Hi Friend,

I recently saw a title for something online titled, "writing as ritual."

The phrase made me pause.

I’ve always seen myself as a writer. And I love rituals. I incorporate both into my Origin Stories course.

Speaking of which…we just started the first cohort this week and it’s off to a really great start! What a cool group of story-crafters! I am seeing if we have enough interest for another cohort starting the first week of May at 11am est - early enough that our European friends can join us! Let me know if you are interested!

So … maybe my pause is because I know too much. About writing. And about rituals.

Yes, writing can be a ritual. And rituals ….are not always positive. Neither is writing.

As we learn in my ReMembering Course, rituals can and have been used to separate people from places as much as to re-join them together. They can form and re-form identities in horrific ways, as well as in ways that are really beautiful.

As for writing....

Growing up, writing was a practice I held onto to help me orient myself in the world. As a teenager, I adored that classic book on writing, "The Artists Way". I devoted myself to my writing practice. I took writing classes every summer. Every morning - three pages, handwritten. Journaling at night. Hours working on my books in between school work (I had a few hundred pages of content by the time I graduated highschool). At the time, I assumed I would become a fantasy writer. I wanted to world-build.

(These days, in the work of eco-spirituality x decolonization x navigating towards different futures, I don't think I'm all that far away from world building ...and it sometimes feels quite fantastical!)

So I am well familiar with writing-as-ritual.

Writing can be a ritual of practice. Every day. Same time, same place. Show up to the page.

It can be a ritual of magic. What might emerge on that page? People, characters, places, futures, pasts… other worlds. In front of the blank page, any world feels possible. It’s up to me … but also not up to me. I could channel something - my higher self, something from the collective subconscious... that maybe no one else could. And it can be hard. I like both: the thrill and the difficulty of writing.

Sartre once said that literature was the instrument of engaged moral action.

Author and critic Georges Bataille said, 'literature is not innocent. It is guilty and should admit itself so....' only by acknowledging its complicity in the knowledge of Evil can literature communicate fully.

In other words, the tool of writing has been used to create and perpetuate harm. So much as any tool can be complicit.

There is, of course, the long history of how the transition from oral storytelling cultures to written forms of storytelling, analysis, etc has caused great damage to languages, cultures, and diverse ways of knowing and being.

That is reason enough for me to do as I have done, and ensure that when I'm talking about the Origin Stories course — a course where we actively work with the magic of myth and meaning—I'm not only emphasizing writing. Even if everyone who shows up wants to write, that's great. But we are clear that there are many forms of storytelling. And I actively include different kinds of embodiment and ancestral engagements, which in some ways increases the potency of the course as a space where the magic of writing as ritual can indeed transpire.

And then there is the other reason that I am skeptical of how much I/we want to overly uplift 'writing as ritual'.

I've also seen, many times, how journaling can lead people down really dangerous thought patterns. writing can serve not just to "get stuff out" of the system but to perpetuate negative-self-talk, exacerbating anxiety, perpetuated inaction, depression, self-hatred, and other forms of inner black holes.

I’ve had times when my own mental health has worsened through writing…. And times when it has really helped me.

And, hopefully, obviously, writing as ritual can and often does simply replicate larger stories the dominant culture tells that are really harmful. Tapping into the collective subconscious doesn’t necessarily lead to greater harmony.

Writing as ritual is an expression… and a tool. As is the case with many tools, (and many rituals) it can be dangerous. To the writer, as well as to others (the reader, the writers family, etc)

Is that not the nature of tools?

To write well, by which I also mean keeping myself sane as a writer, I have learned certain 'tricks' and patterns with my writing, so that I don't get sucked into some of the (many) black holes that can exist.

For now, I’ll just say - pay attention to your rituals: be they writing or others. And to the how of crafting stories. Don't be afraid to explore the multiple forms of impact, the multiple forms of needs and yearnings and desires that exist, with pens and keyboards and speaking and world-crafting.

Blessings in your remembering and re-enchanting!