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The Sôgmô has unveiled a new Armilustrium rite that brings together the holiday’s, and our micronation’s, various backgrounds. The new rite will be published in a booklet format ahead of this weekend’s ritual at Senepyard Court in Anne Arbour.

The Armilustrium rite has changed over the years but its components have stayed largely the same. The Armilustrium has always included a ceremony of invocations, prayers, a feast offering, and a lustrum, that is, the ancient Roman purificatory rite. Since the Armilustrium was an ancient Roman holiday where participants purified weapons (arma) by a lustrum (hence, Armilustrium), the only necessary ritual is the actual washing of one’s “weapon.” For us, this is never been an actual weapon (we are a pacifist country) but instead usually a book or some other tool or utensil that defines one’s moral compass or way of life. There is a traditional formula that has seldom changed: “May this water cast out impurities as the rain purges the air. So mote it be!”

Over the years, other ritual steps have been added. At the public rite, invocations are usually made to Minerva and Mars, the two gods that traditionally oversee the holiday, and the Sôgmô has always given a food offerings and libations as a feast offering. But in recent years the invocation has been opened up to include gods like Jehovah, Jesus, and other deities whom citizens in our micronation worship. A proper meal blessing was added, too, to represent the holiday’s inner meaning and purpose.

This year, the sagamorial ceremony will include more ritual steps representative of our country’s Buddhist background. For the first time in this present rite, Buddhist prayers are included throughout. Beginning with taking refuge and generating bodhicitta, the rite now also includes a deity visualisation meditation (sadhana) on the Buddha Amitabha as well as dedicatory prayers to the two lineages to which the Sôgmô (who hosts the public ceremony) belongs. These changes have come about according to the Collegium Sacerdotum’s tradition that sees Athena, our micronation’s matron, as no different from a ḍākinī, a type of wisdom goddess found in Buddhism and Hinduism.