[Liminal Letters] Embodiment is magical
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Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE! Hey, Reader! We had a long-as-fuck Void-of-Course moon this week and it's has been dark and rainy and stormy all week and I'm feeling TIRED. I opted to honor that this week by skipping posting memes and I'm gonna honor it again by sending y'all a Love Letter from the Liminal archive. This is one I originally wrote over a year ago and it just so happened that it was exactly what I needed to read today. Embodiment is magical.What does it mean to be in right relationship? What does it mean to be in right relationship to your magic, to your spirits, to nature, to yourself? Right relationship is an oft talked about concept in spirituality. There’s a sense that we, as a society, are not in right relationship. I think this sense is broadly correct. Just looking at the world around us, we see the world being stripped of resources much faster than we or the earth can replace them; we see the amazing beings all around us - upon whose abundance and nourishment we are intimately linked - being harmed and killed; we see systems of harm that allow some humans to perpetuate horrific violence on other humans. If you check in with your soul and all that probably feels catastrophically wrong and out of balance. Our relationships as humans to nature, to the spiritual, to the unseen, to the subtle, to the emotional, to the nourishing is deeply are, in general, as a society, deeply wrong. Responding to this sense of something being deeply wrong in our spiritual and metaphysical relationships we seek out this mythical “right relationship”. And in seeking that right relationship, we often run in the opposite direction of everything we perceive this society of “wrong” relationship to be. This can look a lot of ways. But one of the ones I see most commonly is the rejection of the material and worldly. In seeking to reconnect with the numinous in a deeply materialist world, we end up assuming that any worldview that values the earthly is a distinctively “human”, a distinctively “material” thing. The earthly becomes part of what is wrong and in a rush to reject the “human” and “material” for the spiritual, the earthly gets rejected, too. A while ago, in a different context I shared some thoughts about some problems of the materiality-spirituality polarity and the way this can lead to denial of the body, a focus on transcendence, and a denigration of the physical/material. I stand by all that, but today I want to spend a little time talking about this in the specific context of a personal magical practice. While the desire to flee to the opposite of the crass materialism of this society makes a lot of sense, it doesn’t make sense in the context of a magic or witchcraft practice. Magic and witchcraft involve the idea of working with, manipulating, or collaborating with the spiritual to achieve material ends. If your spiritual practice involves magic or witchcraft or spell-casting of any kind, there’s inherently some of the material in your spirituality. But, in my opinion, IT IS A VERY GOOD THING! You are alive - that is magical as fuck; that is sacred as fuck. You are alive and magical and sacred and that life deserves to life well, comfortably, pleasurably. That’s fucking hard in a capitalist world. Making magic and casting spells in order to achieve those material ends is not the contradiction it might appear to be. You’re here on this planet alive and embodied. And that aliveness and embodiment makes you distinct from other entities and spirits. Being embodied and of this material reality means taht you can have a real material effect on this planet. You have a different capacity for action and a different zone of influence than the spirits we’ve already discussed. And that matters. We live in a society that is damaging the planet and other humans and other spirits. And we are the ones who can directly influence this society. It might not be as much influence as you’d like but it’s the influence you have. The earth, the spirits, and the ancestors can take their actions, but add in the essential ingredient of you to that mix and that’s a recipe that has the power to create real change in the world. You’re here on earth having a human experience. And in that experience you have will power,you have the ability to orchestrate this magic into the world. That is power and it is an essential part of this. Your embodiment, your ability to take physical action in the material, is an essential part of right relationship. You can take action spirits cannot. You can make changes your ancestors cannot. And that is magical and powerful in its own right! YOUR EMBODIMENT IS MAGICAL. Period. Full stop. Your embodiment, your life here on earth, is not just something to transcend or to move beyond. You, your life, can be a part the expression of your spiritual and magical practice. And when you acknowledge that, you take a step closer to right relationship. Spirits are beings we can be in collaboration and accompliceship with. That bridging of the earthly and the numinous, the human and the other-than-human, THAT is right relationship! If you're ready to cultivate this kind of collaborative and balanced spirit relationship in your life, you can book a Relational Rose reading with me! These readings are channeled messages from the goddess of love that I work with, designed to help you cultivate reciprocal right relationship with spirit! I'm testing out a live format for these readings (instead of the recorded format I originally offered!) and they are discounted to reflect that! I'm only offering 5 spots with a 20% discount, so if this reading is calling to you, book yours soon!
In Case You Missed It:
This Week's Joys & Gratitudes
What's bringing you joy this week? Where are you finding magic? Feel free to hit reply and let me know! Until next time! In Joy, Magic, and Solidarity, P.S. Know someone who would find magic in this newsletter? Please forward it on! Word of mouth is one way we weave connection & magic! |