What do you need to fully replenish? (Here's a clue: 🔔❤️🪑👤)

A poetry share, some prompts for you and notes on taking your time to transition and rest. | Last day for registration! Oracle Lab Ritual #1 starts this Sunday

Today is the last day to register for this month’s Ritual Lab — and we go live this Sunday the 12th to kick off our diy oracle decks! I am vibrating with excitement to hang out with this circle of brilliant humans!!!

If you were able to step off the face of the moon and fall toward the earth, it would take 4.83 days of constant falling before you hit the ground…

…imagine that…

This December, I was on the moon. Now, I can see the blue jewel of earth getting larger in my field of vision, but I haven’t landed yet.

Things are still coming together. I started and stopped and started and stopped my year-end review, eventually abandoning it for now because…it just wasn’t the right time yet. So much high-velocity change has happened in such a short period of time, my tender humanness is asking me not to force things into a tidy box and leap in to the next thing just yet. I must obey gravity.

One of the best ways I know to actually replenish my energy is to set major projects aside and let myself creatively wander and play, so I cannot wait to settle in to the next three weeks with the Ritual Lab Community making new oracle cards and just abundantly playing with symbols and poetry.

I’ve been working with my oracle deck a lot in preparation for RitLab and using it for guidance and grounding to transition into 2025. In December Neon & I decided to work with the deck together to ask, “What do we need to fully replenish?” — then, we took turns pulling 4 cards out of the deck to inspire our end-of-year poetry:

Working in the pantoum format, we decided that each card in our oracle spread would inform a line of poetry. So, because this is a deliciously circular, recursive poetic form, you can actually look at my poem like this¹:

Here’s my poem:

“What do I need to fully replenish?”

listen for the farthest thing you can hear ringing in the stillness of night
let what courses through you surround you
wait for this
then walk directly into this light

let what courses through you surround you
let it hold you
then walk directly into this light
announcing yourself to the stars

let it hold you
feel the buoyancy of your heart
announcing yourself to the stars
with the fealty of a shadow

feel the buoyancy of your heart
wait for this
with the fealty of a shadow
listen for the farthest thing you can hear ringing in the stillness of night


-Lisette Murphy, December 8th, 2024

And here’s the poem Neon wrote simultaneously…

[*Can you see each card in your mind’s eye while you read his poem?]

Bells herald change
It's time to pour out your heart
Unburden yourself
Let your shadow grow long with stillness

It's time to pour out your heart 
Trade fullness for emptiness 
Let your shadow grow long with stillness
Breathing cold, sharp air

Trade fullness for emptiness
Make room for what must be new
Breathing cold, sharp air 
Listen softly, with joy

Make room for what must be new
Unburden yourself
Listen softly, with joy 
Bells herald change

-Neon McGraw, December 8th, 2024

A prompt for you…

Free Image Word Mystery readers, you won’t be hearing much from me for the rest of the month while I focus on this oracular deep-dive with Ritual Lab friends. 🫶

So I wanted to give you some fun things to play with in my absence:

1. What do YOU need to fully replenish? Using the same 4 oracle cards Neon & I worked with, write your own pantoum and please, please, please share it in the comments! I love seeing your work.

2. What question would you most like to ask the Great Mystery right now? Write that down. Then, pull 4 new cards using your own oracle deck/tarot/animal cards/the last 4 emojis sent to you in your text messages….or some other oracular source. Following the pantoum format above, speak for the Great Mystery and write yourself an answer!

Take good care of yourselves and each other and I’ll check in with you soon, friends. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

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Matt Madden

’s work and diving into the world of Ouilipo / Ouibapo!