Dead Stories, Living Stories
While I take a break as the season of Samhain arrives in the northern hemisphere, I wanted to share with you a glimpse into my other monthly newsletter, The Moonlight, that my patrons as well as the students of The Lunar Apothecary get access to. While the theme changes each year (my Lunar Apothecary folks get to choose the annual focus), it allows involves some sort of exploration of lunar-focused healing and magick.
This year we've been exploring the theme of "lunar rituals and paths of magick" where I pull a ritual and recipe from my free but secret course (which you can access for free as a Magick Mail subscriber) that corresponds to a lunar phase of current month, exploring the energetic practice behind them as well as adapt them to our own needs and the needs of folks we serve as practitioners.
Earlier this year, when the Dark Moon was in Gemini, a sign that helps us to connect with deep, shallow, and shoreline currents of communication, I explored a ritual and recipe that I wrote to support all the ways that we support our transitions through the stories we tell. I hope you enjoy the ritual and recipe that follows - may it support your own practice of becoming.
image via @anniespratt
What was a story you were brought up with that was true for you until it wasn't?
It's part of the growing up process to reassess the stories that we were raised with, deciding what we want to keep, what we want to alter, and what we want to leave behind altogether. as a storytelling species, this is one of those lifelong processes, and we'll constantly be encountering new stories to assess. Our stories, their telling and assessing, is one of the reasons that social media has been so challenging for our collective and individual mental health - we are trying to process too many stories, too many opinions, and too much information in less and less time. While rest has always been part of the prescriptive toolbox of the herbalist, it's become even more evident how new forms of social rest (i.e. extended to permanent breaks from social media) are needed. It's challenging to figure out our own stories, much less meaningfully connect with the stories around us, when we are dealing with so many at once.
When I first wrote this ritual, I wanted to create an outline to work from with supporting folks through their storied transitions. Dead Stories still carries that original intention, but now it feels equally as needed to help us shed the burdensome weight of carrying around all these extra, social media driven stories whether or not we realize that's what we're doing.
Recently, I've been re-reading books that shaped my early practice, some which were decades old by the time I was first reading them, and it's interesting to read herbal and magickal books of different generations and how the recommendations are given for changing technology. From listening too much to the radio, to cautions against getting hooked on 24 hour news or whether or not you should keep a computer in the same space as you store your herbs,¹ it's not been a question of whether or not technology affects our health, but how we should respond to it. When I began my formal herbal studies my initial intake forms asked about time watching tv (my teachers were of the generation that lived before 24 hour news, so they had a clear experience of life before and after such a massive shift in information distribution and how it was affecting people's health), but adding the question about social media didn't come until a few years later.
All of this is to illustrate how storytelling and the stories we are told can shape our own and our client's experiences of wellbeing. One of the ways that we can explore this very Gemini area of our collective lives is to slow down, quiet internal and external noise as best we can, and begin to feel through the stories we're telling ourselves and others. In sessions with clients or even just friends and family, I hear myself asking these story questions like:
Would it be possible to…?
Have you ever considered trying…?
What makes you feel settled/unsettled in your body?
It's very common for folks (all of us reading this included) to have been telling or been told a story that it feels like fact instead of just a choice that's been made. I frequently recommend some sort of meditative practice, but I've had to learn how to meet clients with where they're at with the stories I tell about meditation. I get a lot of folks, for example, who say "Oh, I can't meditate" but their story of what meditation is and how it should be practice is very narrow and often overlaid with what they've been told about themselves that makes them hesitant to try something that might feel momentary discomfort with. A meditative practice is possible, but the story about what meditation is needs to be expanded on.
I continue to learn about the ways that I can make recommendations to folks that feel inviting, not shaming or full of inappropriate boundary pushing, where I get out of my own way, and I think it's an important skill for herbalists and healing practitioners. It's also a way to collaborate with clients and our community on releasing old stories and cultivating new ones.
What are the ways that you incorporate storytelling and perspective shifting practices into your healing work?
image via @katkelley
Dead Stories Ritual
I am accepting all of who I am
There are moments in our life when we realize that we're telling a story that is no longer living - it is a dead story that we tell ourselves because it is comfortable, convenient, because we're fearful of what another story might mean, and for so many other reasons. Maybe these stories are more accurately called limbo stories - stories that can keep us trapped in old narratives that don't allow us to fully live our current truths. This ritual helps us to bury these dead stories with honor and let them decay so they may be fodder for future stories that better reflect our current lived experience and understanding of ourselves.
Dead Stories is a good ritual for before and during big transitions (getting out of an abusive relationship, initiations, starting therapy, self-acceptance of hidden parts of yourself, gender transitions, and so on) where there can be grief and a feeling of unease because new and appropriate boundaries are being set in your life. These are ultimately joyful journeys, but often we need to honor our grief and fear through honoring and releasing these dead stories before we can access that joy. This is a great ritual to perform within your beloved community and the outline below should be adapted to your needs (including ability and sensory needs) - this is only one way that a dead stories ritual can be performed and I encourage you to find the path that makes the most sense to you (for they are your stories to bury).
You will need:
Paper and pen
A metal cauldron or burnsafe container
Metal incense tongs or similar item
A bowl of water (Moon water, spring water, water with chosen essences in it, whatever you like)
A washcloth
A towel
A feather
A new stories altar with one or more candles (see description below)
You will need two altar spaces - one in front of you and one behind you. The space in front of you is the dead stories altar and should hold your paper, pen, burn-safe container, and nothing more. The space behind you is where you can build your new stories altar filled with items which represent the stories that you are bringing into your life and illuminating more. Here is where you can place your feather and towel.
Begin by writing the old story down on your paper. Take as little or as long as you like, making sure to let yourself feel this story as it is moving through your body, through the pen, and onto the page. I encourage you to do this in silence to represent the way that the telling of this dead story has silenced other living stories in your life. When your story is written, begin to tear the paper into shreds, beginning the process of decay. Here is where you can start to make sound if you're called to it, no words yet, but feeling-sounds and grieving-sounds. Add the shredded dead story paper to your cauldron and light them on fire. Use the tongs as you need to to make sure that all the paper burns.
When the body of the dead story has turned to ash, transformed into something new, and it is cool enough to touch, you can start to rub the ash against your forehead. You can rub the ash on any part of your body that you feel comfortable with (avoiding sensitive areas of course). At this time you (or your community) can start to call forth the new story from within you, all with affirming language. I've given examples of solo and/or community phrasing below:
Hello, sweet little me, you're safe now.
There you are! You're so brave! We've been waiting for you! Come on home!
My name is {name} and I am so {brave, smart, wise, beautiful, etc.}.
I am {chosen name}. {Chosen name} is my name. {Chosen name} is who I am.
Oh we've been waiting for you, {chosen name}.
Come on home, {name}, tell us your story. We've missed you.
Once the ash has been rubbed on your forehead (and wherever else you want to place it), pick up the washcloth and submerge it in the water. Use the cloth to wash the ash off of you. If you are in a community ritual and feel comfortable with it, have one or more members of the community wash the ash off for you. If you like you can sing a water chant such as the Born of Water by the Reclaiming community:
Born of water, cleansing powerful, healing changing, I am
When you are ready, turn for the first time to your new story altar, pick up the towel and clean yourself off. From here on out you can speak and laugh and say what you please. Light the candles on your new story altar and speak your new story, new name, new career, new beliefs about yourself. You did it! It can be very sweet and grounding to have a feast of favorite foods prepared for after this rite. Any leftover ash should be buried, flushed, or disposed of in a way that feels final.
I love flower essences for their gentle yet profound effect on our emotional body. Whenever we or a client, family or community member is going through a transition and trying on new words for their story-in-transformation, I like to offer flower essence support. In my experience, most folks find flower essences really enchanting - they speak to the playful, potion-making side that a lot of folks interested in herbalism often have. We're coming up on 100 years of the modern iteration of flower essences developed by Dr. Edward Bach who wanted to create an inexpensive, easy-to-make, and accessible form of homeopathic(ish) medicine. While flower essences are dismissed as purely placebo, I think it is more accurate to categorize them, when used within a traditional storytelling format as recommended, as a form of psychosomatic or psychoneurological remedy (if you're interesting in more of this as it relates to the practicing traditional western herbalist, I highly recommend The Consultation in Phytotherapy: The Herbal Practitioner's Approach to the Patient by Peter Conway).
While I have offered a few essences that I like to turn to for supporting new story confidence, feel free to take inspiration and work with the essences you have readily available to you. One of the joys of any form of plant healing is the locality of practice and being able to turn to our plant neighbors for aid.
image via @qinghill
New Stories Essence
I am living my most affirming stories
I created the New Stories essence to support the work that follows a Dead Stories ritual and for those times when we're needing extra emotional support when speaking our new stories to ourselves and others.
Blend together a few drops of each of the following flower essences into a dosage bottle:
Rose (Rosa spp.): Helps us to unfold, find lost stories and secret strengths, evolve, and open up to the depth of loving ourselves and who we are becoming.
Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria): Helps us to move from a place of telling stories that hide who we are (because of the expectations of others, our own fear, inherited stories, and so on) into being able to tell a more honest and genuine story that we want to tell.
Cerato (Ceratostigma willmottiana): Helps us to trust our intuition and our deep, wise knowing of who we are and the stories that best support that inner truth.
Take 1 - 3 drops as needed throughout the day for a Moon cycle or whenever you need support in telling your new stories (i.e. telling someone your new name, setting a boundary, and so on).
🌙
Healing stories, stories of healing, stories told that we might heal - what are the stories that are shaping your path these days?
If you’re interested in exploring more lunar paths of healing, consider connecting with the story of the Moon phases, starting with the Dark Moon. You can also find a full collection of lunar healing in my Moon Studies archive.
I hope you’re inspired to explore the stories that you’re telling yourself and others as the old year dies and the new year comes to be.
This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎
