Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the April 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and I'm writing it as I begin preparing an academic paper titled "Passion, Empathy, and Action: A Critical Introduction to The Climate Fiction Writers League," which I'll be delivering at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research conference in Reykjavik this year.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
Well, the "Religion" and "Ritual" chapters of The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore are beasts, coming in at over 4500 words each. This is unsurprising, given the subject matter, but I was still sad to cut the material below from the "Ritual" chapter. Long-time subscribers to the Folkbyte newsletter and before it, the Folklore & Fiction dispatch and podcast will recognize the material from the November 2019 edition of the latter, titled "What is a ritual?" It's revised for the book here, so I thought I would share it with you. If you're keen to world-build rituals, you might tuck this newsletter into an email folder and refer to it again when the book is released!
Folklore scholar Sabina Magliocco writes that ritual is the Neo-Pagan religious movement’s most important art form, comparing it to narrative, music, drama, costume, and crafts.1 You might think of fictional rituals in a similar way, as expressions of religious or magical art in a story world. The vitality of this art might also point to the relative age of a fictional culture. For example, an emerging folk group might be in the process of developing new religious or magical practices, and as a result, the rituals they enact and their magical impacts might vary. But the group might also have devout ritual architects dedicated to developing the tradition. Conversely, an established folk group might enact many conventional rituals full of pageantry even as it descends into apathy. There might be no ritual architects in the tradition anymore, and the existing rituals might have lost their religious meaning or magical power. In both extremes, cultural age has an impact on ritual-as-art and the relative vitality of ritual enactments, which are worth considering in your world-building.
Pro Tip: Think of the rituals you build as works of performance art.
This Month on Social Media
Subscribers will have received the March Special Dispatch titled "Leave a Song, Not a Stone," which concludes my two-part series on material culture at Scottish witchcraft shrines and holy places. My new short video for March was titled "Why My Forthcoming Book Is Titled The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore." In it, I discuss historical and contemporary story transmission and the reasons why folklorists endeavour not to "privilege the text."
Final Thoughts
Spring comes slowly to Cape Breton. There is a heavy blanket of snow on the ground still, and this morning we weathered an ice storm. But it will be Beltane before I send you another Folkbyte newsletter, so I've made you a Beltane playlist.
Beannachd Leibh,
Ceallaigh
Footnotes
- Magliocco, Sabina. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. Amazon Kindle. Contemporary Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004: chap. 4.
Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran holds B.A. in Celtic Studies from the University of Toronto, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine, and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. She's also an author, poet, and musician under the names Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran and C.S. MacCath. Her long-running Folklore & Fiction project integrates these passions with a focus on folklore scholarship aimed at storytellers, and she brings a deep appreciation of animism, ecology, and folkloristics to her own storytelling. You can find her online at csmaccath.com, folkloreandfiction.com, and linktr.ee/csmaccath.
© 2026 Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran. All rights reserved unless Creative Commons licensing is specifically applied. To read the full "Copyright Statement and Usage Guide," visit https://csmaccath.com/copyright.