Elements To Creating A Ritual

So I've realized that I've been writing rituals and explaining how to cleanse space and cast Circles but I haven't really explained to anyone how they can create their own ritual. I only just thought of this while I was reading a book by Scott Cunningham who started explaining the different elements to creating your own ritual. While he explained the elements listed in his book were not required but more of a guideline, I would like to create my own guideline here. My guidelines don't really have as many elements to it as his does; this is probably due to the fact that I create very simple and memorable rituals and a lot of my rituals are spontaneous. I do understand that there are a lot of people out there who would rather do formalized rituals that have been written in advance and possibly even practiced.

Generally, I write down Sabbat rituals beforehand and my Esbat rituals are spontaneous since that is a time for creativity. So here is an extremely simplified list of how a typical ritual is laid out.

• Cleansing yourself
• Cleansing the Sacred Space
• Casting the Circle
• Calling the Quarters
• Honoring and calling the deities
• Celebrating the Sabbat or working your ritual magick
• Meditation/grounding your energy
• Thanking your deities and Quarters for helping you
• Opening the Circle

So of course what you do inside your ritual, the 'body' of it, is all up to you. When I am within my Circle there is no concept of time. Many people ask me how long ritual will be and I cannot give them a straight answer because the Circle is a space outside of time. It is a separate plane of existence altogether. Typically my rituals can last anywhere from an hour to 3 hours and feel like it lasted just 20 minutes. Most people in my Circle make the same comment "How was it actually that long?!" 

Sweetheart, it's magick!