Dear ones,

Colonization, capitalism, industrialization, the enlightenment… all of these moments and eras in history (and present day); these ways of viewing the world which influenced actions, policies, and human survival patterns....(whether intentionally or not), all of them have worked to sever our human sense of kinship and belonging to the natural world. All of them have waged some level of war against and received some amount of benefit from us losing a more land-based, more indigenous-to-place culture.

And together, they’ve resulted in a diseased culture, a disconnected and de-humanized one. Some might say they’ve created a massive forgetting, an absence of culture altogether.

And we feel that when we try to enter into ritual and ceremony now. The ‘gods’ we invoke through what passes for celebration and reconciliation are false idols of materialism, extraction, greed, self-centeredness, martyrdom.

So our holidays no longer save us from burnout. They struggle to nourish or bring us closer to aliveness and kinship. Instead, without careful attention and intention, they often seem to take us further from it.

And as it’s been said: it may not be our fault (we inherited it, after all), but it is our responsibility.

We choose what we participate in and what we lend our hearts and energy to.

We choose what we leave for the ones who come after us.

This is why, to me, it feels like searching out the intact bones, breadcrumbs, threads of a more rooted and relational culture is one of the most important things we can do in this time of great upheaval and unsustainability.

The veil is being pulled back more and more to reveal the ugly underside of our collective forgetting, our tender, malnourished roots which are seeking, seeking rich and fertile soil.

Our burnout, our sense of purposelessness and flailing, these are not failings - they’re warnings. And they, when used as a jumping off point to look for a deeper ancestral culture, might also hold clues to a more vitally alive and whole way forward.

This is the journey my heart, soul, and feet have been taking me for the last 10+ years. First, through wisdom traditions not of my ancestral lineage (in this lifetime); then increasingly in the last few years, to see if I can find and reconcile with the ancestral wounds and wisdom of my more direct lineages.

And so this Roundhouse offering (and others to come in the future; along with the rest of my work) are reflecting this journey.

I make no promises that this way of entering the roundhouse is exactly what our ancestors would’ve done. In fact, their exact ways probably would’nt feel relevant today anyway. There’s been a lot of water under that bridge and culture is meant to be alive and evolving.

But this is my (at this point in time) deepest, and ever-evolving sense of how they might’ve used ceremony and myth to to keep themselves human, whole, connected, and alive. How they would’ve stayed in touch with more sustainable rhythms of living and relating in the world.

If you’re here with me, on this email list and in this space, there’s a strong chance you hunger for more meaningful, magical, compassionate lives. You have a sense that there’s more to all this - some spirit animating all of life that you want to feel connected with, be in relationship with. You probably give a lot. You probably feel burned out and stretched thin. You may not have felt like you have a voice. You may not have felt like you have roots.

If so, perhaps this ancestral re-imagining we embark on in our virtual roundhouse will feed something, soothe something, plant the seeds for other possibilities.

If you suspect it might, and the time of the gathering works for you, I hope you’ll join us tomorrow. Or keep an eye out for other ‘Roundhouse’ opportunities in the year to come.

with immense Love and warm wishes for this midwinter time,

Kate

P.S. Tarot cards are another way to start to connect with non-industrialized wisdom and guidance. You can check out more about Insight 2025 here. The readings so far have been so beautiful. <3

P.P.S. I dropped a quick bonus podcast episode on the dissonance between how we currently observe 'holiday season' and how our bodies have evolved to mark the midwinter. You can find it here or in your usual places. I also put it all on social media.