Chapter 16 . The circle swings (The athame queen the wooden spoon and the bard)

Your nose picks up a faint pungent scent and your eyes go left to pick out a group of black robed men, all with an insignia on their robe.  One is sniffing the smouldering end of a smudge stick and deep in concentration.. you are reminded of a wine connoisseur who is trying to figure out whether he likes the wine he has just sniffed and swirled in his mouth and spat out.  Another is swirling his finger round in a bowl and taking it out and tasting it every now and again with a wry look.  You can see a multitude of knives and pouches girdling his waist and a drum is resting over his shoulder as well as a long flute like shape shrouded in cloth.  A third who has a smile on his face that seems permanently fixed.. is looking at the sporadically smoking cauldrons and shaking his head.  You can see his hands wandering to a pouch at his waist as if he wants to throw some of it in the cauldron . 

You pull your wandering attention back to the ritual. Somehow it seems a bit lacking in drawing attention. and you can remember parts of their speeches and litergies as bits from starhawk  and silver ravenwolf books. and shudder the big blue uncle buckies bedtime pagan book.  You notice quite a few of the people here seem distracted and fidgety rather than ingrossed in the ritual. You look over to the corner and see a couple of people  bow to the centre of the circle surrepticiously roll under the sides of the tent and disapear into the nite.  It is like this is set as if for a play.  You are watching it unfold from scripts and it feels more like a well rehearsed production than a spiritual event.  The ritual in the centre seems like one of those moving sculpures inside one of those plastic domed toys you watch from outside. That in this outside circle you all are in a reality of the inner circles crafting that seems to exclude rather than include the various traditions you have caught a glimpse of.  Yet  the energies of all are tapped into and fed into the ritual and changed and transformed to fit the mould set here, which somehow does not seem to connect into the land around or the people but seems to be a manufactured construct of the High  priestess running the circle.  Her priestesses and priests and acolytes seem to be running around like drone bees, following her command without question, yet seeming to lack something in the following.  The words drip with meaning, yet those essences do not seem to touch the ground, The structure seems to be like one of what SHOULD be seemed to be done rather than taking account of the surrounds or the different resources.  You shrug away these distracting thoughts and try and concentrate on the ritual once again.