Ritual Reflections is a hodgepodge of media, gathered intuitively and offered to you from the bottom of my mercurial heart. Use what is here for creative inspiration, for entertainment purposes, or as a vehicle for synchronicity to enter your life.
At the very end, there are details about how you can work with me more directly as a ritual practise mentor and spiritual guide, if that is something you desire.
Feel free to check out past articles here. Enjoy!
If any of this work speaks to you, consider donating to my pilgrimage fundraiser. I am travelling to Ireland in just three weeks and could really use financial assistance.
Tarot tune
A song based on a tarot card, intended for use as guidance, inspiration, or for entertainment purposes.
Nine of Swords
Worry ☆ Restlessness ☆ Fear ☆ Hopelessness
Basement dwelling problems, foundations that topple,
Where is the sun? Where is the cat? Where is the cradle?
Morbid fascinations, married to the underground,
Where is the sun? Where is the God in this place?
Don’t say “don’t worry,” don’t say “it gets better,”
I know, it’s complicated. I hope there’s a God in this place.
And if you worry, you won’t see the sun.
I know, it’s so far up there, in space.
Where is the sun? Where is the God in this place?
Where is the sun? Where is the cat? Where is the cradle?
And if you worry, you won’t see the sun. I know, it’s complicated.
Where is the sun?
If you enjoyed this week’s tarot tune, you might quite like the latest Collective Message.
Collective messages are prose poems that can be used as creative inspiration, for spiritual guidance, or for entertainment purposes. They are based on a set of cards, runes, and numbers I pull intuitively every Wednesday.
Theme song
A song I found particularly delightful and pertinent this week.
Good news will work its way to all them plans.
We both got fired on exactly the same day,
Well, we'll float on, good news is on the way.
This song is the perfect antidote to hopelessness!
Quote
A quote that happened to strike a chord within me this week.
I was amazed that anyone who was staring into the face of death could have that kind of confidence. Lama Tseten could have had his Lama there in person to help him—something anyone else would have longed for—but he had no need. I understand why now: he had already realised the presence of the master within himself.
- Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Ritual reflections
Magical musings, ritual ponderings, and personal stories from my very own heart.
True hope is punk
Hope is, at the very least, worthy of skepticism.
As one of the more transcendent feeling-states, it’s easily manipulated as a dissociative technique, and I’ve seen it used to bypass some of the heavier truths about existence.
Some folks work really hard to have hope. Hope for a better world, hope for their dreams to come true, hope for healing…and they stop there.
It’s almost like hope gives them a free pass to do nothing.
The feast day of St. John recently passed, and I did a novena in order to prepare. This means I prayed the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary 12 times.
Since hope is one of the more important virtues meditated upon during this practise, I had some time to sit with my skepticism and contemplate it.
I discovered that I wasn’t really sure what it was.
I know hopelessness well.
There’s been a strange aura about these days, hovering in the air outside the gas stations and kava bars in town. It colours the eyes of every third person I pass by while I pick wildflowers on my long walk home from the food co-op.
It might be the unconscious unease we all feel regarding the rising temperatures. It might be the disturbed spirits of those dying at the hands of empire overseas, come to taunt and shame us for how easily it is for us to look away. It might be, you know, something in the water.
It might just be all in my head.
“It” feels a bit like hopelessness.
Hopelessness is, at the very least, worthy of embracing. Some stuff just realistically isn’t going to work out. I’ve clung to some pretty toxic relationships because I hoped the person would stop drinking, or stop ignoring me, or stop going out with that other person. I’ve made some poor investments because I hoped everything would work out in the end.
It’s too easy, being hopeless.
Funding my pilgrimage to Ireland on top of rent, bills, and debt feels pretty hopeless. Sometimes, putting all my time and energy into the newsletter and ritual work feels pretty hopeless. Seeing those I dearly love succumb to depression, anxiety, cancer, and other such ailments makes me feel pretty damn hopeless.
The past several days have been a battle, a slog through the murky waters of wanting to call it quits on everything, fuck off into the mountains, and become a hermit. I’ve even fantasised about joining a monastery!
But like I said: I’ve been doing this hope thing all wrong. And on the final day of the novena, I got some semblance of what it means to truly hope.
That willingness to slog through, that decision to battle—that’s hope.
True hope is punk as fuck.
True hope is staring in the face of hopelessness and saying you are also invited to save the world.
It is choosing to make the world more beautiful even when you are tired and angry, sad and sick, grieving and godforsaken.
It is knowing that, if it all falls apart tomorrow, the fact that you lived and you gave a shit matters.
It is knowing that, when it all falls apart—as all things inevitably will—you were here, and it mattered.
Hope is, at the very least, worthy of having. Even if only alongside our hopelessness, even if only to open the windows while the house burns down. Even if it is here to remind us of what we cannot currently have.
Even if it is only a light for us to carry into the underworld—may we have that light, and may we carry it with dignity.
If this writing has in any way touched your heart, and you’d like to express gratitude, consider donating to and sharing my pilgrimage fundraiser.
I will be travelling a route as old as the Bronze Age with a group of multifaith pilgrims next month through the west of Ireland.
I know that this pilgrimage is meant to happen, and I know that I cannot do it without your assistance. There have been a lot of obstacles in the process but I feel called to do my best to soldier on.
Learn more about the Tóchar Phádraig here:
Offerings
Talks, workshops, courses, and other ways to receive guidance or ritual support from me.
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Courting Inspiration is a monthly subscription-based community for creative intuitives to cultivate creative potency and skill through ritual practise. Members have access to:
☆ A monthly live ritual practise call
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Orphic EPs: 3-to-4 song EPs that I release to my Bandcamp at seasonal thresholds, featuring hymns, original songs, folk music from various cultures, and even quirky covers from movies and musicals.
Recorded conversations: friendly talks I have with fellow religious scholars, ritual practitioners, and mundane magicians.
Class recordings: recordings of any of the live lectures I give on transrational divination, inspiration practise, and imaginal somatics.