Learning the Ritual

Several months ago I gave a short talk in Bytown Lodge about the learning of ritual.  I’ve been asked to post this on my blog.

I have a reputation for being a good ritualist.  People have often told me that they “wish we had your gift”. Well, it is not a gift. I know the ritual well because I spent many hours learning it. The only “gift” I had was the knowledge that I needed to and my experience as a musician and medical student confirmed that.

Memory is a fickle thing. We need to try to understand it.  Nowadays we often compare our brains to a computer. Although we understand more than ever how a human brain works we really only know a tiny fraction. We are beginning to realize however that it is entirely different from, and much superior to, an artificial computer.  The study of memory is but one example of that.

We do NOT have a tape recorder in our brain! Our thoughts and ideas are stored in particular areas.  Different concepts are stored in different places. We know this from experience with people with damaged brains (from injury or disease such as a stroke).  They have widely disparate and often bizarre patterns of memory change.

In simple terms we can divide memory into short term and long term storage.  In reality there are probably more subdivisions than this but two will suffice for the purpose of this essay. 

If you tell me the directions to your house in a new location I’ll probably remember it if I’m already on my way there. If I return in a few days I may have some difficulty but will probably get there with a few wrong turnings. If I go there every day for 3 months, I will never again forget where you live as long as my brain remains healthy.

Ritual is like this. I could learn a short piece of ritual, or even several parts of a long piece, and repeat it tomorrow. All the time I’m repeating it however I will be furiously trying to remember the next word, the next sentence or the next phrase. There will be frequent pauses and probably a lot of prompts.  If I repeat it enough times however I will eventually be able to speak the whole piece without pausing.

That phrase, or set of phrases, however is still only in my short term memory and, with time, it will fade.  Next week I will again be pausing: next month pausing (much) more and, next year, I’ll have to start learning the whole thing over again.

If I repeat the piece over and over again however it will become part of long term memory and will stay in my memory for ever.  Most of us remember the Lord’s Prayer for example: we have repeated it thousands of times.

Actors and musicians call this embodiment. It seems as if it no longer is in our heads but in our bodies. We do not have to use brain to remember the words; they just seem to come out. We can then use our brain to think of other things. Things such as emphasis, breathing, volume, speed, pauses.  In other words we can add meaning to the words we speak through body language. We can also receive feedback from our audience and integrate it into our delivery.

Here is my recipe then for learning ritual.

First.  Read through the whole piece. If you can, read it aloud several times. Then begin with the first sentence and repeat it over and over until you can do so without reading the text. Go to the next sentence and do the same. THEN say aloud the first and second and repeat them until you no longer have need of the text. Now go to the third and repeat the process. 

When you reach the end of that paragraph you will be able to recite the whole of it from memory. Do this at least 10 times before you start the next paragraph.  

If you think this is going to take a lot of time you are right!  However it is going to take more. A lot more!

By now however you are going to be feeling more confident. Also, there will be many more opportunities to repeat aloud what you have already learned as now you will be working on things you have in your head and not be reliant on reading.  For example I repeat longer charges while driving alone.

Now comes the easiest but also the longest part.  Once you have memorized the whole piece (and now you think you “know” it) you must repeat it a MINIMUM OF 200 TIMES before performing it in public.  (There’s no need to count however – 199 times will probably be more than enough!) 

After your first public performance keep repeating it for a day or two integrating any feedback you had from your audience.

This is a LOT of work. However, if you start learning the ritual when you are first appointed as an officer, you have years in which to learn the ritual. As you progress through each office you should learn AT LEAST the work of the next one.  On the night you are installed as Master you will be able to perform perfectly every word in the book, except perhaps the IPM charges. Better however to have learned those as well as you journey through the chairs.

John Forster.    Dec 20, 2010