Valentine’s Day is often a commodification of love as a commercialized performance. Yet beneath this modern take, lies far older and more sincere roots. The earliest Valentine figures were transgressive, associated with forbidden unions, clandestine loyalties, and acts of care that defied political and religious authority. In this older telling, love is not comfort or fantasy, but a social and spiritual commitment, often undertaken in circumstances that were designed to suppress it. (Sounds increasingly familiar right?)

Historically, February was not a season of excess or ease, but one of endurance. Food stores ran low, tempers frayed, illness lingered, and communities were forced into close quarters by weather and necessity. Survival depended less on individual strength than on collective cohesion. Love, in this context, was not abstract or romanticised; it was practical, embodied, and deeply relational. It appeared in shared labour, redistributed resources, caregiving, and the ongoing work of keeping social bonds intact when strain threatened to unravel them.

This is where radical love reveals itself, not as a feeling to be declared, but as a practice to be sustained. Folk-life teaches that love has always been something enacted through responsibility. It is the choice to remain present when retreat would be easier, to continue tending relationships when exhaustion, fear, or scarcity make withdrawal tempting. Radical love is not dramatic or loud. It is quiet, durable, and often invisible, yet it is the force that allows communities to survive long winters without turning on one another.

In the contemporary world, this kind of love has become increasingly subversive. Modern political and economic systems are structured to benefit from fragmentation and isolation. They encourage competition over cooperation, self-sufficiency over mutual reliance, and productivity over care. Community becomes optional, rest becomes suspect, and worth is measured by output rather than presence. Within this landscape, choosing interdependence is a form of resistance. Mutual aid, shared knowledge, collective creativity, and emotional availability challenge the myth that survival is an individual achievement.

Valentine, reclaimed through this lens, becomes far more than a celebration of romance. It becomes a seasonal call to recommit to collective care. It asks us to examine how love moves through our communities: who is supported, who is neglected, and what kinds of relationships are being actively nourished. Radical love is not passive kindness or vague goodwill. It is structured, intentional, and ongoing. It requires boundaries as well as generosity, accountability alongside compassion, and a willingness to remain engaged even when relationships are complex or uncomfortable.

This framework inevitably turns inward as well. Radical self-love is often misunderstood as indulgence or self-centredness, when it is more accurately described as stewardship. It is the refusal to internalise systems that demand constant extraction from the body, mind, and spirit. It is the practice of honouring limits, respecting cycles of rest, and releasing narratives that equate worth with productivity or sacrifice. To love oneself radically is to recognise the self as part of the community’s ecology, deserving of the same care offered to others.

When self-love and communal love are held together, relationships shift. They become less performative and more rooted, less transactional and more reciprocal. Care begins to circulate rather than accumulate, and belonging becomes something actively maintained rather than conditionally granted. Love, in this sense, becomes an eco-system, a part of everyday life and it is a sustaining force rather than a symbolic act.

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Across much of Europe and the British Isles, February was often concerned with surviving the hunger gap, as stored foods ran low and the weather was still hostile. February was at time of communal responsibility and was primarily taken up with preparatory tasks such as cleaning, mending, monitoring stores, and watching signs of change in land and livestock. Traditionally, February was more about discipline than desire.

In Neolithic cultures, tools were not just seen as objects but seen as active participants in daily life, Imbolc was a time of preparation and maintenance. It is believed people attached to animacy, memory, and relational meaning to the tools of their craft, trade and business. Axes, blades, grinding stones, looms, and vessels were shaped through the diligent and intimate process of making and crafting, which bound the human maker to the material outcome.

Archaeological evidence suggests tools were often named, repaired rather than discarded, deposited ritually, or buried in ways that mirror the treatment of bodies, indicating an understanding of tools as holding spirit, force, or intention. This animistic worldview saw tools as collaborators in survival. They carried the accumulated knowledge of ancestors and the life-force of repeated use. To work with a tool was to enter a relationship that demanded respect, attentiveness, and reciprocity, reinforcing values of the community and tribe.

For our second in person gathering, Untamed will be hosting a tool blessing and intention setting evening on Feb 3rd at Atelier, Pasadena, 3330 Colorado Blvd.

Winter for our ancestors was as cruel as it was merry. It was a time of darkness, both physically and spiritually. Resources more finite, weather less kind, and community more on top of one another as hunting parties and war were avoided.

Deep winter has always tested how well communities hold themselves together when resources are limited and the future feels uncertain. It’s interesting how these ancient concerns continue to echo down the strings of time, and many of us can relate to the anxieties of our ancient ancestors more so than ever in the current political and economic climate. We are not just experiencing the cosmological winter but a spiritual and political winter, too.

This makes this month a perfect time to examine the idea of community economics, not as a modern trend but as a deeply rooted ancestral and folk concern. Before industrial capitalism reshaped daily life, economic survival was largely local. People depended on one another’s skills, labour, and goods. Bakers, brewers, cobblers, farmers, storytellers, healers, and craftspeople formed interdependent networks and eco-systems that ensured food on the table and continuity of knowledge. Money, where it existed, circulated close to home. To feed your neighbour’s livelihood was to strengthen your own chances of enduring the winter. This was not ideology; it was necessity.

Modern systems have worked hard to sever that intimacy. Globalised capitalism encourages convenience over connection and scale over care, redirecting wealth away from communities and into structures that prioritise extraction rather than nourishment. January, in its starkness, makes these imbalances visible. It asks difficult but essential questions: Who benefits from our spending? Who is harmed? And what kind of world are we quietly funding through habit rather than intention?

Supporting small businesses, artists, makers, and local entrepreneurs is often framed as a lifestyle choice, but it is also an act of folk defiance. It resists the idea that value only exists at scale, that creativity must be monetised aggressively to be valid, or that community labour is disposable. Choosing to shop small, trade locally, commission directly, or share resources is a form of reclamation and empowerment.

January also reminds us that abundance does not arrive through hoarding, but through circulation. When resources move within a community, they generate resilience, creativity, and mutual trust. Feeding our own creative and entrepreneurial networks keeps skills alive, stories moving, and futures possible. In this way, economic choice becomes devotional; a quiet, steady practice of care that honours both the season and the people who walk it with us.

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Like many of us, I have spent the majority of my life ensnared in this cultural norm. Setting aspirational goals to be better, fitter, richer and then found myself trapped in cycles of boom and burst, of optimism and failure. A few years ago, I began to deconstruct from that cycle, especially after reading ‘Wintering’ by Katherine May. I began to realize that by giving myself the gift of time over the winter to really consider and visualize my goals, to tend and nurture the delicate green shoots of serious and sustainable change, ideas and dreams became a more tangible and certain path. Embracing the energy of Yuletide and winter pre -Roman calendar changes has allowed me to create a liminal space where I can think ahead without forcing motion. It’s a time of expectant pregnancy and I have begun to care and nourish myself during this time in the same way that mothers prepare for the arrival of their children.

It has been hard to resist the messaging that I’m not hungry enough, not committed enough, not urgent enough to forge success—but there are no quick fixes to meaningful transformation—and forced seedlings are weak and susceptible to disease. For me, the Untamed Way of January is about trusting my own timing, listening closely, and allowing movement to come naturally and is often signaled when the rest of nature also decides that it’s time to start blooming.

Our Ancestors had a very different relationship with universal energies. It was based on exchange and favor, of offerings and sacrifice—and only then, might abundance and healing be issued. The Cross Quarter festival that fell in the autumn, saw a huge number of beasts slaughtered for possible feasting and ceremonial thanksgiving gatherings. Archeologists have found thousands of depositories in caves, in earth caches, lakes and rivers, and more disturbingly, the offering of human body parts in the walls, hearths and foundations of homes. Now I’m not suggesting we go out murdering our relatives and sticking them in walls as house blessings but I think this time of year is a great time to think about the concept of offering— and maybe even offering without the expectation of receiving.

After all, we are in the months of harvest, which is rich in traditions that center on reciprocity. In many pagan and agrarian cultures, this time of year was marked by ritual offerings to deities, spirits of place, and the land itself, expressing gratitude and ensuring continued fertility.

Today, we can reclaim this idea of offering in personal and creative ways. Make offerings of seasonal foods, songs, or sacred crafts. Pour water for the land spirits. Leave flowers or stones at a crossroads. Write prayers of gratitude and bury them in your garden or potted soil. It’s about honoring a sacred relationship. Offerings are energetic bridges. They say: I give because I have already received.

When spiritual practices such as smudging with white sage, wearing bindis, chanting mantras, practicing yoga, or using dreamcatchers are used without community connection or the socio-political understanding of their sacred context, it can feel like a continuation of cultural entitlement rather than celebration, especially when it is taken without permission by those whose ancestors committed historic crimes of cultural oppression and erasure.

For example, Indigenous communities in North America have fought to protect ceremonial practices like smudging and sweat lodges, which were once banned by colonial governments. Similarly, yoga is a deeply rooted spiritual discipline in Indian traditions, not simply a fitness trend

That is not to say we cannot participate in cultural exchange and appreciation. When we forge authentic and reciprocal relationships between communities, it is a wonderful thing to expand our own spiritual understanding and practice, and learning from one another. However, the issue is that very often, white folks rock up to the circle with empty hands and a big desire to walk away spiritually enriched. This is not because white spirituality has nothing to offer in the learning exchange, but because many white people have become detached and alienated from their ‘own’ spiritual and pre-christian spiritual identity.

The often heated and oppositional arguments we have seen all over social media in the last few years in regards closed practice, appropriation and universal spirituality have led to a seriously reductive sound-bite approach to the discussion. It is not simply an ethnicity issue, a blood quantum issue, a DNA issue—it is about community belonging and community identity. This is particularly the case in the USA, where the history of multiple diaspora communities living together has led to evolutions and exchanges in cultural identities. When cultures blend, as they do in cities and regions with significant immigrant populations, the concept of cultural ownership becomes exceedingly nuanced; rarely to be fully appreciated in a thirty second social media video. For example, the blending of systems such as Voodoo and Appalachian folk magic is an example of how diverse practices influence, inform and interplay with one another. So who owns these blended traditions? Who gets to keep the gate?

Parallels can be drawn to the British Isles, albeit a thousand years of history earlier. The blended traditions continue, even now, to create inter-tribal tension about spiritual ownership in the neo-pagan community. With its significant history of invaders bringing their own cultural practices, folk-craft and religious magical systems to the different regions, assimilation of practice became knitted into British customs through inter-tribal marriage, rape, or settler domination of region. As descendents of a family from the Forest of Dean, our ‘pagan’ folk practice is steeped in a history of Greco-Roman, Viking, Celt, Saxon and Lutheran christianity, each path as distinct and muddled as the DNA that runs through our line.

There is no easy and answer and the one thing for certain is there is never going to be a global agreement on spiritual ownership. As we continue to embrace more technology and media, we are afforded the opportunity to hear more of each other’s experiences, viewpoints and boundaries. We are in an information rich age and there are no excuses for us not to continue in our academic learning and understanding of the world. The call to action is for us to be open to continually evolving our world lens, our perspective and our sense of place and contribution — and especially for us white spiritual folk, we need to start de-centering ourselves, and understand that we are not entitled to the energy, practice and pretty aesthetics of other cultures because we mistakenly feel we have nothing growing in our own garden.

Cultural exchange is a truly beautiful and life enhancing thing. Let’s all be sure to fill our basket full to the brim with our own magic before we head out to meet our neighbors.

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If you’re anything like me, the idea of peace and reclamation has become an oxymoron to my lived experience. It’s something I consider a lot and practice too little. I’m always waiting for that time when things will slow down enough for me to actually find the time for peace and reclamation of self. As such, it has become ironically, something else on my never ending to do list. I’m coming to the somewhat embarrassingly slow understanding that there will never be that magical collection of circumstances that enable me to attend to this ‘chore’ of peace and self reclamation.

As a mother, wife, business woman, school board volunteer, advocate, village witch, chronically ill individual (although I rarely allow myself to admit that last one) the idea of peace has become like Don Quixote’s windmill - a seemingly foolish ideal. I’m sure some great philosopher would tell me that “peace is achieved when one stops seeking it”. For sure, there is some significant truth in that. On the other hand, peace sure isn’t ferociously beating through the bush to get to me.

So one of the things I do is to ask myself what brings me peace? Just stopping to ask myself this question at least acknowledges some form of intention around the idea. So what does bring me peace ? Forefront of my mind is this very moment, sitting here on the porch of my sunny Californian home as I tap away on my laptop. The girls are at school, the husband is at work and I have the rare gift of 6 hours time to actualize myself as writer, creative and Kate — the person outside of all the other roles I also hold sacred.

On a larger scale, peace for me is strongly equated with time - the time to be present, the time to connect, the time to create, the time to love and be loved. Those are the things that bring not only peace but a strong sense of self-reclamation.

The idea that women somehow lose themselves within the constructs of motherhood and marriage have long been discussed, almost to the point that the idea has become a social cliche - and that’s dangerous because it begins to minimize the individual experience of loss of self. You might be wondering what the concept of peace has to do with identity, but for those of us who experience this very real consequence of societal role wearing, peace is wrapped up in the very roots of self.

If the self is lost (or faded), it doesn’t matter how many yoga sessions we attend, how many mountain treks we complete, or how many holidays we take, the fleeting sense of peace we attain in those moments is untethered and easily dispersed on return to the daily reality of work and home life. The separation between our ego and our super-ego leads to a constant rumbling disquietude.

So how can we gain peace? It would be easy here to hop onto Ai and ask for 5 steps towards achieving peace and most probably it would give me 5 points each bullet pointed with little green leaves that would suggest peace is merely a walk away, a meditation music track listen, or in the habit of a few deep breaths— and of course, those kind of practices are a very positive set of tools. I find 10 minutes of somatic yoga gives me a hit of peace in the same way a glass of wine does to others. That doesn’t mean I’ve achieved embedded peace, merely experienced it —fleetingly.

So here’s the reality of the 5 steps to peace, they’re not easy and they’re not tools you can just take in and out of the toolbox. They require lifestyle changes, mindset changes, maybe even absolute and utter chaos and disruption as part of the journey.

1. Financial Control - eugh, that doesn’t sound very spiritual, does it? Well I would argue that financial control is one of the greatest spiritual engagements you can work with. Financial control leads to smart resource management, leading to sufficiency, leading to efficacy, leading to autonomy, leading to self, which all leads to peace. One of the biggest myths around financial control (And it’s one I had to do a lot of work to deconstruct) is that you have to be already wealthy in order to have finances to control. Wrong. No matter if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck or rolling in millions, financial management and financial control are imperative to the health of your life and your mental state. (This requires its own post/s) I strongly recommend Ramit Sehti’s ‘How to Be Rich’ netflix program, books and podcasts. It has transformed my relationship with money, the world and myself.

2. Wabi Sabi (Perfectly imperfect.) — this is a bit of a trend in spiritual circles but that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. It’s a trend because something about the idea of how we relate to the idea of the perfect is universal. Learning that perfection doesn’t exist outside our own mind is empowering. How many of us our limited by the idea that we fail to be perfect or never could be perfect? How does the idea of imperfection gnaw away at our inner peace; makes us second guess ourselves, feel unnecessary shame and sense of failure? The fear of not being perfect is a disease. It’s rooted in generational traumas and constructs of identity. It impacts our ideas of self-worth, value, legitimacy. How often do you look at someone else and think that aspects of their life seem unfairly perfect? Social media has amplified this idea of perfection. The idea of perfection is impacted by social aspects of economics and gender and race. Embracing the imperfect isn’t just about throwing the hands up in acceptance but it’s about deconstructing and questioning the very fabric of our society. Who set the parameters of ‘perfection’ in the first place and how do those ideas uphold constructs that benefit them? A concrete example of this is the idea of motherhood and being ‘the perfect mother’ - who does that construct serve. If it’s such a positive model for women, then why does it tear female communities apart and erode women’s sense of self? Why has the quest for perfect motherhood created such a mental health crisis? There’s no peace in models of perfection. Learning radical acceptance and how to lean into ‘imperfections’ as beautiful authentic realities is definitely one pathway towards peace.

3. Time — as I mentioned before, time is key to peace. It’s unfortunately finite. The clock is always ticking, the seasons are always turning. As Herrick ominously reminds us, “Gather ye rosebuds whilst ye may, / old time is still a flying;/ And this same flower that smile today / Tomorrow will be dying.” or as Shakespeare, in a similar tone of jolliness states, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps on this petty pace from day to day”. Clearly the idea of time as a disquieting and negative force is a universal concern. Time has a habit of slipping by in the mundane, in responsibilities, in work— and in a capitalist society, every single thing is designed to minimise your personal time and to trap you into giving your time to the system. Now obviously we can’t all just step out of the capitalist system, run away to the hills and find peace communing with nature as we take our monthly lake bath. It’s our challenge to find peace within the system. It’s a good idea to sit down and actively take a time audit. Fill in a spreadsheet with how your weekly time is allocated, push the exciting magic button that converts it into a pie chart and prepare yourself for the inevitable existential crisis that comes with knowing how much of your life you have to sign away for a pay-check. But once that is over, look at the time that isn’t and ask yourself if you’re using that in a way that brings you joy, peace and a reclamation of self.

4. Creativity & Ritual —humans are born with great creative capacity. Creativity brings about peace because it brings empowerment and self actualization through expression. I include Ritual here as I believe ritual and creativity are integral to one another. Creativity and ritual allows us to process the complexities of the material and spiritual world. They are the original form of mindfulness. When we are creating or deep in ritual, we are given respite from our super-ego. We are freed temporarily from the structures and mechanisms that disrupt our peace. The ritual and the art become sole focus. We can become healthily unplugged from the distractions around us and allowed the time to fully process our experiences. Bringing ritual and creativity into our daily lives is not easy as it is an exchange of energy, and energy is often in short supply. Very much like the notion of peace, creativity has become knitted into ideas related to time and productivity. Somewhere along the way, creativity lost its place in the universal and became associated with the elite, the niche, the ‘talented’, those who can execute artistic expression perfectly — and so we see how the ideas of time and perfection continually disrupt pathways to peace. Bringing creativity back into your life, whether it’s through creating a peace of art or choosing a more creative way to view something or experience it. Find a place for ritual in the everyday, your morning routine of making coffee can become a deliberate act of mindfulness. The evening shower a cleansing ritual, a symbolic action of separation from the work-you and the you-you.

5. Back to Nature — How can we ever be at peace when we are so far away from the very thing that sustains and calibrates our bio-chemical life force? How can our body know calibration when it’s constantly flooded with hostile chemicals placing us in a constant state of hyper-vigilence and threat? How can we find bodily and mental peace when we mess around with man-made chemicals and toxins, upping and downing our gut biomes, our inflammatory responses, our dopamine and serotonin levels on a roller coaster of digestible and non-digestible gratifications. Energy drinks to energize us through the day, alcohol to chill us back out at night. We weren’t designed to live in the concrete jungle that we do, but we have adapted remarkably well—on the surface. Dig down past the capitalist propaganda and you see a human species in mental and physical health crisis. Spending all day at a desk, not drinking in the sun and its vital Vitamin D, not moving our bodies in dance, in hunting, or village activity, bent over our phones, causing rapid evolutionary shifts in our thumbs and our spine structures. The reality is that this is the social fabric of our modern age, so we need to find a balance, a resistance. We need to get back to a connection with nature—and that’s even more necessary if like me, you have lived in the metropolis for the last twenty years. Like with time, it’s a really good exercise to audit how many hours a day, a week, a month you actually connect with nature. Sit in green spaces, interact with an animal, touch the earth, inhale clean air, visit a garden, a green space, tend a plant, eat food that looks plucked from the ground or a tree. Start with the small things, a plant on your desk —something living and in need of tending. That plant is you. It needs sunlight and clean water. Take the walk at lunchtime. Plan in the trip to the farmers market and buy a vegetable.

These are some of the foundations of finding peace in our daily lives. There is no singular way, it’s a complex matrix of choices and mindsets. And as with all things that we have lost our way with, we need to accept that we may need to turn the house over to recover it.

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To be grounded is not just about feeling calm, it is to be anchored. To be rooted. In psychology, it’s often referred to as self-regulation, indicating a nervous system that is balanced, a mind that can remain present rather than pulled into anxiety or dissociation. In many spiritual traditions it is understood as a state of being rooted in the real—fully alive in the here and now, attentive to the divine within the ordinary.

This is not a new concept. Our ancestors appear to have practiced forms of ‘grounding’ as far back as the iron and neolithic ages. Evidence of their intentional ritual demonstrate a connectedness with the Earth, the seasons, the circle of life and a keen awareness of energies and spirits in both natural and hand-crafted objects. They were evidentially aware of the divine within the ordinary.

Being grounded is not the avoidance of pain or chaos. It isn’t a form of toxic denial, where you get to somehow bypass the trials and tribulations of everyday life by blissing out. Grounding is the cultivation of an inner state from which we can meet life as it is, without being overwhelmed by it.

When we are ungrounded, we can feel fragmented. We often overthink and spiral into imagined futures. Psychologists might call this state a position of ‘catastrophization’. The other reaction to feeling fragmented is to become numb and check out. Being ungrounded keeps us in our heads but not in our bodies. We are distracted, disconnected, and reactive.

Being grounded is a return to ‘being rather than doing’. It’s a return to breath, to body, to earth and our connected place in it.

Practicing Grounding

Grounding isn’t abstract. It is bodily. It is experiential. Here are a few simple, evidence-based practices that help restore groundedness:

• Focused Breathing
  Inhale slowly and silently say, “Be still.”
  Exhale and say, “And know.”

• Walking Meditation
  Slow your steps. Feel your feet connect with the earth. Be aware of how your foot falls and presses to the earth and with each step, repeat a phrase like “I am here” or “This is enough.”

• 5-4-3-2-1 Technique
  Engage your senses to bring yourself to the present:

  • 5 things you can see

  • 4 things you can feel

  • 3 things you can hear

  • 2 things you can smell

  • 1 thing you can taste

• Touch Stone or Object
  Carry a small stone, token, or bead. When you feel overwhelmed, hold it. Let it remind you of something stable and concrete.

• Body Scan
  Gently move your attention through your body. Notice sensation without judgment. Offer gratitude for each part.

• Sacred Stillness
  Sit in silence for 5 minutes. No agenda. Just presence. Let yourself be met by whatever arises—without fixing or fleeing.

In a culture that glorifies speed, productivity and distraction, to be grounded is a quiet rebellion. It is choosing to dwell where you are, fully. It is stopping to hear the universe.

With you on the path,
Kate

I’m Kate Rackham — writer, scholar, magical practitioner, and founder of Untamed Apothecary & The Untamed Way, a space where modern spirituality and well-being meets ancient traditions, rituals and Earth observance. This Substack is my invitation to join me in a quiet, mindful but radical return to the sacred.

Why This, Why Now?

As a scholar of Anthropology, Psychology and Literature, a Magical Practitioner, and an advocate of regenerative culture and agriculture, I have spent years studying how we’ve strayed from the land, from our histories, our stories, and from the practices that once sustained us. We begin with return.

Through Untamed Apothecary & The Untamed Way, I offer rigorously researched essays, folklore, rituals, and practices, grounded in history but alive in the present. My work is designed to support you reclaim your sense of belonging, peace, and magic in a world that often feels fragmented.

As we enter the death throes of systems and leaders that no longer align with our core sense of values and humanity, the world can be a dark and confusing place. Untamed is a very small part of a much wider resistance and reclamation. There is another way: a way that honors the Earth, builds thriving communities, and heals the wounds of centuries of violence, colonialism, supremacy, patriarchy and religious oppression.

What to Expect

• Essays on folklore, ritual, and spiritual wellness

• Curated rituals, recipes, and practices for a more magical life

• Reflections on history, culture, and the power of storytelling

• Traditional crafts rooted in energy work, empowerment and magic

• Critical spiritual theory: explorations on decolonizing new-age spirituality, being good allies, exploring the white supremacy wound, feminism, religious deconstruction, environmentalism.

• Learning rooted in archeological and historical evidence

• Challenge and pause for thoughts.

This Substack is for those who wish to return to a deeper, more beautiful way of living, where every day holds the potential for ritual and magic.

Join Me

If you feel the curious pull to reconnect with what’s been forgotten, to live with more intention and magic, subscribe below. And if this speaks to you, please share it with those who may also be seeking.

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With gratitude,
Kate Rackham
Founder of Untamed | Scholar | Seeker