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The tree where I give thanks after working with others, the tree that I place my hand to its trunk and take a moment, a pause, a breath to clear out the residual energy of the past hours. The tree where I bring the plants to be composted giving gratitude to the medicine they carry.

And in this moment of thanks and presence, carefully nestling the plants into the base of this simple but strong tree, I noticed something that made me grab my heart, as if the opening of it was unfolding faster than I could process.

A nest was here, in the midst of the plants and the flowers. The most beautiful nest I’ve seen as I noticed it was created out of the plants I had been leaving all year long. Pink and red rose petals were sprinkled within. The stems and leaves of mugwort, lemon balm and spearmint interwoven.

And memories flooded of gathering these plants over the months and years and communing with them, praying with them, to them, for them. Bringing them into the space where I have grown as well as my practice of co creating and sharing with others. All the times I have walked out of those doors in thanks and leaving the plants at the tree. How beautiful to witness this moment of sacred composting. Out of death a bird creates a home for new life to enter.

And that is the cycle.
The Seed. The Growth. The Life. The Death. The Rebirth.

And I recently heard from a TCM doctor how the Shen Men is calling your spirit back into your body, like a bird returning into the nest of your heart. And I’ve been pressing the points and feeling my heart, my spirit, and sharing this sweet love note with others.

When I shared this with my lover he said, “You’ve created a nest to nurture others and how beautiful is it that now a bird will take this to nurture their babies.”

And I am watery eyed and in love and in reciprocity.

May we remember from this.

And for those that have come in open to their own death and life cycle, to receive the medicine of these plants and new beginnings,

May this land softly in your heart knowing you are part of this journey of
the bird that wove a nest from the plants and the flowers.

This was not planned as a Magdalene pilgrimage, but it became one as I began to witness a pattern emerge across cities in Italy and Sicily. The voice of the suppressed will always survive. The truth can be cloaked and covered, but not destroyed. Like her gospels that were buried in the desert until 1945.

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Last month in Italy, I wandered cobblestone streets that led me to basilicas of the mother in her many forms, in tears, in grace. And I knelt with an open heart, invoking prayers for the mothers and children in my life and grateful for my body and voice to be a vessel that can support in service and in love.

And this energy carried forward and backward, the mothering within me and around me. I returned home carrying it — in the witnessing of friends and their children, in the ways I tend to myself and others, in the lineage I am still learning to receive and to give.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how inspiring it has been to witness friends parent their children, the healing that it has brought into my life to see the new old ways returning. In particular, one relationship of mother and child that I have witnessed for 17 years. A single mother who stood against the racism that was inflicted on them. She poured into her child’s dreams and artistry from a young age. She is soft and strong. She dreams with her child and encourages her, nothing is too big to envision. She clears roadblocks and opens paths. She protects and guides her child to find her way in this world. Together they create, she witnesses. And this child, now in her early 20’s radiates with confidence, a grounded knowing of herself, her heart, her artistry.

…And it softens me, a heart balm, that gently makes me weep within. I have traveled the timeline it took to come to this point. I’ve gotten to watch in real time what happens when a mother pours into a child’s dream, a consistent tending and the life that comes to fruition from it is truly remarkable.

Many of us may not receive nourishment in this way and we may grieve that — and that’s ok. Open your eyes, your heart to the ways this unfolds around you, because it is all interconnected. Where in your life is a mother and child bond being created that you get to behold? And can you let it imprint gently into your being?

Birth and Death are liminal spaces, what ends, begins again and I find myself attending to both welcoming in new life and tending to my own ancestral lineage as my grandmother’s legs have given out. The complications of alcoholism, poverty and abandonment that have ruptured this bloodline goes deep, but I am also witnessing how I get to mother my mother as she keeps vigil to hers. It’s as if the cracks are getting sealed with a compassion and love that were once hard to feel.

The umbilical cord is the first energetic bond, the thread through which we learned to receive life. Our relationship with our mother, or the one who carried us, shapes the template for nourishment, attachment and belonging. This energetic thread carries generations of grief and love, longing and rupture, stories never told, hidden truths and gifts. And as we untangle and tend the layers of our motherline we are held by and reminded of the original cord, the Great Mother, the land, the Earth herself. The one who has always nourished and sustained. The one we know by many forms and names.

In this connection to the Great Mother we remember our innate wisdom, we remember we carry this wisdom from her because we are of her. In accessing our birth given intuition and medicine we can bring forth a transmission to the mothers before us that did not know peace, this transmission extends into our own upbringings and present life, into the thread that will unfold and carry on behind us, before us and with us.

You know your lineage, even when the memories fade or unknown, you know deep in your bones, as it comes in the silence of the night, in the void of the moon, in the breeze that lands gently on your lips, the lips that carry generations of unspoken dreams and your voice that speaks them into the wind. You know in the depths of your belly and the vast valley of your heart.

MA DONNA // CHILD //
BODIES + EARTH AS ALTARS 📿

before she was carved in stone and before she was painted in caves
she was / is / always will be
the dark soil that holds all beginnings

the altar is not a place we go to find her
it is a reminder that we never left her

she is the doorway, the opening,
the dark that holds all life

we are not separate from the sacred
we are made of it 🏹🪾🌱🫀

May this guided umbilical cord meditation be an invitation to tend to the first energetic bond and not necessarily with your mother, but with the cord itself and all it carries. Allowing this to be an entry point for ancestral healing, for reestablishing how you wish to receive care, for offering compassion to a bond that was complicated, absent or painful. Surrender to what unfolds, there is no right or wrong, just openness.

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What I now call a spiritual experience, a moment of waking up, knowing truth, knowing God, a blip of consciousness after a straight two week crusade of drugs, alcohol and debauchery. It was in this blip while staring out a window that I made a decision that I now see completely altered my life. I had the choice to pick up more, to use more, to drink more - I in fact already said yes to the invitation, but in this moment, my inner distress signals went off, there was a knowing that if I went out again I would die quickly. Instead I collapsed, cried and called a friend to stay with where I would spend the weekend detoxing and praying to stay sober.

Listening to that signal and acting upon it, has brought me through the underworld and back above, emerging as the person I always knew myself to be but didn’t know how.

“Mayday” comes from the French m’aidez — help me. And on May 1st, 1886, that same call became a radical act when workers in Chicago decided their suffering was worth organizing around, worth fighting to end. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s exactly what I was doing. Organizing on my own behalf. Deciding my suffering was worth fighting for, bringing an end to the suffering, the pain, the patterns that kept me trapped in delusion.

And since then I’ve continued to tune into the signals, the parts that wave their arms and demand attention. And sometimes these demands will be as brutal as they need to be to wake up. And I’ve woken up a thousand times to only die a thousand times more.

Scorpio as the Excavator

Our inner mayday parallels to the demand of Scorpio, with a full moon illuminating what has been buried but not acknowledged. Excavation is a process of digging and examining and with one’s inner funer al, we go down, tend to what we find and compost what is ready to go. This energetic composting creates a true completion, a cycle that moves through spirals instead of circles.

Here we don’t bypass or avoid, but we also don’t hoard our stories. Here we learn to move past our story and into the true essence of our soul and our constant becoming.

Stories connect us but they can also keep us stuck if we let them in the way that we share or keep it on repeat in our minds. This is how we can practice the releasing of our stories, where the releasing doesn’t become an erasure but a way for a cycle to complete.

The story of Scorpio transcends through a timeline of being the scorpion, shifting into the eagle and rising as the phoenix. It is here we are reminded that when we make relationship to what stings us, the weight and the heaviness can slowly begin to dissolve, what we avoid only becomes louder and stings harder.

Holy composting: nothing is wasted, it becomes soil; Have a funeral for yourself!

Your hardships and heartbreaks, inner distress signals and suffering are not to be wasted. Your pain is real and so is your hope.

Many years ago I struggled with looking at photographs of myself as a young child, teen and early adult. There was a disdain or sadness that would emerge so I kept photos locked in an old leather camera box.

However, I love a deep cathartic rendezvous with all the versions I’ve ever been. The kind that pokes and prods, where you think you should look away but like a magnetic force you can’t help but look. What if that not being able to look away is the deep resonance of your soul calling you back to yourself? What if it’s your inner knowing guiding you to the excavation that will set you free?

On this particular rendezvous, as the saying goes.. I became sick and tired of being sick and tired [of these reactions, this avoidance to looking at pictures of myself and the stories that came along.]

I spent the evening and into the next day, digging out photos from my past timelines - sitting with each one in deep meditation before writing a letter. A letter of acknowledgement, of presence, of forgiveness, of listening.

And that next day I wore black, my room filled with written letters and analog photos of all the people I’ve ever been. I read each letter out loud, lighting a candle and then lit them on fire mixing paper ashes with dirt, a physical manifestation of the inner burial taking place. Not erasing, ignoring, but putting to rest these parts. Setting them free so they are no longer driving the vehicle of my body and brain.

I danced, moving what felt like aeons of stories of ruptures through me. A celebration of life, flowers planted on rubble, new life taking place of death. A proper burial of what was once suppressed now composted. The past never wasted but transmuted into the ground that now serves as the foundation that I grow upon.

And if you are familiar with the sacred spiral or have read my past posts on this symbol, the sacredness of life, of unbecoming and becoming moves through the spiral - not in the circles or loops. It is through the spiral that we become undone, stripped of what we once knew and spiral back in again with our new knowing, perspectives and experiences. Moving through layers and depth just as our secrets and stories are.

The photos I had dug out that day were then cut out and intentionally pieced together in one frame and have been on my altar since. In the same way I have adorned ancestor altars, I bring offerings and protections to this frame that carries all of me. A daily reminder and reverence to the parts that molded me but no longer control me. Instead they run free as souls I imagine do when they leave their fleshy body, no longer constrained by bones and skin.

And early this year, something stuck out to me, I had not placed a photo of the part of me that I thought I had excavated the most [in therapy, in recovery programs, in rituals]. It’s been a slow unraveling with her the last decade as this part holds the most density, confusion and shame. Like unwrapping a shroud of my own skeleton over 10 years and just within the last year, being able to hold my bones in peace. A true acceptance where fear doesn’t rattle, and her stories now have a layered neutrality to them, an equanimity. When I placed her photo in the frame and read her a letter, keeping her close to me for a couple months, something shifted one day when I sat down at my altar. The quiet yet obvious and subtle repulsion that would sound on when seeing this photo had completely shifted and what I noticed one morning was an opening in my heart, a magnet pulling me in closer to her instead of away. True completion felt in my whole body, a shedding, a release, a putting to rest with a well of love.

What was buried becomes the ground you bloom from.

The same day we enter an invitation to let something die, we are also given the opportunity to let something live. Beltane is the point between the spring equinox and summer solstice, celebrating the full return of life force, where creative and generative energy peak and is the counterpoint to Samhain and Scorpio. If they represent the descent and inner funeral, Beltane shows us what is possible after. The ritual in Beltane is a pole that has ribbons wound from top to bottom by those dancing and weaving. Traditionally the pole was cut from a living tree, like birch or Hawthorn. The Maypole represents where earth and sky meet, physical and spiritual, masculine and feminine, roots and crown, Malkuth and Kether. These inner forces we gather to weave together, our humanness and divineness, being married and our inner union complete. There is joy, there is growth, there is blooming and connectedness, the gift that awaits us when we make our way back from our descent.

There are rituals and myths that have echoed the stories of coming back from the underworld, of the light and the harvest resurfacing. We see it in the story of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld who makes her descent and becomes part of walking between two worlds of dying and living after eating the seeds of a pomegranate. Your descent is not a punishment, but becomes an initiation. You don’t come back as you left, you cannot do the underworld work and come back unchanged. You carry the seeds back up, the seeds that are generative and compost. The pomegranate reminds us with its hundreds of seeds inside one skin that all of creation is contained within one vessel.

Persephone is Scorpio energy, the one who goes down, witnesses and comes back with something the upper world doesn’t have without her. She becomes the maypole that is rising and weaving. The gifts of sobriety have not come easy, there have been distress signals and inner maydays, there have been trips to the underworld not leaving unscathed. But the shift comes in the inner knowing that I can make this descent and rise after. Avoidance dissolves as well as the fear that if I excavate I may never return to the upper world.

Sobriety is not the absence of the underworld but the capacity to move through it. These 8 years are not a finish line but proof of the spiral. In this work, in these practices, we learn and embody the intuitive flow to move between worlds, knowing when to put something to rest, when to let something live, when to make our descent and when it is time to return again.

Because we will continue to return.

Below are questions to reflect on or journal with a couple different rituals to work with. Take what you want, leave the rest, make it your own, these rituals magnify when you feel it in the depth of your body and soul.

What is your own inner Mayday? What is being signaled that needs attention and radical organizing? What is the hope on the other side when you do the excavation?

What has been split within that wants to be woven back together? If not woven back together…what wants to be laid to rest? What wants to live?

An Inner Funeral as a Completion Ritual

This is for what has already died but maybe was never given a proper burial - old stories, old identities, old wounds that genuinely ready to be laid to rest. Not bypassed. Not forced. The ones that have been on loop and are ready.

How to know when something is ready? Can you hold it without being swallowed by it? You feel grief but also underneath a readiness, a tiredness that isn’t just despair.

Name what is being buried - giving it its fully dignity.
Gather photos or items, dress for the occasion, make a funeral playlist if that feels supportive

Eulogy - Write to what you are burying the story, the wound, the part, all of it, read this to the picture you placed out.

The Burial - Once read, burn the writing, into the earth or into a bowl of water to be poured into the earth.

The Compost Prayer - This is not erasing, this is transformation - Pray to what will now grow from the soil, speak to the earth, your well ancestors, your guides. You have let something be put to proper rest, now what will you choose to give life to?

Seal with life - Maybe you have a playlist to dance to afterwards, bring in fire, or nourishing food and movement, plant a flower, the energy of life seals this ritual in.

PS Keeping a collage of the photos on my altar has been such a sweet honoring that I suggest <3


Working with Persephone + Pomegranate Ritual

Call on her as the one who knows both worlds - who was not destroyed by the descent but crowned by it.

What did I learn in the dark that I could have learned in the light? What am I carrying back up?

Bring a whole pomegranate to your altar or into nature. Meditate here, connecting to Persephone and to the High Priestess who also reveals the pomegranate in the tarot deck. Feel into the weight of spirit connecting into matter and matter into spirit. All the seeds inside one skin, meditate in the oneness.

Speak or write what you carried through the underworld and as you cut the pomegranate open acknowledge these are the seeds that bring you back to the upper world - acknowledging you are not the same as when you went down, that you are of both worlds now.

You can eat some seeds intentionally and leave the rest as an offering, to the earth, to Persephone, to the parts of you that had to descend.

To seal in the energy after the offering, speak or write what you are coming back with and moving forward with.
——

To deepen into this work one on one in person or remotely, click here

As above and so below,
Lex

Share Musings with Lex

I know it is heartbreaking you should be heartbroken that means your heart is working. If you're heart is broken and it's distressing that means you are sane, you are a functioning individual, if you are uncomfortable and you are maladjusted to a sick society it means that you are healthy. I am mourning for all of us but also I can't embrace despair even though it sometimes feels very attractive and sensible to do so…" - Mos Def/Yasiin Bey

—-

My tears may be temporarily having a difficult time flowing, but I can feel the pulse of my heart and I am mourning and I am living. And I keep reflecting on this quote about heartbreak and the fragility of life, dualities of everything and nothing. And I keep praying and talking to the water, the origin of us all, the womb, the mother, the beginning of life. Where we all began, where we were carried, held and formed. And I am surrounded by women bringing new life into this world including a blood niece making her way to us and I pray to her everyday. Nourish the land, nourish the mothers, nourish the children. I recently heard an Indigenous woman speak on how people say they don't want to bring children into 'this' world and she said but that's what these harmful systems want and what if instead of fear we birth our children and teach them the loving and traditional ways just as children teach us.

And some of us won't birth children but we nurture our friends children, our communities children, the children who don't have the loving support they deserve. And this is just as important. We can all mother. We tend to each other, we care for each other. And the days when despair feels incredibly attractive and the most logical I vow to mourn and be cracked open, to feel deeply and still choose to show up - there are hands to be held, mothers to be cherished, elders stories to be heard, mouths to be fed and bodies nourished, seeds to be planted, songs to dance to and gatherings. They are so many gatherings, gatherings to organize, to rise, to rest [together].

And in this piscean season, may we swim in our inner waters, trust our b o d y of water, the innate and divine systems that move through us and connect us to each other like the roots and rivers and streams.

And dream. Dreaming is a life force energy -
Imagination is not to be confused with fantasy.
Keep the pulse of imagination a l i v e .

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Over time, I’ve had to strip away the old connotations of what discipline means and lean instead into the felt sense of devotion.

I’ve come to understand that practices with technique are not about getting them perfect, but about the discipline of tending—to the body, the mind, the heart. It’s the act of showing up again and again, even as the experience changes. There is something sacred in repetition, and how repetition slowly creates new pathways within us.

In this audio, I’m sharing The Middle Pillar Ritual—one of the practices I committed to all of last year. It is rooted in Hermetic Qabalah, one of the paths that opened me into my spiritual practice many moons ago.

Just as blood circulates through the body, energy circulates as well. This practice supports the circulation of that energy throughout the whole system, while balancing the nervous system and awakening the inner axis—the central channel, the seat of awareness.

In the next post, we’ll return to devotion, discipline, commitment, and the vow.

For now, consider this an invitation to simply explore how these words land for you.

As you read them—what stirs in the body?
What does the mind perceive?

In devotion,
Lex

And within those three months
summer became autumn
and autumn is now making its way to winter.

The cold is calling me back into myself
seeking warmth in my breath,
practicing the presence of God
in everyone and everything.

And within those three months
I have hiked through Kyoto’s holy mountains
and my body’s memories.

I have fallen apart.
I have created and decayed.
I have yelled and sobbed,
apologized and declared.

Some days it feels like death surrounds me —
pictures of loved ones
framed throughout this corridor home,
holding hands of the dying,
conversations of suffocating grief.

The fragility of life,
of relationships.

I’ve been reflecting on death
and what it is to die,
because it doesn’t feel like he, or she, or they died.

I feel and see them
in the light of the sun
and in the shadows cast by the moon.

The body decays
and the soul grows.

I am dying. I am growing.

There is a myth
that the body’s cells replace every seven years —
as do our relationships.

A series of endings and beginnings.

If this is true,
this would be my fifth cycle
of my body being replaced.

Seven years ago I got sober.
Seven years ago I started bringing my offerings into the world.
Seven years ago I entered a life-changing relationship.

I am and I am not
the person I was seven years ago.

My cells have died and regenerated
a thousand times in between.

And right now
I stand in the in-between —
the threshold of loss and love for another time,
of letting go,
of building.

Is this the pain of ending again?
Is this what it is to be a dying star —
violently exploding
and shedding layers?

Traveling to the underworld —
a destination for the dead
and a source of new life.

I am molting and relearning how to be soft again.

The yearning to be soft
in a world that demands me to be hard.

I am not a machine.
I am made of delicate flesh
and fragile stories.

My heart
an ocean of love and service
that the body has no choice but to contain
reminding me I am human
as much as I am soul.

I am limited and I am limitless.

I am practicing what it is to be both
what it is to honor my body and bones
and say,
I can’t right now.

Since this summer’s injury,
my body has been bracing for impact.

There is a rigidness that haunts me —
the compression,
the tightness,
the loss of feeling.

Sex became numb
and the identities I created
for decades around my sexuality
were put to rest —

buried in the ground
so I may reflect
and cry at the tombstones
of my organs that create life.

I want to be soft again.

I want to know my pleasure
outside of others’ ideas,
expectations,
and dreams of me.

So many truths have been spoken;
my voice and body
can no longer contain secrets
as they once did.

I meet edges of discomfort
every time I share.

But I am nurturing my inner nature,
and nature loves courage.

My muscles and fascia
take care of me in their most primal state —
but my heart,
my nerves,
do not want to brace.

I talk to the water I drink
and whisper to this body I stretch.

Maria, Maria,
I cry,

stretch my heart a thousand times,
show me what it is to be soft and open
in a world of daggers and fears.

Because my greatest fear
is not letting go
when all the signs told me I should.

I am dying
and I am living.

There is something really beautiful happening —
a clarity,
a truth.

Rediscovering,
relearning
who I am
and who I am becoming.

Structures and patterns are falling,
but the foundation remains the same —

a foundation built on love,
on breath,
on prayer,
on practice.

I prayed the rosary this morning
and my heart began to break open again,

like morning light
finding its way
through the windows
to my skin.

Please make me soft again.

a softening meditation - practicing the presence of god
—
Let's soften together, upcoming in person/remote offerings

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As the novena closes, the Virgo New Moon at 0° amplifies this moment: fresh beginnings, grounded in focus, devotion, and the prayers you began nine days ago. A rainbow bridges heaven and earth; a new moon opens the book of what is to come.

Walking Out of the Cemetery Gates

We entered this novena through Mary’s light, carried into the truth of endings by Santa Muerte. She guided us to the gates of the cemetery, stripping us to the bones of what is eternal.

Oya who has met us at those cemetery gates and guided us in now guides us on our way out. Her winds cleared what still clings, her lightning revealed the next steps, and her rainbow arches above the threshold. She leads us back into life, renewed, remade, and crowned in our becoming.

In this way, Oya is not only the storm that transforms, but also the mother who ensures we do not linger in the realm of endings. She ushers us forward, through the gates, into a life more whole.

Over these three days, Oya has carried us through:

🌬️ The Winds of Change – clearing what lingered.
⚡ The Lightning of Clarity & Crowns of Transformation – illuminating the path.
🌈 The Rainbow of Renewal – becoming who we are called to be.

Oya reminds us that every storm holds a promise. The rainbow is both ending and beginning. With the Virgo new moon this is a potent opportunity to seal the prayers of your novena into your practice. This is our disciplined devotion and embodied choices.

Light orange and purple candle and perhaps a third for this new moon. If you feel called to weave in your own new moon rituals with our third and final day with Oya, go for it!

-Candle Intention/Prayer: “Oya, weave my becoming in full color. May this new moon seed my renewal, and may your rainbow guide me into the life I am ready to claim.”
-Listen to the meditation and be guided into your becoming, tuning into Oya’s rainbow.
-Through this novena as we began with our focused intent/prayer to bring to the Threshold Mothers, a clear and simple intention may have been birthed from this novena journey. Your invitation is to reflect on it, write it down and speak it aloud with your novena prayers since Day 1.

PS

As the spark of inspiration to begin this Novena through Substack came about, I did not know until this morning before creating this post that it would be a Virgo new moon. The placement of this new moon also being a black moon, a rare celestial moment has brought me to awe.

Going through photos where I have witnessed rainbows emerge after a storm in many different parts of the world and have visited hundred of cemeteries across cities and countries, my heart breaks wide open and my eyes begin to fill with tears. I am reminded of the countless times I have trudged through dark and stormy life altering moments, where I’ve had to confront hard truths and trust. I have had to give myself over and trust over and over and over again.

The love of the Great Mothers, in the earth, in the sea, in the wind, in the moon, in the stars, in roses and in friends and strangers and the unseen remind me I am not alone. You too hold the Great Mother, the Beloved within as that is what you are. There is no separateness. We are here and we trust and the rainbow emerges and we walk between Heaven and Earth, daily we walk between our bodies and souls. I am just incredibly grateful to walk it with you and I thank you for moving through this Novena Journey with me. It means so much to me and I hope to connect and share our experiences with it over a cup of tea or through messages and snacks if we live in different cities, the thread is the same and remains.

I love you and I thank you. I will post a short closing and integration of this space tomorrow <3

In becoming and in prayer,
Lex

Oya governs the crown of storms and change, the force that shakes us into becoming. Mary wears the crown of light and compassion, showing how to rule with mercy. Together, they form a balance.

The union of crowns from both mothers show us what it means to hold power rooted in transformation. Mary teaches rulership through love; Oya teaches rulership through courage. Both guide us into our own sovereignty.

Today we step into sovereignty after the clearing of Oya’s sacred winds. Today we tune into her lightning that illuminates our path forward and guides us into deep clarity.

This is a powerful day to call in both mothers in balance. You can light an orange candle for Oya, calling in vitality and courage to claim your becoming. A white candle for Mary can be lit to magnify the light. If you don’t have candles, setting the intention to guide you through your novena will be just as powerful.

We honor both mothers as fierce protectors, guiding souls through thresholds of change.

“Oya, Queen of Storms, Crown of Winds, set my path aflame with clarity.
Mary, Queen of Heaven, crown me with mercy and light.
May I step fully into my becoming,
clothed in courage and crowned with grace.”

In transformation and prayer,
Lex

Where Mary lifts us into light and Santa Muerte guides us through the crossing, Oya’s winds carry us into our becoming. She reminds us that we cannot cling to what must be released. Having been stripped bare by La Madrina, we now meet Oya. Her winds clear the residual energy that clings to us. Her lightning illuminates the path forward, charging us with clarity and courage. And her rainbow arcs renewal, promising that no storm is without its rebirth.

For our meditation journey we will be tuning into Oya’s symbolism. For the first day we will embrace her sacred winds. Oya awakens the winds of change. She teaches us that upheaval is not chaos without meaning, but the stirring necessary for transformation.

-Offerings to your altar in devotion and establishing connection to Oya
-Lighting your purple candle (or setting intention) "I light this purple flame for Oya’s winds. May all heaviness, fear, and stagnant energy be swept from me. May her breath clear the way so I may step into truth with lightness."
-Read invocation
-Listen to meditation
-Journal prompts and reflecting/writing on your experiencing meeting with Oya

In prayer during the storm,
Lex

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To live grace is to walk with a softened heart, to let our presence carry healing even when no words are spoken. It is the willingness to meet others with patience, to tend to ourselves with tenderness, to carry light into ordinary places. Grace lived is not abstract — it is the way we embody the sacred in the mundane.

As Mary’s Immaculate Heart burns with love encircled by thorns, we are reminded that grace is not fragile — it blooms even through sorrow and limitation. Living grace means allowing that flame to radiate outward, transforming how we speak, how we listen, how we love.
—-

We now have entered the third day of our Novena with Mary’s Gate of Light. Tomorrow we will transition to our next Threshold Mother, Santa Muerte’s Gate of Truth.

-For today I invite you to light both blue and white candles if you have them or simply make the intention to dedicating yourself to walking forward in grace.
-Continue the invocation
-Recite the Hail Mary if that feels resonate, let it move through you like a mantra until you drop into a meditative state
-Listen to the meditation and let Mary’s light guide you into living grace.
-Journal prompts and any reflections you may have on the connection you have been cultivating with Mary.
-Mother Mary Frequencies Playlist <3

In living grace and prayer,
Lex

Mercy is womb-like.
Mary’s mercy is often seen as an enveloping, mothering presence, like a spiritual womb that can hold both your shadow and your light without judgment. In this holding we are reminded of our wholeness, that there is no separation of shadow and light, it is all one.

Mercy is a cleansing light.
Mystically, mercy is not passive forgiveness, it’s an active dissolving of shame, fear, and spiritual heaviness, so that the soul can be restored to its original purity. Purity isn’t about moral perfection, to be restored to original purity is to return to clarity and alignment of the will of the divine.

Mercy moves in cycles.
Mercy with Mary is reciprocal. You extend mercy to others as you’ve received it from her, and in doing so you deepen your own capacity to receive it again.

Mercy is the “soft power” of the Queen Mother.
Her mercy isn’t weakness, it’s an unshakable sovereignty that meets even injustice or betrayal with love that cannot be diminished.

Today with your candle (white today if you lit blue yesterday) offer mercy to yourself and someone else.

-Read the invocation
-Listen to the meditation from yesterday deepening into awareness with grace being extended
-Journal prompt

In grace and prayer,
Lex

The Rose and the Mother
Mary, the Rose of Light, stands as a living bridge between the human and the divine. In mystical tradition, the rose is more than a flower — it is the unfolding of the soul, the spiral of mystery, the fragrance of grace. To walk with Mary is to enter the garden of the heart, where every thorn has its place, and every bloom is a testament to transformation.

Mary’s presence whispers to us in symbols — the blue mantle of the infinite sky, the white lily of purity, and the crimson rose of love and sacrifice. She is not bound by walls of stone or doctrine; she appears where the heart calls her, in visions, dreams, and moments of quiet knowing.

Why Now
We begin on August 15, the Feast of her Assumption — the mystery of her passage into the heavenly realm, body and soul. This is the doorway where death gives way to light. A week later, on August 22, we arrive at her Coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Between these two holy days is a span of grace — a sacred path where we walk with Mary from her crossing into her crowning. This novena moves in that current, carrying us through our own thresholds of death and renewal.

The Gate of Light
Day 1-3 of our novena we meet Mary at the Gate of Light — the threshold where fear loosens its grip and the heart remembers its radiance. As you arrive, notice where fear lives in your body. Let her presence meet you there, not to push it away, but to hold it in her embrace until it softens. Her light moves through you, not as something you must earn, but as the eternal truth of her love. Here, you are reminded: you are not alone in your pain.

On Prayer
Prayer is the language of the soul — not always words, but an opening, a leaning toward the Beloved. In Mary’s presence, prayer becomes more than just asking. It is entering into communion. It can be a spoken invocation, a silent breath, a candle lit in the dark.

Notice what stirs in you when you hear the word prayer. For some, it feels like home; for others, it carries the weight of old wounds. In this novena, you are invited to reclaim the word, reshape it, or even rename it. Let it be your way of tending the thread between you and what is sacred.
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Moving into Ritual

• Set up your space and offerings to Mary

• Light your candle with intention

• I invite you to read the invocation out loud before the guided meditation.

• After the meditation, write down your experience along with the journal prompt below.

Below is the guided meditation to meet Mary at the Gate of Light. You are invited to listen to this meditation for the first three days of our novena. Each time deepening into her light.

With love and In prayer,
Lex

The first post for Day 1 will be sent out tomorrow morning! I am feeling so nourished to do this with you! Feel free as we move through the next 9 days together to comment your prayers or reflections <3

-Have a journal to write in consistently each day
-Incense if you feel called to.
-Tonight begin to reflect on the focused prayer you would like to bring forth to each Threshold Mother in these nine days.
-Heart opening or grounding tea, cacao

In prayer,
Lex