Core Order of Ritual - Gatekeepers and the Druid's Sigil

Our ProtoGrove's Spring Equinox ritual is coming up, and so thoughts have been turning once more to creating liturgy. I usually try to choose a different ritual stage to write with each rite, and so this time, I chose to do the Gatekeeper invocation and Opening the Gates.

It's really one of my favourite parts of the Core Order of Ritual, even though it was adopted from non-Indo-European tradition (not that my liking something is dependant on the Indo-European status of something), but it's one role I've never taken on in ProtoGrove ritual before. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe it's nervousness, because from experience with my private rites, an effective gate-opening is one of the key points that make the difference between amazing ritual and something that feels more like going through the motions and simple piety in action. At least to me that is.

And I've had so many ideas for a gatekeeper invocation and gate opening.

In our PG, our solar High Days are typically Germanic in nature, and so for me the natural choice of Gatekeepers are the Alcis - the Germanic Divine Twins.
Warning, here is where I go into UPG.

I didn't used to worship the Divine Twins, but a conversation with a certain very well-read and intelligent gentleman about the layout of temples and the connection between the Twins and entrances planted a seed in my mind and it seemed like from then on, every night was dreams about door ways and athletic dancing with spears. Always Twins. I began to see the doorway - that liminal space between inside and outside - as being 'their' place. Rock paintings of the sun with (what we imagine as) her two brothers formed into UPG about the Twins and the Sun, and so the sun also took her place more firmly in my personal cosmology.

So when it came to the creation of my Gatekeeper/s invocation and Opening the Gates, these associations were what came instantly to mind.

What if - at least for the purposes of ritual - the spears were staffs?

What if  a rudimentary dance could be incorporated to 'dance the ways open'.

Soon, I'd written a basic outline for that section of the rite, I would give my invocation to the Alcis, asking for their aid in opening the gates and offer to them. Then, while holding two staffs crossed before me, I would then circle round the fire in a kind of wild 'dance' (because I'm under no illusion of my choreographic abilities here), three times as attendees chant 'Open the Gates!', before separating the staffs and planting them into the earth to form a physical gate of sorts and declaring them open.

Of course, this says nothing of the more magical aspects of this act, the more inner level of ritual.

After writing this piece of liturgy though, I started to find new ideas of ways to 'tweak' this section - like 'preparing' the staffs by turning them into Portals as outlined in Ian Corrigan's 'Sacred Fire, Holy Well'.

Separately, through my divinatory work for the Seers Guild training, I've been getting to know the Ogham a little better, and just this last week, this passage from Skip Ellison's book on Ogham (p26) almost jumped off the page at me:

"We can use the oak in our magic whenever strength or nobility is needed. It can be used as a symbol of a gateway or entrance into the land of Faerie."

And this got me thinking about the use of a Druid Sigil - with its two staves and circle of oakleaves - as a physical and magical representation of a gate. What if it might be considered a gate? Used as a gate in ritual? Do people do this already?

Needless to say, I have a lot to prepare before Ostara.