In the Moon of My Birthday, need for ritual discussed

Ah, yes. Ritual as mask. An insight that I had not thought of in quite the same way before. Just as the mask allows "permission" to transcend our normal state, this transcendent state also allows us to become a conduit for the will (will becoming reality) of a force of nature, a plant, an animal or yes even a deity. Like channeling, man... I am thinking about the "tribes" who use ritual dancing and masks to enter trances that allow them to take on the character of deities.
In our highly westernized and intellectualized existence, we may not have to dress like Athena, Hildegaard, or Rasputin to call in the energies of these powerful spirits. We just name them. Theoretically, as long as you can "thought experiment up" the proper seat of power that you are interested in, burning the right candle, or quoting the right passage is window dressing anyway and holds no true power by itself. Actions, props, and incantations are not the energy, only mnemonic devices to spur our awareness of eternal forces.
In any case, of course ritual is vital! Without rituals, all is mundane. Ritual is like the structure that becomes a conduit for our energies to feed into as well as draw on the All. If one cannot create a process for doing this, or don't want to, I am not sure that one has experienced the transformational aspects of discipline. That is why many labor for months on a costume for the one night that the veil between worlds is thinnest! The amount of energy you invest always effects the quality of what you come away with!
I have always been of the belief that you have to get out of your head to be in your right mind. Regimentation is what allows us to be set free of the mundane. Imagine, in a spiritual sense, what it would be like to be a magnificent artist whose media of choice is colored pencils. If you only had one of each color pencil in every location that you routinely passed through. This ad hoc way of organizing would lead to tremendous costs of time and energy as each color had to be found and remembered. How much art could you make this way? How complicated would making your art become? How would your life improve if you had a pencil case, or better yet a subdivided pencil case that had groups of associated colors?
The organization of ritual has the benefit of putting our conscious mind to bed as it were, this allows us to be less fettered than we were before the process was begun. By calling the quarters, and recognizing that we are relative to all things, we open a whole new set of possibilities. Activating these energies is best done when there are lifeguards, experienced coaches or shamen around. Not on one's own. Some heavy changes can occur when in trance. Having an elder, with prior experience in this "new" territory, on hand is crucial to assuring positive outcomes. The recent "sweat-lodge" deaths point this out quite clearly. It is tragic that some people with a little knowledge are still trying to lead others through rites that require a lifetime of study in addition to the wisdom of the ancients to be effective. We all seek enlightenment, but at what cost?