When we come together in community, one that supports us in our wellness and in our wounding, we begin to question the narratives that have us feel less-than or in competition with each other. We become dangerous to the stories that have been handed to us by a culture that thrives on our disenchantment and cynicism. We begin to see that the world does, in fact, have a place for us – that we belong.

Magickal ritual or ceremony is Earth-and Spirit-centric activism. It requires that we acknowledge, court, nourish and weave multiple layers of intelligence for a deep-structure change. It acknowledges that true, systemic and lasting wellness that attends to the thriving of all life does not come from bills and policy (alone). It comes from human cultures that are deeply well.

In an anthropology class in college, I read about the Yanomami people of the Amazon Rainforest. When a member of their tribe dies, they cremate the body and then put the ashes in a kind of banana pudding that they pass around and eat. As I read this, something in me quietly opened. I got it.

Last week on my birthday, I spent the afternoon in ceremony painting 100’s of Japanese Sumi circles. With a simple supply list of black ink, white paper, and one brush, I embarked on an exploration of mark making in an embodied process of spontaneous creation. I wasn’t trying to make art or anything special, my purpose was to actively dance with Eros in the present moment.

It is a striking truth that Capitalist Culture is nearly devoid of soulfully nourishing, culturally recognized ceremonies. Ceremonies that are meaningful and relevant mark the essential transitions from one stage of our lives to another, and they remind us of our immutable relationship between, and reliance upon, the rest of the natural world. They provide both an opportunity to celebrate a transition and a necessary ‘calling in’.

Gift giving, attending holy services, lighting the menorah each night, caroling, decorating, gathering together with family to eat, drink, and be merry… At their roots, these traditions grew out of a deep reverence for and celebration of meaning and gratitude, practices to help us honor the mysterious benevolence of life and to nurture our experience of belonging and embedment. For many of us, they’ve devolved into obligatory, rote activities that reinforce our disembodiment and our enslavement to the monotheistic and consumerist traditions that have shaped Western Industrial Culture.

It's tempting to imagine the solution is to throw it all out. In actuality, the solution is to take a sacred pause, step back, and look at what you are participating in and why so that you can decide with intention which rituals you will keep, and which you will let go.

At the IEI, we believe one of the most powerful ways to align with our soul’s gifts is through self-designed ceremony. When we connect with something larger than ourselves, we bring in the holy and renew our connection with the more than human world. Through deep listening, we hear whispers from our guides and feel the heartbeat of our ancestors living in us. With the sacred offering of our attention, we receive messages from the Earth about what we can do to strengthen planetary diversity and remember our interconnectedness and belonging.

Weaving the mysterious and unquantified power of our mind with our human longing has the power to create change.

So much of our lives happen “underground.” The people in our lives often cannot see the shifts and changes we undergo or the thresholds we cross because so many of them are not immediately visible as we go about our days. Sometimes they even occur without our conscious knowing! These changes sometimes occur gradually and slowly until one day, you realize things are not what they once were. You are not who you once were. Other times, they happen all at once.…

Preparing to write about pleasure tonight began with a small ritual…

I light a few candles and lift my sage bundle. It smells sweet, pungent, ashy. Touching the flame to its leaves, I drop into a deep breath and blow into glowing orange embers, entranced by their dancing light. Smoke swirls up and around my body, bathing me as I move from a feeling arising within. I’m present to the heat, the light, and the smoke transporting the dayworld into the mystical…

Every time the faculty of The Verdant Collective gets together to craft an offering, we find that no matter the specific content, our intention ultimately comes back to one thing.

BELONGING

One thing we have in common is that the four of us have parts that were painfully rejected by family, friends, institutions, and beyond. Oh my goodness how we’ve wanted to feel loved and held by those who simply couldn’t! We’ve shared stories with each other about moments of despair when we felt too broken or too weird to ever be really welcome in this world.

In our world of busy-ness and sound bytes we tend to rush from one thing to the next, shoveling things into our bodies and minds, rarely giving ourselves the time and space to actually taste and metabolize what we are taking in. And we want you to be able to take this in. It’s quite possible that your life actually depends on it.

One way to begin to chip away at the roots of body image is to begin to ask yourself questions as you dress and adorn your body: Who is this for? Am I wearing this for me? For you? To fit into the dominant culture? Am I wearing this because I’m supposed to? Because it’s what is expected of me? Or, because it’s what I actually want to be wearing?