Years ago I noticed a stick-and-poke tattoo etched just above my quirky, train-hopping cousin’s kneecap: “Come and die,” in blotchy swamp-gray ink. I’ve only recently found it taken from a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”
The beauty of this phrase can be looked at through the lens of biblical theology of course, and it can also be looked at through Christ's Consciousness — the calling, initiation, and devotion to the divine-human experience. This includes pain, suffering, awareness, presence, darkness, and light.
And recently, plain as day, my mind echoed a soft whisper — come and die.
It’s no surprise the words descended into my mind like a crystalline cloud and have taken up residence since.
I had a human design (HD) reading last week by a woman called Fiona where I learned about the “quarters” in the system.
Briefly, there are four total: 1) Initiation — purpose fulfilled through mind, 2) Civilization — purpose fulfilled through form, 3) Duality — purpose fulfilled through bonding, and 4) Mutation — purpose fulfilled through transformation.
Fiona simplified it as 1) Conception, 2) Birth, 3) Raising, and 4) Ferrymen.
Each quarter is essential to the full circle of life, just as each of us here on Earth is one part of the whole.
Our HD profiles reside in only one quarter, and mine is in the fourth quarter… the quarter of mutation where the “purpose” is found through transformation.
The etheric and “unseen” theme of being in the fourth quarter is the acceptance of death.
“Ferrymen” she called us, or psychopomps, metaphorically carry/transport the soul from one realm to the next… from the living to the underworld, a passing veil, without judgment.
It’s done simply as an observer, as a guide. And at the same time, Fiona noted that those residing in the fourth quarter are able to provoke or initiate a death within the person who enters their field.
Stepping into the field of someone rooted in their design and residing in the fourth quarter is basically inviting you to come and die.
You cannot safely veil yourself under delusions and inauthenticity because their aura completely mutates it. This can simultaneously be super uncomfortable (repulsive!) and enlightening for the person stepping into it.
Hearing it felt like a remembering.
The biggest “purposes” in my life have always revolved around deep internal transformation (my external/outward achievements have never felt like my “purpose”)… and they’ve been wildly uncomfortable, in truth, feeling like I died.
To further that, I have left conversations with people feeling like I really freaked them out 🙃
Being ghosted by men and women alike has been a common theme throughout my life… and I see now how a lot of that is due to the unconscious intensity and penetration of my aura into other people’s aura without their permission.
To those who did glean something from being in my field with permission, I feel truly honoured to have been a part of their journey in reflecting back to them the depth, introspection, light/dark, and curiosity they’ve carried within them all along.
My practice now has been cultivating the mastery of my own energy (containing it, not projecting it onto others, not letting others hook into me, not leaking my energy all over the place, not allowing myself to trauma loop) in order to be stronger in my own field, my channels, and my quarter, the Ferryman. I am grateful for all of my teachers (a very special tree included) who help me along the way.
I also thought of Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix. The scene where Sirius (a guide, a psychopomp, a current between the living and the dead) looks at Harry, with deep love, protection, and devotion, just before he is struck with the killing curse.
He is standing in front of the mysterious Veil, whispers floating and transcending inside of it like the wind in an ancient forest. Sirius’ body then collapses to the ground and his soul departs his body and enters the veil — he has died and left this plane.
I mentioned this to Fiona and told her how I felt connected to that scene.
I’ve always found it deeply important as an introduction to the Great Mystery, a thin veil where we are forever on the cusp of the magic of the unseen. She nodded and explained that the fourth quarter is governed by the star Sirius.
Nothing is a coincidence.
Something further I’ve been exploring is that death should not only be thought of as a once-in-a-lifetime/end-of-lifetime occurrence that just happens when we are old.
Deaths are essential to growth in this lifetime on Earth, in this realm. They are initiated for us in myriad ways.
Initiations (conscious ones being referred to as coming-of-age rituals/rites of passage) have been happening since the beginning of time in nearly every culture on Earth. In these modern times, it’s rare, especially in Western/secular/non-tribal cultures, to recognize initiations.
We are a culture that reveres syndromes and disorders and suppresses them to every extent possible and so our initiations are not conscious, but rather unconscious. But they will happen. And if we become awakened to them, maybe we can see them as an entry point to something much deeper.
And here’s the key — you never have to go looking for an initiation.
You don’t have to meditate, join spiritual groups, do plant medicine or psychedelics, or become religious/indoctrinated in any way.
Organic reality will always bring us to our knees when we are being asked to accept death and transform.
Initiations invite us to come and die. We always have the choice to accept or deny the initiation.
Some are initiated in unimaginable and heartbreaking ways… the death of a loved one, a near-physical death experience, a traumatic childhood experience, traumatic birth, environmental disaster, or war trauma/living in war-torn countries.
Others are initiated in seemingly smaller but no less essential ways that tend to chip into the grooves of the soul over long periods of time: anxiety “disorders,” painful menstrual cycles, chronic “illnesses,” identity collapse, job loss, financial ruin, depersonalization, depression,
Recently, I had an old/trapped trauma (or survival stress as Irene Lyon calls it) come up… and so much of it comes back to my throat.
When I was 12 or 13 I had a traumatic incident happen around my neck. And as the years would pass (at ages 17 and then again at 20) I began to have constriction in my throat causing extreme panic and fear to pulse through my body. It was just pure fright at a cellular level that made me, on the surface, appear as a hypochondriac.
I felt like I couldn’t swallow food for fear of choking. I would wake up gasping for air screaming for my mom that I couldn’t breathe. I found myself frantically rushing into hospitals and asking someone to please help me.
“But nothing is wrong with you,” everyone would echo, their eyes wide and unblinking.
When we think of death we imagine last breaths… perhaps a ragged and weak sound escaping the throat before the silence comes.
My body was begging to release the complete and utter fear of death.
And maybe not just fear of physical death, but fear of being and feeling so disconnected from safety — safety in the body, safety in my family, safety in my cells.
Our body is our North Star and one of our greatest teachers. She will lead us to death, and if we trust, there will be rebirth.
So I recently found myself remembering the mutation of death and its wanting to be unfeared and accepted, my cells wanting to be acknowledged and seen. And on the day in question, I swallowed a hot piece of food, and my mouth and throat began to burn.
This seemingly minute and inconsequential scenario provided an opening.
I felt heat rise up from my chest (G center/solar plexus) and was rushed with adrenaline and survival energy. I called my spouse in a moment of co-regulation and resourcing and explained what I was feeling and what it was expressing itself as. He sat silently and listened.
I then explained how I kept having images of myself in a hospital, alone, tied up with tubes under horrific fluorescent lighting, slowly dying with no one I loved around me.
Allowing whatever arises to be there, to express itSelf as it wants, is an initiation.
I am still at the very beginning of this work.
But when I first started engaging with it about a year ago, I would shake and twitch uncontrollably. It felt like my muscles were being sparked like a fork in a light socket, my breath shallow and ragged (it’s important, if possible, to not change the breath — letting it do its thing is another profound initiation).
To simply allow the body to do its thing… to titrate and pendulate when needed… that is the initiation into death, into the underworld that holds all the things we refuse to see.
So I took the initiation and continue to do so in organic ways, as things come up.
I don’t go looking for initiations. And I don't advocate for modalities or tools that force us into them either. I also don’t go looking for ways to “transcend” them. I accept them as they come and let the next steps of working with them be organic as well (there is no one tool, no one right way).
But it always has and always will start with coming back into the body as much as we can, slowly.
One last piece to touch is femininity or the feminine.
I’ve been learning about the energies of the feminine for the first time over the last few months. These are certainly not my transmissions but rather what I’m amassing from the work of brilliant guides like Kim Lohret and Pilar Lesko. After reading their work I was reminded of this quote I posted to my Blogspot back in 2015:
There is a good principle that created order, light, and man
and a bad principle that created
chaos,
darkness,
and woman. | Pythagoras
A quick Instagram hashtag search will smack you across the face with all the feminine wisdom permeating all sorts of corners of the collective.
Preface: none of these identities are bad at all. On the contrary, they can be seen as a great expression of one’s costuming or even authentic channeling.
But it’s widespread now to see the occult seekers discussing feminine archetypes on the surface level of “divine feminine energy” in women’s circles with yoni steaming and sensual dancing.
The religious homemakers discuss feminine “roles,” motherhood, and male/female dynamics from a wounded and distorted masculine lens in a floral dress while making sourdough and a baby dangling from the breast.
But in truth, working with the feminine is death.
The feminine is the Queen of the Underworld.
She will kill you, destroy you, and rebirth you, over and over again.
We love to see nature as a beautiful, healing feminine energy (it is), but as Pilar has expressed in her work, we forget the Lilith side to Eden when we have natural disasters like fires engulfing swaths of land and other earthly horrors that have happened time immemorial.
My own work with the feminine (unconsciously) started when I was alone without my mother (spanning the country or several continents) and most recently when I got married and struggled to find any balance between the distorted feminine and masculine energies permeating my new household.
I thought I had order and light on my path, but the chaos of the feminine came to destroy all of that and wipe away all delusions I had.
And holy shit — it was dark and painful.
And she came in physical form too around the same exact times in the form of historic hurricane Sandy when I moved to New York in college and a global pandemic the year I was married.
I’ve recently read/reread two books with very dark feminine characters and storylines. Animal by Lisa Taddeo and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh.
Both writers have other books with similar feminine energies that are also great (Three Women, Eileen) and when I immerse myself in their stories, I feel stirred, seen, and entranced.
I’d be remiss to mention these books are hated by many and it’s no surprise — the Feminine is triggering AF.
The characters in both novels have self-imposed exiles and coming-to-reckonings. Both have had horrific incidents/deaths with their parents that subsequently mirrored their relationship with men, female friendships, sex, and meaning.
Both ignored this as long as they could and tried to keep things linear as they grew through womanhood. But the feminine ultimately rushed in to destroy these false veils and pull them under the heavy currents, through the tempests, and then spit them back out onto the shore.
It’s as if these writers and their characters express so much of what I have felt or wanted to say but sensed I couldn’t without freaking others out and being confused by my own Self.
Until I started learning about the chaos and darkness of the feminine I could not (and I mean, it truly bothered me) understand why I loved these gritty, seedy, depraved, chaotic, disturbed, and deeply layered stories and women.
I can see now it’s because they were fully immersed into the feminine underworld that the path had presented to them.
In their stories, there is still a lot of unconscious bridling and numbing but at some sure point in their paths, they descend to the bottom of the well. And through the cave, there is a mutation, a death, a chrysalis, a re-emergence into the light.
The human experience undoubtedly will call us to die… and we can do that unconsciously, or consciously.
Initiations, mutations, and feminity bid us to come and die.
Perhaps we can engage with this dance.
in order for us to fully transform
and bring forth the gifts
meant
for ourselves
and the whole.
Thank you for reading.
With devotion,
Tracy
P.S. If you’re feeling the flow to move some energy, the below has been assisting me beautifully in doing just that. x