It’s been a long journey from my Anglican origins to my current spiritual beliefs and practice. Along the way I’ve watched the world’s need for women spiritual leaders grow urgent, and I’ve rejoiced in certain shamanic effects when I take to the dance floor. I’ve also counselled several friends and family members through major life transitions – break-ups, hook-ups, birth, death. But it was only recently that a friend asked me to help design and officiate at the naming ceremony of her firstborn, and I and everyone else involved had so much fun that I thought I should do it more often. If I had enough spare time and money, I’d train as a doula.
But in Australia, a celebrant needs no official qualifications unless she’s conducting a marriage.
So if you’re wanting to hold a naming ceremony, cleansing ritual, handfasting or commitment ceremony, special farewell, funeral, animal blessing, or any other life-event celebration, contact me for a free planning session. Together we can discuss your intentions, establish a theme and a mood, devise a script to invoke powers both universal and particular, give proper credit to that special time or event, and invest chosen moments or even objects with lasting significance.
Given free rein, my own spirit is strongest in contact with nature, and my natural inclination is to hold these rites of passage outdoors, in often-spectacular bush and beachside settings. But significant or purpose-designed interiors are another happy option – indeed, being broadly animist, energy-sensitive, adogmatic and ritually inventive, I can help you create whatever ceremony you need.
It’s important to note again I’m not legally qualified to conduct marriages. In the future I may well do the required training for marriage celebrancy – or the Government may finally acknowledge that people should be able to craft their own contract with the consenting adult of their choice. You never know. In the meantime, handfastings and commitment ceremonies create a spiritual but not a legal bond.
Jack Laurian Pascoe 