The Heart Is a Cauldron

Rather than resolutions that we project onto ourselves and our lives, what shifts when we listen to what we’re being invited into, and who’s doing the inviting? This season, we sit with ideas of Fate—beginning with today’s episode, when we meet with the Fates themselves, those beings with unceasing hands who work deep within the recesses of our hearts.

***January 2022 opens up the next window of spots to work privately with me through 1:1 coaching. This is a three month journey to connect with yourself and your sacred place in the wondrous web of being, whether you’re feeling lost or you have a bold vision but you’re not certain how to get there. Learn more here (kathrynfink.com/coaching) or book time for us to chat here (kathrynfink.com/connect).***

|| 0:00 || Opening prayer-spell-poem

|| 0:58 || Intro

|| 3:40 || Three month coaching opens up January 2022—learn more here or book time for us to chat here

|| 5:18 || Meeting the Fates——but first, a caution about discussing destiny

|| 9:02 || Manāt

|| 10:24 || Moirai

|| 12:20 || Norns

|| 14:19 || Reflections on the Fates: Weaving as complexity and collaboration; cyclical time; self and selflessness; meaning through tending community and the earth; leading a wyrd life

Musical interlude: "Home" by Hannah Mayree from the record label HOMHOMHOM http://hannahmayree.com

|| 29:35 || My personal views on destiny

|| 35:15 || A story of fate

P.S. Looking for winter solstice content? Check out "The Heart Is a Hallowed Night" https://bit.ly/3FlwJrW

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Cited in today’s episode:

Bader Saab “Manat”

bell hooks About Love

Lara Veleda Vesta

Pema Chodron The Wisdom of No Escape

Background image: “Die Nornen” by Alfred Agache

Transcript here: https://kathrynfink.com/the-heart-is-a-cauldron/2021/12/21/episode-26-the-heart-is-a-loom-weaving-with-fate

We complete our journey through the underworld by connecting with our ancestors through the soil of day-to-day life, the mundane stitched through with the mythic.

Woven into this episode are also moments from my own path into relationship with the beloved dead, both human and more-than-human.

Song interlude: “Ebb Tide” sung by my grandmother Lorrayne

Song closing: “How Deep Is the Ocean” also sung by Lorrayne

Time stamps coming first week of Dec

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Please keep this offering alive

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Cited in today’s episode:

Kofi Piesie “You Can Not Mention Libation Without Mentioning The Ancestors”

Sophie Strand "Your Body Is an Ancestor"

“Kutoven Stevens Chases His Running Dreams with a Bigger Purpose”

BIPOC teachers in ancestral remediation and decolonizing

Layla Saad

Dr. Rocío Rosales Meza (podcast ep with Saad and Dr Meza)

olivia pepper

Transcript available first week of Dec.

Background image: Jan van Kessel the Elder “Vanitas Still Life,” ~1665

We turn to fungi as a teacher and ally in cycling through the underworld, being with death and rebirth, poison and medicine, personal and collective movement—and what it means to dance through all of it, not as a dance of binaries but a dance of interconnected layerings and crossings and sporulating clouds. To guide us, we welcome to the cauldron neo-troubadour animist and myco mythologist Sophie Strand.

|| 0:00 || Intro

|| 5:42 || Opening poem from Sophie called “Prayer”

|| 7:19 || Sophie’s story of healing through relationship with the animate world

|| 10:03 || One of Sophie’s favorite tales of the underworld

|| 14:05 || How fungi kaleidoscope understandings of underworld narratives, and myth more broadly, as stories of collaboration rather than tales of solitary, conquering heroes

|| 20:40 || How fungi exist outside of linearity, and how we can let them welcome us even deeper into spiralic ways of being

|| 33:40 || Poison and medicine

|| 33:40 || “Make my healing a party everyone is invited to”—collective liberation and personal revolutions

|| 33:40 || A practice to allow magic to be “an escape from this world, into this world”

MORE ON SOPHIE

Sophie’s preferred blurb to include in my intro/show notes/elsewhere: Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is forthcoming in 2022 from Inner Traditions. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in 2023. Her books of poetry include Love Song to a Blue God (Oread Press) and Those Other Flowers to Come (Dancing Girl Press) and The Approach (The Swan).

Website www.sophiestrand.com

Instagram: @cosmogyny

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The realm of transformation as well as treachery, mystery and magic, and ultimately, the dual medicine of death and regeneration… Journeying into the underworld brings as many trials as it does rewards.

No matter where you find yourself in cycles of transformation, take heart from three tales of those who have ventured—both willingly and unwillingly—into the darkness, and returned bearing treasure for themselves and their communities.

Timestamps coming soon

Musical interlude: Scottish folk ballad “Tam Lin,” recorded by the American banjo artist Mary Cox, from her album Chickens Crowin' At Midnight. Explore and purchase Mary’s music here https://maryzcox.bandcamp.com

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Please keep this offering alive

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Image: Queen of the Night relief of the goddexx Inanna, from 19thc - 18thc BC, ancient Sumer/present day Southern Iraq

Transcript available at kathrynfink.com

What if foraging is, at its heart, about connection? What shifts when we approach relationships with plants as we do humans—and vice versa? What happens when we shift away from the idea of wild spaces that are magical because they are untouched, to living spaces that are magical because we are part of them?

We visit with wildcrafting customs and beliefs in order to glean wisdom for belonging, discomfort that can sometimes arise from connection, and the giving and receiving of genuine kinship.

*** Help keep The Heart Is a Cauldron alive through 2022 by joining the Patreon https://bit.ly/3fYJ5sG ***

II 0:02 II Opening spell-prayer-poem

II 1:19 II Intro

II 4:32 II Hearthtending

II 7:17 II The ethics of foraging and the honorable harvest via Robin Wall Kimmerer

II 12:52 II How humans have learned the who and where of foraging

II 18:24 II How to approach and gather plants ways that honors their divinity, and our own

II 28:01 II How to treat what we harvest after the gathering in, so the entire process becomes a sacred act

II 30:07 II "O viriditas digit Dei" composed by Hildegarde, and recorded by the group Canty, with thanks to Sono Luminus https://bit.ly/3yGWiR0

II 36:35 II Intro to wildcrafting our personal and collective healing journeys

II 37:32 II Our innate ability to connect and belong, and the importance of lived experience

II 43:33 II Culpability vs. communion and feelings of guilt that often arise within relationship

II 46:57 II When we fully awaken to all the aliveness and magic that is woven into true relationship, we can’t help but want to give back

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Honorable Harvest quote from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Hua Tuo tale adapted from https://bit.ly/3m9pzQK

Slovenian tale of plant speech from The Blessing of Herbs on Bonfires by France Kotnik

Background image: “Village girl at a wayside shrine” by Antoni Kozakiewicz

Transcript available at https://bit.ly/3AB0JNM

In this season that invites us to lean on one another, we remember old ways of care, honor living ways that never stopped evolving, and dream new ways, all rooted in togetherness, and the present moment.

Through visits with flower eating apes, communal bathhouses, and indigenous sovereignty movements, we learn that the medicine of us is empowering, holistic, and relational.

II 0:02 II Opening spell-prayer-poem

II 2:30 II Intro—the season of leaning on one another

II 8:10 II Summarizing the medicine of us

II 9:04 II The medicine of us is empowering

II 17:34 II The medicine of us is holistic

II 22:25 II The medicine of us is relational

II 28:43 II How did we shift away from the medicine of us into the medicine of empire?

II 32:43 II A tale of dreaming the medicine of us into being, now

Transcript available at https://bit.ly/3hIjfgR

Photo of macaques in a hot spring in Japan via iStock.com/undercrimson

For moments when we are asked to hold powerful and even conflicting energies at the same time, snake and willow teach us to dance between poison and medicine, grief and healing, death and rebirth.

If we can practice this dancing deeper and deeper into our center, abundance——of the spirit, of the home within ourselves, of our sense of communion with the wider world——awaits.

This midsummer, we delve into the magic of water spirits, who help us navigate this time of year when it feels like we’re asked to contain multitudes, when the fullness of summer seems to conflict at times with undercurrents of grief or fatigue—a tension which feels especially heightened this year.

Water spirits teach us that complexity is divine, that leaning on each other is the oldest and strongest prayer, and that our emotions can be deep wells of motivation, rather than a hindrance.

As a special treat, this episode's musical interlude is sung by yours truly, and there were some unexpected tears while recording as well—both of which I blame on the water spirits being at work in the making of this episode.

|| 0:02 || Spell-prayer-poem

|| 1:17 || Intro and hearth-tending: Each June, I pay forward the abundance from The Heart Is a Cauldron Patreon to BIPOC-led orgs committed to earth-honoring practices + decolonization. This year, 100% of the proceeds from June’s Patreon memberships will go to the National Black Food & Justice Alliance as well as the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. Join any time in June 2021 for your membership to be added to the total that will be given.

|| 6:05 || Meet water spirits, found throughout the world, and appear in as many forms as there are homes for them.

|| 9:05 || Deeper dive into lore and rites of the Slavic rusalki, the njuzu of Zimbabwe, and the Well Maidens from Arthurian legends.

|| 17:52 || A siren song, sung by yours truly.

|| 21:26 || Embodying complexity by dissolving binaries of the mundane vs. spiritual, mind vs. body, us vs. other.

|| 28:27 || Togetherness, and the magic of filling each others’ cups.

|| 31:20 || Diving into our wells of deep feeling.

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Background image: Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse, 1892

What better way to celebrate the one year anniversary of The Heart Is a Cauldron than a conversation about belonging as a radical, living, and collaborative practice?

Becca Piastrelli of the Belonging podcast and I had a heart-to-heart on the many layers of this topic, including:

- Personal tales and understandings of belonging

- Belonging as a radical antidote to Empire

- Toxicity in community

- Being with grief

- How to find belonging in a time such as this

(No time stamps for this episode)

MORE ON BECCA

Becca is a writer, coach, and host of the Belonging podcast. She holds space for women to explore ancestral wisdom, connect with the earth, and find meaningful and inclusive community. In the age of loneliness, Becca shows us how to feel like we truly belong - to each other, to the earth, to a lineage, and to ourselves. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner, child, two cats, and five chickens, where she gardens, cooks, mothers, and gathers with the ebb and flow of the seasons.

BeccaPiastrelli.com

Becca on Instagram: @ beccapiastrelli

Belonging podcast: belongingpodcast.com

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT THE PATREON

Each June, I pay forward the abundance from The Heart Is a Cauldron Patreon to BIPOC-led orgs committed to earth-honoring practices + decolonization. This year, 100% of the proceeds from June’s Patreon memberships will go to the National Black Food & Justice Alliance as well as the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance.

Join any time in June 2021 for your membership to be added to the total that will be given.

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Please keep this offering alive

Subscribe / like / rate / review

Share with friends + on social

Follow Kathryn on Instagram www.instagram.com/kathryn.a.fink/

Join our Patreon to translate this podcast in practice www.patreon.com/theheartisacauldron

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The World Tree is a mythic map of the universe, an atlas of the soul, and a sacred cosmogram of community and interdependence.

In this episode, we meet world trees that have been born out of diverse cultures, and sit under their boughs to learn about emergence and contraction, engaging in cycles of soul-level change, drinking from sacred waters, and remembering reverence for our communities.

|| 0:51 || Introducing the axis mundi

|| 4:54 || An embodied reflection as a way of intuiting your own experience of this mythic ally——plus, I share my own dreaming of the World Tree

|| 10:39 || Meet the World Tree in Slavic Europe, Africa, Mesoamerica, Northern Europe, Turtle Island, and in the maypole

|| 19:08 || Summarizing the medicine of the World Tree

|| 19:34 || Emergence and contraction

|| 22:34 || Engaging in cycles of soul-level change

|| 25:52 || Freedom and sacred vision

|| 26:40 || Drinking from sacred waters

|| 28:22 || Centering the community

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Please keep this offering alive

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Background image: “Yggdrasill, the Mundane tree”, Baxter’s Patent Oil Printing, from the Prose Edda by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (1847)