Living the Assignment

On Becoming A Practitioner of Ancestral Brilliance.

Dear Friend,

We’ve made it to Capricorn season. Day and night hush in and out, invoking the Latin namesake for this time of year, solstitium. Winter Solstice, when the Sun stands still.

This tectonic-like pause reminds me of the essay “A Hollow Bone,” by Terry Tempest Williams, recently published by Emergence Magazine. She says, “Let us learn how to migrate in the dark and return home to where we belong for nourishment. And let us move as one organism when we are called into a moment of flock consciousness.”

In the spirit of quietude, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned this past year, and in the last three years with Saturn in Pisces—the constellation which is the homeland of my Sun, the place where I shine and live into my vitality. I’ve traveled back in time to reacquaint myself with the first few posts from the early days of this newsletter/creative project/journal/threshold, to remember where I began. It’s wild to think that nearly four years ago, I sent out my first letter after months of toiling about whether or not to join Substack. Before that, from 2020 to 2022, I wrote a newsletter called “Letters of Solidarity,” which focused on ecology, healing justice, and ancestral wisdom. I would also record and send a poem to every paid subscriber as an expression of gratitude in support of my work.

Throughout the past three years, I’ve written a series on nature writing, breathwork, gardening, and now, acupuncture. Writing about these topics publicly has helped me learn and grow as an artist and become more comfortable with sharing my work.

All that to say, I’m glad I made it here. This space, and your presence, have been generative and grounding. Thank you.

In my review, I am reminded that creative experimentation is at the core of why I started this newsletter project. It is the assignment that called me to create this space. And, I am in a particular place in life where prioritizing this, alongside what my friend Henaz of Flow Acupuncture calls the ancestral assignment, is non-negotiable.

For example, one of my ancestral assignments begins in late February, when the ground slowly awakens at the beginning of Pisces season. I tend to my garden, some years better than others, as a way to commune with the Earth and my ancestors who made it through the middle passage, and for those ancestors who were already home in the lands of the southeastern coast when the ships sailed in.

Centering one’s ancestral assignment can look and feel and breathe in many different ways. It could mean:

• Honoring the magic and mystery that pulses inside your blood and body

• Allowing time and space to get curious. To see what happens when your spirit determines the cadence of your creative release

• Creating with your hands and sharing from your heart, and allowing others to receive what you have to offer

• Collaborating with your ancestors and remembering that nothing you do is in isolation, all things are interconnected, and you are never alone

As I contemplate my ancestral assignments, sitting with what is yearning to move through me in the coming year, ritual is key. It is a word that continues to emerge as I research and delve into the energetics of next year’s astrology. The word ‘ritual’ derives from the Latin ritualis and relates to religious and spiritual rites. Beyond the linguistic lexicon, rituals take the form of praxis: that which we do to create ceremony.

Centering my ancestral assignments is an act of creative resistance, a movement toward reprioritizing the rituals that were lost or stolen in the process of colonization and enslavement. It conjures a deep knowing inside my bones that my body is a map to the constellation of my desires, that I am made of stars, and the cosmos is expressing itself through me. It means that I get to be a vessel through which the tissue of the Universe weaves itself.

Image of me, by my partner, in Zilker Park in Austin, TX, circa 2015.

Centering my ancestral assignments means, among many things, coming to understand what it feels like to be abundantly resourced, committing that feeling to memory, and sharing it freely. It means that I get to live inside the deliciousness of a compliment I once received from an acupuncture colleague who told me my words felt like honey.

I claim it! I am putting to rest the fear of being perceived so that my words drip from me like honey. My work, I pray, feels the same when experienced: slow, thick, sweet, and gathering. I am a Taurus Midheaven, after all. And, I must concern myself with the senses—the six that we know of, as well as additional senses that are beginning to orbit our consciousness—because I come from a people who could divine through multi-sensory means. I am here to keep the ritual of interdependent ceremony alive, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs so astutely names in the essay, “The God of Every Day.”

We all have ancestral assignments: rituals that support our unfolding, and the unfolding of future generations. If you are curious about the routines, habits, and patterns that are unique to your life, The Ritual astrology reading is for you.

And, if you feel called to share, I’d love to hear which rituals, practices, and ancestral assignments are most alive within you this season.

Wishing you many blessings this Capricorn season.

Until the next one,

Christian

p.s. The year-end sale on virtual 1:1 astrology readings and my 6-week astrology partnership is still going through the end of 2025.

You can learn more about my work and values via interviews I’ve done with homies Sheree Mack, Rose Blakelock, and Lakan Ubaya Nagsalad.

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