We often wait for sacred moments to appear, forgetting our ability to consciously co-create them with life - anytime, anywhere.
There are as many ways to call in and set sacred space as there are people on Earth. To intentionally invoke the sacred into a moment, a physical space, a relationship, or an undertaking is to hold hands with whatever we perceive the divine to be. In this way, we
never walk alone.
Human traditions from around the world and through the ages have practiced the art of creating sacred space in many, many ways. With the deepest of gratitude, it’s humbling to acknowledge that being alive today offers so many opportunities to connect with this
collective human knowledge as it has been distilled over millennia. We can come to this place through many pathways - our blood lineages, teachers who pass on traditions, and from the knowings in our own hearts. The invitation in Qoya is to find what feels true for you.
Below are some ways in which to explore invoking the sacred.
1. Plants
Plants are one of humanity’s strongest allies for purifying and consecrating spaces the world over. The use of burning sacred smoke involves the slow burning of dried plant material and/or the melting of resin on hot coals. In many cultures, the smoke released serves the dual purpose of clearing the air and environment of denser energies and also lifting up our prayers and intentions towards the heart of the divine. Plants often used for this purpose include white sage, sagebrush, palo santo, copal, frankincense, myrrh, lavender, juniper, pine resin, rosemary, eucalyptus etc. Explore what plants are local to your area.
Misting with essential oils in a spray bottle or through vapor from a cold diffuser is a powerful way to bring the energy of plants into a room without using smoke or flame, which is often prohibited in public buildings. An even simpler way to play with this is to place
some fresh plants in a bowl of water, infuse it with your intention, and sprinkle the water around the room.
Anointing yourself with fragrant oils is a simple yet potent process through which your body melds with the plant’s energy and becomes the portal through which sacred space is opened.
When working with plants in this way, we are invited to an even greater intimacy through asking important questions about the plant’s life. Was this plant harvested sustainably? Was it taken in a way that is sensitive to the land who birthed it and the people who have tended its ancestors? What is your personal relationship to this plant in your heart and in your history? What is the plant telling you? Are there wild plants near you that wish to be used for sacred purpose? Are there seeds calling out your name that are ready to be tucked lovingly into the soil?
By dancing with the answers questions like these provide us, right relationship with these beings can grow. We may begin then to co-create sacred space not only with what we perceive the divine to be, but also the divinity that lives amongst the stalks and leaves and
roots and flowers.
2. Oracle Cards
Oracle cards are reflections of the archetypical journeys each soul embarks on. Working consciously with these potent tools honors the portal of wisdom that is our individual and collective birthright. Countless decks are at our fingertips at this time with infinite themes to choose from. These include goddess cards, animal cards, cards drawing on specific traditions, elemental cards, crystal cards, cards inspired by mythology, cards for emotional healing, etc. Decks are now also abundantly available virtually as apps, allowing their wisdom to travel with us anywhere.
Pulling a card allows us to symbolically tap into the infinite knowing of the unseen, whether it exists within us, around us, or both. By tuning into this wisdom, we can call the sacred into a room and shift from the busyness of our lives into a clarity around what we are inviting into the space.
3. Music and Sound
Music can be used in many ways to invoke the sacred. Dancing, drumming, singing, sound bowls, rattles, chanting, listening to sacred songs from different traditions, or simply lying down and letting the medicine of the music wash over you are all potent ways to connect with what the sacred means to you.
4. Prayer
Prayer is a direct conversation with whatever we perceive the divine to be. It may come through a formal tradition or simply the stirrings of our hearts. It may take the form of mantra, song, sacred sound, or just asking for what we really need. Finding your own relationship to prayer is another potent way to invoke the sacred.
5. Creating an Altar
An altar is a focal point for our intention to make what we are holding internally symbolically honored externally. It takes the beauty, hope, and dreams that live within us and gives them to a place to live where they can be tended in the physical realm. An altar can be as simple as a single candle or as complex as an entire bookshelf full of sacred items such as photos, crystals, plants, writings, objects from nature, etc. Altars can shift and change with our feelings, intentions, and the seasons of life. The very act of tending an altar is a profound way to call the sacred in every time it is visited.
Sometimes, especially before teaching Qoya, we may wish to create an altar out of the entire room - sprinkling it with rose petals, lighting candles in all the corners, hanging fairy lights along the walls or filling the space with music, scent and prayer.
Sometimes our own bodies may be the altar. We may choose to adorn ourselves with clothing, jewelry, colors, scents, oils etc. that emanate the divinity we feel within us.
6. The Elements
Water, air, earth, and fire have inspired and activated the imaginations and hearts of humanity since our beginnings. A powerful way to call in sacred space is to engage with the elements in a way that is personal and universal.
Fire can be honored and invoked by lighting a candle, a bonfire, smudging or lighting incense.
Water can be honored and invoked through misting, diffusing, taking a sacred bath or shower, visiting a wild body of water, or simply infusing a bowl of water with your intention.
Earth can be honored and invoked through walking barefoot outdoors, gathering plants, rocks, and other elements of nature and creating an altar, working with crystals, or simply feeling the strong electromagnetic field that exists between yourself and the planet at all
times, wherever you are in the world.
Air can be honored and invoked through conscious breathing, smudging with plants and witnessing the plumes of smoke that fill the air, singing or chanting, having a symbol from nature that represents the sky such as a special feather, or simply speaking your truth deeply into the space, engaging air to move through you in the most integral way.
Working with the Elements can weave into any other method of setting sacred space. What other ways of working with these universal forces are showing up for you?
7. Lineage
Lineage refers to the lines of loving, benevolent beings that we come from. We are all products of multiple lineages at once. Our lineages may be our families, our friends, the land we grew up on, traditions we were born into or taught the sacred by, systems of faith, and the unseen that traces beyond human history back into the infinite. Some lineages may come with very clear inherited ways in which to be in ceremony, offer prayer, and perform ritual. Some lineages may have periodic or seasonal traditions that are followed. Some lineages may be felt in the heart and emanate from this place. Drawing upon your own lineages is one of the most personal and deeply felt ways to call
in sacred space. Through this practice, we may begin to have a felt sense of never, ever being alone again.
8. Trust Your Inner Knowing
There may be something special that arises that fits nowhere in the categories above but feels like the most sacred thing to YOU. Trust that! One Qoya teacher has shared that she always calls her beloved dog into the space before teaching or doing her other sacred work. His energy infuses the space with what she experiences the sacred to be. What is that for you?
9. Honor the Land Where You Are
Explore learning the history of the land where you are. Honor the indigenous ancestors of that place. Offer your respect by making time to become aware of the path of history that led to the current reality and open your imagination to how we may do things differently
moving forward. To explore these ideas more, visit our Qoya podcast with Alvie McKree.
9. Calling in the Directions - A Gift from Qoya
Calling in the Directions in the following way was shared with Rochelle during her time at the Four Winds Society. The fabric of Qoya has been deeply built upon the archetypal energies found in the following invocation. This prayer is available as a gift to you if it is
resonant. Thank you for being here!
1. Standing in an indoor or outdoor space, have an awareness of the placement of the four cardinal directions. Having a rattle and some Florida Water (herb infused grain alcohol) with you can be powerful elements of calling sacred space in in this way.
2. Beginning facing the South, shake the rattle in this direction with one hand and raise the other arm and open palm up facing forward. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to Serpent.
3. Turning to face the West, shake the rattle in this direction with one hand and raise the other arm and open palm up facing forward. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to Jaguar.
4. Turning to face the North, shake the rattle in this direction with one hand and raise the other arm and open palm up facing forward. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to Hummingbird
and the Benevolent Ancestors.
5. Turning to face the East, shake the rattle in this direction with one hand and raise the other arm and open palm up facing forward. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to Eagle.
6. Coming down to the ground, shake the rattle towards the Earth with one hand and place the other palm on the Earth. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to Mother Earth.
7. Standing up with both arms to the Sky, shake the rattle towards the Heavens with one hand. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicated to the Sun, Moon and Stars.
8. Bringing one hand to the Heart, shake the rattle with the other. Take a sip of Florida Water and make your breath visible into the air. Speak the portion of the prayer dedicate to the Heart Teacher.
9. Stay in this space of the Heart in silence for a few moments and allow the sacredness of this invocation to infuse not only the space around you, but within you as well.
Here is the way I call in Sacred Space:
Click below for the audio version:
To the Winds of the South, Great Serpent
Please enter this medicine space and wrap your golden coils of healing light around us.
Teach us to let go of what is no longer true just as you shed your skin, may we shed our past.
Help us move heartbeat to heartbeat with the body of the Earth
Allow us to release and renew, as you do.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
To the Winds of the West, Mother Sister Jaguar
Please walk around this medicine space so that we feel safe to enter the tender place of truth inside of ourselves
Empower us to navigate the Great Mystery
Teach us how to move through our own shadow, our own darkness
Help us trust life by feeling our interconnection with it
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
To the Winds of the North, Sweet Hummingbird and our Benevolent Ancestors
Please fly into the Medicine Space and allow us to feel your ancient heartbeat
You who memorizes thousands of flowers but only goes to the ones that truly nourish you,
Teach us about discernment and illuminate the path of where our soul nectar is so that we may not be distracted by false images
Let us celebrate the sweetness in our lives Ancestors, those of you who have been here before and will be here after us, please help guide our way with healing, humor, synchronicity magic and grace.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
To the Winds of the East, Great Eagle, Great Condor
Please arrive into this Medicine Space and allow us to be lifted by you to our highest heights to see with a wider view
Teach us how to fly wingtip to wingtip with Great Spirit, moving from probability to possibility.
Help us awaken from our dream drought and remember how to dream bigger dreams to live in collaboration and co-creation with spirit.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Sweet sweet sweet Pachamama, Mother Earth
Thank you for this body, this life, these hands, this heart.
Thank you for holding us always and in every moment so we are never without you.
Thank you for being so profoundly generous that every offering we could ever make to you is something you have already offered to us.
Help us to learn how to be more like you. Infuse us with the Love that you are.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Father Sun, Grandmother Moon, our Star Brothers and Sisters
Please shower your light down on us.
Father Sun, Just like there are some days where we don’t see you, but we don’t doubt your existence, may we have that same faith in our light
Grandmother Moon, just like we honor your cycles, may we trust our own
Star Brothers and Star Sisters, Help us to remember the true meaning of community and reflecting one another’s light to each person we meet
Please illuminate the spaces in our being that are ready to awaken.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
To the Heart Teacher.
Please awaken! Please be the source of each thought, word and action.
Please also be the way in which life is received.
May the love that has led us here to this moment, lead us through.
(take a moment in silence now to simply listen and receive the medicine of your own Heart)
If it feels correct to you, you close also close the directions at the end of your experience by simply saying “Thank You” in your own words to each archetype.