The Empress and the Fog: A Ceremony of Rebirth and Ancestral Lineage (part two of six)

It is coming to the end of eclipse season, finished off with the upcoming Aries New Moon.

Eclipse portals are always intense but this one had been particularly harrowing for me - a reopening of a wound, coming face to face with my shadow - a descent into the underworld to uncover if there was a real authentic self beneath it all.

I felt I had emerged victorious to the other side.

I wanted to honour my journey with a Tarot Spread to reveal its messages and where I might go next.

The spread showed me that I now carry Mountain Strength endurance to face emotional struggle. That I am crowned with a new way of being, that there is a grounded, fertile path that begins now.

It told me I must protect my embodied truth — no more intellectual loops. If it doesn’t feel right in my body, it’s a no. And that I’m not alone anymore on this spiral. The Council of Beings card (Witches Wisdom) brought ancestral and elemental support — a circle of ally witnesses to my rebirth.

My future Self is an Empress, not isolated, but deeply collaborative. I am destined to birth beauty in community, to lead with nourishment, and to be abundant without apology.

My very first step is to walk out as the Queen of Wands — bold, radiant, magnetic. Not “preparing,” but inhabiting. Taking up space. I need to start working through what I want to offer people as a service, a sharing.

It was a beautiful spread, lush with meaning — a story of completion and initiation.
A sacred return, with something luminous and real in my hands.
The full-bodied yes I always hope for in Tarot.

So I created a ritual to seal it, to claim it. To mark, in my body, what had changed and what would now be different.

I blew out the candle.
And closed the ceremony.

But as their energy moved through me, a raging sorrow surged.
I felt cheated — to have them now, in my fifties - I felt they had alsways been mine as a birthright but it felt like they had been stolen. Kept from me, purposefully.
Who had denied me this birthright, and why?
Who had decided I wasn’t enough to hold this power?
I let the rage pass through me.
Cleansed my hands with water — a baptism for this next version of me.

Then I unveiled the bowl and lit a candle.
Held The Queen of Wands, then held The Empress

I tried to feel their energy, embody their power.

“I return with the light of enchantment.
I return with my wisdom, radiance and strength.
I return as the woman who trusts her path and walks it even through the fire.”

“I crown the Empress who creates beauty from truth.
I crown the Queen who knows her power is her joy.
I claim the Ace of Earth — a path that is real, fertile, and mine.”

I sat in the in-between, in the void.
The New Moon Promise hummed quietly.
The Council surrounded me — I felt seen. Met.
Tears came.

I wrote on paper the beliefs, roles, identities, and attachments that no longer belong in my field.

And I buried them in the earth.

“I bury the part of me who needed to be chosen.
I bury the performance of being endlessly available.
I bury the part who feared her own Self in The Void”

“I honour the portal I have walked through.
I name this space sacred.
I stand at the gate of endings, bearing the strength of the Mountain.”

I began by calling in the Archetypes that Tarot had told me I should embody - The Empress and The Queen of Wands.

I brought The Moon, to honour Lilith.

I brought the card for Mountain Strength - standing for the endurance I now carry.

And The Council of Beings encircled me — the allies and guides who protect me.

I also placed a bowl of earth.

Crowning the Wisdom Keeper

A Ceremony of Burial, Sovereignty, and Sacred Emergence

The ritual was beautiful. I was held by gorgeous new energies, surrounded by elders.

And yet… something didn't feel quite right, I didn't feel The Queen of Wands or The Empress within me now. I didn’t feel the same shift that I did after The Bone Temple.

Instead I felt 'cut off'.

A heavy, familiar fog.
Not a wound, but more like a shroud.

A sense of being held back from my life, from my lifeforce.

It's always with me but mostly unnoticed, but I think it lifted after The Bone Temple, which is how I could feel it more clearly now.

This fog often comes and seems to cut me off from life, it's as if I'm removed, looking at life through a dirty sheet of perspex.

I'm wondering if in this ritual, in trying to claim these powerful archetypes of feminine power, I am also summoning an ancestral legacy passed down to keep women in my family from their power, from their lifeforce. Perhaps that was why I tapped into so much rage and sorrow.

The Bone Temple was a personal descent — a shadow integration.
I emerged lighter, because the burden was mine to release.

This ritual was a coronation where I tried to step into into a blocked lineage.
And so included in my ritual, almost be default, was the question - what must be healed for me to step fully into this?

And The fog is the answer.

Aftermath

I'm curious what this fog might hold, I'm trying to attune to it more clearly but it's not speaking yet...

some possibilities -

A Legacy of Silenced Women or Priests
Witches, herbalists, midwives.
Or men who were shamans, poets, rebels.
Their stories buried. Maybe my ritual reawakened their grief.

A Curse of Unworthiness or Betrayal
A thread that whispers:
“I cannot keep what I claim. It will be taken.”
Or: “It is dangerous to be seen in my power.”

A Soul Contract to Carry the Fog
The compulsion to loyalty in the family line is extremely strong, even if it means continuing to carry sorrow that doesn't belong to us.
The fog may be a loyalty fog — a binding contract ready to be unbound.

I will take some time to listen more closely and see what comes.

Fog is often how legacy burdens speak.
Not as a sharp exile-wound, but more like heaviness.

A psychic veil passed down from those who couldn’t complete the work.

It lingers especially after moments of joy or empowerment —
as if the soul whispers: Can we really have this?

This may be a rupture not only in me, but in my motherline or priestess-line.
A theft of voice, of intuition, of ritual and healing power.
Something sacred, silenced.

What the fog may hold

If this resonates...

If you feel yourself somehow on the outside of experience and life, as if your lifeforce is being repressed - you know you have so much to offer, so much life to live, and yet there is fog, or ice, or just thick heaviness - not a depression exactly, more like a shroud. Then you may be carry something that isn't yours.

Or maybe you feel you have a birthright to claim, a new identity to step into, fully embodied...maybe you're ready, fog-free!

You don't have to figure all this out in the mind, there are ways of meeting it in the body, in ritual. Maybe you inherited silence, or maybe you just learned to dim your light to let others shine or to stay safe. Some of us travel through life as fog-walkers — competent, kind, even radiant — but inwardly disconnected from the fierce clarity of soul.

If this is you, lets listen in together, there is wisdom in the fog and the stone.

Through parts work, constellation, and ceremony, we will invite your Wisdom Keeper, Empress, Flamekeeper, Priestess, Warrior home.