[Liminal Letters] Savoring Sacred Sacrilege this Eclipse Season
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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! Eclipse season is always a good time to do some deep cleaning and organzing. Sometimes that means deep cleaning your house - which I will always defend as a deeply magical practice. Sometimes it’s energetic. Sometimes, as it was for me this week, it’s digital! I took some time to clean up and organize about 4 years worth of notes on my Notes app this week. Going through the snippets and glimpses of insights I have collected over the years, watching the ideas and themes slowly coalesce into things that have become an established part of my practice was fascinating. One of those ideas is the notion of sacred sacrilege - taking the holy and sacred back from institutions and putting it back into the land, into our lives, into our own hands. And this is an idea that is feeling particularly delicious for this eclipse season moment we find ourselves in. On Monday, we entered an eclipse season - the time between one eclipse and another (eclipses always happen in pairs!). This eclipse season is happening on the Libra-Aries axis. And this idea of sacred sacrilege feels very powerful for this moment. Libra is the scales of justice, of laws, of the negotiations between two agents of power (often power as vested in the state, but negotiations occur anywhere humans are in relationship), compromise, and the consequences of not honoring the sovereignty and power of another. Aries is the warrior, a defender, the assertion of one’s agency, moving forward in the fullness of one’s power, often given the VERY brief gloss with the phrase “I am”. Aries includes many things, but one is an assertion of self-hood, personal agency and power. Eclipses often have a negative reputation. In many ways, it is well-deserved. Eclipse season is a time of wild energy. Things can be tumultuous and chaotic. But when it comes to unjust and harmful systems of power, a little chaos might actually be a good thing. A possible way to consider the confluence of Aries and Libra themes for this eclipse season is: Where can we disrupt the status quo of our relationship to our relationships with our selves, our worlds, our communities, our own power? This is where sacred sacrilege comes in. First, let’s talk about what sacrilege is exactly. Here’s what Etymonline has to say about the etymology of ‘sacrilege’: “c. 1300, ‘the crime or sin of stealing what is consecrated to God,’ from Old French sacrilege (12c.), from Latin sacrilegium ‘temple robbery, a stealing of sacred things,’ from sacrilegus ‘temple-robber, stealer of sacred things,’ noun use of adjective, from phrase sacrum legere ‘to steal sacred things,’ from sacrum ‘sacred object’ (from neuter singular of sacer “sacred;” seen sacred) + legere ‘take, pick up’ (from PIE root [leg-](1) ‘to collect, gather’).” Interpreted literally, the component words of sacrilege mean “to pick up a sacred object.” To commit sacrilege is to take a sacred object, an object imbued with divine and magical power into your own hands. In the context of the early church, thinking about the ways the Catholic Church engaged in empire-building by erasing local context and supplanting localized divinities with church approved ones, then concentrating that divinity and sacredness within the church and in the church hierarchy that was centered ultimately in Rome, it seems to me that it was the Catholic Church committed the first acts of sacrilege. But at that time was there even a word for it? Sacrilege doesn’t enter English until the 1300s. It came from an Old French word that was came into use in the 1200s. And then it referred solely to the stealing of sacred objects; idea that sacrilege referred to improper behavior comes even later. The Church took the sacred away from the local, away from the people, hoarded it in a church, then made up a word for when people tried to take the sacred, the divinity, the power back into their own hands. In a time when we are SO DEEPLY and INTENTIONALLY kept away from the fullness of our personal powers by the forces of Empire, sacrilege feels vital. When the power of magic, divinity, and the sacred have been stolen, hoarded, and concentrated, sacrilege returns power to those it was taken from. When it means taking power back, taking magic back and putting it back into the land, back into life, back into your own hands…that sacrilege is sacred. Sacred sacrilege is about taking the sacred into your own hands, which is where it should be anyways. There are a lot of ways eclipse season might express for you, but if the idea of reclaiming an intentional and personal relationship with the sacred intrigues you, let me leave you with some sacrilegious questions for sacred contemplation:
Until next week, I’m wishing you powerful, divine and sovereign sacrilege! If you are excited by the idea of finding empowerment through sacred sacrilege this eclipse season, my books are open for tarot sessions & a Tarot Empowerment session is a perfect fit for diving deep into the question of how you can return to an intentional and personal relationship with the sacred! You can book your session HERE! FREE meditation for empowered, interconnected energetic sovereignty!The muse struck this week and I was inspired to create a meditation for centering in yourself and finding your power to craft meaningful energetic relationships. If you are... Then this meditation is for you! In the free meditation, I lead you through a reflective journey to help you get acquainted with your energetic relationships and your sovereign power to interact with, grow, and influence those relationships, which is another way of saying connecting to your intuition and finding your power to make some fucking magic!
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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! |