FULLmoon Compost Ritual
FULLmoon Compost Ritual, FromSoil2Soul:
Under the FULLmoon of Cheshvan, @Dev.Brous
We are inside a collective RELEASE for the soil and for the soul. A time the Rabbis referred to as “bitter” - yet we know that the taste of bitter is the taste of healing for our digestive tract. This is a time of year when winter’s exhale can be longer, slower, and deeper having tapped into the sacred stillness of winter’s hibernation. We are preparing for the annual FromSoil2Soul Sabbatical - to fallow the fields of both the inner and outer landscapes. Sit outside under the moonlight. Inhale and take a moment to share your carbon dioxide with a plant or tree.
This is a collective and personal release for a range of anguish we are holding. A chance to metabolize devastation. A chance to release relationships, projects, patterns of loss, mistakes, unconscious patterns, and systemic failures that are known and unknown, seen and unseen, structural and permeable. A chance to release and let go. This spiritual matter is very fertile. We gather to recognize, embody, and release in the form of bioavailable food for the land. Together we rewild and cast away all that needs to be surrendered. It is all a way of flushing fertility. The compost heap is alchemical. It guides transformation.
We compost to FALLOW and ReWILD ourselves and our degenerated ecosystems with nutrients, minerals and lifeforce.
What You’ll Need:
Rosemary or Cedar to burn.
Greens (wet compostable food scraps, fresh plant material or yard waste)
Browns (toilet paper rolls, newspaper, dry compostable materials)
three recycled paper bags (just triple-bag them to provide a heavy lining for this ritual)
Water + clean soap (I love Dr. Bronner’s) to wash hands
*Lastly, you’ll need a place to add your compost tomorrow - after our ritual is complete! This can be a neighbor’s heap, a local compost hub, or just dig a mound in your yard that you can cover well afterward.
To Begin:
Let’s share a moment of silence to burn a sprig of Rosemary or Cedar in the four directions (Arba Ruchot), the Four Winds, to open the ritual space.
Dry Herbs - Rosemary / Cedar to Burn
In building this sacred compost pile, the moonlight witnesses you in an act of surrender, and act of release. A ritual to find balance.
We are balancing greens and browns in order to revitalize hungry soils and step outside of an overculture that is extractive - and causes commodification and depletion.
We are reaching our hands out to touch the skin of the earth and give back.
We are balancing between the opposing forces of growth and rest in order to restore the whole and the holy. We are entering into intimate exploration of fallowing and rewilding - two Sabbatical ideas our grind culture doesn’t permit. We are reducing food waste, and slowing our pace to match the regenerative currents of nature.
Together, in whatever way you are able, read any/all of these seven statements as you add Greens and Browns into your bags - that will become a Compost Pile.
WE compost...to take responsibility for fencing off the heart. The heart is needed in order to grieve. In order to feel. In order to heal. We take responsibility for allowing fear, misinformation, or indifference to keep us numb,
complicit, or unkind - all too often. For believing we are not good enough or making others feel they are not good enough. We compost to build up our fences and defenses in this sacred pile and give it good structure - layering it between on top of and beneath all of our other offerings. (add your BROWNS)
WE compost: distrust and apathy...and take responsibility for feeding war in our social media feeds and conversations, and for keeping others in financial or emotional debt...in ways that are seen or unseen. We take responsibility and compost these debts (add a thin layer of your GREENS).
WE compost...to take responsibility for treating the Earth like a toilet and leaving a toxic, hot mess for the next generation. For prioritizing convenience, efficiency, and productivity over health. For exploiting farmworkers & undocumented laborers that steward the land. For placing the burden of environmental toxins onto the most under-resourced communities. For overtreating our soils, & overfishing our oceans. And we compost to regenerate a commitment to the health of the planet. (add a thin layer of your BROWNS)
WE compost…in the name of Purpose, and we compost as an act of Faith and Clarity and Pleasure – to regenerate the body & mind, the heart & spirit. (add a thin layer of your GREENS)
WE compost…knowing or not-knowing that we belong to a long line of land stewards and herbalists that have faced subjugation and erasure like peoples of many other lineages...we compost to connect with the soil of our ancestors and feel that in heart, body, spirit and we reconnect with what we already know... (add a thin layer of your BROWNS)
WE compost: silence and complicity and listen for the still small and sacred voice of tonight’s FULLmoon. (add a thin layer of your GREENS)
WE compost: with immense gratitude for all that we now have to release. (dress the compost heap with your final thin layer of BROWNS on top)
Recite:
What was alive is no longer alive - thank you for all I’ve received. I’m ready to kiss it goodbye and alchemize death into life force as we feed this Tashlich ‘ Compost to the earth.
Sprinkle water to wash hands over this compost heap. Fold the paper bags over.
May this offering help me set down my burdens for a moment to catch my breath and receive this FULLmoon. May this offering bring freedom to those who need it most. May this offering replenish symbolic fertility to all places of depletion, the hearts, bodies, minds, and souls. And the yards, orchards, meadows, deserts, community gardens, urban streets, the muddy exposed slopes, the savannahs, the sandy eroded farmland, the vast areas of scorched forest and deeply charred habitat, the forgotten rocky hills, and the loamy valleys.
Burn Cedar or Rosemary to close and exalt the bitterness of this month with fragrance, in keeping with teachings from our Sages. May we release with ease, and gratitude for all we have received from the projects, people, and pains we are releasing now. With gratitude, may this balanced compost feed and water the Aytz Hayim, the Tree of Life.
Touch the Earth. Wash Your Hands. Bless Your Hands.
This Ritual is complete.
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