heaven in earth
yew trees, the fall breeze, and what spirituality means to me 🪐
It’s the day after the Pisces full moon in Virgo season and I am in pain. I am not prone to tummy issues (touch wood), but Thursday morning, I woke up with the worst stomach ache in my recent memory. It might have been food poisoning, it could have been from burnout, but whatever hit me that morning came in swinging punches.
I ignored my body’s protests as I trudged into the office for my job, prioritizing a fear of capitalist punity over clear warning bells sounding for rest. I lasted about two and a half hours before deciding to head home and tend to my needs, a shame lingering nearby as I walked out of my building at 11:35 in the morning.
In that moment and for much of my life, my body has been a burden. A corporeal form I am constrained to with an endless to-do list of care requirements that take time, money, and energy away from who I believe I am and how I feel in my mind. I have felt restricted by the limitations that my body forced on my mind, as I felt my mind zip ahead miles beyond where my body placed me.
Growing up, the topic of my body was constantly in other people’s mouths, as my fatness was vilified and I was socially conditioned to take up less space. The conditioning was clearly unsuccessful, though it did leave the legacy of a cold war between my body and my brain. I would avoid mirrors and scales, deluding myself that my body couldn’t change if I wasn’t witness to it.
And yet, it did. And it continues to. And I have the blessing of being able to witness this change, growing in tandem with myself.
And so, I begin the journey of staying and listening, instead of running away. I feel a bit lost in this process, as most of the behavior around bodies that has been modeled for me has centered control or avoidance. As I try to walk a different path, I am learning the ways that my body shows me freedom.
I feel freedom with the water, a true cancerian, whether through waves against my shins or the simple act of sitting nearby and marveling at the shore. I remember glimmers in the grass, tickling my fingers as my hand and the wind move through thousands of children of the earth. I find freedom in my hips and shoulders as I practice choreography that is unfamiliar and tender. It’s there in the softness, a truth my body has always known and manifested.
I reflect, too, how my body feels called to the earth. Always craving the outdoors, constantly competing with my brain’s homebody. The moments where I feel most tense or uneasy, where I have lost a sense of groundedness, have been moments where I feel disconnected from the earth and my body. Where I have spent days indoors and online, struggling to parse through what I’m experiencing in the emotions and physiological responses I have to the endless stream of catastrophe and sensationalism I’m bombarded with. I quickly become overstimulated and unregulated, losing track of what is real, tangible, and important for me to prioritize. I lose connection to my power.
I recently finished reading The Stars and the Blackness between Them by Junauda Petrus, which weaves together a poetic array of grief, love, spirituality, rebellion, and revolution through the stories of Black diaspora. This is a book I see myself constantly coming back to as I reflect on the connection between my consciousness and the cosmos.
One quote that has stayed with me is from a memoir inside the book that is written by Afua, an innocent man who has been on death row for over 30 years. In his spiritual journey, Afua receives the affirmation that “he is infinite” and “The Blackness between the stars is the melanin in [his] skin.”
This quote has reminded me that, while I do not hold the Blackness between the stars in my skin, I do hold the brown expanse of the Earth’s soil in my hands. I hold the vastness of the brown between the grass in my skin, eyes, and hair. I am infinite, not in spite of my body, but through it.
The crisp breeze of the fall has come to visit Berkeley, trading off with California’s tardy and competitive summer, who fights for a few more days to bake before retiring for the season. I took a walk to the park, seeking some connection with the grass and the trees on a lazy Labor Day evening.
After settling into a good patch of grass with a perfect view of the sunset, I pulled out my Magickal Botanical Oracle Deck and asked the universe, “What should I invest my time and energy into and focus on this week?” Within seconds of shuffling, I received card #32: Yew. I opened the interpretation book (eerily to the exact page of the Yew interpretation) and read about the connections between the Yew and the realm of the dead. Yew is known to connect us to a deep, ancient wisdom that helps us see the big picture of not only our own personal lifetimes, but also our lives in the arc of our ancestors and descendants.
This reading felt exactly aligned with what I have been ruminating on in the last week. As I journaled on Thursday over an upset tummy, I wrote down that “ancestry is everywhere around me when I am outside.” This felt like an uncanny premonition of my oracle reading, where the Yew tree called for me to listen to the ancestors. I also learned that this is the time of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts in Buddhist tradition, which recognizes the smaller distance between the physical and spiritual realm and enables spirits, ancestral and otherwise, to visit more readily for the next few weeks.
With these converging messages and affirmations of spirituality, I am suspending disbelief. I am open to hearing from my ancestors, blood and chosen, as I approach a shift in my livelihood. I feel vindicated by the reminder that I have the support I need in order to make the changes I want and cut off that which does not serve me. I am allowed to take ownership over my life, even as I request counsel from those who can guide me.
The spiritual is newer territory for me. I have only practiced with an oracle deck for a few months so far, but I have always had superstitions that feel sacred and real. Whether touching wood or touching grass, nature has been and continues to be an integral part of my spirituality. The presence of organic substances, colors, and entities is a consistent reminder that I am here.
I am here through the thousands of decisions that my ancestors made seeking purpose, joy, and safety. I am here to continue in that legacy and shape new realities.
I leave you with the affirmation I received from the Yew tree and Hecate.
I listen to the voices of the past to create the future.
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