Dig Deep
An Earth Ritual
Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and represents a compilation of essays on animistic nature connections in the modern world. Johanna DeBiase is an author and Nature Therapy Guide living off grid in Taos, NM.
November’s Intuitive EcoWriting Workshop, Writing the Body, is Wednesday, November 21st 5-7 pm MT. Registration closes November 18th. More info below. These generative writing classes for all levels of writing experience delve into a new topic each month, opening a pathway for nature connections while creating authentic prose.
Digging Ceremony
Perhaps you think of swinging a shovel as nothing more than manual labor but with intention, digging can be a spiritual practice.
In June of 2021, I participated in a digging ceremony called BE WITH in Abiquiu, New Mexico, led by artist and ceremonialist, Jesse Haviland, inspired by the short film Passage. Passage was created by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat in 2001 in collaboration with American composer Philip Glass, who provided the music. The film is an artistic depiction of Islamic funeral practices. You can watch an excerpt here:
Prior to this time, I had never heard of a digging ceremony. Jesse is a good friend of mine, and I was honored to be invited to join her. Her impetus for the ceremony was an offering, a way to gift the world after so much loss during the previous year with the start of the Covid pandemic. Her themes were universal--healing, death, trauma, grief, emptying out and filling back up, as we do when we dig a hole for a new tree, filling it in with roots and backfilling the hole again. What have we been emptied of? How can we be full again? In preparation for the ceremony, I went on a solo walk and wrote this poem.
Digging #1
I went to the forest to meditate
And in meditation, I began to dig.
The soil dark, soft, luscious
Threaded with roots
Mycorrhizal roots
(My core is all roots)
The trees and their delicate transmissions
I didn’t dare to disrupt
So I dug around.
My pitted olive hands
Scratched at the dainty fibers
Overcome by connection:
Trees to trees
Me to trees
Me to earth
Me to everyone to earth to trees
I knew then what I came to bury
The old me
The old me was
Disjointed and disembodied,
Striving and unsatiated,
Confused and craving,
always seeking outward.
Never enough.
I needed to bury her
And say my goodbyes,
To thank her for all she had done
To protect me thus far
And let her know, it’s okay
You can let go now,
I got this.
And then I grew solemn,
realizing I live in a society
That perpetuates the old me
And all those like her.
And so, I buried that too.
And I vowed to make it my new path
To connect others with my new truth
That we are mycorrhizal roots
(My core is all roots)
We are all connected in a web
An all-nurturing, all-loving, always evolving web
Just below the surface.
We only need to dig a little deeper.
And I buried that vow too
But not the way we bury the dead,
The ending of life,
But as we bury a seed,
The beginning.
Our first ceremony was a private rehearsal for the performance and consisted of just the five women that would be digging. We met on public lands near Santa Fe, circling up, our knees in dirt, we smudged, we prayed, and then we used our bare hands to claw away at the earth, throwing the sand back behind us faster and faster, clawing and tossing, clawing and tossing in the rhythmic patterns inherent to digging. Then the wailing began, raging cries, primordial yells as we tore at the topsoil and threw the dirt to the air, vehemently and more vehemently, a rage brewing in our collective song. Finally, it would subside, and we rested, collapsing atop each other, resting in the emptiness. We rose and danced, refilling ourselves.
After I wrote this poem.
Digging #2
The clouds rolled in darkly.
We agreed to weather the storm.
We came here to dig.
We came to get dirty.
Which part? The feral and the free.
We are women digging
pentacles and earth angels,
scraping with clipped nails,
Inviting the mother glitter
swaying breath in and breath out,
beckoning lightning bolts through our crowns.
Shrouded in desert,
we sing from our throats, from our guts,
Turkey cries and raven calls.
We sing into water and
Plant luminescent seeds.
The coyote howls in high afternoon
and we draw down the sun.
We dig to bury the old.
We dig to birth the new.
We are birthing from the earth.
Earth. Birth. Dig.
Earth. Birth. Dig.
Earth. Birth. Dig.
Weeks later, we enacted the ceremony again at Únashay, a grief sanctuary. This time we added costumes, musicians, altar building, processions and an audience. Witnesses were invited after to fill the hole with their blessings. The ceremony doubled as a groundbreaking for their new bath house.
Digging our Land
This spring, while digging a foundation for our house extension, I remembered that ceremony. Our foundation took months to dig, including the greenhouse bed, but I found myself loving the hard labor, even in the hot sun, baking my skin brown. Push, lean, shift, lift release. Push, lean, shift, lift, release. Every muscle rocked in synchronicity with the action. I was a human machine; my body was a force strong enough to move earth. The load on each shovel seemingly minuscule, a pound of clay and sand, and yet the simple repetition added up to a hole, a garden bed, the foundation of a home. As I dug, my mind was lost in trance, my body was alert to each twitch of muscle and bend of bone. My heart was with intention to create slowly one shovel full at a time, to build a home.
I did not know then that this digging was practice for the ceremony yet to come. In the fall, moments after my elder dog passed away, we began digging a grave. In the shock of the moment, it felt like the only thing to do. How do we move our bodies in sorrow? How do we express our grief? Eric and I looked around and picked the best spot on the western edge of our property. I understood the therapeutic power of digging, and because of the ceremony we had done, I knew that digging was part of the grief process. So, I picked up a shovel, and I sang songs, and I wept and I dug deeper and deeper and with each shovel full, emptied my grief into the earth.
We dig to plant seeds. We dig to build a home. And we dig to bury the dead. Digging represents the ultimate cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth. In the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, he writes, "To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” [1] When we put our whole body into the force of moving earth for any purpose, we are creating a space within for remembering. Whether you are digging to bury a wishful seed or to put something to rest, digging is a ceremonial tool of transformation and growth.
Here’s how to create your own digging ritual:
Set your intention. What are you letting go of? Or what are you planting?
Follow your heart-sense to determine the location of your dig.
Will you dig alone or with others? Will there be witnesses?
Begin digging. You can use a shovel or your hands, whichever feels appropriate.
If you are beginning something new, you may add seeds, breathing your wish into each seed, and watering them. If you want to let go of something, you may bury a symbol of what you wish to release.
You can bury something representative, or you can simply speak into the hole.
When you feel complete, fill the hole back in with love and care for the precious goods it contains.
Perhaps mark it as you would a grave or a garden bed.
[1] Gandhi, M. K. (1968). The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi (Vol. 30). The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. https://archive.org/details/HindSwaraj-CWMG-030
moving, wise, poetic, my core is all roots-yes
Awesome. I too, have found solace in digging for the ethereal construct of digging.