Ritual Reflections is a hodgepodge of media, gathered intuitively and offered to you from the bottom of my mercurial heart.
Of the four articles per month I publish in this section of the newsletter, two of them will be partially paywalled. This one’s completely on me.
Use what is here for creative inspiration, for entertainment purposes, or as a vehicle for synchronicity to enter your life. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!
Tarot tune
A song based on a tarot card, intended for use as guidance, inspiration, or for entertainment purposes.
Queen of Wands
Magnetism ☆ Erotic power ☆ Confidence ☆ Attraction
between you and me
galaxies begun
we are as close as two can be to one.
we are as close as two can be to one.
praise be
to blessed gravity.
we are as close as two can be to one.
we are as close as two can be to one.
Did you love this tarot tune?
You might enjoy last week’s Collective Message!
Collective messages are prose poems that can be used as creative inspiration, spiritual guidance, or for entertainment purposes. They are based on a set of cards, runes, and numbers I pull intuitively every Wednesday.
There may be guidance for you in the prose poem or the divinatory tools that came through.
Check it out below:
Offerings
Talks, workshops, courses, and other ways to receive guidance or ritual support from me.
Guidance & Ritual Support
The caliber in which this human weaves ritual throughout everything is inspiring and purely authentic. I am being taught a lot about my own inner worlds and the power of making space for those worlds within and around me to have a voice, to have space to dance with all of me.
- James Sauter, visual artist and dear friend
In a world founded upon fragmentation from the cosmic forces, ritual practise is the missing piece of the puzzle.
It’s the doorway to re-awakening our sense of purpose and connection to the more-than-human.
I use my knowledge of ritual theory in conjunction with my personal experiences & the teachings I have received over the past 5 years to support highly sensitive intuitives in creating rituals for deeper self-knowledge, ancestral connection, and ecosomatic attunement.
To get started, book an Insight Session and learn how I can be of service to you.
Courting Inspiration: A Monthly Play Space for Creative Intuitives
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 live community practise call every month
☆ Exclusive collective tarot and oracle card readings
☆ Recordings of guided practises
☆ Access to The Oscillator's Stone newsletter content normally only available to paid Substack subscribers
Message me to learn more and sign up!
Soma Metaxy: Three Dynamics of the Extended Body
The "extended body" is an experience we have at the intersection of the soma, the imaginal, and the environment.
As a ritual movement practise, Soma Metaxy (which translates to "body between") can help us rebuild our sense of communion with the more-than-human world.
In this 2.5 hour class, I will lead a group of 30 humans through guided movement practises for dropping deeply into centre, exploring our periphery, and meeting the edges of our sense-gates. I will give you a set of practises designed to support the authentic expression and full aliveness of the body.
Artists, musicians, dancers, and performers of all kinds will especially benefit from this exploration of the threshold between the imaginal and the somatic.
Join me on May 31st at 6:30 PM to learn these techniques, which are inspired by Butoh, Laban-Bartinieff Movement Analysis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and more.
Admission is $25. Check out the event page to learn more and sign up.
Note: this is an in-person workshop. If you won’t be in Asheville, NC in-person the day of the event, don’t sign up!
Enjoying this content?
Sign up for a paid plan and get even more!
For less than $2 per week, you can access all sections of the Wednesday “Ritual Reflections” newsletter every week, instead of just twice per month:
Tarot tune: an original song based on a tarot card.
Theme song: a song that feels relevant to the vibe of the week.
Quote of the week: a quote from one of the books I read during the week.
Ritual reflections: sometimes, I’ll post articles exploring ritual theory. Other times, I’ll post musings and reflections based on personal experiences. Often times, it will be a combination of both.
Offerings: I’ll keep you updated on any live talks, events, workshops, and courses I’m running.
Paid subscribers also have access to exclusive audio content:
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.
All that for half the cost of a cup of coffee, every single week.
Theme song
A song I found particularly delightful and pertinent this week.
The YouTube algo gifted me some extremely queer fairy-themed electropop that I didn’t know I desperately needed. Now I’m gifting it to you. You’re welcome.
Quote
A quote that happened to strike a chord within me this week.
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Ritual reflections
Magical musings, poetic ponderings, and personal stories from my very own heart.
How to responsibly flirt with danger
(Above is a snippet of a silly little jam that happened at my birthday party.)
I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.
Jump in with two feet and my heart on my sleeve, ready to be eaten alive by whatever monsters lie waiting in the depths I’ve not yet explored.
I have a certain hunger for experiences I know will destroy me.
And this desire to be destroyed—or as
calls it in her brilliant Bridgerton analysis series, ruined—is as divine as it gets.I have learned so much from the white peony, who relies on ants to eat away their sepals so that their delicate petals can unfold. Destruction is the sacred twin of creation. It is the force that eats away, so that something else can blossom.
I used to get pretty bent out of shape, back when I bought into very shallow understandings of concepts like manifestation and the Law of Attraction, when things would go wrong and fall apart.
I figured, I must deserve this. I must have manifested this.
There must be something wrong with me.
Because I wasn’t seeing chaos as part of the whole. Because I wasn’t seeing the sacredness in my own ruin. I wasn’t seeing how, like the shedding of my uterine lining every month, what I leave behind makes space for something new to be nourished and brought into the world.
I wasn’t seeing the ways in which going to my death was keeping me alive.
If you want to responsibly flirt with danger, you’re going to need to be willing to give up some things:
Comfort
The comfort zone is for licking and tending wounds, for resting and regenerating. It’s not the place we go to be challenged—it’s the place we go to integrate after we have been challenged. Be keenly aware of where your comfort zone lies, because you are definitely going to need it later.
Pride
You are going to look stupid as fuck and you are going to probably feel a little ashamed. The more prideful you are, the harder danger is going to ruin you when you flirt with it. If you’re coming in with a bit of humility, at least you’ll be okay with how stupid you might look or feel.
Fear
Fear is what happens when the very important survival mechanism of vigilance becomes hypervigilance. We may straight-up attack the thing or freeze or pull away at a very unintelligent time if we’re consumed by fear. If we let fear all the way in, we’ll know when it’s time to retreat (thanks to that aforementioned humility) and when we’re ready to lean away from our comfort. A healthy relationship with fear means a healthy relationship with danger.
The more we fight our deaths, the more we neglect our depths. The more we stay stuck, never maturing, repeating cycles instead of riding the spiral of refinement.
I love complaining about not being 30 yet, in part because of this discrepancy I feel I’ve always had between my real age and my felt age. I’m recently 29, and still feeling impatient to exit the bardo of my 20s.
I’ve always felt ancient. I’ve always felt as though I have been carrying the burdens of the world, but I’ve also always felt as if those burdens were somehow sacred, as if it were some great honour to carry them.
When I was a child, I would ask my mom a lot why I was here. I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something, I’d say, but I don’t remember what it is. She knew what I meant, but she didn’t know how to answer. How does on answer a question like that—especially when it’s a small child asking?
That small child was born to yearn for what they felt was missing. Now, they are learning to trust what that yearning has magnetised into their life.
Every year on my birthday, I’m reminded of the sacred burden of being alive. Of the responsibility I have to keep going through whatever fires of transformation burn before me. Of my relationship with death as a living being, and with life as a dying being.
My prayer for this next year of my life is to open more fully into the mysteries.
To take more emotional risks, similar to the ones I was willing to take in my early 20’s—this time employing the discernment I’ve cultivated through trial and error, through heartbreak and hardship.
I’ve never been so grateful for my scars.