Holy dread is something that I first remember experiencing in 2014, although it’s possible it happened before that and it just wasn’t as dramatically on my radar. I had gone up to my sacred mountains, the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, to perform a ritual for Ariadne, Dionysos and the Mountain Mother. I wrote about the experience here, and back then I described feeling…
“a temptation to distract myself with something innocuous, and underlying that… a bubbling up of something terrifying.”
At the time, I wrote it off as a sort of grief-fueled existential crisis. But I just journaled about it and went ahead with the ritual as planned.
The next year I went up again to repeat the observance, as I felt it had been quite powerful, especially doing it in the summer with the Corona Borealis overhead. I added to it a bit, and decided to invite the spirit of my husband to join in. (I also did some other work to connect with him before the main ritual.)
This time, the feeling of dread was SO strong leading up to it, that I remember recording a video of myself on my phone “just in case” I didn’t make it through to the other side of the ritual. I knew it was a silly thought, but I couldn’t shake it. That ritual turned out to be incredibly powerful - what I feel was an initiation and blessing from the gods upon me and my husband both.
I will also usually feel holy dread during Anthesteria before my Khoes rites, and sometimes during other festivals like Lenaia.
So how would I describe holy dread? It’s like a weighted sense of impending and inexplicable doom that directly precedes an important ritual, trial or spiritual work. The level of holy dread can sometimes be correlated with how powerful the ritual turns out to be, but not necessarily. The weight is lifted at some point once the ritual is started. (Or I would assume, if you chose to not go through with it- although I’ve never done that.)
I’ve experienced holy dread for rituals both indoor in controlled circumstances and outdoors in nature. But it’s only ever been before rituals that have a strong ecstatic element and involve entheogens or altered states of consciousness. However, I don’t think it’s just the knowledge that I’ll be partaking of entheogens that causes the dread. The feeling is distinct from the sort of nervous butterflies or trepidation I’ve experienced before using psychedelics recreationally. It could be something to do with the ecstatic element - the knowing that I will be giving up some measure of control and putting myself in the hands of the gods and spirits.
When I experienced it most recently a couple weeks ago, I was by now very acquainted with the feeling, but it STILL completely bowled me over. It was so pronounced, that I was genuinely concerned for my well-being. That’s how intense it was. I kept thinking, what if this was actual intuition this time, warning me to stop? What if this was in fact a bad idea? Were the gods trying to tell me to stop before I even started?
So of course, discernment comes in really handy here. In this case, I performed some divination and got the green light. I also recorded a video of myself on my phone again, which is weirdly soothing. It puts a light/mirror to your own fears, and it pacifies the thinking-mind to say things out loud and put it “on record”.
Note:
When I googled “holy dread”, I re-discovered that it’s a phrase in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”. It’s a poem I’ve been familiar with since my teenage years so perhaps that’s where my subconscious mind grabbed it from. Apparently it's also the title of an appropriately atmospheric track from The Fountain soundtrack (one of my favorite films) - so I figured I’ll share that here:
