making a grimoire
returning to something more ambiguous
I recently made a very indulgent purchase.
I bought a tome.
A massive book of blank pages, bound in hand-tooled leather.
Traveling through Greece, Cypress, and Israel I visited locations steeped in religious history that I felt wholly alienated from. As I tried to metabolize the magnitude of violence and carnage that has been carried out (and continues to be) in the name of a God, I found myself becoming a bit radicalized.
Radicalized towards ambiguity and away from dogma.
Towards interconnectedness and away from hierarchy.
Towards simpler, truer living.
My research these last two weeks has centered on what it would look like to return to nature-based, cyclical practices and wisdom teachings.
Could this be a way to root my lifestyle in what I find the most intrinsically valuable? Sustainability, slowness, authentic connection, beauty, music, nature, complexity, laughter, making gifts with my hands, feeding the people I love, kinship with animals…
As I stumbled upon new, suitable ideas like “druidry”, I also knew that this new exploration needed to be as individual to me as possible.
It needed to be ambiguous because we put too much value on things being clear-cut, clean, and sterile.
It needed to have the runway to mature slowly over time. The fast pace of modernity wants results and conclusions, like yesterday! But this demanding rush drip feeds us our anxiety, worry, and regret. Or at least it does for me.
I’ll assemble my own grimoire.
Not a book of spells in the way people who like novels about teenage vampires or handsome werewolves might imagine.
A book of wisdom collected a walk… a conversation… a quiet Sunday morning at a time… Very slowly, over days, months, years, and generations.
A gathering place for items of mundane magic, stories that hold humble lessons on living and reverence, and knowledge given by loved ones eager to share their own sweet noticings and traditions.
It will smell like simple secrets, old ideas made new, and the seductive promise of adventures that await.
Here and there, you’ll find pressed blossoms chosen for the majesty of their simple beauty. Or you’ll turn a page to find an assortment of autumn leaves shouting up at you in a hymn of buttery golds, burnt oranges, and that brilliant, unmistakable red glow of dying embers in a once-raging bonfire.
I’ll include sprigs of herbs I’ve grown or foraged from neighbor’s yards with short notes on what I like about each one - the rich, regal scent of basil or the crisp, lemony tang of wood sorrel - along with the best ways to use them in your cooking. Helpful plants will get a page, highlighting both the medicinal and mystical attributes patiently waiting for just the right hands and the right alchemy to unlock their gifts. Followed by instructions on how to create teas and tinctures. Potions if you will.
I’ll include a map laying bare the mysteries of my favorite places to forage wild fruit and mushrooms for the hunters in my family who go out in search of edible treasures.
Once I know the best places to catch the sunrise each season, I’ll jot down those coordinates as well so that a future reader can stand where I’ve stood, steaming morning brew in hand, as the first rays of light pierce their way through the cedar bows.
Hopefully, they’ll have a dog or two at their side. Familiar. Companion. Teacher. Reminder.
There will have to be a whole section of my mother’s favorite recipes. The ones she left me in the letters she wrote for me to read each year on my birthday. Which will make me want to include my father’s recipe for braided cardamom bread. And by that point, I might as well include my other mom’s recipe for brown bread that crossed the Atlantic with her Polish great-grandmother. And I can’t leave out my best friend’s recipe for apple pie touting the flakiest, butteriest crust you’ve ever had. Or my other best friend’s recipe for french sourdough made with the 150-year-old starter she was given when we were in college. Or my love’s recipe for wood-fired pizza made with imported Italian flour and shrimp caught fresh from the ocean you can see from his family’s porch.
(If I’m lucky, each will be in their own delicious handwriting.)
I’ll make sure there are a few how-to guides. Ways to meditate. Ways to ritualize. Ways to write a letter. Ways to wail. Ways to clear your mind. Reminders to put your bare feet on the ground, enjoy the dirt under your fingernails, and smile at the tickle of grasses between your toes.
Don’t forget, dear one, you are unquestionably of the earth.
I’ll include poems - my own and others - hoping they lay forgotten at least until a distant grandchild rediscovers them many years after I’m gone. Their fingertips gingerly turning dusty pages, passing over my careless, scratchy handwriting. Their brow furrowing as they try to conjure up a vision of where I might have been sitting when I wrote it. Was it a gift from a lover? Something I came across in my travels? Something I found while meandering through a bookstore with creaky wooden floors?
I hope there are at least a few pages of prayers. Something to tickle that immortal whisper inside that knows we are never alone and are always on the verge of the next life-altering moment.
It will be a soft, unofficial space to immortalize why it is so essential for our souls to give thanks, why when divinity seems absent you’ll find it hidden right here in the current moment, and how rapture is revealed when you kneel at the feet of all that you already have…
I hope the pages give the reader an impression of irreverent and salty humor, a lust for devotion, an imperfect and unhelpful tendency to get frustrated with the darkness in the world, the ferociousness of my love, and just enough mystery that after I am gone the myth of me becomes a comfort and a guide to the people I love but have left behind.
And I hope that when I go, there are still plenty of blank pages for the next author to begin collecting their irreverent ideas, gratitude, and special practices for whichever reader comes after them.
Dive Deeper:
Maybe I’ll fill a whole volume with all the different kinds of moons…
Wolf Moon, Quiet Moon
Snow Moon, Hungry Moon, Bear Moon
Worm Moon, Crow Moon
Pink Moon, Seed Moon
Flower Moon
Strawberry Moon, Salmon Moon, Thunder Moon
Buck Moon
Moon
Harvest Moon, Corn Moon, Wine Moon
Hunter’s Moon, Sanguine Moon
Beaver Moon, Mourning Moon
Cold Moon
Blue Moon (aka the 13th Moon)
Invitations and Promotions:
I'm offering pay-what-can coaching (life, business, or love) for the month of December. Shoot me an email if you are interested!
Noticing:
I’m done caring about Christianity and Christian history! Yes. I hear all the counterarguments of why I should care, but I don’t anymore. I’ve watched its stories told and retold in movies, tv shows, in books, and in classes over and over and over. I no longer find it interesting or valuable to me. On this trip I finally reached my saturation point. I have had Christian beliefs, stories, and most importantly values imposed on me my whole life in ways that I know most Christians would take umbrage with if it were some other faith imposed on them. So I finally gave myself permission to divest. To take the stance that I do not need to value or make space for a belief system that I do not value in my personal life.
As I was walking back from swimming in the Patromitis Harbor of Symi island, the waters were so clear I could see almost all the way down 30 feet. The temperature was just a few shades cooler than my the heat of my skin. On the way back, I ran into a woman on my trip who I’d guess is in her late 70s, and suggested she should do it. She said she’d forgotten her bathing suit and I jokingly encouraged her to go in anyway! Give the locals a story to take home! To my utter shock, she said “I would make all the locals- (mimed wretching over and over)” I felt such intense protectiveness. There was nothing gross about her body. I hated knowing that she looks in the mirror and sees something she thinks other people would find disgusting. I hate that we do this to our women. I hate that we make aging an ugly thing. It’s not. Every wrinkle is an experience, a laugh, a lesson written into our skin. We are meant to look like the libraries of our lives. If you are a woman and you are older, there are many of us that look at your crow’s feet, your silver hairs, and your widening hips and we admire them. We see something to look forward to when it’s our time.
Have you heard of druidry?
I’ve been able to eat gluten here because the US and the EU use different species of wheat, and I’ve been making up for about a decade’s worth of bread and croissant deprivation. Sweet decadence!
If you are intrigued by archaeology, have you heard of the archaeological site Akrotiri, Thera? It completely captivated my imagination. Frescoes suggest that it was a women-run, advanced, Minoan civilization dating back 3500 years!
When I studied abroad in Chile, I was introduced to Silvio Rodriguez. Here is one of his most iconic songs. Best if listened to first thing in the morning over dark coffee or while decompressing over a good glass of wine.
until (probably) next week, Theora