Forging Cohesion (Part I)
#campcrafting 005: Harnessing the ancient magic of ritual
We can’t rely solely on the traditional ceremonies of the past. We must have the courage to create new ceremonies in the present so there will be traditions for our children, grandchildren and our great grandchildren to follow.
~Berniece Falling Leaves, Metis/Lakota Sioux Elder
1. The God Pole
The God Pole stands majestically in the sacralized hearth of the Troth-Heim camp. It extends eight feet towards the heavens, with graven images masterfully carved into its woody flesh. The eldritch faces etched upon the totem leap alive — straight out of Norse pagan lore.1 The man shamanistically embodying a Gothi — an Old Norse chief-priest – by the name of Gunnar Redboar of House RedHammer, walks solemnly around the hearth. His brothers and Elder Jarls, EikBrander Solgyafi, Ullr Amaranthson, and Lutr Ulfskjald – Knight-warriors of great renown and Households of their own, sit in constellation amongst the throng of people in attendance of this most sacred of rituals: The Burning of the God Pole.
In the Old Norse Sagas, references of the Runestang (rune poles) were used to describe totems with magical properties. This communal ritual of crafting, erecting, and finally burning the God Poles binds together the seven independent Houses of Troth-Heim, a real, living tribal band. In the words of EikBrandr, the man embodying the All-Speaker on behalf of the camp, Troth-Heim literally translates from Old Norse: “Home of the Faithful.” After hours of merrymaking, drinking mead from animal horns, and storytelling of tales of deeds of battle to those among the Troth-Heim camp, I stand now on the outskirts, dressed in my ceremonial Scythian attire, a leather Phrygian cap upon my head, adorned in a deerskin fur mantle and linen garb.
Although not of Troth-Heim, I was invited as a guest to witness the ritual. Immediately, I sense a shift in the band’s attention, as the ceremony is about to come to its conclusion. Gunnar’s voice booms in command to ignite the God Pole. The totem had been erected on the first day of the pitching of the camp, a fortnight beforehand. Now, the wooden work of art sacrificially burned, lighting up the faces of those who sat around the hearth to bask in the conclusion of their physically, mentally, and spiritually challenging weeks together.
The Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA), founded in 1966, is an international living history group with the aim of studying and recreating Medieval European cultures and their histories before the 17th century. It is the home of one of the world’s coolest full-contact sports — an MMA medieval mixed martial art. Every year in Slippery Rock Pennsylvania, 20,000 SCA members congregate for two weeks in what is the equivalent to the Burning Man of Medieval Martial Arts – an event called Pennsic. The aim of its participants is to be as “period” as possible as they recreate the lives of our ancestors. The product is one of the greatest exercises in tribalism I’ve ever experienced.
The SCA attracts all walks of life, but especially those with a love of fantasy and a penchant for playing full contact sports. The scientific research on what makes for good groups, shows that identity building, experiencing shared hardship in pursuit of a common goal, and egalitarian powers among members is a fantastic formula for group cohesion. The SCA provides the perfect tribal sandbox to express all these dimensions of human group behavior. Pennsic has served as the breeding ground for some of my life’s most enduring relationships — many of which have been explicitly bound by overcoming collective challenge and participation in ritual ceremony. Our aim here is to provide a recipe to cultivate cohesion in your own groups.
Cohesion is the degree to which group members stick and work together in pursuit of a goal.
In this article, we will outline how to harness cohesion. Cohesion is a kind of group resilience. It works on on scales of groups, from a family member that takes pride in their lineage to a warrior fighting for the sovereignty of a nation. Without it, there is little glue to keep the group adhesive high. Ritual and ceremony are the most powerful tools we have to be able to accomplish this task. Embedded in the rituals you craft will be coded the sacred values of your camp’s identity, norms, and ultimate purpose. Proper use of this recipe will embolden your group to be super-charged with the will to overcome adversity.
2. The Cohesion Formula
In the previous article, we explored how cohesion is driven by the personality makeup of a team. Here, we’ll transition from understanding to performing. The following is the campcrafting formula to bootstrap cohesion, where r = ritual, i = identity, | = notation for “given”, v = values, and c = cohesion:
Your task then is to enact this formula. To this end:
Define your group’s purpose (p)
Define your group’s values (v)
Create a shared identity (i) (as a function of purpose and values)
Embed your identity, purpose, and values into co-created rituals
This is applied evolutionary science at its finest. This formula is not my own — it is the birthright of every human being who ever lived for over a quarter of a million years. I explore this topic deeply in OUR TRIBAL FUTURE, but here we’ll outline the broad strokes of the time tested, tried-and-true formula to strong group creation. When groups have strongly delineated identities and clearly defined membership alongside sacred values that are crystal clear — the group will be able to overcome immense challenges and stick together, unified in the pursuit of their goals.
You and your group are #campcrafting, and so your purpose is already defined. We’ll call this living purpose. Our goal now is to align your camp’s living purpose with your group’s sacred values. All effective groups share sacred values.
Sacred values are the social norms that group members observes as absolute and inviolable.
Cross-culturally, sacred values differ from material values in that they incorporate moral beliefs. In effect, conceiving of breaking a sacred value is the worst kind of social taboo. It’s the deepest of tribal sins. Some people, dotted throughout history, have chosen death instead of breaking a sacred value. They are a group’s commandments, and as such serve as the spiritual north star that determines the shade and color of other norms. Developing your group’s own sacred value will help symbolically crystallize your collective purpose.
3. Camp commandments
With the cohesion formula in hand, where do we start? Let’s begin by using an exercise from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which allows you to integrate your own values with your camp.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a peer reviewed psychological technique that is based on the principles of mindfulness and acceptance. The goal of ACT is to help individuals develop psychological flexibility by learning to accept difficult thoughts and emotions, while also committing to actions that align with their personal values.
ACT may sound like psychotherapy hocus-pocus, but its key innovation provides a proven method by which groups can augment their power to enact their shared vision in the world. If you stick with the #campcrafting series, we will explore in depth the kinds of Prosocial governance systems that could measurably improve the capacity for your group to achieve its goals, and ACT will be a cornerstone of these strategies. Here is a brief pitch of the Prosocial process if you’d like to get hyped up for what’s to come. For now, we’ll foreshadow ACT with some very basic techniques to get the cohesion building process started.
First, meditate on your individual interests in why you are motivated to invest your energy into the camp.
Ask yourself: “what matters most to me about our campcrafting?”
Literally get out a piece of paper and jot these down.
For example, when I performed this exercise, I listed:
A group from which I can receive wise counsel
To have people around me I can totally trust
To be loyal and receive loyalty from others
In essence, this is a way to tease our most important values. If we were to boil the things I listed down into value form, we see themes like loyalty and trust bubble to the surface. Now, have each camp member perform this exercise which will help to integrate individual and collective interests. Together with your camp, write down each member’s list on a whiteboard. Then, instead of considering the issue on the individual level — contemplate it on the group level.
Ask your camp: “What do we as a camp care about most?”
Just to preface the kinds of concepts such an exercise could generate, my camp’s whiteboard was spilling over with the following:
Family
Inclusiveness
Mindfulness (impact awareness)
Fun/inspiration/building each other up
Fairness & balance in responsibilities
Friendship & respect
Stability
Economic efficiency
Knowledge sharing
Open mindedness in discussion
Resilience
Long term vision
That’s a long list. But just as it was for the individual level, themes emerge. Kith and Kinship ties. Building things that last. Speaking our minds. Psychological and physical safety. If we were to canonize sacred values from this list of themes, it might go something like: Family, Trust, Legacy. To give it that “motto” or creed feel, let’s brush a coat of Latin over it. Family: Familia; Trust: Fiducia; Legacy: Legatum. And there you have it, a first draft of a creed your camp can rally behind in your quest: Family, Fiducia, Legatum.
Get after your campmates to run the exercise by sending them this article.
Let’s continue Forging Cohesion in the next part of this article topic, by exploring the ways in which identity, ritual, and challenges can boost our spiritual strength even further!
From tales such as Gautrek’s Saga and accounts of the Uppland Temple, a pagan Norse religious capital in Sweden, where such totems are referenced.