On October 16, 2024, I completed the greatest achievement of my lifetime. Earth Entity Animism was born of 7 years of reflection and action as an artist, writer, and activist.

I have always questioned the current ways of society. In my time on this earth, I explored many options for faith and guidance. Most possibilities contained one element or another that did not align with my core self.

I often found faiths structured around hierarchies that did not allow people to worship together equally and held restrictions on movement, dress, or learning because of a person’s sex or station in life. Some faiths specifically centered on outdated ancient practices that required hours of research, reading, and interpretations to understand and apply in daily life. Other faiths, while being very liberal and open, still retained a sense of supremacy by centering on intellectualism and the ability to read and quote others but remained distant from the raw and harsh world of suffering and the fierce truth that must be spoken to dismantle systems of oppression.

The worst, for me, were faiths that required believing in an external entity that miraculously guides millions while somehow providing privileges to one group or another, which has historically been used as an excuse to dominate and cause immense harm to people and planet.

I removed myself from those faiths and focused on the world at large. I asked, “What is the cause of suffering?” and “What are the most basic boundaries required to end that suffering?” At first, these questions seemed too simplistic and impossible to define. I wondered who am I to define such things. However, the drive to answer such questions was unrelenting, and after being hit by a truck in May of 2017, I was forced to be alone with my thoughts during the long and painful process of recovery.

I began to spend time each day listening to my past and future self, looking for patterns and dismantling the narratives I was fed since birth by a society that existed in a state of domination for thousands of years. I purposefully refused to look at the words of those who have gone before me so as not to be derailed from my personal experience.

I began to journal the random thoughts, patterns, images, and words that arrived, even if they made no sense or had no (seemingly) direct connection to each other. My injuries and the nature of my thoughts required me to adapt an unconventional way of keeping notes by using colored pencils on a large 18×24 pad of newsprint paper. I loved that the pencils flowed smoothly over the paper without smearing and that the pad had ample space to make drawings and color code different layers of thought. I spent many mornings lying on the floor or standing in front of an easel, furiously scribbling the random contents of my mind.

At the beginning of this process, I tried to push myself to be who I was before the accident. I still had the goal of interacting with others at least as much as my genetic disability would allow, which required lots of time alone and avoidance of chemicals, scents, car exhaust, and dozens of food allergens. In some ways, I wanted my version of normalcy back. However, when the worldwide shutdown due to COVID-19 in May of 2020 happened, I receded further into isolation, and my internal voice and journalling increased exponentially. The patterns revealed by observation and internal processing were starting to repeat and group into specific concepts like speaking fierce truth, enacting a loving reduction of suffering, and moving through an evolutionary shift, among others.

When I was ready to accept my path as an Animist Minister and solidify this quest as my life’s work, humanity quickly adapted to the world shut down with the use of tools such as Zoom, which provided me the ability to attend my ministry sessions online in the safety of my home. The Animist teachings provided me with the religious structure I needed to pursue my faith as an individual instead of following a prescribed way of thinking. Web of Life Church helps ministers find their own unique path and calling while requiring an understanding of their particular ancestors, decolonizing their minds, and understanding the importance and impact ministry has on community. For instance, my disability does not allow for employment as a minister performing traditional tasks like officiating weddings and funerals; however, my words and actions can still have an impact regardless.

My first attempt at creating a faith was called Quantum Animism. I purchased the .com during my time in training. It was not yet taken by anyone, and I double-checked that the term was not on the internet. Many of my early journals were filled with mathematical bits that were to be the basis of QA’s iconography (symbols) and language. The term also fit my ideas surrounding the space-time continuum and aligned with my ancestry of a father who became a space engineer without any college or training outside of his drive for knowledge.

I still struggled with the cohesion of concepts and the idea that the goal must be to start a church and garner a following as a means and reason to create a faith. This idea created an insurmountable hurdle, and my inability to force the process to go in that direction after my ordainment made me feel like an utter failure. I felt like I was falling behind and didn’t understand why I couldn’t force the faith into existence by my own force of will.

The worst night of all was waking up abruptly from a deep sleep, filled with energy and anxiety, instinctively knowing the term Quantum Animism had been written by someone else. I ran to the keyboard, and there it was: a website about Quantum Animism with a slightly different website name. I saw only the title and read nothing of it. I knew it did not contain the concepts as I saw them, yet the term was taken. I laid back down in the dark and realized I missed my moment. I wondered what I was going to do now. Should I abandon everything? Just sink into worthlessness and despair? I didn’t know how to continue or even if I should. Yet, the information and observations kept coming in the days and years afterward and could not be ignored. I didn’t have a choice but to proceed.

In 2022, I joined TikTok. Almost immediately, I began following black, brown, indigenous, LGBTQIA, and disabled creators. TikTok provided the first-person information I preferred, and it extended the requirement of decentering whiteness, colonization, and supremacy that was integral to my Animist Ministry ordainment.

This one specific choice changed by being like no other. The people of this earth came to me, brought into my hands by the algorithm, and shared their personal human experiences. I learned that the many ways I was mistreated in my female forward form were not isolated incidents or the experience of an unlucky few but the experience of millions of women who are trapped in a patriarchal system. I learned how much of our culture is shaped by supremacy, how much that supremacy is kept from many of us through education, distraction, media, and tradition, and how I am complicit in all of it to some degree, regardless. I learned to witness the suffering of others in real time, not from books, movies, or video games, which have a level of removal from fact, but in the ugly raw moment of violence and atrocities. Such a witness reveals unvarnished truth that wounds the soul and transforms a frozen tongue into a scorching instrument of fierce truth that demands an end to suffering.

For over two years, I was broken over and over. The realization of the destruction of people and planet based on supremacy that demands the suffering of the many for the benefit of the few seemed endless. The damage is so vast that it was all-encompassing. I had to cycle through phases of deconstructing an oppressive society, resting, and creating a new society or risk being lost to despair. Despair delights those who embrace supremacy, dominion, and hierarchy as a way of being.

Using this method of cycling through phases, I regained some stability in my mind and body. It was a slow process at first. I stopped pressuring myself to complete my writing and instead initiated care for my community in creative ways that worked for me. My need to grow organic and non-allergenic foods provided an opportunity to share free seeds, plant starts, and the little extras from my garden outside my gate. The time spent in my garden created a deeper connection with Earth Entity. It saved my soul from continual torment and gave me stable ground to continue my unique path.

By September 2024, I had given up Quantum Animism as a name for my faith for good. Everywhere I looked, the world was labeled quantum, quantum dish tabs, and quantum internet, among others. Although I understood we live in an age of quantum computing, it seemed like too lofty a name to connect to the entity that is earth. The best name is direct, simple, and approachable. Earth Entity Animism arrived in my mind, and it made sense on a level as intricate and intertwined as quantum physics.

All of the concepts finally fell into place. Using a template for a one page zine (short for “fanzine”) provided by a TikToker, I reduced each tenet to its essence so they fit into 14 roughly 2 1/2″ x 4″ rectangle spaces that take up two sides of one page. The zine format required some interesting folding that tested my dyslexia and was bound together by exposed staples, which my fingers did not love to touch. I decided to reformat the rectangles on the paper so they lay out like pages in a book’s single signature (a stack of pages to be bound). The signature could be bound by staples hidden in the center or by traditional binding with thread.

My goal from the start had been to create an article of faith that was simple and direct, easy to follow, and fit in the palm of a hand or slip easily into a pocket. It was finally almost complete! I did my best to get to the keyboard in the last few weeks of writing. My many disabilities got in the way often: chemical exposures, food allergens, flare-ups of old injuries, and the dreaded cyclic vomiting syndrome sometimes took me all the way out of functioning. It didn’t matter. Somehow, I felt like I was coasting to completion. I felt no pressure. The feeling of failure was gone. I felt a quiet joy. I felt total alignment.

In the last few days of writing, I looked up from my keyboard to see a comet streaking across the sky. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ALTAS) was making its appearance after 80,000 years, last seen at the dawn of human evolution. It was a fitting companion to a new faith that embraces an evolutionary shift away from harm to people and planet. Each night I was well enough, I walked into the warm evening air and marveled at the bright head of the comet trailing glowing gas and dust across the night sky. For years, I had visions that completing my work would coincide with a rare stellar event. I could not have known or planned to coincide with this historic event in 2017 since C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was not discovered until last year, and I did not have its appearance on my radar. C/2023 A4 is named for the year of its discovery and two observatories: the Purple Moutain Observatory (Tshuchinshan, or Zijinshan Astronomical Observatory) in China observed on January 9, 2023, and independently by ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System located in Sutherland Observatory) in South Africa on February 22, 2023.

The last words were written on October 16, 2024, and Earth Entity Animism was born under a supermoon and a rare stellar event. May its spirit ever circle the earth with a reflective guiding light and lead humanity on a journey for the next 80,000 years to embrace a faith in humanity and protection of planet using an adaptable guide to human ethics.