The Ritual Calendar

Mapping the End of a 15 Year Life

In 2023, I placed the final brick. I finished writing Book 5, it was like a closing of one life and the violent, beautiful birth of another.

In the Realms I’ve built, seasons do not simply happen, they are celebrated through ritual. Each realm has its own way of negotiating the transition between what was and what will be. As I look back on my transition from accountant to psychologist, I realize I was performing these rites in my own blood and soul.

The Versant Veil: The Seedwake

For years, I was in a state of Binding Flame, crafting tokens of my life from the “dried plants” of my daily grind. But 2023 was my Seedwake. I took the ashes of my old career and mixed them into new soil. I planted three seeds: one for family(Kin), one for my writing (Craft), and one for my truth (Vow). I poured the first thaw-water over the threshold of my new practice, inviting the green of a new life to return.

Iron Howl: The Meltwater Run

My transition was not quiet, it was a Meltwater Run. I had to unearth the “den tokens” I buried in autumn, the parts of myself I hid to stay safe in the corporate world. I rinsed them in the cold reality of my burnout and ran toward the sunrise. As the ice of my 15 years sacrifice cracked, I let out a short howl. It wasn’t a cry of pain, but a call to the pack(Kin), signaling that the paths were finally open.

Crimson Sanctum: The Unwrapping Rite

During my “Stillness Tithe,” I wrapped my creativity in heavy cloth and hid it to protect my pride and my family’s stability. In the dusk of my burnout, I performed the Unwrapping Rite. I pricked my soul, the pain of the transition, and anointed my books. I chose which parts of my past to keep and which to “gift onward.” By releasing my old pride as a “provider,” I permitted myself the humility of action.

Ashpire: The Ember Unsealing

For fifteen years, my dreams were Flame-Sealed Oaths written on obsidian and locked in glass. I kept them above the hearth, visible but unreachable. In 2023, the heat of my collapse finally caused the glass to fissure. At dawn, I spoke my promises out loud and set them in motion. I now carry a shard of that broken glass as a charm, a reminder that a vow is only powerful when it is lived, not just kept.

The Covenant: The Thawing Knot

This is the heart of my current moment. I am untying the Thawing Knot beside the stream of my new life.

• I have kept the strand of my story.
• I have returned the strand of accounting to those who gave it to me.
• I have set the strand of my exhaustion adrift.

As I stand at the edge of the water, having finished the five books that saved me, I speak the single word that the Covenant dictates for the start of the season:

“Begin.”