Dear Shapeshifters,

In the Northern hemisphere, we hold hands with the harvest maiden of Virgo season as she walks us across the threshold of summer, through the veil of the Fall equinox, and into the new year in the Jewish calendar, the month of Tishrei. If the summer’s verdancy is the “in breath to winter’s out-breath”, then perhaps the Fall equinox is that place between breaths, that liminal moment obscuring where one begins and the other ends (Danica Boyce).

Tending to the Mundane in the House of Mystery

This Virgo season, I’ve been reminded how the mundane and the mysterious, the practical and the ritual, are perpetually seeded within and queering one another–that “the rituals of our ancestors rise up out of the mundane” (Peai Luzzi). Mundane, reproductive labor — daily practices of care and organizing and tending, during times of ease and times of crises — make the home of the sacred.

As we approach this veil-thinning season, we might allow Virgo energy to move us towards looking at what organizational systems are already in place in our lives, and if they create space for what is sacred to us, if these systems need tweaking, tending, or unraveling and remaking. This exploration gets to be directly related to mystery. While we can certainly realize that perhaps we’ve been overplanning and seeking too much control–scheduling, list making, organizing, planning, accounting – these can all be sacred acts if we allow them to be.

Going to Seed, Exile as Return, and Belonging to Multiple Realms

Virgo represents the harvest maiden, after all, a chthonic goddess who straddles both worlds, who embodies the ways that the seemingly opposite are woven together–like the harvest season itself, a life giving season of much practical labor, and a season of veil-thinning mystery and death. Like Persephone, whose name means thresher of grain, and who is both Queen of the Underworld and the embodiment of growth, of vegetation, of life. Her presence awakens life in Spring and Summer, and her absence, exile, and return to the underworld as seeds sown, lays things to rest in the Fall and Winter, while Demeter grieves their separation. But I imagine that though Demeter grieves, the underworld might rejoice at Persephone’s presence. Persephone’s exile is also a return. And I imagine that Persephone’s experience might be that of feeling simultaneously stretched, undone, and woven together by the realms she belongs to.

And this past month of Elul has been about both return and exile, coming together and coming apart, needing the latter to have the former, as we approach the new year, a time of harvest. The Sefer Yetzirah (1:8) says, “If your heart runs, return to the place.” And I’m thinking about the way we might queer ideas of return and exile: how we might consider brokenness or the unknown as being another familiar realm we return to, rather than only wholeness and clarity. I’m thinking about how a cyclical breaking apart and scattering of the self, might be as much a part of our existence, as it is for the plants around us going to seed.

In the month of Elul, one practice is that of repeating Psalm 27 on a daily basis, which says: “Let me dwell in the house of the lord”… but we might understand that to be “the house of becoming/mystery.” (Dori Midnight)

Mystery as a house. A home. A place, like many homes, that isn’t always comfortable, and in fact which is often quite uncomfortable, and not always safe, but in which we try to create sanctuary. And that place must be tended to, a practice.

As Dori Midnight shares, Psalm 27 can be understood to be about “finding home in the unravel, touching stones in the flowing river of change, placing our feet directly in mystery, the unknown as foundation… [finding] a remedy for fear, and a daily practice as we move towards the gates of the new year.” And if this particular psalm doesn’t resonate, we can find whatever anchor works for us: another piece of text, a letter to self, a cup of chamomile tea, a song, a dance, a moment of prayer, a conversation with a loved one, a spell cast before an altar to change—whatever way we can daily create space for and recognize the divine where we are, even and especially when we find ourselves inside a storm.

Grief, being with the uncontrollable, the presence of change, and the unknown, invites us into this home, and to find these touchstones, again and again.

*Meme collaboration with* *@softcore_trauma*

Creating Sanctuary: Reconsidering Crises and Safety

Bayo Akomolafe invites us to reconsider how we orient towards crises and safety. What if, instead of responding to “crises” from urgency and activation… or “recoiling… into a coddling kind of safety” and avoidance (that actually perpetuates violence and death)--what if we found other ways to stay with the trouble? To slow down as we orient towards rupture and losing our way? To “ease the passage” of these cracks and broken places, these sites of new shapes and new gods, with “ornaments and libations”, with support networks, with “a collective communitas…an assemblage that allows people to lean into these spaces of rupture, that supports people as they go through this”? This, Bayo says, is what he means by “creating sanctuary.”

These calls from Bayo make me think about the practice of building sukkah (breezy, 3 walled, temporary structures in the woods) during this month of Tishrei. A practice of dwelling in the impermanent and permeable. Dori Midnight shares, “this tradition/invitation to stay in vulnerability and connection after we’ve soaked the husks of ourselves/been rearranged/been turned out and returned through the Days of Awe. We are not meant to return to old structures.”

Bayo’s calls to make sanctuary in places of rupture also make me think about doula work.

Inspiration for Being with Rupture: Becoming doulas

This liminal season makes me think about the work of the death doula, the work of the birth doula, the work of the caregivers and artists who don’t even know that they’re doulas - who are supporting those in their communities in various kinds of big upheaval, change, conflict, and crises. I’m thinking about the collective doula work that these times call for in general.

In many ways, doula work is a lot about tending to the mundane, every day needs that exist along sacred thresholds of birth and death: figuring out what care tasks need to be done, finding out what someone’s needs and wishes for care are, figuring out systems for coordinating care and support for those receiving and giving care, helping advocate/navigate legal and health care institutions, etc.

AND doula work is all about mystery, surrender, and cultivating the ability to be with intensity, uncertainty, our lack of control, and often great pain during great transformation– bringing softness, slowness, and allowance to these places of tension and unhelpful urgency.

We cannot do this work sustainably or supportively if we consistently respond in this role from a place of emergency or trying to hold or be in total control - even though it may truly be life or death. Often the anchors for this presence for doulas are simple: We might find a prayer, practice, or spell to repeat internally or an ally or anchor of some kind, to help us root ourselves. We listen. We breathe. We provide water, touch, encouragement, a cool cloth.

This season invites us to consider the ways we may already be doulas for one another, for the worlds to come, and to allow ourselves to find the touchstones we need to stay present, and do what small things we can to bring nourishment to places of rupture.

Easing the Passage with Chamomile

I don’t know about y’all…. But for me, this season has been screaming “CHAMOMILE!”

Chamomile, chamomile. I will hold Persephone’s hand, but I’m bringing Chamomile.

Rather than just taking the edge off, Chamomile helps us meet the edges with softness.

Historically used to support melancholy, hysteria, those feeling disturbed and unsettled, Chamomile relaxes our nervous systems, is a gentle anti-inflammatory, helpful for asthma and the lungs, soothing to the skin as well as the digestive system for stomach upset by emotional distress. Chamomile can also help us to get a more restful sleep, and can be helpful in supporting those with insomnia + nightmares.

This nourisher of rest and protector of our dream space was a strewing herb in Europe in the middle ages used to keep away pests and evil forces, as well as a grave plant, “to ease the passage of the dead into the world to come” (McIntyre). Chamomile has also been used in love potions to “attract the beloved” (McIntyre).

And Chamomile is also known as “the plant’s physician” for their ability, when planted next to a struggling plant, or used in the garden as a tea (when cooled), to revive them. They are a natural pesticide that doesn’t deter or harm pollinators, an antifungal, and a micronutrient accumulator that also detoxifies the soil. They are especially helpful in preventing “damping off” of seedlings.

Chamomile is an incredible ally for us in this season of underworld descent, and in times of massive loss, when the grief of ongoing or unresolved crises or traumatic stress, raw nerves, or tension throughout the body feels overwhelming. Chamomile can nourish those on the front lines of various crises, helping us let our shoulders relax, and releasing tension as we settle into the unravel, to sink into nourishment where we can find it.

Chamomile supports those seeking to create space for deep rest, slowing down, and being present with the unknown.

If Psalm 27 was a plant, I think Chamomile would be a good contender.

A Spell for Adorning our Edges

This liminal season invites us to straddle both realms: to do both the sacred and mundane magic necessary to create sanctuary along our shorelines, edges, and ruptures, to bring softness into those places and moments where we feel impossibly stretched and lost, in those spaces between breaths, when the next isn’t always certain– when we remember that the unknown is an essential part of ourselves and the universe.

This Fall equinox, may we ease the passage for ourselves and others, in our collective un/becoming, to find deeper empowerment in surrender to what is not ours to control, so that we might find new questions, nourishment, and perhaps even pleasure into the places we are most deeply cracked open.

May we adorn our edges with offerings for the worlds to come.

Let us make sanctuary

In the strange

Let us savor

The drips of honey

The chamomile scattered

At the shorelines of our longing

As we surrender to breaking

And singing

Hollowed out, bursting

Let us hold

The hand of Persephone

Let us meet

Our fear with gifts

As we make our descent

Remembering the pomegranate seeds

have always been in our bellies

And we are galaxies of seeds and juice

Scattered and sown

Let us love

Within the folds of rupture

Let us remember

That safety

At life’s expense

Is not nourishment

That coming undone

Need not be comfortable

To be what is needed

Yours,

Mara

Grief spells is a monthly creative project/love letter/newsletter for fellow grieflings. Sign up here. You’ll receive love notes like this one, resources, and updates on offerings.

Grief Spells for the Fall Equinox: Meeting our Edges, Easing the Passage, and Returning to the Unknown