we no longer remember the names we used to be called, we can trust no one except the reddest, rawest version of ourselves. This is a ritual of wedding the self and committing to soul.
Paint and adorn yourself as you like, my love. Wear all the jewels you value, or be naked as a newborn. Feel beautiful, and walk in grace toward a natural altar or one you have crafted for the occasion. As meaningful as it might be to have witnesses, consider moving through this rite in solitude. Your commitment to soul is a sovereign matter, after all. Place a warm palm flat on your steady-beating heart and know yourself as whole. Speak your vows with a voice so resonant that it ripples back through the very fabric of time and comforts you during your most fearful childhood moments:
Dearly beloved, I have planted my bare feet firmly on fertile ground and curled my toes into the primal mud. I am here to declare myself unruined and unbroken, and I am marking this day as my first sacred birthday. I, the woman most wild, hereby take my soul to love, honor, and cherish in this majestic, joyous life and in all my future incarnations. I am forgiving all my past transgressions, and I am unveiling my truest face.
I am the outcast Priestess no one understands, and I am taking a vow of rebellion. I have ripped up my roots and run into the desert screaming for a wilder life, and I am building a new house on these unmapped lands. I hereby promise to be the largest version of myself I can ever be, to replace complacency with self-compassion, and to reject apathy in favor of activism.
This is not a selfish ceremony; this is an act of soulful justice. I wed myself to vindicate the women of this world, the feminine in us all, and the wounded planet. My work does not stop here. I am sucking the poison of patriarchy and privilege out of the soil and spitting it moonward, for these are the dire days of the fallen kings and rising queens.
I am the wayward Priestess, and I do commit myself to cherish my deep self and all I stand for now, as the red sun rises and the futures of our children’s children hang in the balance. I am swelling to fill a bigger body. My hips are wide, and these new bones were forged in the crucible of my soul’s darkest night.
By the power vested in me by the Ministry of the Holy Wild and the sacred feminine heart, all blessings be.
BEDTIME INCANTATIONS: A RITUAL PRAYER FOR THE PILGRIM PRIESTESS
On your loneliest nights, love, whisper these wild blessings straight into the shadowy, haunted places of your psyche, those warm, wet forests where the truest fairy tales are told and the loam-skinned breasts of the ancient feminine rise and fall with breath under your bare feet:
I am wandering through these unmarked territories and learning new skills for surviving this particular wilderness I find myself in. This is the prayer of the last pilgrim Priestess, and I will whisper these words into the unforgiving chill, watching them fog out in all directions and willing them to bring comfort to every lonesome soul who finds themselves choosing stark liberation over a soft and sweet-smelling nest.
May I always grant myself permission to change, and may I see others as cyclical beings in their own right. I am the new moon Maiden, the full moon Mother, and the dark moon Crone puffing in and out of existence. I am the most ancient Mother Tongue language spoken by my ancestors, and I am just now remembering the words that are tattooed on my bones.
I am seeking out a new, wild home, and I am pouring its foundation on all I know to be true. When my hands are worn bloody with the work of it all, I will sleep safe in the knowing that my inner altar can never be crushed.
Blessed be this tougher skin of mine, and blessed be the Holy Wild.
Our magick is our declaration, a practiced and enacted affirmation about the changes we wish to make in our lives and to our worlds. Magick is unique and personalized alchemy, and one woman’s relationship with it will most certainly not match that of even her closest Sister-Witch. All aspects of the deep self inform our magick, with the scars of our roots, the gifts of our grandmothers, our particular position in the cosmic web, and our unique soul mandates serving to ground our Craft as a living, breathing reflection of who we are and where we would like to go from here.
In this final chapter in the Book of Earth, I offer you Earth Magick in the form of spellcraft for manifestation — that is, opportunities for raising energies in order to nourish a desired outcome — and pathworking experiences, or guided meditations for tapping into the fertile wellspring that is the unconscious mind in order to commune with guides and Goddess energies. Our spellwork is our wild message to the universe, an energetic conveyance of our right to invoke what we desire and purge what does not belong. Our pathworking, our communion with our ancestors and those ghostly guides that will orient us in just the right direction, serves to set us back on course along the Red Road, if we only listen to their direction. If our verses tell a story and our ritual marks what has been and what is now, our magick both honors and shapes the yet-to-come.
THE LILITH MANDALA: A MAGICK SPELL FOR WELCOMING WHAT COMES
Materials: Journal, writing utensil, large piece of paper or canvas (18" × 24" is best), art supplies
This spell requires reflection, my love. Very often, our manifestation magick falls short, fizzling even before the circle is cast, because we are seeking to invoke some great thing that, in our marrow, we do not believe is truly ours. We can invoke only what is for us, shifting and moving energies with our words and our ways to bring to us what we know we deserve, what we believe is ours to hold in our hands, and what will drive the changes we wish to see in the greater global community.
Deciding what is truly ours requires assessment, and our inner Crones know the skill of taking inventory quite well. Begin with your story. In the teaching tale, Lilith glimpses her new wild home when she tastes the forbidden fruit: Every time the gritty marrow of the fruit touched her tongue, she caught a glimpse of her destiny. With every hearty swallow, she saw the rainbow shades of her liberated life. Through this rebellion, she is able to see the garden for what it is, a colorless place where she was not allowed to know too much or be too much, where she was forced to wake each morning and pretend to be someone she had not been for a long while, a smaller version of herself that was only a pale reflection of the regal majesty she had become.
The Priestess of the Wild Earth takes to the Red Road understanding what her home will not be; it will not be a cage, it will not force her to pretend, and it will most certainly not be boring. As she wanders along the road toward home, she encounters a number of souls who will support her on her path. These wayward lovers and bright-eyed friends will help her remember the feeling of the snake’s scales on her skin, the way the apple’s juice ran down her neck, should she become distracted by the day-to-day and forget the place from which she rose up, free and wild, rootless but reaching.
She spends her time on the Red Road of liberation taking stock of her past. She considers those youthful days before the garden took her, before the underworld began to feel confining, and she traces her patterns of disconnection and relationship, abundance and scarcity, and fruition and void. She harvests a deep knowing, an in-the-bones understanding, of who she truly is during her most joyous moments. She lets the dead parts shrivel and fall off as she walks, and she surrenders to nature’s storm with her whole body and soul.
Part 1. Tracing the Feeling Mind
