The Disappearance of Rituals.
Neoliberalism and the inexorable force of production have produced a crisis of community: a narcissistic cult of authenticity and mass turning-inward are among the pathologies engendered by it.
Modern power operates not through direct coercion, but by manipulating the psyche and exploiting freedom.
This crisis of community is caused by neoliberalism’s pressure to produce and consume, which forces us into a state of “unrestrained activity” that destroys the quiet, shared rituals that once brought meaning and stability.
– Byung-Chul Han
As part of my journey tracing lost ancestral histories and stories erased and fractured by colonisation, I began exploring the ancient significance of ritual and ceremony to bind people together around key life events and transitions.
Collective grieving, coming of age ceremonies, rights of passage and honouring losses not typically spoken about, such as suicide, estrangement, loss of a job or home, miscarriage, abortion and working with the life shifts within menstruation and menopause; are all profound ways we can restore balance, wholeness and dignity to our journeys here.
It is part of my ongoing healing and practice to study and revitalise these ways of honouring the natural cycles of life that touch us all.
I often co-facilitate space for sharing circles to honour the natural seasons and cycles together. As well as red tent menstrual spaces and spaces for rage and grief to be processed and witnessed in community.
I have been working with healing and harmonising my menstrual cycle for over 10 years now, I have found profound shifts and positive results with attuning my life to my menstrual cycle phases, based on the lineage of teachings from Jane Hardwicke Collings and The Red School.
Here is a short film I made about honouring the beauty of a menstrual cycle, called ‘Life Blood,’ in collaboration with Rachel Hardwick & Peter Nichols who is the initiator of the incredible Thames Estuary Sunken Slave Ships Project:
I am interested in ways we can explore returning to ritual and ceremony.
Supporting collective healing, restoration and unity through communal acts shared around the medicine of story, poetry, song and empowering cross-cultural and multi-faith shared experience.
I am undertaking Ceremony a year long training in partnership with and generously supported by Wisdom Keepers, to learn from experienced elders connected to teaching lineages throughout this process: Fiona Shaw (initiated as a medicine woman and leader of the Sacred Fire of Itzachilatlan), Angharad Wynne (Brythonic, indigenous wisdom tradition of the British Isles, with ecology, philosophy, creativity and contemporary animism practice), Tyson Yunkaporta (Apalech clan, Australia), Helene Lindmark (Sámi), Ngataiharuru Taepa (Māori) and Kurikindi (Kichwa, Amazonia).
