Time Consumption
-or-
Yet Another Fotamecus Rite

OBJECTIVE:
To draw the power of the Fotamecus time manipulation egregore into the participants and thus imbue them with the ability to distort time.

BACKGROUND:
Fotamecus was initially a sigil used to alter time that, through constant use, was imbued with a life of its own as a servitor. Fotamecus subsequently was released to the internet, and the power of hundreds of users around the globe was enough to eventually push him over the border into egregorehood, beyond the control of any one individual. Fotamecus is diametrically opposed to Chronos, espousing a model of time as fluid and malleable instead of fixed an immutable. Further information about Fotamecus may be found elsewhere.

NOTES:
This isn't really a very structured ritual; it's mostly social in context with a short ritual-like component at the very end. If it feels like you're not doing a ritual until about step -4, you're doing it right. This is probably because of the heavy kitchen-witchery style of most of this ritual.

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

• An oven
• Sugar cookie dough (either ingredients for home-made or a supermarket pre-packaged dough)
• A cookie sheet
• A small clock for each participant
• A Fotamecus Talisman (this can be a paper drawn with the sigil or any physical object other than a mechanical timepiece)
• A small magnet and glue (optional, necesarry only if talisman is to become a refrigerator magnet)
• Participants, one of whom is Head Cook (HC)

RITUAL:

-10.		Participants gather, chat, socialize, and have fun. People should be entertaining themselves with food, conversation, games, etc. The central area around which this circulates should eventually move towards the kitchen.
-9.		The participants start baking cookies. If you've got pre-pack cookie batter, this is as simple as slicing the cookies and tossing them on the tray. If you're baking from scratch, the HC should be incharge and ask people to measure and mix things for him/her, trying to get everyone involved.
-8.		Once you have one cookie on the tray for each participant, everyone should gather and simultaneously impress their clocks into their cookies while saying "Praise unto Fotamecus! Chronos, your time has come!".
-7.		Put ze cookiez in ze oven an' bake 'em.
-6.		Socialize some more; have fun. Play a game of Twister. Put a Monty Python movie on for atmosphere. Get some shinai and spar in the back yard. Engage in meaningless ontological debate. You get the general idea.
-5.		Retrieve da cookiez. Let 'em cool. (450 + 98.6 = bad)
-4.		Participants gather in temple space (or, it true kitchen witch style, use the kitchen area) with the cookies and the Fotamecus Talisman. Form a circle together around the altar (dining table or counter). Cover the altar (table) with an altarcloth (tablecloth) upon which is painted the sigil of Fotamecus. Alternatively, use a piece of butcher paper on which the sigil is scrawled with whatever was handy at the moment. Place cookies upon the altar (table) in a circle around the talisman.
-3.		Insert Banishing/Opening Ritual here if so desired (or clean, disinfect, and mop the kitchen).
-3.		All participants gather in a circle around altar (table) and join hands, raise them upwards, and look up while calling out loudly, "Fotamecus, We Call Upon You!". Hands are lowered but still held, eyes focus on altar, and all call out, "Fotamecus, Come Witness This!"
-2.		Participants break hands, and the HC takes the talisman in his hands and holds it above the altar. All participants place a hand above and below the HCs hands, completely enclosing the talisman. Following the HCs lead, participants begin to breathe deeply in unison, focusing upon the talisman held in the center of their hands. Participants draw in as much power as they can and force it through their hands into the talisman. Slowly the breathing gets faster and faster. A gnosis should begin creeping up slowly, and as it creeps up, the breathing becomes faster and faster, the group moving together as they breathe power into the talisman.
-1.		As gnosis is reached, all participants place their dominant (writing) hand upon their cookie while keeping their other hand on the fist containing the talisman. Then all participants call out, "Fotamecus, Come Feed Us!" and visualize the energy from the talisman running up their arms, into their body, back down the other arm and into the cookies. Continue to call this out throughout this process, not necessarily in unison.
0.		When each participant feels they have charged their cookie, they raise their cookie skyward, call out, "Fotamecus, Come Feed Me!" and take a bite their cookie, other hand still joined above the altar, still drawing in the power of Fotamecus from the talisman. Feel this power settling in your stomach as you eat the cookie, welling throughout your system, becoming a part of you.
1.		After eating the cookie, return the other hand to the center and wait for all to be done; resume breathing in unison, but slowly and at a comfortable, regular pace. Try to feel the power of Fotamecus spreading throughout your body, the ability to manipulate time at will. Let your mind wander on those thoughts.
2.		When all have re-joined hands in the center, all say in unison, "We Are Fotamecus! Chronos, your time has come!". Then the Head Cook calls out, "Let the Battle be Enjoined!!!" and all give the best battle cry they can.
3.		Congratulations, you are now a warrior of Fotamecus! Spend the next few days trying to alter time, possibly with the use of the Fotamecus sigil, possibly without.
4.		Either keep the Fotamecus talisman on hand for the next ritual, draw lots to see who gets to keep it, or give it to an individual if their is overwhelming consensus as to who should have it. Or glue a magnet to it and stick it on the refrigerator.

TIPS:

• When impressing the clocks into the cookies, identifying marks can be impressed into the cookie as well to help remember which cookie belongs with which person. Alternatively, each individual cookie can be cooked on aluminum foil that is marked with the participant's name/sigil/idenitifier.
• If there aren't enough clocks to go around, everyone can place their hand on one clock and impress each cookie one at a time together while repeating the phrase for each cookie.
• If call-and-repeat must be used for the group lines, it should be called by the HC, and then the HC will repeat it with everyone else in unison.
• Any othe food that will take an impression of a clock is a suitable substitute for the cookies.
• If agreed upon beforehand, instead of simply breathing in unison, all participants can chant the mantric sigil "Fotamecus" in unison with their breathing.
• In case anyone missed the obvious symbolism: You're eating a clock (well, a symbol of one at any rate). You are thus conquering it, becoming its master. It's been imbued with the power of Fotamecus and you have drawn that power into yourself, literally digesting it, so that this power becomes a part of you. Duh.

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