Creating Radical Rituals

At Burning Man in 2017, I found myself reading tarot cards as a part of Circus Combustus. Our camp sat next to the Esplanade, the main inner road that rings the temporary city in the middle of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

All sorts of people wandered through our behind-the-scenes peek into the circus, and some of them found themselves at my table of pickled punks, tucked into an atmospheric nook next to the main stage.

With an oversized deck of Rider Waite Smith Tarot cards, I drew a single one for each client. Working through the energy of each card, I asked the person to accept the card from me and use it in their own Radical Ritual. Thus, it became the magic disappearing deck; I only met each archetype once, then gave that card away.

Photo Credit: Ju^2 Photography

Often, the two of us spoke about what their ritual might look like: Where they’d set up the card, or who they needed to call when they got home. Especially challenging cards usually wound up being left at the Man or the Temple to be burned at the end of the week.

I found myself sharing tools and stories from The Enrichment Project, using what I’ve learned from these women to help my tarot clients craft their Radical Rituals.

I read for sometimes five or six hours at a time, and it was both exhausting and exhilarating.

But I often felt troubled, handing a stranger an exceedingly challenging card like the Tower, then sending him off alone into the middle of the desert, with just a flimsy paper shield, when it was so clear that his foundations had been shattered and his assumptions overturned.

The following year found me signing up for a six-month long shamanic apprenticeship with the magnetic and magnificent Rock and Roll Shaman herself, Andye Murphy. Andye challenged me, as good shamans do, to take myself and my gifts seriously. She also gave me journeying tools, and I joyfully discovered that taking a shamanic journey added another dimension of support to my tarot clients.

I found myself in Havana, meeting a husband and wife who have been practicing shamanism for decades in between Cuba and Siberia. Their methods of working with energetic fields opened my perception, and my hands, to even more tools.

Journeying and other tools used in a Radical Ritual

And thus I began accreting additional practices into a fuller Radical Ritual Tarot offering. You don’t have to go back out into the world with just a flimsy paper shield. The full Radical Ritual reading offers the maximum support for whatever curve balls life might have thrown at you.

I get so many questions about the tarot. To me, the cards are a tool. A bridge that helps me across life’s mysteries. An escape hatch out of my own thought boxes. They help me mature my own tools for working with grief and anger and fear. They also ask me to pause and receive joy, which is sometimes more challenging.

Let me help support your own transformations.