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A hand in a patch of angelica. AECERBOT Translated by Lara Vesta ÆCER : field, land, sown land BOT: help, assistance, remedy, cure The Aecerbot is an Anglo Saxon "metrical charm" recorded in the eleventh century. Infused with elements both Christian and Pagan, it is a multi-day ceremony meant to heal and restore land that is unfruitful through offerings, blessings and ritual action. This interpretation is part of a spiritual practice I call "direct translation," where I look

The alchemy of letter writing is two fold. First, it is the tangible, the process itself--so different from writing an email which may or may not survive a decade, depending on the whims of technology, and will likely never be seen again. Placing pen to page, or typing for print purposes changes the nature of the communication from the start.

An important component of any ritual practice is keeping a record of your process.

Developing a tiny daily ritual practice has been instrumental in my personal and spiritual growth. It is also the non-negotiable foundation of every class I've ever taught. From community participants, dark goddess cohortees, university students and even children all learning is bookended by this: --craft a daily practice that is repeatable and achievable. usually this means keeping the practice short, frontloading it first thing in the day, and ritualizing something you alre

This introduces a series on crafting simple, effective ritual practices. Ritual makes us more connected, and also sovereign. : Ritual gives us foundation, and stretches our boundaries of self so that we do not have to carry the weight of transition on our own. : Ritual brings us home to the grace of being-ness, the trust that things are in alignment because we have shown up and done our work on every level. : Ritual roots us in place and community, even if we are solitary.

I've taken to calling my gnosis based, relationship based spiritual path ancestral animism, and my reasons for that are multiple.

Mythic cyclic consciousness understands there is no end or beginning, no striving for some “perfect” inhabiting of a polarity, but the beautiful dance that is balance. My prayer is for the balance to be regained, on a micro level, and a macro, to be a part of the rhythm, to sing a soul song in the flow.

Who is the Bog Hag? This archetype, familiar to us, known in our bones, surfaced for me in late 2023 when I was skulking a thread about perimenopause that came up in my search results. A woman wrote something about embracing the Hag she was becoming, flipping the bird to expectations and taking up residence in her Hag hut. Yes. That will do, I thought, my heart opened and immediately wrote the poem that ends this letter.

This is an old trick I learned as a fiction writer. When you get blocked, don't stop writing. Change course.

The journey to the Dark Goddess is a natural part of any death transition — any difficult rite of passage that takes us out of our ordinary experiences and places us into a liminal cycle. Death transitions may be those transitions classically seen as negative — such as a serious illness or accident, death of a loved one, job loss or divorce — but even so-called positive transitions such as marriage or the birth of a child carry the weight of endings. Largely we navigate our c

What are the names of the spirits in your ancestral languages? What are the names of the spirits in the land where you live now? How does our relationship to place transform when we view it as relationship, necessitating respect and reciprocity?

Return is the third phase of an initiatory rite of passage. In myth it often includes a ceremony of homecoming, coalescence, community honoring. On return the initiate may ritually take a new name, something symbolic of the new role or work they embody after transformation. Return can be a time of mourning, grieving and celebration simultaneously. It is paradoxical, an ending and a beginning, often without a place of pause in the cycle of transformation, but still marking a d

These herbs were called Wuldortanas. Wuldor means glory, tanas is related to the word tanian, which means to decide by lots.

The second our lives become a ritual story — honing us, annealing us, moving us outside of the known and into the unknown — we have again agency, choice. This is where working with myth can support our journey, and understanding the ancient form of the most human stories can give our own strange, underworld travels a comprehensive shape.

Telling a story of empowerment around these embodied experiences has been essential to my work, and this passage about disability as a corollary for power affirms what I have been feeling and thinking for a long time.

Intention is the centerpiece of magic, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, infusing traditional words or objects with power and meaning. Intention is also the potency of spiritual work.

In the midst of transition I learned to trust my ceremonial practice. I’ve been through enough now to know it is the cornerstone of reciprocal consciousness, raising my awareness of the sacred balance of offering and receiving happening in every moment. When I feel off balance, overwhelmed or afraid, I turn to ritual — ritualizing my routine, my days and encoding my prayers in symbolic action.⠀⠀