On Becoming

It is Perseids season here in our land of dark skies, and once again – just like the first year we arrived here – we were graced with a new moon. As I watched imitation stars streak across the inky sky before an unreal scene of the milky way, a vibrant electrical storm raged across our valley. In this surreal landscape, it is possible to witness rain without feeling any, to have a clear sky over us and for the Northern valley residents a quarter mile away to be under total cloud cover, to see the torrents rushing down the sillhouettes of the mountains and remain parched.

Because of the nature of the season and how things have continued to shift and evolve, it feels like time to compound on the last update.

I had said that November had felt like a precipice, and that Spring was the tipping point that was to define what it is we are and what we do with this project of ours, and the shape of our lives more generally. Then, not too long after that update, Starlight's job essentially vanished overnight, and that in itself was a call to action and a catalyzing experience that has thus clarified several things for us. The direction we're going in is not necessarily different than our original direction, though it does feel as though certain things that had diverged or evolved differently than originally planned must be reigned in, re-evaluated, re-oriented, and re-written.

While we'd been pushing ahead building out the Ranch, and were set to make enormous strides this year, we've decided to slow down for a moment and take stock of everything we're doing. One of the things that's really been wearing on me about "marketing" or even talking about the Ranch for some time is that originally the Ranch was the place Practice occurred, the space we offered to friends and community, and cultivation was part of relating to place and land, not necessarily something that was done separately. Initially, we created separate avenues for discussing the Ranch and the ritual practice because of perhaps a misunderstanding of what folks were interested in. Initially, when I got on the Fediverse for the first time long ago and began sharing about our practice, there was one space where I discussed our practice and how that related to the land stewardship efforts. As time went on, it seemed that folks were more interested in the nitty-gritty of cultivation, rewilding, and animal rearing, and so we separated the Ranch out into its own kind of space, but I think as time wears on we're finding that this was a mistake.

Some of this will be repeated in very similar terms in the update set to be released for the Ranch, but I've found that those of you who are most embedded in both Sigillo Sacro and the Ranch are interested in both of them because there really aren't two things. What is most interesting about Rancho de la Libertad is its proximity and inherent relation to ritual re-orientation to land stewardship, its rootedness. When we separate out the Ranch and make it "farm as product" or "farm as knowledge source", we turn it into a "farm", and we've started even using those words to describe it. But it isn't really a farm. We cultivate food because cultivation is offering, we consume the bodies of other beings for our survival and capability to become more sovereign and offer calories to our families but also because sacrifice is a deep and sometimes difficult-to-talk-about part of so much of land-based religion the world over – including the sacrifice of wilderness to cultivate domesticated species, the sacrifice of animals, the ritual act of pulling plants from the ground to consume and then intentionally decomposing pieces of them, and so on. We rewild the land because the wildlife here are our kin, because they deserve homes, because we rely on them as much as they rely on us and we all rely on one another in an infinitely-directed web of existence. And all of this can be talked about in purely rational terms, couched in the language of analysis and climate justice and so on, because obviously it exists in that space as well. But that invites a different kind of interest, and a different wormhole of expectations. We don't want to ever push the land past its productive capacity (which is extremely minimal and likely will be unless some great meteorological shift happens and dramatically alters our precipitation), because while feeding our community is sacred this is the one thing that I think has a harder line even than selling tattoo work: the bodies of other beings shouldn't be for sale. We truly believe there is the capacity for consensual mutuality where we are raising animals and asking their genuine permission to consume them – but this thought is so far outside of the way that we typically consider consent and relation in our world that it's impossible to discuss with folks who see us as a farm – but we believe that selling that life inherently violates something sacred about the exchange, and turns it into the kind of exploitation that we're trying to avoid through cultivating our own food.

So some of the pushes slated for the Ranch this year aren't going to happen this year, because we need time to set up other avenues of cultivating community relationships, because we need to re-evaluate what the Ranch is, and we need to re-draw some lines in the sand. It's also possible that I'll re-center the Ranch as part of the ritual practice rather than its own thing, but as of right now that won't manifest in any way that's relevant to you, I'll probably still keep things like educational material about gardening in that sandbox of a website for my own conceptual organization, but the language I use there might change, and I may be releasing less from the Ranch for a while (and I'll address how this affects paid subscribers in the update I release there, in case you are one and you're reading this wondering how this all affects what you've been promised).

That said, we've begun to understand how vital Sigillo Sacro as a practice and a conceptual space is to finding the people who are genuinely interested in Rancho de la Libertad as a space-for-coven rather than as a farm, a homestead, or a permaculture site. Initially, after all, this was the only way anyone found us who wasn't local and finding us out in the wild, and most of you who've stuck around initially found this space – even before it bore this name, back when it was just my own contemplative online void – and not the Ranch. In-person it's kind of like this, too. We meet more folks in person when we initially talk about having a farm who are interested in like, sitting around and petting cute baby pigs or using this space for their own purposes or buying something from us than folks who are really invested, or who don't flee the second we start talking about the way that we actually relate to the project. This is a part of choosing to open up the ritual practice more broadly. Sigillo Sacro is an initiatory space: it teaches through writing, in-person events, and so on, and it also brings folks into the actual work of re-orienting themselves to relationships with other beings, which then supports the understanding of the space as existing to help support all of that. I've been doing this with Sigillo Sacro for a long time, it's just that I think we drew the lines in the sand all wrong and attempted to garner more financial support from the Ranch to keep the artistic and ritual practice pure, which was backwards.

So, as some of you already know, I've started offering services that I've been offering for folks in our immediate community for years for a small fee in an effort to both enable a sense of mutual exchange in the way that most folks can understand exchange, push the practice further than its geographic boundaries, bring in some financial support even if it's minor, and invite folks in who otherwise wouldn't have been invited in if I were doing this work for free (because it does require quite a bit of psychic/psychological effort and requires something in return). This isn't random or desperate, but calculated. It's the softer line, one that provides genuine value without coercion, brings us some support, and helps us invite and educate folks who want that into the circle of community.

This also includes tattoo services, and I've taken the steps to "go legitimate" in the eyes of our society and the industry as a whole, and am testing the waters of whether or not my tattoo practice can truly remain pure in commerce. Part of this is beginning to take clients one day a week at the local queer misfit shop called the Unfurl Collective, and accepting an offer to guest at a new shop in Los Angeles. I'm certain that there are going to be adjustments that have to be made, and I anticipate that it will take some doing to find the right space to work where I can offer the same kind of transformative, in-depth and intimate experiences I've been able to offer here at my own studio, but I truly hope that it will also initiate more folks into the idea of genuine spirituality that pushes us towards right-relation and not just more self-serving, self-help, you-as-a-product nonsense.

On all of this, I'm a little nervous. It feels like the right thing, and all of the signs have been pointing towards this being the right thing. However, I've oscillated between some of these choices for a very long time and have really identified strongly with "I tattoo for the good of it because this is sacred" and "dream weaving is for community members, not psychic booths at festivals", but genuinely I think that this is the right place to land, at least for now. I'm curious to know, especially from those of you who've been on this trajectory with me for years now, what you think and how this makes you feel. It won't necessarily change things concretely, but I do genuinely value your input and advice.

Until next time ~