Excerpt from “A Ritual State of Mind” by Michele Briere
Getting a ritual together has been a headache. Literally. We need to remember that the old rites were for the temples only, not the general public. The rituals were also a specialized act, each priest had a specific part to which they spent their lives in training and practice. Many of the priest’s functions were passed down in their family, sons taking over for fathers. What few rituals we do have are written as though the reader understood what was happening. Some ritual prayers were written for us, some were not.
The main ritual that has been left to us is the Akitu, the Babylonian New Year Ceremony.1 I have taken this rite and broken it down to a monthly New Moon rite. From the main New Year Rite to the repair of the temple roof to the re-covering of the temple drum,2 which was a major ritual that took the entire temple to complete, each rite contained a great deal of food offerings and thanks to the gods.
The ancient Middle East really didn’t have a calendar as we know it; each city-state had their own rituals which were not necessarily on the same days as other city-states listed them.3 They counted years in the reign of whatever king was currently sitting on the throne. Months were sometimes messy due to the lunar cycle, and the king had the right to order another month put in place if his advisors informed him that more time was needed before the New Year. This straightened out the sometimes uneven years. New Year was twice a year according to our calendar, at the equinoxes. Sumer had two seasons, winter and summer. At the fall equinox, Dumuzi was reborn, released from his time in the underworld. During this time, the fields were sown, the growing plants representing Dumuzi’s return and his fertility in the sheepfold and the fields. At the spring equinox, Dumuzi “died”, returned to the underworld, and his sister, Geshtinanna, was reborn. Her name means Lady of the Vine. Summer was the time of vines.
This period was altered every other year. During the public part of the Akitu, which was a long and loud parade and celebration, the images of the gods were brought into the city, after having been floated down the river on a barge. The main images were of the gods Nabu and Bel, or Marduk. This was Babylonian, so Enki can be substituted for Marduk in the Sumerian rite, although I really don’t see them as being that close in character. I honestly don’t know how the “–ologists” came up with Marduk as a fertility image.
This parade of the gods represented fertility returning to the city. While one city was replanting their fields, the other city was letting their fields rest.
The Akitu spoke very strongly to me, but it took about fifteen days to complete, and needed a full temple of priests. I have altered this ritual for modern use. I first broke down the Akitu into steps, and then I took out the steps that were no longer applicable to modern, Western times, such as removing the role of the king. It can now be used for solitary use or as a group effort. These steps are in the order of the original Akitu festival, only simplified, with repetitive actions removed.
Writing a ritual can be tricky. Rituals can be as simple as being still for a moment and acknowledging the gods in a thank you, or getting out the arts and crafts box and giving a room or yard an overhaul.
Having taken the Akitu apart and separating the outdated material from what can still be used, and keeping the remaining steps in order, I spent an hour outside in our backyard walking through the format of the rite. After scratching my head in frustration, I realized why it wasn’t quite jiving—I was using my housemate’s circle. The temple rites were done in a temple. Duh! So I drew a rectangle in the dirt at the other end of the yard, drew the main altar in the northwest corner and the offering altar in the southeast corner, as stated noted in archaeological excavations. I stepped in from the east, and everything suddenly clicked together.
The main temples stood about seven stories high: mountains in that time period.4 At the top of the temple was a smaller penthouse, the gipar, which was the private sanctuary of the temple god, a place where only the high priest or high priestess, called the En, could enter. Steps ran the height of the temple on the east side. The east was a place of beginning because it was where the sun arose each morning and the moon arose each evening. The west was the entrance to the underworld, the direction where the sun and moon set and presumed to be resting in the underworld. The sun was there daily, but since the moon is sometimes seen in the daylight, the moon only journeyed there once a month, during invisible moon when it was completely dark. New moon began about seven days later when the first crescent appeared.
The gods could be found in both heaven and the underworld. North represents heaven and west represents the underworld so I believe that the main altar should be in the northwest corner. East symbolizes fire, and south corresponds to earth; both fire and earth are transformative properties, so I believe the offering table was in the southeast corner. These are my own reasons, so there is no reference for this other than studying the myths for the cosmology.
The path of the sun was important, so entering the temple from the east seems logical to me. I follow the path of the sun from east to west and continuing around back to the east and I walk to the north, west, south, and back to east. I’m not going to get silly about this and insist that people turn only one way while in ritual, but for the purpose of entering, exiting, cleansing, and smudging, let’s follow the solar course.
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