Now is the time
for golden dreams,
for your imagination
to dance with reality
and weave ideas into form.
Now is the time
to root deep,
to reach out,
to rise up.
Happy Summer and welcome to this week’s Rituals of Returning newsletter with more allies for summer flourishing! We also have some beautiful color experiment goddesses ready for you in the shop. AND, we’re having a special summer sale! Almost 200 listings are 20% off, including the Daily Practice Deck!
This week's magic:
13 minute mini ritual video: Allow, let go, create
tiny video slideshow from my own family Summer Solstice ritual
April/May prayerbook flip-through video.
Replay from our 2000 Days of Goddess live celebration including free printable booklets!
Back to the Roots collection with so many free resources from this month!
My poem Skunkwatching was published in Thimble Literary Magazine this month.
bonus baby skunk video that we delighted in seeing just this past weekend!
And, I made the shortlist in the Tadpole Press 100 Word Writing Contest with my tiny story: Warmblooded.
New essay on Feminism and Religion: Earthprayer
Back to the Roots!
Back to the Roots is now drawing to a close after celebrating our 2000th day of #30DaysofGoddess!
Make sure to check out the collection where all of the free posts are available.
And, grab your welcome kit with beautiful journals and customizable covers.
Life’s Bits and Pieces:
A chant for summer:
Roots below and sun above,
I’m held in wisdom,
held in love.
Waters flow
and clear light shines,
summer’s magic
is now mine.
reading:
(to self) Red Rising—a little violent and disturbing and disheartening (a blend of Hunger Games meets Ender’s Game), this book is also immediately engaging and swoops you right up into this sci-fi world of far-future colonists of Mars and how they have stratified society into a brutal color-caste system. Naturally, we must rely on a plucky, gifted, unwillingly heroic 16 year old to save the day (world).
(to kids) Into Battle, book five in the Seventh Tower series—almost finished with this one (also color-caste based society with Red at the bottom, interestingly!). We’re starting to get a little annoyed by some elements of this series, I have to admit. I don’t want to spoil it, but sometimes the plucky, unwillingly heroic, teenagers get a little too “promoted” through the ranks than makes any logical sense.
(still listening to with Tanner): How to Trap a Tiger—we’ve got about 20 minutes left in this one. Rooted in Korean folklore, but set in modern times.
Note: I am on Fable if you want to follow along with what I read there!
Resource Reminders:
I’ve started to add our monthly activation replay videos for this year’s #30DaysofGoddess practice to the homepage! Scroll past the “2026 Practice Updates” section to access the videos. Note: Live monthly activations are available to any member of the Goddess Magic Mystery School Patreon community free and paid both!
FREE class:
Allow, Let Go, Create: More Allies for Summer
Happy Summer!
I return to the roots.
I return to now,
to the pulse beneath
all the noise,
to the ripeness of this moment.
I let presence
transport me
into the sacred.
In this week’s video, I share our supplemental herbal ally, Linden, and our animal ally, House Mouse, inviting us to return to beginner’s mind, embrace imperfection, and create our lives with quiet, persistent joy.
Reminder: I do create monthly handbooks for members of our Goddess Magic Mystery School community and June’s handbook is available here.
Expanded post available here.
May we have patience with our infinite dreams
and our beautifully human limitations.
May we make space for deep listening
to our heart’s longings
and trust in inner wisdom.
May we remember that we are woven
into a magnificent web of magic,
supported, connected, and enough.
May we be soft but persistent
as we continue to create lives
we love to live.
Questions to consider:
What attracted you to a goddess faith, or an earth-based path, or to everyday magic and sacred living?
Can you allow space for mystery in your days? Side note: this reminds me of a quote I read after making this video: “God is the name of the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it shape.” (Barry Taylor)
How might you tackle the challenges in your life by going in small?
How might we tackle some ordinary situations in our lives that are heaping up and asking for attention—one book, one box, one basket, one item at a time?
Can you allow yourself to go back to the roots?
Affirmations
I am flexible as I build my future.
I protect my resources by surrounding them with what I love.
I take on my tasks with a playful air.
I take care of what I love.
I open my hands and let go.
I allow my life to be as it is.
I allow ease.
I allow joy.
I allow discovery.
I allow transformation.
I allow myself to go back to the roots.
I create my life with joy.
I accept this moment.
Flowering Where We Are
June holds the full creative power of the year—everything lush, buzzing, ripening, in bloom.
And still…sometimes we don’t feel ready for all the brightness and busyness.
In our Simple and Sacred circle this month, we honored that it’s okay if this isn’t your year to be in full blossom, maybe you’re strengthening roots instead of showing flowers.
You are no less magical for blooming slowly.
Does it feel like this is a root-growing summer or a flower-showing summer for you?
"the faithfulness I can imagine would be a weed
flowering in tar, a blue energy piercing
the massed atoms of a bedrock disbelief"
—Adrienne Rich
In our Community Practice last week, I shared an essay by Daniela Molnar called “Flowering in Tar" (Oregon Humanities). She invites us into our senses for a "geohaptic" connection. Imagine that your six senses—touch, sight, sound, taste, smell, and intuition—are six thick roots extending from your body down, down, down to the center of the planet, where they anchor into what Annie Dillard once called Holy the Firm.
Holy the Firm can be whatever you name as ultimate:
• Goddess/God
• gravity or time
• molten metal or mystery
• the sacred, the absolute, the hum at the center of things
From that core, these roots rise back through the layers of the earth—rock and soil, water and air—reaching into your veins, your skin, your bones, your mind, and heart.
"You are socketed into the living world through your senses."
This deep rooting is a gift.
And, a quote to remember and draw strength from:
“When the world feels hard, remember this: We live on a planet where trees feed their dying elders through underground rivers of root and fungus. Where whales carry songs older than memory across entire oceans and octopuses dream in shifting colour. Where every breath we take is given by trees and the algae drifting through the sea. Where plants rise around us as medicine, monarch butterflies travel thousands of miles on wings softer than paper, and tiny birds navigate by sensing the earth itself. Where starlight travels for millions of years before touching the earth, and tiny seeds break open stone in their longing for light.”
-- Brigit Anna McNeil
Note: this section was part of my Back to the Roots series free on Patreon.
A summer blessing…
And so,
we crossed the threshold
into summer,
the vision we breathed into being
on the winter solstice
has now taken form.
May we have the courage needed
to stand in this liminal space,
one foot in creative darkness,
one foot in bright possibility.
Let us look into our own cupped hands,
seeing the seed dream
we have nourished,
that we’ve planted and protected
is now ready to bloom and thrive.
Let us clear space around it.
Let us weed away
what is not needed.
Let us step back
and invite the heat and passion
of summer’s light
to invigorate and strengthen
that which we have so patiently tended.
It is now when the visions
we have nurtured
become real.
Sending love to all of you.
Keep living your magic,
Molly, Mark, + Family
