Sacred Rage
In response to the anger and grief I’ve been feeling about the current state of affairs, I knew I needed a healthy outlet.
Nature is my go-to grounding practice. A walk, while listening to the cacophony of birds and animals scavenging among the dried foliage of winter, brings me immediate comfort. On this particular day, as I was taking a moment of reprieve, I noticed a small pile of dried cedar from the holidays in front of me. Nothing burns faster than dried cedar. An annual burning of my dried-out Christmas tree verifies that knowledge, and intuitively, I knew that FIRE would be my mechanism for releasing the feelings gnawing inside of me.
I created a small fire with the cedar trimmings and lit the match. The sound of wild crackling and the smell of cedar smoke gave me a rush. I stood and watched as different parts, stems and cedar tendrils began to ignite. The fire quickly burned and ate away at any tangible evidence that anything was initially there. I visualized my own rage becoming a part of the cedar wood itself. As it burned, I stood in the cedar smoke and smudged my whole body and aura, releasing negative and disempowered energy from my body. At one point, I became entranced by the flames, comparable to the Buddhist Trataka practice of staring into a candle flame. It calmed my mind and gave me focus. One half of the fire was now ash with a distinct line of burning orange in the middle, and the other side was still green and waiting to be consumed by the flames. As I zoomed out, the fire looked like a yin yang symbol to me, a balance of polarity, the light and the dark, the dead and the alive. Sometimes we notice beauty because we understand the pain that came before it. In this moment I felt “sacred rage.” I was somehow comforted by finding a sacred way to work with nature and transmute my emotions. I found a positive and sacred way to feel ugly feelings without the self-destruction. While the fire was dwindling, I didn’t quite feel fully purged, so I hauled giant, dried okra stalks, leaves and pods from last year’s garden to the pile. It felt symbolic. I sensed that okra was likely used in rituals long ago, and I vowed to honor that wisdom and heal myself in the process.
When I take moments like these to listen to my body and process my life, sometimes I will find myself engaging in brief, intuitive creative rituals. As I reflect upon them later, they’re never short of fascinating symbology. When I saw the cedar branches as I went outside to sit, I knew I should burn them. I knew it would be healing. Cedar symbolizes strength, endurance, and longevity. Deeply rooted in spiritual traditions, it signifies purification, protection, and a connection to the divine. Okra has been used especially in West African traditions to cleanse negative energy and connect to ancestors.
It never ceases to amaze me how Mother Earth provides for us. Every healing tool I needed was right there and I trusted its call and wisdom.
Go within, look around, get creative, ritualize a walk in nature and practice gratitude for ancient wisdom. Find ways to address your rage and uncertainty and then let it burn.