Ceremonies Inspired by Deborah Blake's Magic & Julie Brook's Firestacks

 The election left me shaken to the core, like so many others.

I feel the need to respond in some big way. Though I don't think discourse is the answer for me. 

Instead I am planning a ceremonial response.

The intent of my ceremony will be to stem the tide of evil threatening democracy and life on this planet at the hands of people who take or retain their positions of power and responsibility starting January 20th, 2025.

I am taking my ceremonial inspiration from the work of two strong women.

The first strong woman is Deborah Blake; noted author & witch. She writes books for Llewellyn Publications as the Everyday Witch. She also writes enthralling, poignant, often funny, fiction. One of her series of fiction books centers around the tales of the Baba Yaga. 

Wickedly Unraveled* is a book in that series with a very strong spell that I adapted for my ceremony.

The second strong woman is Julie Brook who does 'land and tidal art'; specifically her 'Firestacks'.

Julie Brook builds what she calls firestacks, which are essentially cairns, starting at low tide, using the 'dry-stone walling method' to be 5.75 feet high & 6.5 feet wide so they will not go down easily when the tide comes in high. 

Next she builds a fire in the firestack with seasoned logs. She & others replenish the fire with more logs every half hour or so.

The tide washes in and the fire in the firestack is beautiful against the sea & the sky. 

For the website Terrain.org in an article titled: Prose, Photography and Landscape Art by Julie Brook - she said:

"When the sea was quiet and rising—an incremental rising you felt creeping up your body— the tension between fire and water became a form of choreography: of time, of sound, of light—an exquisite dance between the water rising and receding, the fire dousing and regaining itself."

I think that's what we have to do over the next 2 or 4 years. We  have to keep dancing even if the fire seems to go completely out. 

And rest in the knowledge that the tide - a force of the true apex predator - Mother Earth - will wash all evidence of those who would attack her out to sea - so much unremembered sand on the ocean floor. Good riddance.

(I don't have permission to use Julie Brook's work BUT I URGE YOU SERIOUSLY to click on the Terrain.org article & look at the pictures & view the very powerful 15 minute video. Mesmerizing.)

So that's how I will be spending a small part of my equinoxes, solstices, full moons & new moons in the coming year. 

After that - maybe something with an Earth focus, or water, or air.

Always with love & light. 

*The Baba Yaga series:

Wickedly Dangerous, Wickedly Wonderful, Wickedly Powerful

Dangerously Charming, Dangerously Divine, Dangerously Fierce

Wickedly Unraveled