Rites of Aster
Purity, Gestation + Personal Winter Lore
Seasons Greetings and Blessed Imbolc to those who feel called to celebrate such shifts.
Themes - Imbolc, February, Dawn, Brigid, Midwifery, Purification, Ancestral Trauma, Land Relationships, European Descending Kin, Embodiment, Animism, Death, Cycles, Aquarius Season, Collective Change, Innovation, Healing, Nature
In my neck of the woods, I am reflecting on Aquarius themes of community and am sweetly anticipating the holiday Imbolc. Imbolc is a traditionally Irish Pagan festival acknowledging the half way point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. I honor Imbolc as a potent gestation period - a chapter of slowing down to allow for what wants to be birthed and unfold. There is so much work and creativity emerging in the slowness.
A time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere when the deep layers of soil begin to warm, preparing seeds to start their very very early beginnings of germination. Imbolc is an invitation to consider our own re-birth, as well as the nurturance needed for our intentions to take root. Imbolc serves as a liminal and ripening space where we are invited to plan our actions and take steps to tend what is waiting to emerge. In my own body, this a time much more potent for new year rituals than I feel is offered in the practice of Jan 1st being the hallmark of resolutions and change.
I speak in more detail to themes and symbols embedded with Imbolc tradition in a revised version of my writing from last year, I encourage you to spend a little time with that post if you feel curious to learn more + see how the seeds of Imbolc have evolved for me over this last sun cycle.
Rites of Aster
One such seed thats been implanted is actively gestating is my new creative container called Rites of Aster. Long in the making, a steady pace of practice trauma tending, plants, ancestry, somatics and the like. Then boom - she was born. Rites of Aster is at my roots. Rites of Aster is a name that came to me around the solstice, a name that has depth and meaning and captures my journey in ways that still gives me goosebumps.
Aster is the enormous plant family of the many dear-to-me-plant kin (sunflowers, dandelions, yarrow, arnica, balsam root to name only a few). Aster is a family that I now know has always been present with me, but I was not yet able to embrace. Aster is the family that called me into the plant path, an Aster Family member named Arrowleaf Balsamroot was the kin who pulled me in when I felt so lost and emotionally orphaned. Yarrow was the Aster member who secured my seat at the table of herbalism and taught me how to experience unconditional belonging.
Aster is the name of the street that I called home as I developed in the womb of my mother, Aster is the place I was brought home from the hospital and the home my mother still resides.
It’s the street name of the yard where I first gardened as a child, the street name of the woods where I made potions out ‘weeds’ and other plant matter found in the woods. It’s the street name of the land where my sensitivities were set ablaze in ways only early adverse childhood trauma can spark.
Aster (deriving from the Greek word for Star, Star being the tarot card also connected with Aquarius) serves as a reminder that the heavens and earth are divinely connected. A reminder that plants and planets have their own unique relationship. Aster reminds me of the blueprints that the cosmos and the land lay out so generously for us to follow.
In a time where mentors, guides and support are needed more than ever, in a season of gestation and emergence - I am happy to share my story, practice and intentions that are held in Rites of Aster.
Topaz Healing is the branch that practices mental health therapy. Topaz is the title for my chapter of settling out west. She is here to stay until further notice.
Rites of Aster is the trunk with expansive roots, capable of holding whatever growth comes next. She gets to be the name for my herbal labor of love — balms, salves, tinctures and teas. She is the place
There is a growing, creative part of me that has so much excitement for ritual, ancestral re-connection, astrological weather and my deeply rooted practice in the liminal realm of somatics. I want to share the magical layers that light me up more confidence and pride - Rites of Aster seems to want this for me too. Rites of Aster is nudging me forward and showing me where expansion is needed.
With this formal introduction to Rites of Aster, I invite you to be with some personal Winter Lore that’s emerged and unfolded just after her birth:
Themes of Imbolc 2025
I just recently sat with in a special Imbolc practice hosted by Daniel Allison and Danica Boyce called Wolf Milk in their Cave of Dreams Series. In this shared time together, I am grateful to have gleaned more depth as it relates to Imbolc, February and the origins of how we honor this time of year. Most of what I am inspired to share comes from the story telling and teachings with Danica and Danel.
February, the month Imbolc is celebrated, is a time of the year closely mirroring dawn. February reflects the liminal space when just a sliver of light begins to emergy and the stars barely begin to fade.
While there are layers upon layers to unpack around the symbolism and meaning of this potent time of year, I want to ground us into a particular theme in this time of the year that calls on wild purification. Purity can hold a very specific meaning for many Western Christians - but for our purpose we may try to release our preconceived ideas of purity and for a more cyclical + contextual lens instead.
Mensis Februarius (month of February) - sounds familiar, right? The name February stems from from the Roman word Februa (purity) and is connected to the god of purification named Februus. This time of year is nestled just after the wild celebration of Saturnalia, and is a time in which Pagan Romans held festivals for fertility (Lupercalia - Lupus means wolf) and to honor deceased parents (Parentelia) + publicly honor the dead (Feralia) during the month of February.
Unlike doctrine of many familiar religious influence, purity in this context is represented by the whole cycle of vitality, death and the inevitability of rebirth. Purification does not only include a ‘cleanse,’ it requires that we actually engage in the messy wild process of building life + vitality first.
And in this sense - there is no value judgment on what is messy and what is clean. It’s all part of the spiral of life. I find it fascinating to sit with the ways this cyclical nature mirrors what takes place in the reproductive organs of a menstruating person. A whole cycle of life, death and rebirth exists within the body, month after month — largely in sync with the moon. It is a cycle that is not only mirrored in lunar patterns or the changing of seasons, but a powerful cycle that is feared, respected and worshipped in across the globe and across the span of time.
Imbolc provides a space to celebrate the life that remains, while also providing opportunity to grieve that or those which did not make it to see the sun return. I deeply appreciate the space Imbolc holds for both light and dark to be revered simultaneously. I appreciate how Imbolc reminds us of the cyclical movement from light to dark (time and time again) is what is truly at the heart of what it means to become pure. There is no arrival, only spirals.
I know many of us feel the duality of pain and grief that shows up next to the expectations of joy during winter holidays. Yet, our current western cultural ways and rites seem to dissuade us from collectively carving out space for our grief to be public facing, especially during the ‘merry’ holiday season. In fact, I argue that our current cultural practices encourage us to grieve silently and in private, despite there being so much need for collective mourning in the height of winter (certainly during winter 2024).
Imbolc and its beloved goddess Brigid encourages us to challenge the ways we have dissociated from death and darkness, while overly grasping for light. Brigid: goddess of midwifery, protector of hearth and livestock, artist of poetry, a saint birthed in the threshold of a doorway — abandoned by her father and left to be raised by a druid, has the ability to bless those with fertility or support those who may have no desire to give birth. Brigid reminds us of the incredible power that is held in the liminal space where life and death portals often blur. She is a blessed mentor for grief and joy, she protects us as we continue to simmer by the hearth, contemplating the fires of change that want to emerge in the days to come.
Imbolc 2025: Some Personal Winter Lore
While I am resting and reflecting, planning and preparing - purifying for the spring time ahead, I am also leaning on this new year energy to slowly process my own experience with loss and grief that shook me over the Winter Solstice season. I’ve been vocal in my writing about my own ancestral patterns, family lineage and wounds that are forever shaping the ways I show up in the world. I feel safe and secure to let some of my personal processing flow through this medium, trusting I will be held with grace by those who take the time to join me here.
My venture home to North Carolina this year was guttural. In my Imbolc writing last year, I explored themes of matrilineal patterns, wounds and healing that emerges in this time of the year prompts me to integrate (thank you to Brigid, the symbol of all things womb and nurture related). Winter Solstice excavated some ghosts within my maternal lineage that I know exist, but had not found the language and practice to understand in the ways I am able to comprehend now. A lot of what took place involves hereditary relational wounds and: abandonment, silence, shame, secrecy, escapism, scarcity and grasping.
I am intimately familiar with what to expect when I return to the land and family in North Carolina. Even with the substantial work I’ve done to be in integrity with my needs while visiting home, I was severely caught off guard at the level of un-wellness that I witnessed + endured during my recent return.
I share my experience to emphasize that even as a somatic trauma therapist, I am vulnerable to trauma triggers and I recognize there is no finish line to the work at hand. I recognize this work as remembering what it means to be whole and worthy exactly as I am, before the wounds of separation grew rampant in our bodies. Even as someone actively de-constructing the colonizer wounds of severance and separation (from place, land and lineage), I will and still do get caught off guard at how much I writhe when confronted with the evidence that colonialism is still alive in myself and in my people.
I want to take a moment to uplift and express gratitude for my dedicated practice to Embodied Ancestral Inquiry (EAI). EAI is a practice of ancestral, land and story re-connection. It is a balm that has aided me in the height of some of my biggest trauma triggers, a North Star in moments that I feel my psyche stretched to her absolute limits. Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Leigh Guiol have been wonderful teachers, mentors and co-conspirators in curiously creating a way forward for folks who have been conditioned to believe safety lies in power over, but crave to be in community with.
This approach to healing the severance wounds living in the vast majority of my white European + christian descending kin. Through the practice of EAI - I’ve been able to find and connect with language that captures the depths of where I come from and how I’ve been shaped into the person I am today. The work I’ve done in the context of EAI profoundly shaped the experience of returning to home, land and lineage this year.
The Journey into ‘Purification’
I intentionally planned to spend the second half of my time visiting my home state in solitude up in the hollers of Watauga County, where I have substantial roots through my Mast lineage. The Masts were Swiss Mennonites with ancestral roots in Guggisberg, Switzlerand. My Mast people came to Turtle Island as part of a large wave of religious refugees fleeing from the religious oppression by the state church of Switzerland during the Anabaptist movement. I am privileged to have access to some in-depth written records of my Mast family story.
My Mast family still ‘owns’ quite a bit of land, despite the fact that there are no remaining Masts living in the county at this time. On this land is a house just down the road from where my maternal grandfather (granddaddy) Mast also grew up. It is a house that once belonged to my grandaddy’s uncle. While I am unsure about the happenings and whereabouts of this great uncle, I do know that in 1977, my grandaddy’s parents renovated this house and moved in.
The Mast house is one I’ve been most familiar with in my life and it’s a home that has held only fond memories for me. After my grandaddy’s father passed, my grandaddy and his three brothers created an LLC and a trust to oversee the home and its surrounding land. This LLC is set up ideally so that the home stays in ownership of the family, allowing family members to schedule visits and enjoy the simple pleasures this landmark place graciously offers to us.
My intention was to return to the land and home that my family has built relationship with for well over 200 years for solace. This is also the first time I’ve visited the land and place since beginning my EAI studies. In preparing for my visit home, I intentionally chose to spend the last leg of my trip here because it is the closest place I know that offers a true sense of home, sense of belonging and unconditional love to me. After the turmoil of the holiday, I looked forward to take up space within the acres and acres of forest. I craved walking in the middle of the woods and releasing sounds from my body that otherwise would cause grave concern to my neighbors back in the city. I wanted to be in conversation with the land and get to know her in ways EAI has helped me cultivate. My plan for rest and repair felt like a sure bet as I was driving up the mountain, turning off at the river and pulling into the drive way and parking under the carport.
My first reaction was to gasp at the ways in which moving water can carve the land like room temperature butter. The creek I spent my childhood playing catch and release with crawdads in had moved herself. This creek used to serve as an old fashioned refrigerating system, trickling through a small shaded spring house hidden among the magnolias. In part of her negotiations with Hurricane Helene, the creek decided to hop over her bank - moving away from her house and settling in much closer to the human house. I took note of the felt sense brought on by the change in land is felt and acknowledged in my own body. My senses were awakened and I was excited to feel into the conversation emerging between and the land spirits.
The next piece of communication took place before I even had a chance to unlock the door the house and go inside. The land offered up a very recently deceased mouse for me to meet in the carport - between my vehicle and the entry way. Knowing the land to be fairly wild and aware of a cold front had just moved in, I sort of chalked the mouse’s presence to wrong time and wrong place.
Dealing with deceased beings is not my most confident nor favorite task to tend when visiting with land, but is one of the most natural parts of the greater cycle and I do my best to receive the lessons offered to me in the presence of death and dying. I carefully transplanted the fallen mouse from the concrete to the ‘garden’. A space once filled with aliveness when my great grandmother Grace was also alive to care for it. Even though the garden is a shell of itself in any season these days, it felt like an honorable place for the little mouse to return to the earth, conditioning the soil.
Relieved and a little sense of pride for providing the mouse a prettier place to pass, I enter the home and begin to settle in. I have a practical ritual of cleaning up the home when I visit, both because there are often extended gaps between human visits with the house which means there can be quite a bit few other creepy crawlies (flies, bees, stinkbugs) who make their way into the home just in time to die for winter (except for stinkbugs, they literally never die). Cleaning also feels like a respectful way to say hello, expressing my gratitude for the solace and refuge this home so kindly offers me.
I begin to sweep, starting in the kitchen - making my way to the den and then into the master bedroom that sits just through the doorway that takes guides me to the hallway and stairwell to the second floor. I am feeling the warmth of the home, taking in the little floral velvet pillows situated on a whicker chair between the hearth and the kind sized bed. I pick one up and am feel the essence of great grandma Grace, a woman I never got to meet but feel a soul connection with over our love of growing flowers. I return to my sweeping duties, but stop again as something catched my eye by the fireplace.
There on the hearth was a literal cauldron cradling the body of a small deceased bat. Let me repeat: there was a dead bat in a cauldron on the hearth of the fireplace where I would be resting my head that night.
Yes, there are certainly bats that live around here. Yes, there may be times when said bats have made their way into the home. However, the dead bat being laid to rest in a cauldron by the hearth in the bedroom is NOT an every day occurrence and my body understood this as such. Dead mammal number two. Make no mistake, I was awakened, my sensitivities lit up. I was ready to listen and the land was clearly ready to be heard.
I took this heightened sensitivity and my potent curiosity with me into the forest. Close to the farm and not too far from the home, I run into a hunting stand. I am aware that my grandfather and his brothers have some sort of arrangement with hunters. At the time, I am not aware of the details - but am quickly annoyed when I find a hunting camera set up so close to the homeplace. There is something agitating about having a camera posted up by people whom I do not know on land that is so sacred to me. But I shake it off and remind myself that it’s Christmas Day - the likelihood of these hunters paying any attention to me or this land was slim.
I made my way up hill towards a ridge. This hill has history. This hill has been the ‘mountain’ my mother and I would walk up ritually when I was a kid just to turn around and come back down again. My mom would carry a portable boom box that played “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac on CD. The lyrics filled my mind and my body remembered the sweet but slightly cringe feeling I would get as my mom forcefully tries to curate ‘heart felt’ moments. It’s a complicated thing - mothers, feelings, memories and the like.
I crossed the creek to head up a different path than we would normally take with our boombox. I moseyed through the white pine, appreciating the softness of the earth beneath me, cushioned by a sea of fallen brown needles. I arrived to the top of the hill, still cradled by the tall pines as I breathed in the glitters of golden hour and the chaotic sounds of the birds. As my eyes grazed the ground, I took note of white fur scattered around. I glanced around a bit more, quickly spotting the deer carcuses the fur clearly came from.
There they laid at the edge of the white pine forest and the knoll that holds memories of song - three unalived, and still unbutchered deer. My heart sank in a way that sincerely surprised me. I do not have particularly strong feelings about hunting. In fact, I really don’t know all that much about hunting at all. But something about what I was witnessing taking place on the land begin to make my blood boil. I felt the impulse to offer a little more reverence to this recently departed being, so I gathered some fresh pine and placed it over her face as some sort of attempt to let her know I witnessed her and that I care.
A fire sparked inside of me when I arrived to the Mast Homeplace. It grew when I found the little mouse and put them to proper rest. The spark turned into a steady flame when I met the dead bat in the cauldron at the hearth. The flame began to roar when I found the dead deer, left to rot with no reverence or reciprocity.
I don’t know how long it had been since the land felt visited by a human with the capacity and commitment to really commune with her, but I started to uncover in that moment with the deer, that the land has been thirsting for a type of connection and care from her human kin that has been scarce for far too long.
Whether this rage was mine, my ancestors or the spirit of the land - I am unsure. However, it is a rage that felt greater than me, older than me, and deeper than simple being inconvenience or annoyance with these hunters.
I spent the evening by the hearth with an altar I had assembled in response to these big feelings. I sat by the hearth — crying, feeling my own emotions and what also felt like emotions belonging to my lineage. I felt that I was not alone and I found comfort in the knowing I was in the care of this land and lineage.
The next day, I was still raw and even more enraged when I stepped outside to admire the cardinals to find a couple of F250 trucks parked just past the old barn. I immediately knew it was.
Without much time to slow down and think through my actions, my hand was scribbling an unfriendly note telling them who I am, what I would be doing and to essentially not shoot me as I visit with the land. I left my contact information and offered for them to call me.
I also made a jab at their hunting skills, highlighting the fact that they drive side by sides to the head of the holler, where they bait deer from a stand and leave the deer to rot. Not my most emotionally mature way of communicating, but it felt appropriate for what was rising and being illuminated in real time.
I left the note on one of their windshields. I had intentions to venture down the road a bit and connect with other areas I have a special connection to. I hopped in my car, blew the horn as a warning to whatever animals may be in the line of fire and took off down the road. Again - I am unsure what possessed me to feel such certainty that these hunters were a menace, but I proceeded as though I knew they were guilty anyways.
Not 30 minutes after I left, I got a call from one of a patriarchal figure in the Mast family. He had gotten a call from the ‘hunters’. Nevermind I’d left my name and number, these strange men called a man from my family to make him aware of my unneighborly note. My family member was calling to tell me the arrangement our family had with the hunters. He apologized no one had informed me that these men pay the taxes on the land which gave them unfettered access to the forests during deer season. He then instructed me that I was not allowed to walk back on the land while they are there.
When I heard the words “not allowed to walk on the land” I felt my heart sink into my stomach. There was a feeling of devastation, injustice and grief that overtook me. I began to cry — hysterically. My family member, in shock at the level of emotion at which he was hearing over the phone, began to ask why I was crying.
His concern went from sincere to inflamed. I couldn’t get my words out. I was overcome with emotion that I was now sure was not only mine. I was crying the type of tears that are followed with erratic gasps of air. While I continued to sob, trying to find my center - he made it a point to tell me my crying was unhealthy and that I should see a psychologist. Jokes on him. That comment dried my tears up just long enough for me to remind him the last thing I need from someone like him was his judgment. My comment ended the phone conversation. I began to make my way back to the house, sorrowful tears returning with me.
I arrived, parked in the carport and poured my body over the earth as rain drizzled from the sky. I laid on the ground between the home and the garden, once bright and filled with life, now a shell of herself.
It came to me clearly then. My family had veered too far away from the place we owe our very beingness to. Rushing into focus came memory that this land provided safety, sustenance and survival for my family over multiple generations. I was flooded with memories I didn’t witness in my lifetime, but know to be true. Memories of my great grandfather driving across the state the get home to call the cows in. Memories of little boys picking butter beans. Memories of my great grandmother cutting fresh flowers to make bouquets. Today, there isn’t a single Mast family member of mine who lives in that county, let alone close enough to care for the soil.
My people assimilated, abandoning the mountain for modernity and trading deep roots for a more modern definition of success.
The expression of grief I felt around this assimilation makes me think this is what inspired folks to engage with keening way back. Keening is the name for a particular way of lamenting grief, a practice once held by Gaelic women of ‘lower class’ during funeral rites and similar grief stricken ceremonies until it was deemed illegal by the Catholic Church.
I keened and I grieved and I writhed about it all.
With the support of the land, my ancestors and the sacred midwife Brigid - I felt into the wounds of my people as they traded freedom for power. I felt the hurt of the land as my family abandoned her and left her in the hands of strangers. Not just any strangers, but strangers who held her in such little reverence or respect.
I was overwhelmed by the calcified trauma (a phrase that I first heard from my teacher Marika Heinrichs) that thawed and revealed itself - the ways in which this trauma morphs into greed and shades of narcissism over time. Many of my family members have an extraordinary abundance in their access to money and wealth. Millions are held in accounts growing at exponential rates just on the interest alone. The land raised some of these kin of mine, and in return - they handed her over to unskilled hunters so they would not have to the $5k in taxes per year.
This land does not belong to me, my current family or those in my lineage who’ve been her steward since the late 1700’s. Perhaps this is where my rage is also felt. I am aware that this land has ancestral ties to the indigenous people Aniyvwiya (Cherokee) translating to the “Real People”, often shared with Ye Iswa (Catawba) translating to the River People. These indigenous peoples knew her hollers well before the Mast’s landed here. I am aware that land ownership has been upheld by violence, domination and greed.
Whether it was the spirit of the land, the echoes of my ancestors or my deep unconscious connecting these dots for me, I arrived at the confidence in my own felt sense and embodied knowing. This is the magic EAI has been so skillfully reconnecting me with - the subtle felt sense that we all have access to, but have been systematically encouraged to forget over time.
This subtle but potent felt sense has grows stronger as I sharpen my sensitivities through somatic practice, connect with cyclical rhythms as I spend more time with nature and my attunement to ancestral memory as I engage with ritual + genealogy work.
The severance wound feels severe, sharp and overpowering when I am able to access moments of surrender with it. Severance is not a feeling I wish on anyone, but a feeling that’s changed me in ways I would not want to rewind. I was writhing, being rung out, but I was also experiencing something like a release and renew - what I now refer to as purifying. Baptism by death. Clarity and closer connection on the other side.
While there isn’t a definitive ‘message’ or ‘lesson’ in this story — there is an interesting (to me) outcome that took place.
I did not keep this experience to myself. I shared it with a couple of cousins, I spoke about it with my grandfather. In a family that often sweep conflict away and only changes under perceived force, I saw a new pattern unfold. My 93 year old grandfather met me with more validation than I was expecting for someone a bit stuck in his ways. He even told me he didn’t blame me fore crying about the land and that the rule about the not being able to walk around was ‘bullshit.’ My cousins shared their concern and frustrations with the presence of the hunters.
Somewhere in this alchemical process — between my outcries of concern and me landing back in Salt Lake City — it was announced via email that the role of overseeing the Mast Home had been passed down to my younger cousin. He is a lawyer who works within the family business, a fairly level person who knows the ins and outs of property law.
This shift is a significant piece of the story for me. My grandfather and his brothers have been the overseers of the land my whole life. Rather than this responsibility being passed down to the next generation in line, it skipped over and landed in the hands of my millennial cousin. The literal expression of Pluto shifting from Capricorn’s old ways of operating to Aquarius’ innovative and community oriented intentions was jarring. I was so relieved when my cousin initiated a transparent conversation about the lease between our family and these hunters — begging the question if this is an arrangement we want to entertain at all.
For now, the hunters are continuing to ride their oversized diesel trucks for the remainder of this deer season - but it is up for debate whether that is the way we want to be in relationship with our home place in the future. The shift to transparency, curiosity, re-imagination of what this place may need and deserves feels like the type of change we are craving as a collective at this time.
Witnessing the seer of power skip a generation and land in the lap of my younger kin feels like such a poignant symbol of what Aquarius season holds - what the recent Pluto move from Capricorn to Aquarius is going to feel like. The process towards innovation and change will not be pretty. In fact, it might involve quite a bit of death and decay. But the rebirth is absolutely worth it. In my case, it means shifting from familial themes of power over to power with. From ambiguity — to transparency. From a cultural norm of conflict avoidance, to more open lines of communication.
The mouse, the bat the deer - they were the purification. They are what ushered in a new conversation, new dynamics, a shifting, innovative and more sustainable way forward. Nothing is entirely resolved, but better tools and fresh perspective to navigate the way ahead. I am grateful for the cycles of life and my trust that even when I am in the grieving portion of a particularly painful ending, that light, birth and creation is on the other side.
Thank you for witnessing me and my stories.
I am wishing you a Blessed Season filled with alchemy, hope and a sight of that faint light just at the edge of the darkness.
Want to engage with seasons and stories with me?
Our Imbolc Somatic Practice has been postponed and there is still time to learn more and register here!
