It is at once ancestral to my blood lineage, and ancestral to the lineage of this Land. It is my body in context as descendant of settler colonizers. It is my body in the context of settler, trying to unsettle. It is my living frame, my skin, as a white person raised on Southern evangelical-flavored colonizer religion, and polite racism. It is grappling with my heritage and coming out of the fray scathed. Marked. Affected.

It is at once performance art, and my work as Bean Feasa; it is earth-based spiritual medicine. It is sin-eating psychopomp work: a banishing and clearing. It is at request of land spirits that I use my blackthorn branch as a blasting rod.

The Banshee (Bain Sidhe or Bean Sidhe) the “washer woman at the ford” or “woman of the faery mound” is a specter of death. She is of the Otherworld, the parallel realm. Folks will know her when they see her: pain, fear, disgust, outrage. In this project, she haunts the lands of “the South,” out of place, out of the norm, and keening in the mass murder, the torture, the violence and extraction inherent in her existence there. A mirror indeed.

As a living death rattle, I invite Bain Sidhe into my body and channel the energy present in the objects I gather and within the land and spirits I am co-creating with.

I move my body, holding intent that the alchemy in my living cells transmute layered pain in the soils I stand on toward something compostable for the earth. I hold that this alchemy to take place toward awakening Land Spirits and any Wards in the earth so that they may reclaim their space. I intend this alchemy in my body to take place toward making the genius loci so inhospitable to the culture of white supremacy, that something new and whole has time to take root.

I hold the space for alchemy as a mirror to white folks that still suffer a cognitive dissonance. Who were your people, before they were subsumed into the beast of whiteness? Who were your people before they capitulated and became "white?"

• I fast for at least 24 hours prior to this working. I consume only herbal decoctions, tinctures, teas.
• I adorn my body in ritual objects, and symbolism that welcome Bain Sidhe.
• I welcome my well ancestors to come forth and activate in my bones and my blood.
• I put bare feet on soil, ground, asphalt, whatever the case may be in a physical location ritually chosen with my guides and spirits of place and space.
• I make an offering to the land and the ancestors of the land (in the case of my locale, the Cherokee and Catawba, when this project was born. I have also performed this work on Osage, Shawnee, Hopewell, Adena, and Kaskaskia lands.)
• I set the boundary that what passes through me will not stick around, and enlist my spiritual allies to help enforce this boundary.
• I move my body in primal shapes and make sounds as a vehicle for trance in parallel spaces until I am in an ecstatic grief state, and it feels as if things that are not of me are coming through. I move my body until the work feels complete or until signals from my physical vessel pull me back to self-tend.
• I make another offering to land, ancestors, and boundary-working guides, with much reverence and gratitude.
• I self-cleanse using water, salt, smoke, and dirt.
• I ground, and here, the work is temporarily complete. I eat very nourishing foods, comfort foods, and go to sleep with the aid of some mugwort for protection in my dream-state.

I do not claim absolution in this work, or even seek it. My ancestors would love that. But I do not engage in the Banshee practice on their behalf. (I engage in specifically other ancestral healing work on their behalf, and my own. Because I want to. Not out of obligation.)

I channel Banshee on behalf of a liberatory future not yet materialized, but one that has been held for thousands of years, and is currently being held, shaped, protected and cultured by magical radicals everywhere. The Banshee, in Celtic mythos, does not show up until death has happened. She appears to signal the death of a beloved to family members and intimates.

Banshee was born in the year 2019. It is the year 2026 as I write this. Colonization is still the normal, present reality we all live in. It has not died yet. But by the very nature of its own extraction, it is dying and cannot survive within its own systems, ways of being, thinking, and doing. We are moving through hegemonies of racism, whiteness, patriarchy, and colonizer religion every. single. day.

Banshee in the Bible Belt is a visioning of our collective future beyond... _____. It is a motion toward what must be, rather than a hope for what could be. In Banshee I signal death of thing that is not dead yet. But like vultures, and like Celtic Sin-Eaters of old, Banshee in the Bible Belt is present at the threshold between life and death.

Here are some organizations and thought leaders whose frameworks inform my ritual work, especially as I conjure the Banshee in the Bible Belt.

The Emergence Network

Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures

Refugia Village Mystery School & Dream Temple, especially the coursework for “The Burning Times Never Ended.”

Ritona Press, especially the coursework for “Land: Loss & Reconnection”

Mab Segrest, and her book Memoir of a Race Traitor

I officially initiated this project in a ritual confirmation of my commitment to this work. Meaning, I had been hearing the Land ask, and I chose, this day, to say “yes.” Here are photos and writing from a post I made on instagram, documenting this happening.

The writing:

“Today I spotted this blue feather on the ground, as soon as I stepped out of my car to walk inside my grandmother’s house. I spent the day helping with some housework and chatting with my grandparents. They told some new stories, but mostly the same ones about their youth and their elders too.

And as per usual I was inevitably invited to church and this ensued in draining but also respectful discussion about our spiritual differences. I tried and probably failed to explain that white Christianity’s collusion with white supremacy through history makes me very wary of churches. I did not share that I don’t identify as a Christian. I did not share I’m a practicing animist, and that a church service simply doesn’t do anything for me.

I was exhausted by the time I left, physically and otherwise. Then I got the intuitive hit to go a different way home than I came. And then I received guidance to stop at this old church and cemetery on the way home to leave my found feather as an offering to the spirits of the land. So I did. I tied a bit of string that was a leftover from an old spell around it (biodegradable, but maybe a bird will use it to nest) And I walked until it felt right to leave it in a spot: on the rock wall outside the gravestones all lined up in rows.

Note: there’s some energy around the land near my home neighborhood that’s rather ... not unusual but noticeably potent. Beneath gorgeous pastoral veneer is a fairly undisturbed heaviness. It feels like old spilled blood and colonial white violence. That’s most places in America. But around [placename redacted for privacy] and [placename redacted] it just feels extra... something. So: I visit this old 1800s church from time to time. And I used to live in the house next door. We are semi-familiar, this piece of earth-space, its beings, and I. And today I solidified a commitment to work with it as space and place. I don’t know what the feather is for. I don’t know how these pieces of feather, family and land fit together. Sometimes you just listen to your guides. Sometimes your bright and well ancestors make requests, and with right boundaries, you do what you can to meet them.

I do know that The Land is people too. Earth is Body. And Place holds the memory of the various bodies that lived and died on it, as soil and microorganisms interned back into itself. Land requires tending too. Sometimes land is hurting. And sometimes you leave a feather. Or a rock. Or simply water. Or a gift in line with the values of the ancient people that lived on a land. I don’t know how the pieces all fit, but today, a feather is : I see you, and I hear you, Beings of Place and Space. I align myself with your wellness, and within the level of my skill to do so, I can tend your pain.

I don’t know what’s next, but I will stay tuned, since this practice is a practice. I wanted to share this especially for anyone who ever also hears the Earth speak, or prays with leaves and stones : you’re not alone and you have every valid right to listen.”

An introduction to Banshee, the first public appearance, performed as a poem.

Regrettably, the only photographs I have of this performance are stuck on someone's film camera that I currently don't have access to. Some things are meant to be felt, live, and accessed only in memory.

The Monologue as poem is here.

February 2025: Banshee in the Bible Belt at Eastern Kentucky University’s Fred Giles Gallery, for the juried show In Commonwealth.

From the title card for the art show:

You are on sacred ground.

Here is a portal to the Otherworld.

Here is a portal to presence.

You are standing on land that has been stewarded by Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee) Hopewell, Adena,

Shawandasse Tula, and S’atsoyaha (Yuchi) for thousands of years. European settlement and the

Atlantic Slave Trade changed this land forever. Below your feet are stories untold. The stories that we know are only partial fillings.

Soil is Soul.

Here is a reference guide to the ritual objects laid in this space. Together the spirits of these objects weave a spell of healing, memory, and protection. Liberation for all beings. May we all get free.

1. Ancestral Altar: an heirloom record cabinet from my matrilineage.

2. Black Locust Branch: inked to preserve their natural color. North American plant energy syncretic to Blackthorn, Straif or “Strife.” Banshee branch. Blasting Rod. Crone. Morrigan.

3. Paper Sigil Tapestry: ink, charcoal, channeled symbols.

4. Blessings Ceramic Vessel: Handmade by my matrilineage.

5. Prayer Quilt: Handmade by my matrilineage.

6. Pinto Beans: Sacred plant, favorite food, nourishment.

7. Corn Meal: Sacred indigenous plant, heavily exploited by current overculture.

8. Soil from the site of Bloody Monday, Louisville, KY.

9. Stones from a crossroads at Riverside, Farnsley-Moremen Landing, Louisville, KY.

10. Water from my tap, from the groundwater aquifer from the Ohio River.