Ritual Practices

Inspired by: Fucus vesiculosus (Bladderwrack)
Collected: Matinicus Island, Maine, Summer 2023
Archive Wing: Tidal Organs & Submerged Memory
Function: Emotional clarity, full-moon breathwork, saltwater attunement
 

Description:

Seaweed is the lung and limb of the ocean.
When dried, it curls into silence—but when returned to water, it reanimates, expands, remembers.
This practice invites you into temporary relationship with saltwater as a carrier of unspoken emotion.

Salt preserves. Water transmits. This ritual draws on both to facilitate emotional release without collapse—a simple act of embodied witnessing, guided by tide logic rather than language.
 

Method:

• Fill a ceramic, clay, or glass bowl with salt water.​

• Set the bowl on a surface low enough to comfortably rest your hands in.

  This is not a bath. It’s an interface.

• Sit quietly. Submerge both hands into the bowl.

  • Keep your spine upright.

  • Breathe slowly, matching the rhythm of waves (inhale 4, hold 2, exhale 6).

  • Stay here for at least 3 minutes, or one full tide of emotion.

• Speak aloud something that has remained unspoken.

  • You may whisper. You may cry.

  • This is not performance. It is release.

  • The salt will hold it.

• When finished, pour the water outside—ideally into soil, under a tree, or into a basin of growing things.

  • If that’s not possible, pour it mindfully into a drain with intention.

• Record what your body felt—not what your mind thinks.​

  • Do not rush to “make meaning.” Just notice what changed.

​

Inspired by: Scleroderma citrinum (Common Earthball)
Collected: Moss forest, Vermont
Archive Wing: Spores, Embers & Underworld Organs
Function: Release through rupture. Letting go with gesture.

Description:

The earthball fungus appears as a sealed orb—rough-skinned, yellow-brown, sometimes mistaken for a stone.
When ruptured, it releases a dense cloud of dark spores, signaling decay in progress.
This practice mimics the earthball’s function: to release what no longer belongs inside.

Method:

• Locate a round, tactile object (seed pod, mudball, small fruit) that can be broken or crushed.

• Sit in quiet. Hold the object in your palm. Assign it a weight: a story, a thought, a memory you’ve carried too long.

• Say it aloud—once.

• Crack the object. Split it open. Let what’s inside go.

• Scatter the pieces in soil, compost, or under leaf litter.

• Walk away without turning back.

• ​

Field Notes:

This is not about purging or perfection. It’s about acknowledging decomposition as part of the life cycle. What rots can nourish. What breaks can become ground again.

Inspired by: Ganoderma applanatum (Artist’s Conk) and other spore-dropping fungi
Collected: Birch logs, New England woods
Archive Wing: Underworld Organs & Decomposition Memory
Function: Mapping invisible influence. Drawing with decay.
Description:
Some fungi drop spores in astonishing quantities, creating ghostlike dust patterns beneath them—accidental cartographies.
This practice harnesses that quality: to let decay leave a mark, and to witness where unseen life accumulates.
Method:

• Gather fine powder: charcoal, cinnamon, ash, cocoa, or crushed dried mushroom spores.

• Lay a piece of paper, cloth, or bark flat.

• Gently blow, tap, or sift the dust across the surface.

• Do not “draw”—instead, let the dust settle through breath or vibration.

• Observe the resulting pattern.

• Title it. Date it. Burn it, keep it, or offer it to the wind.
   

Field Notes:
This practice resists control. Like spores, ideas disperse.
Not all maps lead to destinations—some simply record where breath has passed.

Inspired by: field grasses, cultivated rows, weedy wilds
Collected: Open meadows, untended edges, food forests
Archive Wing: Geobotanical Memory & Sensorial Inquiry
Function: Nervous system regulation, plant communication through stillness and gaze

​

Description:

To lie down in or alongside plants is to lower yourself to their register.
It requires slowness, softness, and a relinquishing of control.
This practice attunes your nervous system to the quiet rhythms of photosynthesis, wind-response, and root attention.
It is not for taking—but for receiving, if received.

​

Method:

• Find a place where plants grow thick: between rows, beneath sunflowers, in unmown edges, on the belly of a hill.

• Before lying down, attune your body:

  • Take three long exhales.

  • Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly.

  • Notice what’s alert, what’s softening. Wait until you feel safe enough to be still.

• Lie down gently, keeping your spine long, your face open to the sky or to the stems.

• Let your gaze soften. Watch either:

  • The tops of the plants against the sky

  • The point where they emerge from soil

• Stay for at least 7 minutes. No reaching. No naming. Just stay.

• That night, before sleep, close your eyes and recall one detail: a flicker, a shadow, a pattern, a feeling.

  If something comes in your dreams, write it down without interpretation.

Field Notes:

This is not passive.
It is a shared regulation event between you and the vegetal world.
Plants notice posture. Stillness is an offering.
Sometimes the transmission is immediate; other times it arrives as delayed mycelial message.

 

"I lie down not to see but to be seen."

Inspired by: Artemisia vulgaris
Collected: Roadsides, field edges, riverbanks
Archive Wing: Sensorial Inquiry & Nocturnal Memory
Function: Dream incubation through plant alliance and olfactory priming

​

Description:

Mugwort has long been used to enter the space of dreaming with intention.
Its volatile oils—when inhaled, burned, or placed near the body—have been linked to vivid imagery, increased recall, and emotional resolution.
This practice engages mugwort as a non-ingestive dream companion, grounded in observation and reciprocity.
You are not conjuring. You are co-dreaming.

​

Method:

• Harvest or obtain dried mugwort—from your own patch, a field gathering, or a trusted source.

  • (If harvesting yourself, touch the leaves before cutting. Name your intention.)

• Prepare a small bundle, sachet, or single stem to keep near your bed.

  Optional: Gently warm the herb in your hands to release scent.

• Just before sleep, engage in one quiet observation:

  • Inhale mugwort’s scent.

  • Observe what images come immediately—without interpretation.

  • Speak a single question into the air or under your breath. Something you want to dream through.

• Place the herb near your pillow, beneath your bed, or beside your head. Do not sleep on it.

• Upon waking, write down your dreams without editing. Even fragments count.

• After three nights, compost or release the mugwort back to the soil. Thank it.

Field Notes:

Mugwort works through association, subtlety, and scent.
Do not expect narrative dreams. Expect symbols, textures, places you forgot you remembered.
This practice is about retrieving your inner archive.
It is also a training in how to be in dialogue without demanding answers.

 

“The plant opened a gate. I walked through with my eyes closed.”

Inspired by: Goethean observation, phenology journals, visual fieldwork
Collected: Anywhere a plant grows uninterrupted
Archive Wing: Sensorial Inquiry & Slow Perception
Function: Deep attention, perceptual humility, reciprocal witnessing

​

Description:

To observe a plant for one uninterrupted hour is to allow it to emerge, rather than be named.
This practice resists identification, usefulness, and extraction.
It is not drawing as documentation—it is drawing as noticing.
Time is the medium. Attention is the method. The plant is the guide.

​

Method:

• Choose a plant—wild or cultivated, known or unknown.

  • Preferably, choose one you pass often but have never truly looked at.

• Sit or stand with the plant for 60 minutes. Bring a notebook and a pencil only.

• For the first 10 minutes: do nothing. Breathe. Allow your eyes to soften.

• Begin to draw the plant—not perfectly, not symbolically.

  • Draw as you see, not as you assume.

  • Let your pencil wander with your perception.

• Write nothing. Do not name parts. Do not analyze.

• Stay until the hour has passed, even if you grow bored or restless.

• Only after you’ve left the plant:

  • Write down what you felt shift.

  • Note questions that arose—not answers.

  • If needed, research the plant after the experience.

Field Notes:

This is a practice in undoing—undoing speed, hierarchy, and the pressure to categorize.
By staying, we enter the plant’s time.
What arises may be visual, emotional, spatial, or wordless.
This is an ethical posture: observation as reverence, not ownership.

 

“The longer I looked, the less I knew. And somehow, the more I understood.”