Roots & Rebellion: How I Found My Way to the Altar
How did I end up here, talking about plants, sex, and altered states?
I contemplate this from time to time and giggle to myself. Of course I, a scorpio, would end up here, amongst all that is deeply taboo. A herbalist promoting self sufficiency, medicine for the people, a relationship to the earth that degrades the hold the medical industrial complex has on human health. A sexologist, censored by platforms and peers for encouraging that which empowers because a sexually liberated person is an untamable one. An altered state enthusiast, exploring the mind and the cosmos. And at the intersection of these realms, something so undeniably spiritual that it corrupts the accepted experience of numbness as a way to move through society.
They say you won’t understand the path until you get to where you’re going and I truly never would have thought all my detours would lead me here. I guess you never know where a series of failed relationships, sexual trauma, dangerous experimentations, a recognition of self-perpetuated pain, and a desperate need to understand it all will take you.
And yet, in a way, it all makes sense. I can see the threads pulling in from all the different directions. But for me, it was one love affair in particular that shaped me, encouraged me, expanded me.
Growing up in the rural foothills of the Carolinas, my family had five acres of beautifully forested land. I remember tapping my leg as a small girl, anxious to be done with homework so I could burst out the back door of our humble home and hear the leaves crunch under my feet as I ran wide. Fortunately, we had very few neighbors and property lines were nonexistent to my young mind, making five acres seem as fluid as a thousand mile sea.
In good times or bad, I always sought the comfort of nature beings- rocks beings, tree beings, water beings. All of whom seemed to seek me too. Far into the woods beyond the boundary of our property, was a creek that noticeably lit up when I arrived. Almost as though we animated each other. We craved each other.
I was held by her, Tar Kiln Branch Creek. I was cultivated by her. She showed me the magic of the world. I learned wonder and mysticism through the eyes of the forest. I learned my own soul. It seems of no surprise our intimacy would inspire me throughout my life in the way it has. Yet, water doesn’t carve a path all on its own, earth in some places denies and in others softens and gives in.
As I grew older and more critical of life, I became acutely aware of the many lenses I use to view the world. Some of them so thick and wide it was, and often still can be, difficult to see the frames upon my face- productivity and development, competition, and adaptability (all part of my middle class upbringing). And I have my privileges too- a good education, prettiness, whiteness, able-bodied, a supportive family. I acknowledge my biases and limitations and have always worked to understand them. Afterall, I yearned deeply to discover how I could feel pain so intensely and equally the joy of life.
It is this queerness that urges me to seek understanding of the experience of another. It is my archetypal researcher wanting to uncover all that lies hidden in the unsaid words and reverberations of feelings. For this I turned to nature, where, amongst the trees, there are no words.
It was there, betwixt the wind and the water, that I discovered answers to questions I had about self and society. The dualism of grace and vulgarity so obviously concurrent in nature helped me to understand all those ancient religious texts I read in college. Earth became my shaman.
Like many stories of lost devotees, the wisdom and nurturance I gained in my guru made me fall madly in love, pulling on those long forgotten threads of Tar Kiln Branch. And once again, I was forced to admit the undeniable attraction I have to Earth and its inhabitants. It is this love that shapes my work to be a uniquely broader, more intersectional perspective of sexuality and altered states.
As an herbal hedonist I see the pleasure I feel in my own body as a microcosm of the pleasure the larger planetary body is capable of feeling. Untamed Altar, then, is a philosophy of interconnection between intimacy and spirituality, that the body is a vessel to god. It is an activist movement to dismantle inequities against the planet and its beings. It is an art form through which beauty is understood as an essential piece for continued evolution. And it is my attempt to understand all that is taboo about myself and the world.
I believe education is the key to liberation and, so, my mission is to provide accessible education that seeks to understand sexuality and all that is taboo instead of demonizing it. My pedagogy is one of ecofeminism, erotic ecology, and sustainable sexuality, providing options for people to take health into their own hands by becoming a fully informed and empowered participant. By building knowledge of alternative ways of relating to Earth and one another I know we can shift into the new paradigm.
