship with fire and so its capacity to destroy has become out of hand. Knowledge on it’s own is not necessarily helpful, it is how it gets used that is key. Honouring fire and acknowledging our own inner fire and how we use that in healthy ways can only serve to support life.
The Community Sacred Fire is a road map back to healthy culture, a template to help us return to connection to ourselves, each other, nature and spirit.
It can be applied towards the release of trauma, grief, as a centre point for rites of passage, building of relationships, to facilitate conversation with the ancestors and the future generations and many more applications. Many of our ancestors were not supported to heal and this can be expressed in the physical as different disconnections. Working with this format can heal things beyond this time and place.
We will be offering this fire you are attending as an overnight process dedicated towards health and happiness for all our relations, supporting our questers, for cultural healing and honed to the specific needs of our group so we are united in what we are doing together
What happens in the ceremony
We tend a fire from dusk until dawn through its life stages from conception, birth, childhood and youth, adulthood, old age and ultimately death. We honour each stage of this process and through connection with fire in all its life stages can learn and experience a lot about the flow of life and integration of things that are moving in our own lives.
We use tobacco offerings to the fire to offer our prayers. We sit with the fire in prayer and share if needed, sing if we feel, or remain silent. Songs, stories and reflections are very welcome within the context of being in heartfelt connection with the intentions of the ceremony. Nothing is performative. There are no spectators, we all co create this gathering and our unique contributions are really valuable and important whether we are vocal or remain quiet.
We always move in a clockwise direction around the fire as we embody the archetypal movements of creation.
We are smudged into the space which has a clearly defined entrance. We use water to cleanse as we enter and there is a bowl of water on the shrine for the ancestors and the future generation to balance the element of fire.
There is always a fire tender, who is focused solely on the fire and the prayer of the ceremony.
There is always a space tender, who holds the energy of the space in which the fire is burning and pays attention to what is moving with focus and prayer.
The opportunity includes
- Seeking wisdom from all the life stages
- Honouring all the life stages and our ancestors
- Communicating with our ancestors and the future generations through this conduit
- Laying prayers through the fire
- Listening.
- Coming into direct relationship with fire and exploring how to communicate with it
to learn from fire, like sitting with a teacher
- Allowing the things that need to move in our lives to move (fire transforms states faster than any other element)
- Allowing grief to flow and be transformed
- Being present with ourselves in nature
- Deepening our relationships with each other through sharing this experience in community
and many more things that may be unique and personal to each of us.
Protocols around ceremony
As many of you will be aware, all ceremonies are different. Different traditions and lineages work with their own unique alignments to creation. These are important to align with to ensure good conduct and relationship between us and the Powers of creation.
Some basic principles –
Be in an upright mind even though we may need help with struggles and challenges. We are asking for help within the ceremony so it is really resourceful to remain humble.
Approach with respect, humility and a willingness to heal with all aspects of the ceremony including preparation, during and after.
We don’t step on or over anything around the ceremonial space, including wood, water, smudge, tools etc. We attempt to walk in conscious awareness of our surroundings. This tangible act of not putting ourselves above anything reminds us to not believe we are better than anything else, more significant, powerful or important.
We don’t drop anything to do with the ceremony.
We are conscious of good conduct with our thoughts, emotions and words.
Tobacco
We use tobacco offerings. A small pinch of tobacco is offered to the fire before each manipulation and we offer tobacco as we enter and leave the space. We can offer tobacco at any time to give a prayer.
Tobacco has been used for generations because it is understood that it carries prayer and intention to the unseen realms more effectively than any other plant. Sal has explained this to me that the tobacco plant does not give back to the earth in its growing cycle and needs humans to complete this circuit back to nature. It is seen as sacred by so many traditions. We appreciate some people may have a difficult relationship with tobacco and you must do as you see fit in relation to this part of the ceremony, but we invite you to experience the feeling of working with this plant in a good way.
The fire as an intergenerational altar
We have made a considered decision to welcome families at this gathering and children to the fire ceremony. A big part of our personal alignment for doing this work is for cultural repair and it is our belief that having young people connect with these practices is healthy and supportive to healthy connections moving forward. We will invite their voices in and offer stories for them (and us) in the early parts of the nights ceremony. They can sleep by the fire or camp close enough to be in ear shot. We will do all we can to support you all to be settled well and orient the young people to the ceremony in their own age specific ways. We will have tenders on hand to offer some very light structure outside of the ceremonial time but this is a co-created camp and if you are bringing children please take responsibility for them at all times and collaborate with other parents/tenders to support each other and our village thrive and flow.
What to bring – more detail soon for this, but what you need to bring for the ceremony itself is
A comfy chair
Warm clothes and a hot water bottle
Something to put on the ancestor altar to represent your ancestors if you would like.
A pouch of additive free tobacco.
No charge for ceremony – healthy relationship
There is no charge for the ceremony but it does take a huge amount of time, work and energy to bring together this experience. The reason for there being no charge is so that finances do not stand in the way of anyone attending and seeking healing. If you are in a position to afford to donate it is a wonderful way of expressing your value for the experience and supporting those holding the ceremony to live. We honour the roots of the work through donation of some of what we receive back to the Pine ridge reservation where material resources are very scarce even as the cultural heritage is so rich. Please give what you can, with no pressure.
With love
Jill