Uncover the truth and renew life by picking the flesh from the bones

“A wailing is about devouring the flesh from the bones, laying bare the bones of the matter, getting to the reality underneath all the messiness. A wailing is about getting to our own bones, what is real and solid for each of us underneath.” (Vulture Spirit)

 

The wailing circle at Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary was born of my mom’s death.

 

In May of 2022, at 76 years old, my mom had a stroke that she couldn’t recover from, but it was a week before she took her last breath. She was a devout Catholic and had attended the same church in Florida since 1988. Father Mike came to her bedside nearly every day during that week.

 

The same Father Mike who, nearly 30 years before, received my letter which was supposed to express why I wanted to be Confirmed into the faith, but which actually stated why I did not. He spoke to my mom on my behalf, and I never became a Confirmed Catholic.

 

The same Father Mike whose homily, upon the beginning of the first Gulf War, went something like this: this terrible war would not be happening if we were all good Catholics. I was barely 12 but I knew that the war was happening, at least in part, because such sentiments existed.

 

Father Mike presided over my mom’s memorial mass. I concede that the mass was precisely what her Spirit needed. But it was so not what I needed.

 

What I needed was a wailing, a gathering of the community who loved her, around a fire, to process our grief together through movement and sound.

 

Shortly after I got home to NY from the memorial, I was in the car with my two sons and their dad, driving to one of their soccer games. I was familiarizing myself with a new Tarot deck, reading the booklet which included a short paragraph about the 8 million or so (a contested number) women and other targeted groups murdered in the witch hunts perpetrated by the patriarchy and its one father god religions.

 

This was not new information to me, and yet in that moment, freshly in the wake of my mom’s death, I wanted and needed so badly to wail for the loss of women, of healers, of Earth and goddess worshippers; to wail for what has become of our planet because of that loss.

 

But I didn’t let myself. I was in a car with three men, and it didn’t feel safe or right to allow my emotions to flow in that moment.

 

It was in that moment of bottling up my emotions (for the umpteenth time in my life) that a vision crystallized in my mind of many people freely moving their bodies and making wild and high-pitched and guttural sounds together around a fire, and I promised myself to make the wailing circle a reality.

 

I know in my bones that my long-ago ancestors processed grief, death, trauma, loss, fear and other hard and heavy emotions in this way. There is so much for us to mourn in the world right now: war, injustice, the continued and steady destruction of life on this planet, in addition to our personal devastations. Yet there is so little structure and support for cathartic, transformative mourning.

 

Vulture spirit showed up strongly as the guardian spirit of the wailing circle once it began to take form in my mind, and shortly thereafter I came upon a freshly dead, but unmarred vulture on the roadside.

 

In the shamanic tradition, which is my Spiritual home, there is powerful medicine and magic in such gifts of animal parts from the universe. So, I collected the body and saved the wings, tail, feet and head knowing these would be important. I was shown that they would hold energy in the sacred container we put around the wailing circle.

 

Vulture Medicine is death, transformation, and rebirth. For the healing of despair, grief, trauma, fear, and more, it is necessary to go deep within, to go underground, to go to where our emotions can be excavated, felt, expressed, honored, and then composted and transformed into new life. It is important to do this together, in a circle of humans willing to be raw and real.

 

Symbolic death, transformation, and rebirth brings to us knowledge of ourselves. In a wailing circle we reclaim that knowledge. We reclaim lost ways of being. We reclaim what has been stolen from us in the destruction of the Earth based spiritualities that all our long-ago ancestors lived. We reach into the depths of ourselves, to bring up and out what is hidden, to heal, to grow, to transform.

 

Last Saturday, Feb. 8th, was the 6th iteration of what the Wailing Circle is becoming at Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary. It was purposefully held in the wake of the most recent (personally, nationally, and globally devastating) inauguration.

 

I begin wailing circles by saying, “Vulture medicine is about gathering in a circle to uncover the truth and renew Life by picking the flesh from the bones. That is what we are doing here, together, today…”

 

Blessings and Courage,

 

Betti

 

P.S. Shamanic Healing can help you process and heal from grief, despair, trauma and more. Book a call with me to explore the possibilities: https://calendly.com/sacral-transformations/shamanic-consult

 

Betti Rooted Lionheart is passionate about working with teens, queer people, and anyone who feels despair for the Earth and humanity. She is a shamanic healer, a Minister of the Church of Earth Healing, a spiritual empowerment activist, a fire priestess, a Writer, a facilitator of the Work That Reconnects, the mother of two Sons, and the founder of Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary in Trumansburg, NY.

 

Betti offers powerfully transformative one-to-one shamanic healing sessions. She also teaches shamanic journeying so that you are empowered to heal and transform yourself, remember your power and purpose, and take aligned action in service of the Earth and all life. Betti can help you reclaim the divine feminine through developing your own Earth and goddess-centered shamanic spiritual practices.

 

https://sacraltransformations.com/ [email protected]

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