Ritual Reflections is a hodgepodge of media, gathered intuitively and offered to you from the bottom of my mercurial heart. Included here is an original hymn based on a tarot card, a song that I enjoyed this week, a quote that really struck me, and some reflections on my own ritual practise and mystical experiences.
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.
Use what is here for creative inspiration, for entertainment purposes, or as a vehicle for synchronicity and magic 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.
Four of Swords
Rest ☆ Meditation ☆ Withdrawal ☆ Introspection
good night,
it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
good morning,
we’re gonna get a fair warnin’.
big fish, little fish, cardboard box,
take all my tears and fill up a grail-cup.
big fish, little fish, cardboard box,
we’re gonna get a right fair warnin’.
If you enjoyed this week’s tarot tune, you might quite like last week’s Collective Message:
Theme song
A song I found particularly delightful and pertinent this week.
Quote
A quote that happened to strike a chord within me this week.
You must not be discouraged if you have not responded to God’s call immediately. His Majesty is prepared to wait days, even years, especially when he sees our intention is right and that we persevere. At this stage perseverance is all that matters. If we have this, we cannot fail.
- St. Theresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
Ritual reflections
Magical musings, ritual ponderings, and personal stories from my very own heart.
Words tumbling from some place Other
The yarrow sang through the kitchen window, voice resounding against every empty beer can and windowpane in our tiny Lake Hopatcong house.
Having been a city-dweller all my life, I was not accustomed to the songs of plants.
I remember when Artemisia vulgaris reached its dragon-clawed leaves out to me one Brooklyn summer, any time I passed by empty lots or fractured asphalt. I almost thought I could hear her. Surely, I was imagining things!
Imagining things—the way I used to imagine them when I was much smaller, much wider and open and wild.
I hadn’t heard a voice this loud and sweet and clear since I was eleven years old.
Eleven years old. That’s when the fairies told me they’d be going away for a while.
I was in that Lake Hopatcong house because of a man. A man who in another life had surely been my beloved, with the way his fingers would absent-mindedly reach into my heart from across the room.
A man named after his grandfather, who in turn was named after one of the patron saints of Ireland, who was in turn named after the priest class of Rome.
A man who, in this life, was a practise in saying goodbye.
The voice of the yarrow rang against every empty beer can and green bottle that once contained uisce beathe, the water of life.
For him it was the water of death, the water of dreams wasted and drowned out alongside every dark voice crowding his skull. If the voices of light in him were to do such brutal battle with the Dark Ones only to fail, better there be no voices at all.
Death tasted better than life to him.
The voice of Achillea millefolium found me home alone that day, heart free of his fingers, and called me up the trail just south of our little house. At the very end of that trail, a field boasted rows of my old friend Artemisia. I’d go all the way to the end, typically, to find her tall and unruly—to be unruly with her—but today was different.
Today the voice of the yarrow stopped me about halfway along that trail and guided my eyes toward a fork in the road, a fork I’d never noticed before. Felled trees peppered this new pathway every few feet, marking the widening distance between the known way and the new one.
I was still there, in the woods of Lake Hopatcong, but by the second threshold I was a little less there. By the fourth threshold I had begun to sing, words tumbling from my tongue, tumbling from nowhere, from someplace other: take me home to the rocks and stones, where the salmon swims and the oak trees know…
I remembered a place I had never been, dreamed a home from another life, smelled a sea I’d never seen. Ireland. And when the trail dissolved into a steep incline made of stone, I hardly noticed. And when the soft hum of cars whizzing by became mightier, I hardly noticed of cars grew I carried on to the top, through the tall grass to an overlook by the highway and I noticed…her.
Achillea millefolium.
I saw her stem shooting up from the very center of this large rock overlooking the highway, the only one of her kind. I saw her and, though I didn’t yet know her name, I knew her voice. I knew her song. I knew her from some place Other.
It would still be years before I would know her sacredness to the Druidkind, before I would follow her in dreams to new wild places, back to homes from other lives, toward seas I’d never seen.
It would be years before any of it would make sense.
But in that moment, it didn’t need to. For I heard her song, loud and sweet and clear.
Welcome home, the fairies said.
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.
Learn more about the Tóchar Phádraig here:
Offerings
Talks, workshops, courses, and other ways to receive guidance or ritual support from me.
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!
Ritual Practise Mentorships
I have two spaces available for magical mentorship.
One is the Seership Program. This is a space for your intuition to blossom and become refined through intimate study of six intuitively chosen tarot cards. We’ll dive deeply into the meaning of these cards through guided meditation, devotional practise, ritual design, and more. You can learn more about it here:
The Seership Program
The other is for the Living Altar Mentorship. This will be a year-long plunge into the heart of emergent ritual theory and practise, designed with your unique devotional path in mind and carefully crafted to feed the animate forces that guide you.
Learn more about that by booking an Insight Session with me.
Not sure where to start? Let’s chat:
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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.