Ritual for Reconnection with the Loved Self

  • Gather many roses, wild flowers, or other plant entities from where you may. It matters not whether these flowers or assemblage of petals are bought or picked, gifted, or perhaps pieced together from the gathering of your potted babes. Remember even grass cuttings and fallen leaves are no less a part of what is born of and returns to our family-in-dirt. Maybe you select greenery with mythical, spiritual, and magickal meaning or specificity, you might choose for aesthetics, memory, personal connection, other inspired intentions, you might take what is on hand only, or piece together what intuitively feels right… there is no wrong course to take, but that you choose and that you acquire.
  • Candle(s). One or many.
  • A bowl of water and a clean cloth
  • If you gathered roses, I recommend that at least one of these roses smells heavily (rose for heart/pericardium-opening). If you choose other plant friends to play with consider anointing yourself with rose oil, or with a rosewater hydrosol with which you might spray scent around your space. Alternately, choose an oil scent, incense, or hydrosol, or other fragrant flowers, which calm your insides and deepen your breathing—a scent which feels warm and safe, like a home you want to spend time inside. Perhaps this scent reminds you of something wild and real, yet at the same time is gentle and loving…
  • Bring with you a particular item for which you feel a personally grounding affinity.

If you are the type to clear, sanctify, charge, or anoint your space in particular ways, do so as a part of this recipe. If you prefer to launch into these instructions solely, you may. Working with what you have and what feels right to you is at the root of this solo play. Even if this ritual is performed simply in your mind, you and what you have at hand are enough, and always will be.

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Make sure your environment is warm enough and protected enough to spend some time undiscovered and free from being called away. It should be a space where you can allow for disrobing and other personal intimacies.

Build a circle with the flowers and petals you’ve gathered. This space will be large enough to feel freedom within without sacrificing a clear sense of intimacy. Listen to your spirit’s sense of space today.

Place candles around the circle and your surrounding space aesthetically in ways that please you. Allow for inspiration and creativity. Find satisfaction in the final placement of everything. All candles nested in the border of the circle or outside may be lit as a part of your ritual setup. One candle is to be set inside your circle, unlit, next to a means for lighting it.

The bowl filled with water and your cloth shall be set inside the circle, gently.

If you are using oil or another scent aside from the flowers you’ve gathered, place this inside the circle as well, with appreciation.

Inside the circle place your grounding object while whispering a blessing.

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When all is right, you yourself may step inside.

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Sit or stand and settle your bones for a moment in this space
Appreciate this moment with yourself
Light your candle
Pause to speak some intentions, and continue onward…

The bowl and cloth are for washing your body head to toe, not avoiding any body parts, and not lingering on body parts either. Let this cleansing be neutral, without expectation, egalitarian, appreciative, and soft…

After washing, breathe the fragrance of your flowers in deeply, picking up a flower if you choose to, and letting the scent linger inside. Notice how it effects your internal world. Alternately, anoint yourself with scented oils at this moment, perfume the air, light incense… fully appreciate breathing this moment in.

Caress yourself all over, not avoiding any body parts, and not lingering too intently on any body parts. Take time to feel your own touch on each part of the body—even in your hands and fingers that are doing the caressing. Give each body part the time and attention it asks for. No goals. No expectations. Just listening.

After this full body caress turn your attention to the grounding object you have brought with you. Pick it up or let it sit a comfortable distance away, and use it as a visual focal point on which to meditate. Invest in this object an acknowledgement of your body as a part of what grounding can be too. Become friends in the realm of solidity.

Last, lay back and feel whole.
Connect with yourself
Connect with the items you are working with
Connect with the Circle you’ve made and what life it represents
Connect with what is beyond the circle—your space, your neighborhood, the larger community, the world, the universe, infinity…

When you’ve traveled as far as you can imagine going, come back home little by little, pass back through the layers of beyond, back into this space you occupy, this body you reside in. Here and now.

Thank your body by pressing each part of it and giving thanks.

Take a moment to breathe.

Extinguish your candle.

Break the circle, leaving with all you have found during this contemplation.

This space is yours and may be found at any time, inside.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

My writing takes time, research, and consideration: it is my art.
Please help me continue by joining my Patreon campaign, Donating, or booking a professional or educational Session with me. Thank you!

Unlearning Love

I have been working on my heart lately. My sister, the acupuncturist, would say that I’m working on my pericardium. Looking into Doaist Chinese Medicine, I can’t say that I disagree with their perspective on the subject. I adore learning new systems and languages.

As someone who works with herbs in a folk manner here in the United States, it’s fascinating to talk with my sister about Chinese herbs and how they’re used, or considered for support of various systems of health. We use many of the same or similar herbs, often prepared differently, and certainly thought of through different pathways of understanding. Understanding the connections people make—personally and culturally—expands my ability to see how connections work at all, and to make even newer connections as I walk through life. I value this highly, and it’s only served to help me communicate with others and listen better.

My cat, Tamlin, is in the hospital today getting oral surgery. She’s almost 18. I’ve had her since she was 3 months old. This is the longest relationship I’ve been in by far outside of family. She’s saved my life more times than I can count. I don’t know what I’ll do without her when the day comes… She anchors me to the reality of what love is, and to the responsibility of loving. What I could do to myself in times of crisis and depression, I have never been able to abandon her to.

Emotions have felt like excruciating pain in my body for as long as I can remember having feelings. Completely overwhelming. I’ve been called a crybaby since childhood for good reason. When I feel the pressure of sadness, anger, fear, shame, etc. build in my body I don’t know how to not break down and cry. Emotion often feels like intense helplessness to me, and the only cure is time and space and an option to speak calmly and be connected with gently. Even still, if I’ve suffered an anger-filled emotional argument it can take a few days to recover and feel safe in my body again or steady in my brain.

Testosterone has helped modify this for me, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. It feels good to have more control over my body when I’m in an intensely emotional state. I absolutely consider this hormone to be a privilege in multitudes of ways (acknowledging that what it helps “fix” for my particular chemical [im]balances are a personal reality). Still, it’s amazing to be able to stay present and see what’s happening from a slightly less viscerally overwhelmed place when I’m triggered these days, rather than feel blinded by being pinned down by emotion, like a bug to a scientist’s board.

I was away at the end of December for a week visiting family (chosen and related). Spending time in New Orleans with my chosen family asked that I start resolving the thing inside me which is afraid of loving deeply. The most natural thing in the world for me is to love. I am in love with loving and have been since forever. I’m still the little kid laying for hours in a field watching spiders do what spiders do, and talking to grasshoppers and trees. I want life to be like that today. Acknowledgement and joy. Cherishing and being in wonder of life for what it is, not what I imagine it should be.

Sometimes I think this world’s commitment to desiring change over an acceptance of reality is the most painful trauma we are socialized to internalize. We believe there is a right and a wrong and that bodies should behave in a certain set of ways. We know this isn’t what the world is made of though, and so we judge instead of endeavor to more accurately translate. Imagine what things could be like if we learned more languages…

There is healing in acceptance, in seeing, and in understanding. When we imagine what life or other people “should be”, and then act out accordingly, we can rather deeply wound things. When we act out of fear, as though that story of fear is the truth for all, we can dampen the electricity between us. Of course there is no end to misunderstandings—and we can learn from mistakes or acting in ways which don’t serve the world around us. But I also ask, where are the wide open spaces? Where are the stars and our dreams? Where is acknowledgement of the palpable connection that can be felt between all bodies? Where are our desires to make love with one another and the Earth, and all sentient beings we share the planet and our most basic atoms and molecules with? I need the ocean and trees to be ok in my own body. I think to some degree we all need nature to remind us how to be ok.

I hope 2020 is full of endeavors to connect or create space, rather than push through. I hope for more peace in our own bodies, granting more space and peace to the bodies around us. Life is a series of choices and change. We are each made of molecules based of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. We recognize one another at an atomic level, and have the ability to know things which are not right before our eyes—even when we cease remembering to listen. We can always start remembering again though. One gift we share in life, is an ability to breathe.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

My writing takes time, research, and consideration: it is my art.
Please help me continue by joining my Patreon campaign, Donating, or booking a professional or educational Session with me. Thank you!

Sluggish Heart

Pen and ink by Creature KPW

When the Heart is wounded it takes time to heal. Your Heart may need to remain motionless in critical care down a long white corridor, through those electronically locked double doors. Your Brain will tell you that while your heart rests it’s perfectly fine taking over to help sort out what’s needed. That Brain of yours is a smart cookie though, it’ll keep you afloat for a long, very long time. Faerie time, in fact.

Years might go by as Heart rests. The morning its eyes flutter open, Heart will probably believe it has revived after a deep sleep or short mini-vacation. Heart will be ready to face another day, refreshed and happy. It will catch a cab to work, arriving early. Your Heart will grab a cup of coffee from the office kitchenette and weave its way through well trod pathways toward its cubicle seat wondering how much has piled up during its time away. Your Heart will discover Brain working feverishly, right there in front of the computer that’s always been assigned to Heart.

“Oh… hi there”, your Heart might confusedly say, “Um, I’m back.”

“It’s been a while, Heart. We’re good here though, no need to worry yourself about coming in today”, Brain mumbles perfunctorily, “I’ve got this on lockdown. Take a little more time to rest, I’m sure we’ll need you again soon enough—no reason to come in when there’s nothing to do. Catch some porn or flirt online, treat yourself. Take a walk in the woods, this time of year is gorgeous they say. Obviously I’ll call you when you’re needed. Don’t worry about it.”

Heart might turn away at this point, and do just that.

Heart might walk home or to somewhere entertaining, half-heartedly toying with a project idea it dreamed about in the past.

Heart will wait for a call from its friend Brain. Days will pass…

Then more time will slide by.

Though Heart calls Brain from time to time to see if there’s any work, Brain always seems one step ahead. Brain never really needs anything.

In time Heart takes up needlepoint.

Heart develops online friendships, brightening up the day of those who like quirky photos and funny memes.

Heart collects likes and does well online.

Heart calls Brain less frequently.

One day Heart forgets it even has an office to call. Brain doesn’t mind.

Heart steadily forgets how to navigate work stuff like first dates, a request to kiss, and the difference between NSA, FWB, and casually hooking up.

Brain is taking charge of everything and Heart doesn’t want to mess it up…

It’s easier this way.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

My writing takes time, research, and consideration: it is my art.
Please help me continue by joining my Patreon campaign, Donating, or booking a professional or educational Session with me. Thank you!

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