NAMING THE INVISIBLE:

A RITUAL TO EXPRESS GENDER

This experience is designed for naming the invisible ways gender manifests in our world – in our months, in our colors, in our stories, in our history, in our bodies, in our perception of self.

March is a month of overlap, of holidays layered on top of holidays, some intentionally placed to overwrite the others, some claimed in this century – Women’s History Month, Easter, Equinox + Spring – all the ways we engage with the cycles of the season spiritually and culturally. It’s a month of planting seeds, of birth and rebirth, mothers and babies, gender and archetype.

For some, March may evoke goddess energy, and for others, pastel colors and fluffy creatures. For others still, March may conjure Women’s History Month, commemorating the vital, yet largely invisible, role women played in American history. March is both feminine and/or feminist, depending on your lens. Either way, culturally and spiritually, consciously or unconsciously, March is gendered in a way that limits us. Gender as a construct creates divisions into groups, pushes us into invented boxes designed to emphasize the difference in our biology, without acknowledging the infinite ways in which we overlap, without acknowledging the nuanced layers of our experience. We can name these layers, we can also let those boundaries blur.

Over the course of this ritual, we will gently rename, remake, and reconstruct our understanding of gender and prepare to make the invisible visible. The goal is to widen our viewfinder, to connect with what is already there and let it expand. To remember the parts of ourselves that exist without the container that is a name. We are expanding gender into a spectrum – of color, of archetype, of symbol.

Today we name the invisible, and we prepare to plant a seed.

HOW TO DO THE RITUAL

This is a preparation ritual for physically planting the seeds of the invisible parts of ourselves, nurturing and tending to their expression.

There are five steps; it should take about 20 minutes. You will need: 3 slips of paper (i.e. torn strips of note cards, or joint filters); a pen; candle; and a lighter or matches.

This ritual is intended to be guided by voice and performed on the Spring Equinox (Saturday, March 20th). You can download an audio track of the ritual by clicking the button, or you can read the full text of the experience below.

DOWNLOAD THE RITUAL

NAMING THE INVISIBLE

full ritual text

PREPARATION

Make sure your ritual items are nearby, with a nice open space on the table or floor in front of you.

Now, take a moment to get yourself settled, wherever you are sitting.

Take a deep breath in... and out. In... and out. In... and out.

Take your candle and place it about a foot in front of you. Light it.

Repeat out loud:

Welcome East, guardian of air, the space in the layers of self, the gentle wind that supports us -- let us breathe deeply.

Welcome South, guardian of the fire, little sun, life force, clarity of being, feed us with warm rays -- let us be nourished.

Welcome West, guardian of the water, cleanse us of false structures, move through us into flow -- let us drink.

Welcome North, guardian of the earth, alive and rich with decay, earth us, ground us -- let us remember.

Step One: Gender As Spectrum

To name the invisible, we must first become aware of what is absent.
Those parts we consciously hide from the world, or the world hides from us --
those parts that have been hidden for so long we’ve forgotten their names, and sometimes their existence.

Gently close your eyes and conjure a rainbow from your childhood, stretching through the sky, or shimmering through a drop of dew or refracting through a crystal in the light.

Bring this full spectrum to life in your imagination. Not just the colors, but the feelings. Feel into it. The magic. Color from light.

Now, with this rainbow in your mind, consider your wardrobe, your home space, or your art, exactly as it is.

First answer, right answer – What color is missing? Name it, out loud.

The absence of this color is as much a part of your identity as the colors you consciously choose.

When did you first choose to exclude this color?
Can you identify a moment?
A memory?

What are your stories around this color?
Are they Cultural?
Personal?
Gendered?
True?

We were taught to believe that gender exists in a binary. One or the other. Girl or Boy. Pink or Blue.

Later, perhaps we learned that gender is a spectrum existing between two fixed points. The purple between male and female.

But what if gender exists beyond two fixed points of color.
What would that expanded spectrum feel like?

Who would you be if you claimed this invisible part of you?

Step Two: Naming Your Color

Fold your paper three times until it resembles a gardening label.

Now write the sentence onto your label: I am (Whatever Your Color Is)

And now say out loud 3 times:

I Am (Your Color). I Am (Your Color). I Am (Your Color).

Who are you now?

Where can you feel your color in your body?

Notice the feeling.

Step Three: Gender As Archetype

We have many stories and symbols of Spring, some to explain the seasons, some to explain the Equinox – a day we celebrate today.

Equinox are the days where we experience the perfect balance of light and dark hours – where it is 100% even. There are two a year.

Equinox is a place of balance, where 363 other days – the vast majority of our existence – fall somewhere else on the spectrum. Somewhere else on the scale of experience.

We, too, exist on that spectrum.

Our gender is beyond the two most often named – there is more for us to claim, to express.

Let’s imagine gender as one of the other 363 days of the year. Less of an identity and more of a place. A place that doesn’t have to be binary, a place that can be marked by the expression of archetypes and symbols. A place not confined to only 2 of 365 different possibilities.

Think of a symbol – a feeling, a phrase, a place that feels like it could be an expression of your gender.

It could be anything that comes to mind.

There are no wrong answers, and feel free to write down as many as you’d like.

Are you a triangle? A crescent moon?

Can you create a sense of your gender through animal energy?
Are you a hummingbird? A bear?

Can you create a sense of your gender in the archetypal characters of myth?
Are you Circe?
Are you Anubis?

Can you create a sense of your gender from the archetypes of tarot?
Are you the Star card, the Devil? The Hanged One?

Can you create a sense of your gender through the archetype of natural force?
Are you a rainstorm, or a whirlwind?

What happens if you let that symbol take you in?
What happens if you widen your view?

Step Four: Naming Your Archetype

Now, fold your paper three times until it resembles a gardening label.

Write down: I am (Your Chosen Archetype)

And now say out loud 3 times:

I Am (Your Chosen Archetype). I Am (Your Chosen Archetype). I Am (Your Chosen Archetype).

Who are you now?

Where do you feel that in your body?

In your spirit?

Notice the feeling.

Set the paper aside.

Step Five: Integrating The Experience

Now it’s time to feel these things together.

Take your third label and write this sentence onto it:

My name is (First Name). I am (Archetype) and I am (Color).

Say it out loud 3 times:

My name is (First Name). I am (Archetype) and I am (Color).

Inhale, Exhale.

Collect all of your labels.

You have now named and integrated two invisible pieces of you.

They are written for the world to see.

This color, this archetype, this integration – they were always a part of you.

You’ve expanded your field of vision to see more than a rainbow.

A 3-dimensional spectrum. It was always there.

Now we’ll close the space.

Repeat out loud:

Thank you East, we breathe deeply.

Thank you South, we are nourished.

Thank you West, we have drunk.

Thank you North, we remember.

Dowse or smother your candle to end Part One of the ritual.

PART TWO

Now, if you like, you can manifest these invisible expressions into the world.

Plant a seed for each of these invisible parts,

Perhaps a flower or vegetable related to your color or archetype.

Anything you choose. Anything that feels right.

You can label them with the paper markers you just made.

You can plant them indoors, in a pot or vessel of your choosing.

Or you can plant them outside.

Pick a place that will allow you to care for them, to observe.

You will tend to these newly named identities.

These emerging expressions of you.

You will help them to grow from the earth.

You will help them to grow from you.

Nourish and nurture and acknowledge these invisible parts of self.

And if a seed fails to thrive or emerge, be gentle and invite yourself to get curious about that hidden part of you.

Ritual by Brooke Sebold and Sarah Sellman.