Published on BitchMedia.org, April 10, 2017
The list of rituals offered on the website of community-based healer, organizer, and ritual artist Dori Midnight seem to sum up her deft blend of the spiritual and the practical. There are healing rituals and fertility rituals, but also activist rituals and “queer magic and transition rituals.” Midnight, who has trained as both a clinical herbalist and an interfaith minister, grounds her work in a commitment to collective liberation, but punctuates it with a healthy dose of cheek: Her apothecary offers up elixirs called “Boundaries in a Bottle” (“Excellent for visits with family”) and “YES Liberation” (“for healing, strength, protection and support in the face of racism, neocolonialism and oppression”). In other words, she’s definitely a great mystic for the times we live in now.
What motivates you to do the work that you do—and how is our current political situation impacting it?
Love. I have always been motivated by wanting to be of service to who and what I love: my communities and extended web of artists, activists, healers, and dreamers; young and old folks; queer and trans people; people of color; my disabled and chronically ill kin; liberation movements; and the earth itself.
The current state of affairs is totally showing up in my work. The racism and injustices are nothing new; [they are] just getting more articulated and less veiled. But there are also many real ways that peoples’ lives are…read more
