Today marks one year. Last year, today, I woke up to the Full moon in Gemini and nervousness in my gut. I lit so many candles in the house, prayed, and gave thanks for all the subtle guidance and guardianship I received while in a container, tending to wounds and working toward my doctorate. I had spent most of 2022 and a good part of 2023 in dissertation mode, honoring the marginal voice and the space where art speaks in its own terms; rarely does it need me to translate. Yet here I was at the final threshold, which required my translation. While I didn't want to share a presentation, it was so meaningful to be witnessed by all the people I love as I received the Doctor of Depth Psychology and Archetypal Studies title.

As my dissertation defense was virtual, the college had me sign in one hour early to ensure everything in the Zoom portal was working correctly. Little did they know that everything had already been double and triple-checked many days in advance. Since I didn't have to fix any Zoom issues, I spent most of that hour trying to get my 91-year-old grandmother on the call. We had also practiced earlier, but it was only her third time trying to log into Zoom via a text message. It was so difficult to even conceive of her getting on; I coached her at every step via phone. She made it, and I felt accomplished, even before having to present anything at all. She was the first in the Zoom room to witness my nerves. Today, I reflect that out of all the people I love on that call, she is no longer present in bone and body on this planet in this timeline. Today, I recognize how my past self created a container for this new, fresh wound to rest in.

Aabuela and I spoke about death, about transitioning, about what she might be holding on to. I reminded her that, in spirit, she would always have a place of honor in my home. During her last week in the flesh, I asked her if she wanted her ancestor altar to be in the kitchen with Mimi and Manuel (her mother and father) or upstairs, where I paint, write, and create. She chose the latter. She hadn't embodied her vibrant self for the past year. She had a major physical wound that needed weekly tending, had taken a few falls, and couldn't care for herself, which became a big mental obstacle. Although she wanted to, it was hard to conceive that her body would heal like it used to. That said, her nature wasn't to surrender but to fight to the end, to survive, knowing that no one before had ever overcome a battle with death. I often wondered what was keeping her on this planet. I urged her to ask my grandfather, who had passed years before, for help crossing over. I encouraged her to give things away—simple things she hadn't seen or used for decades; it was difficult for her because, as she repeated time and time again, "I might need it later." I became curious about why some of us linger in the living when part of us wants to die. I thought maybe, in her own way, she was mending complex relationships, and she needed more time.

For the past three years, I had been traveling back and forth, helping her when I could. It felt like she had been dying for years, and honestly, she was bouncing back from falls and spinal fractures. I didn't feel the urgency this time to get on a plane or drive for three days; it was different, and I thought we had said everything we needed to, and we had. What I wasn't expecting were gifts at the end of her life. I had never considered the gifts offered at the end of life. Her gifts were not in words but by journeying via dreams and visions that now live in my bones, blood, and heart. I recognize today how this gift has strengthened my belief, purpose, and trust in the creative process. The images she shared with me are haunting, magical, beautiful transformations. But I think what I am receiving in a new way is yet again how the image supports and anchors these difficult transitions.

As she transformed into different species of butterflies with child-like curiosity and joy, she realized how necessary the wing image was to accept this new flight. She then turned an iridescent glitter color like a sparking mist, wind, or smoke and said "todo lo soy" as if realizing this for the very first time. "Everything I am," there is no distinction between you and me, between water, ocean, cloud, tree, butterfly, bird, cat, human.

Yesterday, during a treatment, I lay on a table, and the inquiry that I heard was, "How do I receive myself?" this inquiry is part of grief. Grief is the undercurrent in my ocean; it feels like a transition from receiving myself as a granddaughter to Martha Sanchez and learning to be in a world where she is everywhere. Perhaps the overflowing tears, at any moment, are a visceral remembrance of her overwhelming embrace. To be embraced by all of it. The undercurrent of grief lets me receive this gift in a new way. I, too, am metamorphosing, transforming, changing.

In her honor, I remember the power of creativity and art and how the blank page is always an altar where we can collectively place and tend to our wounds. On this November full moon in Taurus, I share a part of my dissertation, Navegando Liminal: Rituals to Translate the Image of the Wound (2023, Tacoronte-Perez).1

Listen to part II: Remembering Magic: Poison Power

Remembering Magic: Poison Power

Some things are both poisonous and medicinal depending on how they are prepared and absorbed. A poison is considered“anything—apart from heat or electricity—which is capable of destroying life by absorption into the living system” (Ellis, 2013, p. 17)2. Pharmakon and pharmacognosy is the study of poison via an experiential tradition, where the healing knowledge is extracted directly from the poison (Pendell, 2005, p. 3)3 To understand this, I invoke the Aztec witch-goddess Tlazolteotl—she of divine filth associated with excrement, the source of her potent fertility (Klein, 1993, p. 21)4. For the Aztec, excrement embodies the spirit of the earth, which through Tlazolteotl provides food, shelter, stories, and community. Like excrement the wound can be repugnant, putrid, and poisonous, yet also possess the power to bless and restore when explored from a different perspective. For example, animal excrement, blood, and bone provide nitrogen-rich soil used as fertilizer for plant growth. Depth psychology, and this research, address ways to bridge the gap between the wound as a poison that acts from the unconscious to disrupt or distort one’s consciousness and its power to make us more whole when differentiated and integrated into awareness (Jung, 1937/1969, p. 121).5   

Modern humans have evolved to follow the fragrance of a sweet ripe peach, pick it off the tree with ease, bite it, knowing it is safe to eat. Humans naturally turn away from filth, foul smells, and bitter foods—tastes and smells that can indicate when something is poisonous in the wild so that we do not eat them. We often react in the same way to the so-called negative, the shadow with its potions of psychological poison; we smell its fragrance and back away from the pain, split, or wounding it stirs in us.

However, if we look to the plant kingdom for wisdom, we find that many poisonous plants can heal and cure our ailments (Ellis, 2013). Often, a specific part of the plant holds the poison, and the difference between the medicinal and the deadly plant depends on the quantity used. Narcotics like opium and belladonna aid in sleep and relaxation, while sedatives (digitalis purpurea, aconite) slow down one’s heart and assuage the pain. All have the capacity to kill.           

The blessing one’s wound might contain—like the medicinal portion of the poisonous plant—often reveals itself in dreams. Lucid dreamer expert and teacher Clare Johnson (2017) explained that when psyche offers an image and one can see it, it is medicinal. Although not pleasant to taste, the psyche through nightmares prescribes the adequate dosage to shame, scare, or silence us, shaking us awake.6 When one begins to digest the images that contain the medicinal qualities of the shadow and the wounds it holds, with time one might experience the shadow’s powers and gifts.

If poisons have medicinal properties, why is it difficult to extract the antidote from the wound? In trauma the poison stays hidden in the unconscious; it may be forgotten and perhaps become even more toxic, spilling from oneself onto others and across generations. Mark Wolynn (2017)7 explained in It Didn’t Start with You, how in some populations of mice, trauma and traumatic events are passed down transgenerationally. In contrast, in an interview with Connor Beaton, Francis Weller (2021) explained that transgenerational trauma is also the “transgenerational transmission of courage, affection, love, creativity, and imagination” (41:38). Weller’s observation invites remembrance and honoring of the resilience of one’s ancestors. One might say that the voice of trauma calls out to future generations for help and their resilience is thanked because their survival provides an opportunity for the trauma to become conscious, and thus be healed. These are the two voices (please help; thank you) that echo through votive offerings, retablos, and ex-votos.Through these acknowledgments of past traumas there can be suffering and resilience. Put another way, those horrific underworld images—the images of the wound filled with shame, disgust, and abandonment—move the soul (Hillman, 1979, p. 79).8 They do so in re-membering of lineage and one’s place within it; their relevance and honoring are critical to this depth psychological study, which is also an artistic process.

The artistic process crystallizes or distills an idea into matter. It is similar to making medicine from poison as it requires a transformation—as one does the work, the labor, one is worked on. Many spiritual traditions have priests and priestesses, shamans, and curanderas who ritualize nature’s elements artistically, through image, to reach inner worlds (Durand & Massey, 1995; Hagedorn, 2002; Kāretu, 1993; Marchi, 2013; Patrinos, 2020).9 When one takes on the role of looking at one’s wound and tending to it, one enters ritual and becomes the artist—working together with the wound. Initially, one is drawn to solve or mend, but with time, practice, and staying in relationship to the wound, the spiralic nature of healing is discovered. As Jung (1961/1963) observed, “There is no linear evolution: there is only circumambulation” through which one consciously reorients around and circles the self as the organizing center and totality of the psyche (p. 196).10 Rather than place medicine on the surface of the wound to silence or numb it, as one spirals inward one learns how to extract and cook healing medicine right from the wound. Healing becomes one’s ability to harness the poison in particular quantities as medicinal.

Offering Wounds: Asemic Writing

As a preliminary engagement on the way to revealing the image of the wound, spontaneous mark-making, like Asemic writing allows trapped or unknown feelings and sensations to be expressed. Asemic writing can look like words or writing; but is unreadable and has no decipherable meaning; it can be a placeholder for the unknown. Asemic artist Wenda Gu expressed that these marks represent “imagination beyond the limitation of language.” Although considered meaningless, I would testify that it lives in that space between the image and the word, like a symbol carrying energy. Asemic writing provides a first step in shifting from writing to free expression, a way to create or comprehend an Other meaning, an in-between place, or a much-needed release.

The effect of asemic writing suspends the observer and perhaps even disrupts one amid thought, seeing, and attempting to read. Asemic writing requires us to pause, and although we may still seek to make meaning of these marks, it asks us to lean into surrender, acceptance, and sensation because we cannot read what is in front of us, the way we are used to. Like wounding, this practice brings us to a place we can all occupy regardless of our differences, literacy levels, or identities. When amplified with this practice, wounding can express what cannot be said, and once in a gestural form, the wound begins to live outside oneself.

Asemic Practice: Express and Release

Find a comfortable place to sit or rest in front of your altar. You may want to have your journal, and your writing tool (pencil, marker, crayon). If you like play some music, or set a timer for 10-15 minutes.

Using your dominant hand, begin by asemically writing some of the objects you might have in your space, or the sounds you might be hearing. You also may write to call on your ancestors or remember the anchor images that support you. When you feel ready, you can also use asemic writing to express how you feel, what might be heavy on your heart, a secret you have been keeping, or let your burdens go.

To transition, re-orient yourself into your space; notice the sounds, deepen your breathing, look around the room, and eventually let your eyes rest on the altar or sacred image. Then, note your observations and imaginings in your journal by doodling or free writing. Make this offering to your altar, keep it in your journal, or transform it in any way you like.

Dr. Chanti's Substack is a reader-supported publication. You can expect both theory and practice—nerdy-scholarly articles, creative invitations, and liminal practices that support. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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