Learning & Memorizing Ritual

 Ritualist's Corner  
 
One of the problems that most often plagues Masonry is poor ritual. By 
this, I don't just mean getting the words wrong -- I mean ritual that 
is drab and uninspiring, which fails to actually *teach* a candidate. 
Ritual is often mediocre, and it doesn't have to be; anyone can do 
ritual well, provided he knows a little about acting. 

It isn't hard, actually; it's mostly a matter of knowing how to do it, 
plus a lot of practice. This article is intended to impart some 
guidelines on how to do Good Ritual. It doesn't demand a lot of time, 
or any particular talent, just a little drive to do well. Read it and 
play with it. With some practice, you should be able to use these 
techniques to good effect in your Lodge. The course is specifically 
aimed at dealing with the longer speeches, but much of it is also 
relevant to shorter pieces; I commend it to junior officers. 

This is adapted from a lecture that I worked up for my own lodge; 
having done that, I figured I should try to spread these tips around 
for the common weal of the Craft. (Caveat: I do assume that you have 
some kind of cipher book, with encoded ritual. If your jurisdiction 
doesn't use this, you'll have to adapt these lessons.) 
 
1: Figure out the Words  

The first step of learning any ritual is to know what you're saying! 
This should be obvious, but is often overlooked, because brethren are 
afraid to admit that they don't already know the right words. Don't be 
afraid to admit your own limits -- I've never met *anyone* who gets 
every single word right every time. 

Start out by listening to someone say the speech, preferably several 
times. (You should be doing this the entire previous year, listening 
to your predecessor.) Listen carefully, and make sure you understand 
what's being said; ask questions if you don't. (After Lodge, of 
course.) 

Next, go through your cipher or code book carefully, and see how much 
you can read. Mark words that you can't figure out, or that you're 
unsure of -- this is the point to catch any mistakes you may be 
making. Then call or get together with a Ritualist or a reliable Past 
Master, and talk through it, reading out of the book slowly. Have him 
correct any mistakes, and fill in the words you don't know. Take notes 
(preferably somewhere other than in the book), because you will forget 
the corrections as soon as you're on your own. 

2: Understand the Speech 

This step gets overlooked even more often than the previous one. Read 
through the ritual a couple of times, and make sure you really grasp 
it. Don't just know the words -- know what it's talking about. Find 
out who the characters being talked about are. Again, ask questions. 

Now, start trying to understand the speech structurally. Any ritual is 
made up of components, separate pieces that are linked together. For 
example, a section may be talking about symbols, with three paragraphs 
per symbol: concrete meaning, abstract meaning, and purpose. Figure 
out what these pieces are -- you'll use them later. 

The next step is especially useful for long speeches -- visualize the 
speech. Any speech can be thought of in terms of movements, places, 
rooms, stuff like that. Words are hard to remember in order; places 
are easy. The canonical example is the Middle Chamber Lecture, which 
walks through King Solomon's Temple. That's no accident -- that path 
is easily visualized, and makes a good example of how to learn ritual, 
which is probably why it is the first major speech an officer 
learns. This is why we use symbols in the first place: because they 
are easy to learn and internalize. Use them. 

3a: Small-Scale Memorization 

This is never anyone's favorite part; anyone can do it, but no-one 
finds it simple. It's considerably easier if you do it right, though. 

Start out by reading the speech over and over. Don't move on to the 
next step until you can read it from the cipher quickly, without 
breaks or hesitation. Read it *out loud*, when you get the chance. 
This step is particularly important, and skipped more often than any 
other. Don't skip it -- this is how you get your brain and mouth 
trained to the words. It may sound silly, but it really matters -- the 
mental pathways used to talk are distinct from those used to read. 

Now, start trying to learn sentences. Just sentences. Read the first 
word or two of the sentence, then try to fill in the remainder from 
memory. Don't fret if you can't do it immediately; it will probably 
take at least 5 or 10 times through before you're getting most of the 
sentences. You'll find some that are hard -- hammer those ones over 
and over (but don't totally neglect the rest while you do so). Again, 
get to the point where you're doing reasonably well on this, before 
going on to the next step. 


3b: Large-Scale Memorization 

Once you've got most of the sentences, try to move on to paragraphs. 
Again, some will be easy and some hard. Try to understand exactly why 
this sentence follows that one -- in most cases, the ritual does make 
sense. An individual paragraph is almost always trying to express a 
single coherent thought, in pieces; figure out what that thought is, 
and why all the pieces are necessary. Keep at this until you're able 
to get most paragraphs by glancing at the first word or two, or by 
thinking, "Okay, this is the description of truth," or something like 
that. 

Finally, start putting it all together. This is where the structural 
analysis in Step 2 gets important. You visualized the speech, and 
figured out how it hooks together; use that visualization to connect 
the paragraphs. Make sure you have some clue why each paragraph 
follows the one before. In almost every case, the next paragraph is 
either a) continuing this thought, or b) moving on to a related 
thought. In both cases, you can make memorization much easier by 
understanding why it flows like that. Convince yourself that this 
paragraph obviously has to follow that one, and you'll never forget 
the order. 

 4: Smoothing It Out 

You're now at the point where you've got pretty much all the sentences 
down, and most of the paragraphs, and you're able to get through the 
whole thing only looking at the book a few times. Now, start *saying* 
it. 

When you're driving in the car; when you're alone at home; pretty much 
any time you have some privacy, try saying it all out loud, at full 
voice. Trust me, it sounds very different when you actually say it 
aloud. You'll find that you stumble more, and in different places. 
Some words turn out to be more difficult to pronounce than you 
expected. Try it a few times. 

Start out by trying to do this frequently -- once, even twice every 
day. It'll be hard at first (and it's a real pain to pull out the 
cipher book while you're driving), but it'll gradually get easier. 
When you're starting to feel comfortable, slow down, but don't stop. 
Practice it every couple of days, then every week. Don't slow down 
below once a week. If you feel up to it, see if you can speed up your 
recitation. (But do not ever speed-talk the ritual in open Lodge -- 
that's for memorization and rehearsal only.) 

5a: Mindset  

Last part. You're now at the point where you pretty much have the 
ritual memorized. Now, the trick is learning how to perform it well. 
Very nearly everyone has some amount of stage fright; us acting types 
often have it even worse than most. The trick to overcoming it is 
control of the nerves. 

Now that you're comfortable reciting the ritual, observe how you do 
it. By now, you're not thinking about it so much; your mouth is doing 
almost all the work, with the conscious mind simply making a few 
connections between paragraphs. That is the right state to be in. 
Think about how that feels, and learn it. 

Before you go in to "perform", do some basic acting exercises. Take a 
few deep breaths; concentrate on not thinking. I think the ideal is a 
little light meditation, but it takes a fair bit of practice to be 
able to drop into that state on demand; for now, just worry about 
being calm. Being calm is far more important than anything else. If 
you're calm, you're unlikely to screw up too badly; if you're tense, 
you're far more likely to. Some people like to exercise the body a 
bit, to relax the mind; you should do what works for you. 

5b: Acting 

Now the final nuance, which separates merely competent ritual from the 
really good stuff. Now that you're able to let your mouth do all the 
talking, start listening to yourself. Think about the ritual again, 
but don't think about the words, think about what it means. What are 
the important bits? Emphasize those. How could you use your body or 
hands to illustrate a point? Try talking *to* the person in front of 
you, not just *at* them -- look them in the eye and make them get the 
point. You are teaching important lessons here; try to capture a 
little of the emotional intensity of that importance. 

Think of your "performance" as a melding of two parts. Your mouth is 
providing the words, your mind and heart the emotion. Again, nothing 
beats practice. This is what rehearsal should really be for -- taking 
a dummy candidate in hand, and learning how to really get the point 
across. Don't fret if you find that you need to change "modes" now and 
then -- here and there you will need to think about the words briefly, 
when you change paragraphs or hit a hard sentence. That won't throw 
you, though, so long as you keep track of what you're saying; you've 
already figured out why each part leads into the next, and that will 
guide you when you stumble. 

Conclusion 

Don't expect to get all this down instantly; it takes most people a 
few years to really get good at it. Just try to advance yourself bit 
by bit. Learn the transitions and pieces first -- if you have that, 
you can get through the ritual. Next time, work on memorizing more 
thoroughly. The time after that, work on getting it really smooth. 
After a while, you can build up to the point where you have the luxury 
to act. And at that point, you will find that you start doing the kind 
of ritual that Masonry is meant to have -- both moving and 
interesting, enough so that the candidate (who is, remember, the whole 
point) actually *learns* what you're saying, and what it actually 
means. And if you really do it well, you'll find that you come to 
understand the meaning of the ritual a good deal better yourself...