The Ritual

Okay, let's talk about scary, cultish things. Like chants. And rituals.

So forget everything you know about the words below and just read them in your head, with the voice or voices the words compel.

Whose was it?

His who is gone.

Who shall have it?

He who will come.

What was the month?

The sixth from the first.

Where was the sun?

Over the oak.

Where was the shadow?

Under the elm.

How was it stepped?

North by ten and by ten, east by five and by

five, south by two and by two, west by one and by

one, and so under.

What shall we give for it?

All that is ours.

Why should we give it?

For the sake of the trust.

Now, you and I know that those words are the Musgrave ritual. But we don't think of it as a ritual, Sherlock Holmes having showed us the truth behind it. Yet it was, when encountered by generations of Musgraves, a ritual. Something performed as a regular ritual observance, with no other meaning than what the listener derived from what was plainly a responsive reading. Perhaps the head of the family asked the questions and the family responded in unison. Perhaps someone new got the honor of playing inquisitor every Christmas or New Year's or some other significant day of the year.

But ritual, it was, ritually observed. 

The thought of passing something from someone long gone to someone still to come. Something so important that one should give everything that one owned so that "he who will come" shall have that sacred thing, that was entrusted to the family in some bygone age. The ritual does not say who is coming, or what he'll do when he gets here, but we know his gender. Musgraves of a more religious bent could have imagined it was the second coming. Darker minded generations might have feared this mysterious "He." Perhaps early readers of the ritual had been told who "He" was, perhaps not.

The symbolism of sun and shadow. "The sixth month" instead of June, like "the first" might not be January. The possibility that "sun" is a play on "son," like in that one old Star Trek episode. A square that goes from ten feet wide, to five, to two, to one, rounding down on fractions as it halves itself to the infitesimal microcosm of "so under." 

One could build a cult around those words, easily enough. Rituals have their own ordered appeal. And for many centuries, that's what the Musgrave ritual was . . . just a ritual, for a family with a cultish mission. 

But at least is wasn't a curse, like those poor Baskervilles got!