I have been fortunate to have attended some great Pagan rituals.  But, gods know, I have suffered through a lot more rituals that were just terrible. A lot of you probably know what I’m talking about.

I know fellow-Patheos blogger, UU minister and Wiccan priestess, Rev. Catharine Clarenbach knows what I am talking about.  She has written about the contrast between the her own Pagan practice and some CUUPS rituals she had attended, which she describes as “tepid at best, and disorganized and appropriative at worst”, and which, she says, don’t get any more powerful than “writing wishes on flash paper and lighting them from the chalice or, at best, an eight-inch cauldron”. I don’t mean to pick on CUUPS rituals. I find this mediocrity to be endemic to public Pagan rituals of all types.

For a long while, I have believed that this was due to a lack…