photos by Spencer Handley
A healing harvest thread for times of Thanatos { from a private event October 2023 } :
One of my prayers at these sacred detoxifying waters this cycle was to offer my body as an altar to the goddess.
Imagine my naive fog of confusion when even in this beauty prayer I was restless for 4 or 5 hours after laying down Friday night and when I finally fell asleep had thanatoic nightmares of constantly needing to fly and never able to land but for a brief time only to need to run again for fear of being captured {only now hearing of the horrors that occurred I have the context to understand what I was subconsciously somatically sensing on the other side of the world}. I was shaken as I never have nightmares, and now knowing the tragic events that took place I understand why these exhausting visions came, and I wish to share how my healing harvest is unfolding in the hope that it may inform our path of peaceful processing into greater grace.
Unrested after diving into the collective subconscious, eventually the heat roused me, and I looked at the Chronos clock and felt ‘late’, missing the shuttle, missing breakfast {happenstance fasting}, missing yoga with a Side of Twerk by Christiana whom I wanted to see shine in a student now teacher.
In the pools aš į was cleansing the residues of confusion another elder priestess said her body wanted to hold mine and informed me I was too open to the collective subconscious, that I needed to be more protective and less porous, as I lose my self in the vastness of the capacity of my container which leads to confusion when I fall into the gap between the paradise I know is possible and the current context.
Considering this, during my last lateness to blindfolded contact, I was witnessed in unexpected grief and held with great care in my shedding rawness {gratitude for unplanned places able to hold processing}.
In retrospect, the collective somatic permission to feel deeply while being supported in blindfolded contact was my chrysalis of collapse cracking open, reborn in new form, wet wings unfurling, novel appendages filling with life.
Wet and vulnerable, drawn to at least try to vicariously ride the edge of the ecstacy intended in Matt Sturm’s Joygasm workshop, I was drawn to where Trevor had hung his art of flowers encased in ice, laying beneath, finding repose in recieving the transmutation of solid to liquid, bathing me in perfumed rain, opening my corporeal channel now to life to give this embodied experience to the earth, continuing to dilating into the expression past a personal sense of modesty as an offering ¡for the planet!
When Matt instructed the other participants to come and find a tree or an element of nature to connect with, I was under the closest element around, and found many friends above me interacting with the flowered ice, stroking it, licking it, melting it faster and increasing the production of liquid {IYKYK, this deserves to be recreated on film}, and I got to recieve their energy through the medium of moisture as universal solvent.
As a water witch + Healing High Priestess of Earth Body Temple I now realize this was a synchronistic ritual to which there would be a community crecendo.
Trevor then unhung the ice phalluses {help me name these more elegantly XD} and made a suggestion to walk around and bring the experience to others laying down for a sound bath. I was overjoyed at the opportunity, and long story short to put a transcendant experience into shallow word boats, proceeded to body dom the collective with this new medium for play to the upliftment and ecstacy of all.
When I unfurl my awareness to a transpersonal symbolic level, what was occuring was a thawing of a freeze response I have had around giving all the new forms of love that wish to flow through me, sympathetic magic melting my frigid places as a Movement Muse in a phase shift : lubricating liberation of the static beauty encased in ice now transformed into surrendered giving flow. Aš my life’s purpose is to co/create, give, and {blessedly now} recieve new forms of love, I work at the evolving edge of embodiment, far past the limits of language and the current culture, and I had been self-sabotagingly kefluffled about how to ask for consent for inventions that have never existed before, previously getting caught up in my head about the ethics of the evolutionary edge.
My healing harvest was to give self-permission as an instrument allowing divine love full power of expression, and to trust that backing this with a lifetime of integrity and values cultivation makes my offering highly unlikely to cause ‘harm’ aka discomfort which I was overindexing hypothetical phantom concern for {and with the caveat of putting in safety nets to proceed in a stepwise fashion sensing if the others are able to recieve an initial gift and also ready to repair if need be}. Many present expressed the ice queenDom chanelling was captivating simply to witness, to say nothing about the rapture of receiving. This hilights how much mutual pleasure and transformational catharsis playful purrrmission brings the collective as a ‘community fluffer’ letting divine love have full power.
If it is of service to your shining, my prayer for you is that you are able to be held by those you trust in breaking open, ecstatically emerging from your chrysalis, and finding your beautiful winged pattern of how to express love in this wild world with the time we are blessed with physical form.
As I flex my wings exploring the air realm, I am resourced to give spiritual somatic support and revelrous ritual {the current flavourite form is 6+ hour bodywork ceremonies} at my seaside sanctuary in west marin, or you can summon me to your local temple if we can arrange a nurturing environment. My work is donation based, and I subsist in gratitude to charitable contributions to the public charity 170b1a Church I co-founded, Earth Body Temple. Additional potent threads of welcome include co-catalyzing more spaces of compassionate corporeal culture + liberating lands + resources to reinvest in the thriving of our wee earth bodies and regenerating our broader earth body {our temples and clergy housing are exempt from property taxes and your donations are tax deductable}.
TLDR: My response to Thanatos is opening to and channeling more Eros, love, and life. I wood revel in supporting yew in dewing similarly if in service to your thriving aš High Priestess of Earth Body Temple. Feeling forward to co-creating paradise.