Ephememorials : Grief Flowing into Grace
Ephememorials are ephemeral memorials elementally embodying the essence of an entity // form that has passed from physicality.
Divergent from traditional forms of remembrance that resist alteration over time {such as stone}, Ephememorials utilize their inherent inertia towards phase change as a channeling : a movement-based cryomancy {divination via ice}.
Water is renowned as a medium & solvent and through Ephememorials, prayerful Presence & treasured offerings placed in a watery cauldron combine to solidify the summoning of spirit into physical form for a time-bound visceral visitation in impregnated ice : water receiving an extension of the beloved’s essence & elementally enrobing their spirit.
Ephememorials provide primal bereavement catharsis : water becoming a medium – ice a temporary tactile body via Somatic Magic. The container of the solid crystalline surrendering its form provides a potent movement metaphor meditation on mortality and is also a responsive ritual of remembrance + release.
Through Ephememorials mourning melts into movement & grief is given gravity as ice made water surrenders its form. In this shifting space for grace, love is lubricated into free-flowing fluidity, as an interactive physical place for praising the value of what has passed & honoring the holy hole of absence.
As that which is solid breathes itself back into molten water, this process provides a patient primordial mirror for ritual release : unfreezing emotion & welcoming it into grounding. As ice, the abstract is clothed in crystalline form, felt slipping through your fingers, alchemically cathARTically weaving water : shimmering, splashing, & splaying itself out as Nourishment for the living, drip by drop.
As animist traditions affirm, energy + spirit do not vanish, but appear to disappear : dispersed + transformed. Ice becomes liquid, then vapor, connected to the natural cycles : just as our own forms, once stardust, return to soil or smoke. Upon cessation, corporeally contained awareness of human form diffuses into everything, the phase-based psychopompic physics of entropic oneness.
Animists teach that we can observe beauty changing form & apply this worldly wisdom to increase our connection to meaning. Ephememorials create space for sacred witnessing: watching what you love melt, not as tragedy, but as the truth of transience in time made tactile. To be incarnate is to dissolve eventually, & through Ephememorials we experience compassionate corporeal catharsis by witnessing the grace in the way things can fall apart while still giving themselves to life + light.
In these transient altars of crystalline change, we do not preserve – we participate. We commune with cold to create clarity via contrast, evoking gratitude for the gift of time we have been granted as warm-hearted wonderers. The ice is temporal, with an eternal invitation: to remember that presence is not measured in permanence but in the depth of contact we allow while it is here.
The Ephememorial intention is not to move past grief ~ but move with it, for in the meltwater, we recognize that nothing has been truly lost, only transformed.
Ephememorials are expansively encompassing & can be enacted for : people, pets, places, relationships, roles, parts of self, communities, ecosystems, societal shifts, beliefs, ideals, imagined futures, shared dreams, & transitions of all forms.
All photos by Yakov Barton
Crystalline Channeling for Non-Corporeal Consciousness
Ephememorials are a crystalline channeling utilizing the phase change of the solid ice to liquid aš the offering that lubricates communication between solid and spirit through the language of form fluxuation.
This transformation over time is movement encoding meaning – giving somatic symbolic language to the spirit of the deceased to communicate with the living, not just abstractly or psychically but physically.
There are levels of intimacy with the passer’s spirit, from a more divinatory {s}crying which involves a surface reading of the ripples of remembrance, to a corporeal channeling of complete sublimation.
As with all forms of indirect discourse, the challenge is in the translation. A skilled Movement Minister knows their personal base pattern so well that they can identify any deviation as divination, in this case, a message from the deceased. The most extreme form of Movement Ministry occurs when the Water Witch offers their body as a vessel to be ridden by the spirit to allow it human form and expanded interactivity.
All photos below by Basile Verhulst
