Marmalade Today

THE INTENTION OF this short ritual, then, is to invoke some benefit here and now. It is always difficult performing rituals for immediate affect as they can often disappoint. Rituals usually require at least a few weeks or even months to work themselves through the interconnectedness of all things. However, the intention, here, is to bring some short term benefit; although short term may, itself, be a relative definition.

Why Marmalade Today rather than Jam Today as the saying goes? Well, in a temperate climate, where this ritual was first conceived, jam was traditionally the poor relation to marmalade. As Complexity Magicians we are never shy of invoking exactly what we want so we thought; why should we settle for Jam? (Plus we didn't have any jam in the cupboard when we looked but we had some marmalade.)

The thinking behind the symbolism uses the usual Complexity Magic technique. We steal any ideas that fit and lay them on as thick as you might if your mother wasn't looking to see how much marmalade you were using on your toast. Complexity Magic is about pigging out on the symbols. Using the Tarot as a starting point we selected three cards which seemed to fit with the idea of getting what we wanted:

4 of Wands: described as Perfected Work
10 of Cups: described as Perfected Success
10 of Disks: described as Wealth

These terms come from the Anthony Clark Tarot which was based on Crowley's Book of Thoth. The definitions of these three cards all point towards getting what you want but each acts on a different level or in a different way.

Perfected Work is about your efforts coming to fruition. Perfected Success indicates perhaps more good fortune by circumstances outside your control. Wealth is exactly what it is described as, but it has a greater permanence because it is to do with the material world. Between them these three cards are our ingredients for Marmalade Today.

Preparing The Temple

The temple is prepared with the altar in the centre, with the symbols specific to the intent of the ritual.

The three Tarot cards are placed along the sides of a triangle, with a candle at each point. A small jar of marmalade is placed at the centre. It is desirable when doing this to use a new jar of marmalade so as to avoid evoking breakfast. The size of the jar is important as those present will have to eat all of the marmalade in the jar. There should be enough for everybody but there should be none left when all the participants have each had some.

The rest of the altar is decorated with the usual magical equipment; disk, athame, wand, cup and bell. In this case a choice of wands was available but we chose one with a resemblance to a Unicorn's horn as it matched the symbolism described below. A circle and a triangle were described in the symbolism of the two tens. Therefore, the altar was left uncovered (without an altar cloth), which exposed a circular motif on the altar top, and a triangle was placed over the circle.

All words to be spoken during the ritual are presented in quotation marks in bold italic as in this line.

Abbreviated Pentagram Ritual

Any opening can be used as preferred by the participants, in this case the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram was used.

Call the Spirits of the Marmalade

Any participant may perform the Invocation of the Marmalade. Either pick one person to perform all three or preferably get three people to perform one each.

Wands:

"From the Sphere of Jupiter we call the Unicorn of Perfected Work, from the Olive Grove with the deep violet carpet of Shamrock beneath it's hooves."

Disks:

"From the Sphere of The Elements we call The Empress of The Kingdom of The Sphynx to create a Circle of Wealth."

Cups:

"From the Sphere of The Elements we call The Princess of The Willow, Lilly and Ivy, to create a Triangle of Perfected Success."

"We call upon you all to enter within this jar of Marmalade."

Sacrament

Firmly grasp the jar of Marmalade, open the lid with a single effortless twist, stick a finger in and scoop out as large a lump of Marmalade as you can manage. (Remembering that there needs to be enough for each person present.) There is a knack to this as you will need to hold it on your finger for a moment while all present each prepare a finger full of Marmalade. Once each participant has a good copious scoop of Marmalade on their finger exclaim to each other:

This next exclamation should be with real relish. The participants should really enjoy the statement and have a big smile on their faces. There should also be an emphasis on the word Marmalade to indicate it isn't just any old Jam!

"We have Marmalade Today!"

Immediately after this statement all participants put their fingers into their mouths and greedily suck the Marmalade from their fingers. This needs to be done with a feeling of glee.

Drink whatever is in the cup on the altar and close the ritual in whichever way is preferred.

Repeat Pentagram to finish

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