Ritual

I had a question that I posted on witchforum.net "What do you do before you begin a ritual? Is it something different for Esbats, Sabbats, and just regular workings or do you do the same thing every time?"

Here are some answers I've received

Vakanai said: "I haven't done a ritual yet, but I think I'd do the basic steps I do for meditation or just getting my mind silent, focused, and in the right kind of state for doing something important. Get my posture good, back straight, shoulders back, head straight. Clear my head and relax. Breath deep and regular. I usually imagine myself walking down stairs, 21 steps, counting backwards from 21 (I got it from a book, Psi-Kinetic Power; it really does get my mind to a bit of a deeper place than usual). I'm trying to get in the habit of shielding and grounding/centering as well. Pretty basic."

Snowdog said: "I will ground and center then meditate, I'll ask the goddess and god to to be with me as well as my spirit guides and totems for guidance. I then meditate in the void until the circle is cleansed and altar consecrated. We do ritual with our coven so if I am helping our HP to cleanse and consecrate I will meditate a few miutes before we start. The important thing is to forget everything that has happened or is going to happen in the world and focus your energy and mind to the ritual. I think of it as trying to have a conversation with someone with the television on that has a show running that I am interested in, you can't concentrate and give 100% of your attention to that person. Turn the TV off, clear your mind of drama and focus on the important things."

 Ken Ra said: "The day of the ritual I schedule for low stress. Meals are easy to eat foods, enough to fill but not stuff me. I will have a shower with baking soda salt and Myrrh. I will check and prep my working space.  Then I will tighten my courage and jump into the ritual."

What do you do before a ritual?

The how question.

I got an email last night from a friend of my containing what I call the How question.

"How do you (meaning Witches, Wiccans, Pagans, Druids etc.) find the time to learn everything about your religion? My aunt let me borrow her Book of Shadows when I told her I was interested in Paganism. But I was working full time, taking two night classes, and could barley manage to keep a social life much less learn a Religion. I tried for two years to learn what I could but I couldn't even master basic meditation. How to you find the time to balance your regular life and your Magickal life? I can't seem to see where I went wrong and three years later I'm still interested in learning. Is this why I couldn't find that many teens who were real Magickal people? The ones I met all turned out to be posers who didn't want to study or work hard for anything. How do you do it?"

Would anyone like to share tips or tell how you learned to balance your life to include Magick? You can comment or make a post about it in your blog if you'll link it here.

Work

I'm still working on getting this blog up and running. I was hoping to get people to comment and leave ideas. What do you expect from a Wiccan blog? What do you think I should have on here?