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Divination by Art:
A Ritual of Reclaiming Creativity
Excerpted from The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman ©2018 by Danielle Dulsky. Published with permission from NewWorldLibrary.com | January 2, 2019
Materials: Art supplies (see suggestions below)
Sift through your earliest memories of creation, Priestess. Recall what it was to know art making as synonymous with joyful play. Remember the sense of surrender that came from the stirring of sandy mud in a bucket or from whole-arm scribbling. Return to the youthful innocence that could source creation in the absence of control, and see beauty in the crumbling leaves and animal skulls. Descend into childhood, and know how it felt to embody the artist in the absence of our so-mature, so-limiting obstacles to creative freedom. Distinguish between a desire to create and a desire to create something perfect, glamorous, or salable, and work from a feeling state of robust fearlessness.
Find a forgiving medium that will permit many layers and a large perhaps nontraditional canvas for your work. You may work with pastels, ash, charcoal, chalk, or mud on newsprint, a flat stone, a driveway, or an old tabletop. The possibilities are endless, my love, so think outside any lines that may have been drawn for you so long ago.
Fix your eyes on your blank canvas now and honor the sense of trepidation in your sacrum and heart. Give a nod to the knowledge that you are on the precipice of manifestation, that while the potential for creation is limitless, you are about to significantly shrink down what is now infinite. Sit with the sheer power of this knowing, for it is the very spark of the Goddess.
When you feel ready, set an intention that you divine clarity on a particular area of your life. It might be relationships, sacred work, health, spiritual connection, or any other life area that seems to be on the surface at the moment. To source clarity is the only intention. There can be no other expectations for how you will feel while creating or how the finished piece will look. Permit the creatrix power to well up from your roots; then begin, trusting in your agency with an endless and ancient feminine faith that the outcome will be perfect no matter whether it be beauteously symmetrical or chaotically abstract. Move with your whole body, for the Maiden artist is never physically bound while her hands flit about like entities separate from the rest of her body. She feels the same Shakti pulse in her toes as she does in her fingertips, and she intuits every stroke. She is the medium, the canvas, and all things vibrating above and below.
Whatever your format, try to fill the space as fully as possible, leaving no area blank, and then close your eyes. Return to your intention to be gifted with clarity, then inhale deeply. As you exhale, you are releasing your hold over this piece you have handcrafted. Look at the art with a so-soft focus, letting your vision go a bit blurry. What do you see? What shapes and colors are there for you, and what do they mean? Let your art be a sense maker and an oracle.
What themes arise, and what would you title this work? Now, if that title was an answer to a specific question regarding the life area on which you needed clarity, what magickal conclusions could you draw? You are an artist-mystic, and this work is your crystal ball. And so it is.
Next: Thirteen Days of Spiraling Through: A Strategic Ritual Sadhana
More with Danielle Dulsky
Danielle Dulsky is the author of The Holy Wild and Woman Most Wild. She is an artist, yoga teacher, energy worker, and founder of Living Mandala Yoga teacher training programs. ... @WolfWomanWitch, @NewWorldLibrary
The Holy Wild invites you to create your own spiritual path based on often-suppressed ancient principles and contemporary practices. Using the elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) rather than traditional patriarchal hierarchies, this “holy book” is designed to connect each individual to their universal — but often denied — powers. Wild woman Danielle Dulsky takes you deep as she explores and embraces sacred feminine archetypes such as the Mother Goddess, the Crone, and the Maiden. We hope you will enjoy these excerpts from the book.