Main Ritual:

Ogden Pagan Pride Day to Feature The Ship

The Ship: A Mystery Play will be the main event at Ogden’s first Pagan Pride Day gathering, set for August 30 in Monroe Park.

Written by early 20th century magician and occultist Aleister Crowley, The Ship is one of his many examples of presenting magical ritual in dramatic form. It is best described as a modern Pagan take on the medieval Christian “mystery play”. While those plays dramatized the death and resurrection of Christ, The Ship focuses on the death and rebirth of the Sun God, symbolizing the annual solar cycle of the seasons.

In the story, John, the High Priest of the Sun, is brutally slain following an act of betrayal. His body is then placed in a ship and sent across the sea, a time-honored symbol of death and rebirth, to await its transformation.

Of course, says Ogden Pagan Pride Day spokesperson Karen DePolito, Pagans today are as aware as anyone else about what causes seasonal change: “We don’t believe the sun literally dies and regenerates itself every year. But that doesn’t make the mythos any less important. Without this waxing and waning cycle of solar energy, life on earth as we know it would not exist.”

With Pagan Pride Day happening during the late-summer harvest season, event organizers think it’s a good time for floating The Ship, a celebration of how the sun’s yearly death and resurrection sustains us all.

The Ship is being produced by NOX Oasis, the local body of Ordo Templi Orientis USA.