come be reborn with us

#DiaSacrificia #RanchoDeLaLiberta #Siin #DiaDeLosMuertos

So I'm clearly a rookie gardener and I made this hilarious mistake of sprouting various medicinal plants in a single bag so now I'm vaguely unclear about what each of these sprouts actually are!
But the good news is that some of the year-old seeds actually did sprout, and those sprouts were just transferred to pots to (hopefully) keep on growing.

#Gardening #MedicinalPlants #Herbalism #RanchoDeLaLiberta

Teaser from Friday's shoot - details to be released this week!
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#RanchoDeLaLiberta #DiaSacrificia #Siin

Oh! Speaking of updates here at the ranch, it just kind of happened that we're now hosting a very casual viewing of the Perseides meteor shower next weekend. We're located in an International Dark Sky Community, so we have strangers coming to camp and friends coming to enjoy the shower. Anyone in the American Southwest is welcome to contact me for details if you're interested in joining us. It isn't necessarily an "event" we're opening to the public, but I'd definitely be open to considering hosting new friends for something so casual.

As summer closes, it feels like the season is ramping up again, and it's quite exciting to re-enter the season where work can really be done on our land and we'll be consistently hosting our community again.

#RanchoDeLaLiberta #Updates #MeteorShower #DarkSky

Reminiscing on old performances as I prepare for new -
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Details to come but #DiaDeLosMuertos will be held at #RanchoDeLaLiberta and we will be opening the space up to the public
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I plan to have a bill put together and posted in the next two weeks. All updates will share the hashtag #DiaSacrificia

Will update once details are released but we will be hosting Dia de los Muertos here at Rancho de la Liberta.

Looking forward to sharing more about what this will entail, and if we're going to open invitations to the public!

#DiaDeLosMuertos #RanchoDeLaLiberta

Have been sleeping outside underneath the stars, nude, awaking to the first light of dawn each morning. Each night is begun with final waking visions of brilliant milky way and endless stars, each day commences as sun rises over black mountains groaning of ancient volcanoes and brilliant blue seas. Dreams are punctuated with hysterical coyote songs like the flutes of those who stewarded this land before the value of it was forgotten by greedy men desperate for glinting gold, who razed every last tree to the ground on their frenzied rush to their own demise.

#RanchoDeLaLiberta #Meditations #LandWorship

Welcome! I'm Siin, a ritual handwork tattooist and multidisciplinary artist based in the high Mojave desert. My work seeks to bring the recipient or viewer into transcendent states, often centered around connection with one's body, the land, and the Divine.

I've recently gotten more comfortable defining myself as a pagan animist. My practice is rather eclectic though rooted in ancestral Chicano & Sicilian practices and folk magic. Because these cultures have been heavily assimilated, I will never claim that any practice or ritual I engage in is "authentic". I am, as most of us are, working with the tools I've been given by the two surviving generations before me, my own interpretation and inspiration, cues and materials from this sacred landbase, and the broader social context.

My partner and I are the owners of #RanchoDeLaLiberta, a regenerative agricultural project and sanctuary here in the desert, currently in its infancy. We host events and people interested in being a part of the sacred work of stewarding abused land.

Veneration of life and creation are at the base of my art and spiritual practice. I'm proud to be the creator of a small human, and hopefully more in the future. Parenthood is sacred to me, and I will occasionally share meditations on it or cute things my kid has done.

I will be opening books to schedule tattoos in the spring. However, I will only be accepting clients selectively. If you're interested in having space held for a tattoo or tattoo ceremony, my email address is in my inbox. My work is priced on a sliding scale: I'm not out to make money, but my time and knowledge is worth something. If you need this space, but are concerned about being able to afford it, reach out to me.

I look forward to engaging thoughtfully with everyone new and old here, and appreciate if you've taken the time to read this entire thing!

Blessings ~

#Introductions #Siin #InkWork #LandWorship #SacredTattoo #LandSteward #Pagan #Animism

As we celebrate this, the most lively, longest day of the year, I bring some updates:
We've been extremely busy these last couple of months, getting some of the new plantings established and also just with other *life* things.
We've learned some valuable lessons and I'm extremely pleased to be able to share that everything we're growing at the Ranch is absolutely thriving!
Thriving, despite the water that is literally the quality of brackish seawater, we found out (we have filters for our whole house and for our drinking water, but learned that the whole house filter isn't cutting it AND that the hose spigots aren't going through the whole house filter since they were poorly set up).
Thriving, despite that the topsoil is literally just sand and gravel. For instance, on a whim I planted some sweet potatoes in sand in a spot where a hose spigot leaks, and they're sprouting, having only been given sand and the drip from the hose. My guess is they're able to thrive on the nutrients in the tuber itself, so we'll see what happens when those are used up. For now, though, it's extremely exciting to see things take root in such an apparently hostile environment.

There's also grass shooting up anywhere it can, anywhere there's water and a little shade. It's a good reminder that this is not a true desert, that this is just arid land and it is only desertified through human behavior. And especially as we read "Tending the Wild", on resource management by California's Indigenous peoples, it's inspiring to realize that we can reverse this state through careful stewarding of the land, as well.

With blooming sage and rosemary, mesquite and palo verde, date palms and oleander, prickly pear and beavertail, agave and aloe, there is an abundance of insect activity and wildlife. Crickets, grasshoppers, all kinds of bees, fascinating spiders, desert iguanas and really large lizards, ground squirrels and many more types of birds than we saw last year in the summer, all are flocking to the green, the wet, and the shade.

Birds are taking pomegranate seeds and depositing them around the desert, one of our mesquite trees is sprouting a small child next to it, our date palms are propagating themselves with little frond shoots and one is even growing teeny green dates despite the fact that we were told we'd have to hand pollinate them to make that happen.

We're celebrating abundance and giving offerings and thanks to this land all day today, culminating with a ritual this evening to charge a solar tattoo I'll be doing outside.

#SummerSolstice #Solstice #RanchoDeLaLiberta #Permaculture #RegenerativeAgriculture #MojaveDesert #Eco #Sustainability #Desert #LandWorship

Duads | Devotional tattoo
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Hand poked among friends and family, and loosely based on designs traditional to my partner's ancestry (as encouraged by him and done with respect, offerings, and a significant amount of preparation and research).
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#SpiritualTattoo #SpiritualInk #InkWork #SacredInk #SacredTattoo #Duad #RanchoDeLaLiberta #Siin

The weather is getting marvelously warm, and with compost heaps and greywater retention on the property that means the flies are now becoming a nuisance outdoors.

Money and time are tight but we need to get this coop built and bring some chickens home ASAP - before summer is in full swing, to help out.

On a more positive note: we are SO excited for all of the trees and plants that will be delivered and planted in the next couple weeks. We just picked out some lovely things yesterday and I cannot wait to share before and after pictures.

#Permaculture #Homesteading #SelfRegulatingEcosystems #DesertHomestead #RanchoDeLaLiberta

Updates:

1. Going to the local (well, Coachella Valley, kind of a hike, but as local as it gets around here) nursery this weekend to spring on some mature trees to provide shade for other plantings. This will be the only time we don't grow from seed. In order to have some water retention & shade in place before summer monsoons this year it's worth it.
2. My partner surprised me with a load of incredible books, some of which are on chicken care. So! I've been learning about chickens all day, and we plan on getting chicks from a somewhat-local hatchery after our New York trip.
3. We finally found a potentially promising permaculture designer to help out. Crossing our fingers for our phone call on Saturday!

#Permaculture #RanchoDeLaLiberta #Homesteading #RegenerativeAgriculture

In this stage of spring, the morning after the first quarter moon, I'd like to do some sharing on action and intention and how that's manifesting here at Rancho de la Liberta. I expect this to also become a thread of updates for anyone interested in seeing our progress.

Intention: Rancho de la Liberta is a space for spiritual awakening and connection, ecological and personal regeneration, the land thriving as we do - we seek shared growth, symbiosis. A few weeks ago that was only a goal - now, we're seeing it become a reality.

Action: Our equinox party was profound - a collection of individuals with love to share engaging in individual *and* collective spiritual journeys, breathing the wind, dancing, stargazing, speaking questions and sharing answers. Everyone who was here really needed and wanted to be here, and that was incredibly eye opening.
I then held a friend in ceremony just before the first quarter. He's been on a pilgrimage: he flew to Jordan just after visiting California for the first time almost exactly a year ago and being with us for our wedding. And then he came back, a full cycle later, knowing the questions and partaking of the flesh of the gods for his answers. To be able to faciliate this journey was an incredible honor.
This week I'm preparing to share a little bit of my individual soul with the world, next we make a plan to move forward with our vision.

#RanchoDeLaLiberta #Mojave #Homesteading #SpiritualAwakening #Commune #CommunalLiving #Permaculture #RegenerativeLiving