The Community Practice
A Commons Spell (or Spell of the Commons if you like a bit of flourish) is an act of welcoming in the spirit of the land (including plant allies), honoring ancestors of place including elders past, present, and becoming, and acknowledging the common space between all gathered. It's a practice that builds upon the history and living reality of the commons - shared cultural and land-based resources available to the community - as well as traditions like land acknowledgements.
I love land acknowledgements. They're such an easy way to participate in a cross-cultural act of story-telling, ancestor honoring, land connection, and community dreaming while countering overculture narratives about a particular place and people. Started by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists in the 1970s, Welcome to Country land acknowledgements not only addressed the lack of respect towards the original inhabitants of the land that events were being held but also as a ritual of welcome to any non-local group of people. The practice has spread to other parts of the world, especially places where there has been profound harm and displacement done to the original people of the land, including North America. The true beauty of a land acknowledgement lies in inspiring people to solidarity with their Indigenous siblings for land to be re-matriated and rights restored. I wrote my land acknowledgement for my community works a few years back if you want an example of what one might look like and further resources for understanding their meaning and use.
As a Pagan who has hosted and attended many a ritual that begins with some sort of honoring of the directions (which is honoring the elements of the land both grand and local), calling in ancestors, and welcoming people into of sacred space, land acknowledgements have been a joyful practice to incorporate into my classes and work. Incorporating land acknowledgements into our practices as herbalists and plant folk is a powerful act of re-membering our complex histories, celebrating survival of Indigenous peoples (including their herbal wisdom which informs many of our own practices), and dreaming of more kind and more just futures. Land acknowledgements are a beautiful expression of hyper-local presence and a practice that goes hand-in-hand with practices like the slow food movement (including the practice of using local herbs).
Inspired by the tradition of land acknowledgements and Pagan tradition of recognizing sacred space, I consider a commons spell a community practice meant to evolve and change with where you are physically (the land you live with), your relationships with your community (the land between us), and your inner world (your land-body).
For our purposes, we'll be focusing on creating a commons spell for your herbal practice that seeks to speak to the land and people you live with, as well as the land and people where the plants you use come from, all in a spirit of shared welcome. You don't need to be overly specific (unless you want to!) but focus on creating a spell of the commons that serves as a way to be in a deeper relationship with the land and all its gifts as well as your human and beyond-human kin. A commons spell can be an interesting way of speaking to your personal lineage of migration and settlement and how you've come to your relationship to your present place. You can incorporate sacred ones that you're devoted to, local parts of the landscape (including hyperlocal things like the tree growing outside your window), and/or ancestral names (an especially beautiful practice if you happen to live in a place where your family has been for generations). You can also name land that you might not live with but which shapes your practice - this can be especially meaningful for those of us living in the diaspora away from places we consider our homeland, but it can be any specific land that you feel informs your work. Let yourself be as poetic or simple as you like, focusing on what feels like an honest and sincere way of expressing the relationship to the land.
A commons spell can also be a way for you to share parts of your private practice in a way that is appropriate for a general public that might not have the same cultural or spiritual framework as you. In other words, while I might cast a circle and call the directions in a certain way with my Pagan peers, my commons spell might be guided by elemental language but be broader in details and tone so that non-Pagan community members don't feel like they're in the middle of a very specific sort of ritual. A commons spell can resemble a simple blessing or invocation, a call-and-response style blessing, or even a haiku. Let yourself be guided by the style that calls to you in this moment, knowing that you can always change a commons spell whenever you like.
As you write your commons spell, here are a few helpful things to consider:
What and/or who are you welcoming in?
What and/or who are you honoring?
How do you want others to feel hearing your commons spell? How do you want to feel speaking it?
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A Simple Rhyming Commons Spell
We summon the commons
through our common labor, struggles, and needs
through our common hopes, dreams, and deeds
we share what we have
we honor what we know
we make space for what's emerging
we bless the seeds we sow
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A Version of My Commons Spell
Let us call the commons
With reverence for the land we are gathered with:
the two rivers of this tree-filled valley,
and the traditional living stewards of the land -
the Nisenan and Miwok -
and their elders past, present, and becoming.
A deep bow to all of our benevolent ancestors -
who have made our lives and this gathering possible.
A deep bow to all of our descendants -
may we honor them through our works and deeds.
A deep bow to our beyond-human kin and the spirits of the land -
may we live together in peace.
Thank you for gathering with us -
may our time together be blessing
and the magick of the commons flow through, between, and beyond us
Blessed be!
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Call and Response Commons Spell
In this version I've made up names of places in the landscape like "rainbow river" as an example of how a community might name local features of the land as part of their commons spell. Each call can be made by the same person or different members of the community gathered (whether planned or spontaneous - be sure to decide ahead of time what your approach will be).
Call: Let us call in the commons together
After every call respond with: With honor and welcome, come you in
Call: From the east we call in the delta winds and honor our family of sky
Call: From the west we call in the rainbow river and honor our family of waterways
Call: From the south we call in the drylands and honor our family of the invisible world
Call: From the north we call in the deerwood forest and honor our family of earth
Call: From the center we call in the ancestors of the land
Call: From below us we call in the ancestors of blood
Call: From above we call in the ancestors becoming
Call: We are gathered together in the commons - with honor and welcome!
Final Response: With honor and welcome!
Sacred Inquiry
Read through the list of prompts, spending time with whichever ones you find interesting. These questions and prompts can transform into divination spreads, the first lines of poems, journal entries, coven conversations, and more. Let yourself feel into them.
What does my inner compass look like, the one that guides me wherever I go?
How is the land around me mirrored in my skin?
What do I notice about my skin?
How has people's perception of my skin affected me?
What is a map of the world that I grew up with that I no longer use?
I love when my skin is…
My skin feels supported when…
My skin feels disrupted when…
When I connected to our community web I saw / felt / heard…
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✨ Return to The Gathering Path ✨