Winter Ross

Spirituality & Health • 16th March 2026

Midwifing the Soul

Alua Arthur presents herself on the TEDx stage looking the opposite of the Grim Reaper. She is resplendent in a bright orange ensemble, her glittering jewelry and beribboned heels a metaphor for the ecstatic side of life. The subject of her talk—living in the present, dying well, and midwifing the dying as her life purpose—is serious. She describes the conditions she hopes for at her own good death, concluding with a joke, “And if I die with a bra on, I’m coming back to haunt everybody.”

Journal for Shamanic Practice • 25th February 2026

Recipe For a New Year's Ritual

The word “ceremony” in its original Latin form is “awe”. Repeated behaviors related to reverence and awe, with a sense of connecting to powers greater than us – this is Ritual.

Author's Blog • 31st December 2022

Blog: She Who Hears the Cries of the World: the Writing of Winter Ross

Sacred Hoop Magazine • 1st December 2022

Scent of the Ponderosa: The Magic of Talking with Trees

The ponderosa pine called to me as I tramped down the hill from my evening hike. The call came as butterscotch incense. As a person with synesthesia, I experienced the scent not only as a song but as a warm touch. The tendrils of perfume were fingers beckoning me down the trail. I followed my nose until I found the source, nearly 50 feet away. How had I walked right past this magnificent being on my way up?

Spirituality & Health, May-June print issue • 1st March 2021

Science & Myth: "The Talking Tree"

Trees have an intelligence. A tree may have as many as 3,000 chemicals in its phytohormonal vocabulary. Like us, they produce neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and glutamate. They have memories of a sort and seem to learn. They are conscious of their bodies in space. And yes, they experience pain.

Ceremonial Visions • 8th July 2020

Website Content: Ceremonial Visions

Life can be - Koyaanisqatsi - out of balance. Too easily, we lose the path of Beauty and Spirituality. We forget, in our dealings with ordinary reality, that it is necessary to our health and evolving consciousness to participate in the joy that art, poetry and ceremony bring to the world.

Colorado Central Magazine • 30th November 2022

Tourism/Travel: "Ragpicker Magic"

MAGIC? AT A USED BOOKSTORE? You’d expect to find it at the tarot reader’s place, the Buddhist temples, or among the breathtaking 14,000-foot peaks towering over the small community of Crestone. But at the used bookstore? That’s right, if you intend to explore the esoteric wonders of the little town nestled among the Sangre de Cristos, don’t miss the Ragpicker Bookstore. A visit to the Ragpicker, usually called “Carmin’s” by the locals, is an adventure. The shop is not hard to find; although, it

Spirituality & Health • 22nd October 2022

Self Help: "When Logic Fails"

My brain is fried. I’ve come to South Carolina from New Mexico to be with my sick mother, who’s in a nursing home. I am exhausted from moving from place to place: from guest room to retreat center to housesit to campground. I don’t know where to go next, and I can’t make a rational decision.

Spirituality & Health • 10th March 2022

Medical Astrology: Connecting Stars, Planets,…

“For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians first separate the soul from the body.” —Plato Medical astrology is a branch of astrology that associates parts of the body (as well as diseases and treatments) with the nature of the sun, planets, and the 12 astrological signs. With ancient roots in India, China, Egypt, Greece and medieval Europe, the art of linking the cosmos with the human body—and the medicines and plants that treat it—is at least 5,000 years old.

Spirituality & Health • 22nd December 2021

"Art for Transformation"

THOUGHT: that mysterious electronic charge in the synapses in our brain. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by the existential angst of being human. At other times, awe and wonder at the beauty of life on earth comes to us just as powerfully. Thought is what causes our tumbles and stumbles through what we perceive as reality.

The Taos News Tempo • 27th October 2021

Profile: "Takoja Institute: A Place of Sanctuary and Creativity"

Before she passed away in 2014, Judith Sauceda had manifested a vision - she created a sacred space, a salon where kindred spirits and wisdom keepers gather, a sustainable site where knowledge, skills and love can be handed down to future generations. Takoja Institute was established 30 years ago. Today her extended family and friends continue to support Judith's endeavor.

Winter Ross

Spirituality & Health • 16th July 2021

"Form a Goddess Circle, Find Your Sacred Self"

Which Goddess Circle Is Right for You? Try out several circles to find one that fits. Are you a gentle Crone seeking the company of other wisdom keepers? Perhaps you’re a new mother looking for support and friendship in a space where your child is welcome. Or maybe you’re a feisty lover looking for the wild dance. Maiden, Mother, or Crone, you’ll find what you need.

Spirituality & Health • 11th June 2021

Profile: "Lakota Activist and Builder Christinia Eala"

Christinia realized sustainable, owner-built housing with solar alternative energy was the direction she needed to take for reservation housing. She studied earthbag construction at Cal-Earth Institute, inspired by dome designs that are flood, fire, and earthquake-proof and architecturally based on the sacred circle. She teamed up with a solar school, experimented with hempcrete and pallet houses, spending years researching and planning.

Spirituality & Health • 25th May 2021

Buddhism/Self Help: "Feeding Your Demons"

A demon is a metaphor for anything that is taking your energy, be it fear, obsession, addiction, or something else.

Spirituality & Health • 23rd April 2021

Self Help: "A Grief Garden Can Help You Heal"

It was the sacrificial braid of human hair that brought the grief home to me. I felt like a grave robber. As I brushed leaf mold from the light brown twist, I realized it had once belonged to the mourner who’d designed and planted the small, circular garden bed I was restoring. She had left a traditional symbol of sorrow. Who was she? Who had she lost? How had the creation of this shrine helped her heal?

Spirituality & Health • 5th March 2021

Folk Medicine: "The Hoodoo Blues"

Hoodoo is a rich and complex collection of beliefs and magical practices. Spells timed to moon phases; charms, curses and crossings; dream interpretation; candle magic; incense; sachet powders; purifying baths; floor washes; symbols and sigils drawn on pathways; potent herbs and roots soaked in conjure oils; silver mercury dime talismans, and prayer bags anointed with sweat, blood or urine; are just some of the methods employed in acquiring that lucky life we’re all after.

Spirituality & Health • 9th February 2021

Divination: "Throwing the Bones: Finding Your Future"

For a year now, we have been hearing the phrase “In these uncertain times.” Many of us are having difficulty coping with the seemingly apocalyptic crises we are facing. We are lonely. We are anxious. We are grieving. There’s a part of us that believes in, and understands, the language of magic. If we are to heal wholly, we must engage all parts of ourselves in the process.

Earth First! Journal • 7th December 2020

Environmental Reporting: "Resistance to Oil and Gas in the Sacred San Luis Valley"

The Great Climate March Blog; Wild Woman Rising • 2nd June 2014

Travel Article: "The Holiness of Dirt"

I trudge breathlessly, head down, toward our next camp: the parking lot of El Santuario de Chimayo. I hurt all over; my joints are stiff; the soles of my feet are burning.

Society for Shamanic Practice • 29th March 2020

Opinion Piece: "Walking the Edge of Cultural Appropriation"

The young man was goth-like, pale and pimply, dressed in a long black coat and lecturing to a circle of listeners at an Earth First! gathering in the western wilderness. The subject of his talk was the cultural appropriation of earth-based spiritual traditions. He had embraced his Wiccan ancestral roots, he raged, and anyone white who strayed into Indigenous spirituality was simply politically incorrect, if not morally indefensible.