I was thinking about Bohemian Grove. A friend of mine actually paid for a copy of that video of Alex Jones'... the quality is crap, you can't really see or hear anything clearly, so he can claim they were doing just about anything. Frustrating, that.
The distinction between ritual and theatre is an awfully blurry line to begin with. All ritual is a form of artistic performance, whether or not it has an audience, and it's arguable that all theatre is also a type of magic. If a stage performance is effective, the audience suspends disbelief and becomes emotionally involved. I should think this could easily be fed into a magical working by the performers, with or without the knowledge of the audience.
Anecdotally, I've seen this principle demonstrated; there's a theatre group in my community which annually performs something called "Dark Goddess". On entering the theatre, every audience member is asked if they enter freely, then smudged with sage and given a candle to light, which is placed in a dish of sand at either side of the stage area and left burning throughout the performance. The actresses evoke goddesses from various cultures - different goddesses are included each year - and tell (or sing, or dance, or chant) their associated myths and stories to the audience. The performance opens with a circle casting and placing of guardians, and closes with breaking the circle and a group blessing. Many of the audience members realize exactly what's going on, and many don't; it has all the trappings of ritual, but is presented as a theatre performance. Regardless of how many people in the audience recognize that they are participating in a magical ritual, it's a very powerful experience. |
