The history of PAT rituals

Regular readers know I am a core member of Elaion and as part of Elaion, we host PRacticing Apart Together rituals. This is an idea I came up with back in 2013 (and man, how time flies!) and then had several long discussions about with Robert Clark. We wanted to offer a way for our global membership to feel like they were part of one community, a community of worshippers.

I offered some options in the post I linked, but we soon discovered that coordinating times would be tricky and we also didn't want to put pressure on anyone to 'be there or be square'. We were going for simple, inclusive, and easy. And we wanted it to further the understanding of ancient worship for our members.

So, we settled on a model based upon the premise of ‘Living Apart Together’ relationships, where partners keep their own home but still form a household. PAT rituals are performed at your own home, but aligned with others around the globe. We decided on a time that most people around the globe would be awake for, and we decided to put together rituals that we could 'hand out' so everyone would be doing roughly the same thing--either at the same time or at a time of their choosing, and we even post up the rituals in the Facebook group so no one can forget it's happening.

Low threshold, easy to join, and something to do that will bring us together.

We held our first PAT ritual in August of 2013. Since then, we've organised over 350 of them and every time, people join. They do them a the indicated time, or on the same day, or around the day--whatever works for them. It's brought Elaion together in a way we could never have imagined starting out. It's been a large draw for new members and it's given us all a sense of belonging.

Thank you all for making them the succes they are. Thank you for being a part of my community.