Hola! Iâm Ixchel Lunar (they/them), an Indigenous time ecologist, ancestral medicine guide, and rhythm witch for creative rebels, decolonial dreamers, and neuroqueer visionaries. This Substack is dedicated to weaving business, body, and belonging into something no empire can replicate. Still punk as fuck. Still cozy in the chaos.
Samhain Workshop Tomorrow
We gather tomorrow, Wednesday, November 5, 2025.A gentle, grounded circle for tending endings, thresholds, and what wants to grow next.
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You will leave with a presencing practice and an acestral connection practice.
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Bring a candle, water, and something to write with.
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Replay available until Sunday for those who cannot attend live.
Save your spot: https://lisa-jara.com/en/workshop/
Before we dive in, I ask for your kindness and non-judgment as you read this Dragon Letter.
I donât usually speak about my devotional or spiritual practices unless invited, and this isnât shared to persuade anyone or suggest a path. Itâs a glimpse into my lived experience of place, ancestry, and change. Please receive it with respect for difference and the understanding that many of us walk with the unseen in our own ways. But if you decide to unsubscribe because of this email, we probably arenât a good match anyway. Blessings on your path.
Hey Beautiful Wildlings,
Ah, that magical time of year in Mexico has come and gone, Dia de Muertos. Though the liminal space remains.
Saturday, November 1st, is the day to remember those who left too soon⊠the children, the young, the dreams that didnât get to grow old. In the Mexican cycle of DĂa de Muertos, itâs the first threshold before we welcome all the departed home.
On Saturday, I was heading out to explore some festivities in Coatepec with my partner when something strange happened at our gate, which made me decide to stay home. Someone passing by our gate as we left was being a bit too nosy for my liking.
Having only been in the new place for a week, and with daytime robberies very high in our area, I opted to stay home a bit longer until my partner returned from grocery shopping. I know when plans change or there are delays, they are usually for a good reason that Iâm unaware of, so I wasnât bothered.
Eventually, I headed out and made it to Centro (downtown) to see the sights, look for some herbs, a talavera spoon rest for the kitchen, and wander to the exhibit of ofrendas for Dia. The herbalist at the Saturday mercado was already gone. But I found a lovely spoon rest, and then the firecrackers began. I started to walk towards the municipal building, where the giant catrinas were, when I saw a parade forming. How fun!
The parade was stopped midway in Centro so I went down the block to the beginning of it to discover it was a parade for Santisima Muerte! I was surprised because Iâd never seen something so public or explicitly focused on this âsaintâ (or Madrina Muerte, as I call her). Had I gone to Centro earlier I would have never known she was a thing here. And later I learned itâs a really big deal.
I didnât go looking for Santa Muerte. She arrived in a swirl of firecrackers, brass, and the beat of âMacarenaâ, a song about debauchery that was very popular in the mid-90s; we even danced to it at our (unconventional) wedding. A joyful procession breaking through the crowd in Centro.
The sweet scent of copal and cempasuchil (marigolds) filled the air. Iâd expected Catrinas and ofrendas, not the bone-white saint walking among the living. But there she was, my Madrina Muerte, surrounded by the ones she never abandons.
Her followers call her La Niña Blanca, the White Girl, the Skinny Lady (LA Flaquita). Sheâs the patron of those whoâve been shoved to the margins: sex workers, migrants, street vendors, queer and trans folk, the poor and the incarcerated. Gustavo VĂĄzquez Lozano writes that she is âthe reflection of a Mexico that the official narrative refuses to see.â1
In her skeletal grace, thereâs no hierarchy of worthiness⊠death levels us all. Tomas Prower reminds us that death is not darkness but transformation, a mirror showing us where life begins again.
âThroughout time, Death has been praised and maligned by human societies all over the world, and yet she has remained an ever-constant presence with us, continuing the same work no matter our opinion of her. She holds no grudges and no opinion of you, and to those who are willing to learn the secrets of her mystery school, she will be a powerful ally for the rest of your life and whatever awaits you after that.â2
In Coatepec, where her public processions have been growing for nearly a decade,3 she is both feared and beloved⊠a saint who listens when others will not. The Catholic Church condemns her as heresy, yet she thrives because she is fiercely accessible, without gatekeeping.
What I felt in that moment made sense later. Scholar-practitioner TomĂĄs Prower calls her âa non-judgmental deityâ who âgives no preferential treatment.â4 That lands in the body. Death is the one who doesnât sort us into worthy and unworthy. She meets you where you are.
She speaks to those who have lived through thresholds: the new-place inhabitant unsettled by a stranger at the gate; the queer or trans trajectory shifting ground beneath their feet; the soul thrust through lineage cracks looking for roots and repair.
In the cult of Santa Muerte you see people petitioning not only for escape from fate but for a reckoning with the fact of mortality. Her iconography is derived from both Indigenous death-deities and the European âGrim Reaperâ figure, making her a syncretic guardian for the precarious.5
Whatâs stunning is how devotion to her isnât about embracing doom or darkness. Devotees ask Santa Muerte for health, work, love, justice, and protection.6 I think of a woman in Veracruz who credits Santa Muerte with shielding her during the pandemic: because the only sure thing is death, so the one who stands at its threshold becomes protector, just like my abuelitaâs father was for me when I again faced Death as a teen.7
Santa Muerte lives where church and state reject her, yet her following grows. The Catholic hierarchy in Mexico calls her âa blasphemy against religion,â8 and still she rises in the streets of towns like here in Coatepec, where even last year the permit for her âarco floral artesanalâ (the huge floral arrangement carried in the video below that will adorn her ofrenda) was denied. This year, there was no trouble.
For someone like me, who has arrived in a new place where her presence is newly visible, there is a gift of recognition. She invites you into that threshold-space, that âin-betweenâ where ancestry and place change, where one is neither here fully nor there.
She asks: what do you carry in your lineage that must die so new strength may grow? She reminds us: death is not only an ending, it is a change, a clearing, an invitation.
I understand her appeal. She belongs to those of us who have lived on thresholds⊠between genders, between lands, between worlds. In her presence, thereâs permission to stop performing purity or progress. She teaches devotion to truth, not perfection. She doesnât promise escape from endings. She teaches us how to meet them open-eyed.
So I left the parade changed. I came home and lit a candle for her. Because as Prower writes, Santa Muerte is not about courting death, she is about befriending life through the honesty of its impermanence.9
What can you compost today?
Iâm not suggesting you pray to Santa Muerte. Think of this as tending the compost of your own life, honoring whatâs breaking down so something fertile can grow.
When you feel ready, light a single white candle. No incense, no altar, nothing elaborate. Just flame and breath. As it burns, name one thing that has ended this year that deserves your gratitude; a habit, a relationship, a pattern of overwork, an identity that kept you safe but small. Speak it aloud if you can.
Watch the light flicker, the wax soften. When the candle burns out or you blow it out, say quietly:
âI honor what was. I make space for whatâs next.â
Thatâs it. No summoning or saint required. Only you, the flame, and the small truth that every ending composts into the next beginning.
From my TikTok video:
Wild Presence: Year of Rhythm Coming SoonâŠ
A year-long mentorship to rebuild your life and work around a regenerative pace.
Where your output matches your bodyâs truth. Where Time becomes an ally again.
Wild Presence is in a deep reweaving⊠a fuller, more embodied version of the work. This next cycle brings new guest guides, live practice labs, and monthly systems and operations support for creating with a generative nervous system.
Be the first to hear when enrollment opens.
May the coming days be kind to your thresholds. May whatâs ending find rest, and whatâs beginning find rhythm.
Stay wild, love fiercely. Your presence is golden.Maltiox! xo Ixchel
P.S. My Human Design Sessions are now open for November and December.If youâve been wanting a personalized reading or refresher before the year turns, this is the time. Reserve your session at stellarhumandesign.com
P.P.S. Maltiox pronounced mall-tee-osh means with gratitude in Kâiche Mayan.
𧔠Iâm on TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky (where Iâm sharing my favorite TikToks, musings, and links there too)!
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I was raised and bore children on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Coast and Central Valley Miwok (colonized as Petaluma, CA) and Nisenan (colonized as Sacramento and Fair Oaks, CA), past, present, and future. I also write, work, and live in the highland forest of the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Totonac, Nahua, and Mexicah, past, present, and future, in what is known as Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
P.P.S. I do not live or consent to the colonial impositions regarding the construct of Time. I also practice honoring rhythms of work, play, and rest so that I can serve you with embodied presence and with loving care. This means I may take several days to respond to your requests and questions. (h/t Eva Glamaris)
P.P.S. A mention is not necessarily an endorsement of someone. Itâs an acknowledgment, a citation, of the origin of information in my process of understanding. (h/t Kelly Diels)
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Copyright © 2026, Cheyenne, WY, and Veracruz, Mexico, All rights reserved. Sharing your lineage of knowledge is decolonial. When iterating, please cite me. Not citing is epistemicide.
