Why I no longer call myself spiritual.

I no longer call myself spiritual.

That is not because I have lost faith, depth, or reverence, but because the word has been hollowed out.

Too often, spirituality is framed as transcendence at the expense of the Earth, at the expense of embodied life, and at the expense of lived truth.

I am not interested in leaving this world behind (yet).

I am not interested in closing my eyes to what is happening around us, numbing myself to suffering, or locating “awakening” somewhere other than where my body stands. The work, as I understand it, is not to rise above life, but to enter it more fully. To remain available to reality, including its grief, its contradictions, its horrors and its discomfort, without turning away and without being consumed by it. That is no easy thing.

This is not a project of “love and light.” I have walked that road myself, masking real pain with spiritual language, and witnessing how the same language is used by gurus and teachers to bypass accountability and excuse toxic behaviour.

This work is not about glossing over suffering, aestheticising pain, or transcending ourselves out of responsibility.

It asks for honesty rather than comfort, and for presence rather than escape.

Hermetic teachings remind us that, contrary to many spiritual traditions that denigrate or attempt to transcend the body, the body is not opposed to the soul, it is its counterpart.

The body is the soul’s expression in form, the place where spiritual intelligence meets matter and becomes knowable through sensation, limitation, and lived experience. In this understanding, incarnation is not a mistake, and the body is not something to escape. It is the field in which transformation becomes possible.

There is no awakening that does not pass through the body, no truth that is realised without consequence.

When spirituality disconnects from embodiment, it becomes abstract, performative, and unaccountable.

I hear a great deal at the moment about diverging timelines and levels of consciousness. About “ascending,” aligning elsewhere, inhabiting higher frequencies, often this accompanied by a quiet refusal to look directly at what is happening on this planet.

What I also see, woven through much of this language, is extraction and exploitation, particularly within spiritual circles.

Plant medicines, ancestral practices, and sacred traditions are being packaged, branded, and sold through exclusive retreats costing thousands. What was once communal, relational, and rooted in land and lineage is increasingly commodified, colonised, and made inaccessible to the very people it comes from.

Healing is becoming a luxury product. Awakening a status symbol.

Facing this reality leaves no neutral ground. Either I participate in the same dynamics under a different name, or I draw a clear line and commit to a different way of working.

My approach may slow my progress.

It may limit my reach.

It may make my work less marketable.

But that is not what this work is about for me.

I have made a pact with the Medicine I work with and the terms are clear: the work must remain accessible.

Those who have financial means are asked to give more, not out of charity, and not out of virtue, but as part of their relationship with the medicine and the work itself.

Reciprocity matters. Exchange matters. Weight matters.

And for those who genuinely cannot afford the usual costs of ceremony, money is not a barrier. Healing cannot belong only to those who can pay. It cannot mirror the same hierarchies and exclusions that are already fracturing the world.

You cannot separate the work we do from what is happening on this planet.

I have felt deep disappointment at the lack of acknowledgement within spiritual spaces of the lived realities of so many people; war, displacement, poverty, systemic violence, ecological collapse. There is a dangerous fantasy circulating that healing happens in isolation, in curated bubbles of safety and beauty, disconnected from the world’s pain.

Nothing is separate. We are all connected. There are no exceptions.

If you believe you can heal above or beyond the world and if you think transcendence means leaving it behind, you have missed the point entirely. The Earth does not ask us to escape. She asks us to stay.

To feel. To remain present. To carry what we can, and to be honest about what we cannot.

This work is not about purity or perfection. It is not about becoming enlightened individuals floating above the mess of life. It is about learning how to live inside that mess with integrity, humility, and care and allowing that to change how we walk, how we choose, and how we relate.

That is why 'spiritual' no longer feels aligned to me and the work I do, what I am committed to is far older than that word.

The work I offer is initiatory

Why This Work Is Initiatory and Why That Matters

Initiatory work sets this path apart from much of what now circulates under the language of spirituality, healing, and personal development.

This work is concerned with thresholds. With moments that alter orientation so completely that returning to a previous way of being is no longer possible. Initiation changes how you live, how you relate, and how you stand in the world. It works at the level where insight becomes consequence.

An initiation does not add anything. It reorganises what is already present. It strips away what is no longer viable and brings into view what cannot be carried forward. What falls away does so because it no longer fits the truth you have met.

Once something essential is encountered and absorbed at the core, the internal landscape changes. You may want to return to what was familiar, or try to resume old patterns, but something in you will no longer cooperate. The body begins to speak differently. What once functioned stops working.

This can be disorienting. It can feel inconvenient or unsettling. It is not a sign of imbalance. It is the result of a shifted orientation.

Initiatory work unfolds over time and through integration. It cannot be rushed without distortion. It cannot be reduced to a consumable experience without losing its integrity. It brings responsibility rather than promise, and asks to be lived with rather than interpreted from a distance.

This is the initiatory work that unfolds through the Serpent Wheel and is held in practice within the Serpent Ceremony.

On the other side of the threshold is a life aligned with purpose, clarity, and aliveness.

A life where you are able to express yourself and your gifts without distortion and without obstruction. Where what you do arises naturally from who you are. When you move in that way, effort gives way to coherence, and there is a quiet rightness that needs no explanation.