Empress Whispers
I just wanted to share this excerpt from a beautiful email I received from Angell Deer. Angell is an animist, writer, and healer whose work I have been following for some time. I think it speaks to the subtle programming that has been happening for centuries and the importance of reclaiming control of our bodies, our time, and our psyches.
“That whisper is what I call Empire.
It’s also the heart of my next book—Empire Collapse, Soul Remembering: Ceremony, Story, and Guidance for the Long Night—coming next year. The book asks how a whispered program can shape almost everything: how we eat and work, the pace of our days, the way we measure worth, what we call success, how we pray, how we love, and what we’re willing to trade for belonging. Not to turn life into a battle, but to turn it back into a relationship.
When I say “Empire,” I don’t mean a single nation. I mean the logic that trains us to extract, optimize, and outrun our own seasons. It prices everything and values very little. It tells us that urgency is a virtue and usefulness is a form of holiness. It sneaks into the body (cycles turned into schedules), into time (ripening turned into rushing), into economy (reciprocity turned into revenue), into culture (community turned into audience), into spirituality (medicine turned into merchandise), into the psyche (the soft voice that says you are behind), and into our relationship with Earth (kin turned into inventory).
And because life loves a counter-current, there is another presence rising right now in many of us: the Empress songs that some of you have been feeling. This presence embodies sovereignty that looks like soil and milk, beauty as governance, seasons as law, wealth as fruit, and friendship and song. Where Empire says scale, she says tend. Where Empire says own, she says belong.
This essay is not a rant against the modern world. It’s a map for noticing where the whisper lives in us, and a small basket of practices for gently uninstalling it, so we can root into rhythm again: with land, with work, with each other, with the unseen. “
Wow Theresa! Thank you for sharing this....such a reminder of our journey. Bringing us back to center and stay grounded and connected to Source. I too am filling my days with the garden and really embracing the beauty and abundance that our Mother Earth provides for us. All that we have missed and not recognised as we worked the hamster wheel.