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.

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.

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.⠀⠀