The Shape of My Brain

I love maps, diagrams and charts, family trees, architectural drawings, diagrammed sentences, anatomical drawings. I love sigils and symbols, too. My brain "gets" the interconnectedness of things and events so much more fully when I see a picture that includes shapes with lines to indicate where the connections occur, and arrows to indicate direction. So it makes sense that when I receive a lot of intuitive information all at once, my tendency is to draw a chart of what's coming to me.

When I began doing Feri initiations, I received the shape of the ritual fully formed, as a picture. I filled two sketchbooks with drawings, a process that helped me understand at a fundamental level the energy of the ritual.

Schematics are also very helpful when I need healing. During a very bitter romantic breakup, I drew stylized caduceuses as a way to document the break as well as my recovery from it. When a Reclaiming community I had been a part of kicked me out, I drew a mandala evey day for six months as a way to process the exile. It really helped.

This summer I'm at it again, this time I'm intuiting the essential shape of a ritual for soul retrieval. Wary as I am of magic, I figure it can't hurt to sit around doing these drawings. The skills I'm learning aren't harmful either, such as learning how to use a drum to connect with the heartbeat of the earth. What's wrong with that? I've hooked up with some animal guides - never a bad thing, is it? - and have travelled widely in the imaginal realm, learning many wonderful, helpful tidbits. It's quite likely I will never put it all together, which is fine by me. I don't really want to be doing this kind of work. Conjuring tends to bind me. The spiritual path I love best is all about letting go of shaping energy in order to allow a pure and formless ray of divine reality to gently touch my heart.

But the information is arriving on a daily basis, so I'm taking it in with gratitude and appreciation, learning, and drawing the shape over and over. So far I've filled one very thick sketchbook with this shape, and have drawn very large and complicated versions on butcher paper, too.

Because people expressed interest in seeing the schematics, below are a few versions. The ritual is a dance that includes linking to the Pole Star, plunging down to the underworld (like bungee jumping - whee!!), retrieving something then getting the hell outta hell as fast as possible. (When I was a little kid, sometimes I had that feeling coming upstairs from the basement, as if something was chasing me.)

Next it's up to the upper world so that the beneficent beings up there can heal what was missing, re-ensoul the missing link, and fill the work with divine light and wisdom. The ritual ends with a gentle landing on the earth plane.

I know, I know!, kind of crazy sounding, isn't it? Oh well. Call it performance art, or a spiritual calling, or just plain nuts. Mea culpa.