Vision Quest Fire Ritual
Preparing for my fire ritual on the last night of my vision quest in Capital Reef National Park three years ago, I gathered bones, stones, and wood. They had been weathered and bleached white by desert wind and sun. After four days of fasting alone in the desert, I too smelled of fire, sweat, and sage. With a single narrow rib bone, I drew the images of my life story in the sands of that dry river bed called Council Wash. I etched the significant passages of my life story all the way up to this night. As the desert stars began to emerge I set my ceremonial circle with the objects I had gathered. I placed an old weathered log on the opposite side of the fire from where I sat, an invitation to those that would come during this longest night of tending fire. To the desert stars, I spoke allowed my invocation to the sacred and my intent to release my old stories.
A completed threshold crossing requires a deep surrender and reaching out to something sacred, something outside of our own limited capacity to dream. Some might call it God, Goddess, Creator, Grace, or Great Mystery. We cry for a new vision for the life that is to come. However, there are certain gatekeepers we must encounter before our crossing is complete otherwise we are unable to return to the village with a new vision.
As a global village, we have been cast into the alchemical fires of initiation and cultural regeneration. Like the initiatory phases of a rite of passage, we have transitioned from Severance to Threshold and eventually to the Return. However, we will not simply return to the old story. The evolutionary arc of our global consciousness has been pulled forward by mysterious forces of nature unconcerned with the material comforts of a life we have outgrown. We called it a pandemic and like the initiatory journeys of those from the old stories, there was no guarantee of survival once we began crossing the threshold. We grieve for the many that did not and will not make it. We pray that their lives were not lost in vain and will assist us in ushering in a new story for future generations human and nonhuman.
During the long nights of the threshold, these gatekeepers will test us. Our news channels will call them clashes between protesters and police. All the parts of our collective psyche that we have held in shadow and not be willing to look at will rise up from within our stagnated society for review. Repressed traumas, racism, social and economic injustices, and the unresolved passages from our collective global consciousness have come to sit at our fire. We must look at them and hear what they have to say. It is said that the first revolution is the one that happens in your mind. The second revolution occurs in the streets of our cities and towns. We are being asked to reconcile that which is now rising from the ground and bones of our ancestors. We find ourselves standing somewhere between a painful memory and an impassioned dream. How shall we respond?
As the early morning light crested above the horizon over Council Wash my fire had burned down to ashes. I took a small juniper branch and erased my old story that I had etched into the sand the night before. I stepped into ashes of my old life rubbing a bit of the ash on my body and turned east facing the rising sun. While we are not sure how this new story will unfold or even what it will look like down the road we stepped forward into the light and into the new story that stands just a few paces in front of us.
“It’s strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, It is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert Is a pilgrimage to the self.” ~Terry Tempest Williams
Written by Kedar Brown