We Crave Ritual: Devotion Without the Dogma
We CRAVE Ritual
Not in the trendy, aesthetic way we see online.
I mean in the ancient, bone-deep way.
The way your nervous system settles when something is held with intention.
The way your heart softens when there’s a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
The way grief needs a container.
The way joy wants to be witnessed.
The way change asks for a threshold.
We are anthropologically wired for rites and rituals of devotion.
Devotion to a path.
Devotion to the self.
Devotion to God, Source, Creator, Spirit, the living intelligence behind it all.
Every culture across time has carried some form of ceremony to mark life.
Birth.
Coming of age.
Partnership.
Death.
Seasons.
Harvest.
Initiation.
Forgiveness.
Prayer.
The sacred pause.
The return.
And yet so many of us are living in a world that has forgotten how to do any of it.
We celebrate big milestones with a dinner reservation and a photo.
We grieve alone in our bedrooms.
We move through identity deaths with a brave face and a to-do list.
We don’t know where to put the trembling in our hands, or the ache in our chest, or the longing we can’t explain.
So it leaks out sideways.
Into burnout.
Into numbness.
Into addiction to distraction.
Into a constant hum of “something is missing” even when everything looks fine.
Ceremony is where the soul puts what the mind can’t hold.Women are reclaiming the sacred because devotion was never meant to be mediated. The Divine was always meant to be met directly, in the body, in the breath, in your inner compass & in the land.
– Marly Grace
If you’re like me, you didn’t grow up without ritual.
You grew up with a version of it.
I grew up in a religious family. There was structure. There were prayers. There were rules. There was reverence, at least on the surface.
And still, I always felt like something was missing.
Not because I didn’t believe in God.
But because I couldn’t FEEL God.
I couldn’t feel the living breath of the sacred moving through my body and my life.
I couldn’t feel a direct relationship. It felt mediated. Filtered. Conditional.
Like the Divine was somewhere “up there,” and my job was to behave well enough to earn proximity.
And under that, there was something else I couldn’t name back then, but I can name now
Shame.
Guilt.
The quiet sense that my body was suspicious.
That my emotions were too much.
That my desires were dangerous.
That my intuition was not to be trusted.
That my knowing needed to be submitted, corrected, disciplined.
That my feminine nature was something to manage, not something to honour.
As I grew older, I started studying, reading, and walking a path of embodiment. Not as a trend,
but as a necessity.
Because I realized I couldn’t keep living disconnected from myself and call it faith.
I couldn’t keep outsourcing my relationship with the Divine to institutions that benefited from my dependence.
So like many times before, I went into research mode and the more I learned,
the clearer it became.
The narrative I had been raised in was shaped in a way that discredited women’s innate gifts and knowing from the beginning.
It separated people from their own direct connection to the sacred.
It taught devotion, but often stripped it of intimacy.
Stripped it of the body.
Stripped it of the Earth.
Stripped it of the feminine.
It wasn’t just spirituality.
It was a system.
A machine.
And machines don’t thrive when people are sovereign.
A machine thrives when people doubt themselves.
When they feel unworthy.
When they fear punishment.
When they believe love must be earned.
When they stay disconnected from their own inner guidance and natural born connection to Source.
When people live in a state of constant shame and guilt, they are easier to steer. Easier to control. Easier to keep small.
So yes, I have opinions about “organized religion.” And I also have compassion for those who found comfort there. Because I know what it gives,
and I know what it takes.
For me, the cost was too high.
My rebellion against the bastardized, backwards system wasn’t to become atheistic.
It wasn’t to throw away the sacred.
It was to go back further.
Back to the ancient rites.
Back to the path of devotion that doesn’t require self-abandonment.
Back to the priestess path.
The one who listens.
The one who remembers.
The one who tends the altar, not just in a building, but in her own life. In her relationships. In her body. In her home. In her grief. In her joy. In the way she moves, eats, rests, speaks, and creates.
The priestess is not a performance.
She is a posture.
A posture of reverence.
A posture of responsibility for your own connection.
A posture of “I don’t need permission to be in relationship with the Divine.”
And this is where things got really interesting for me.
Because the more I studied on different theologies, the more I realized they are, for the most part, telling the same ancient stories.
One of those paths brought me to the figure of Yeshua, and honestly,
when I took away the dogma created after,
I saw a mystic.
A sage.
A prophet.
An initiate.
A man who wasn’t trying to build an empire of control, but trying to wake something up in people.
A man who spoke in parables because truth is rarely received through force, but through revelation.
A man who sat with the outcasts, touched the untouchable, disrupted the power structures, and refused to worship the institution.
I’m not here to debate theology. I’m sharing my lived realization.
That the kind of person he appears to be, in the way I’ve come to understand him, is the exact type of person who would have been turned away by the modern buildings that have claimed his name.
The irony is almost too much to hold.
The same walls that display the crucifixion are often the ones that would reject the living embodiment of his message.
Because the message threatens the machine.
Not a message of “obey.”
But a message of “remember.”
Remember that the Kingdom is within you.
Remember that you are not separate.
Remember that love is not earned through fear.
Remember that the sacred is not owned by anyone.
Remember that your body is not a mistake.
Remember that women are not a threat.
And that last one is where the wound runs deep.
Because there is a reason women have been conditioned to distrust themselves.
There is a reason feminine wisdom was demonized.
There is a reason the priestess became a problem.
There is a reason intuition was labeled dangerous.
There is a reason the healing arts were called witchcraft.
There is a reason the feminine was reduced to silence and service.
When women remember, they stop asking for permission.
When women remember, they stop outsourcing their authority.
When women remember, they start building lives that cannot be controlled through shame.
And so I choose remembrance.
I choose devotion that feels like breath in my lungs, not a noose around my neck.
I choose rituals that bring me back into my body.
I choose rites that honour thresholds instead of rushing past them.
I choose practices that reconnect me to Source directly, without a middleman.
I choose to build a life where the sacred isn’t something I visit once a week, but something I live with.
Not perfectly. Not performatively. Not as a new religion.
But as a return.
Maybe you feel this too.
Maybe you’ve felt the ache of something missing, even while doing everything “right.”
Maybe you’ve been trying to be good, but your soul is craving real.
Maybe you’re not looking to abandon devotion, but to finally meet the divine without the layers.
If that’s you, I want you to know you’re not broken.
You’re remembering.
And the hunger you feel isn’t a flaw. It’s your spirit asking for ritual. For devotion. For a path that includes your body, your intuition, your feminine knowing, and your direct relationship with the sacred.
The return doesn’t have to be dramatic.
Sometimes it starts with lighting a candle, looking in the mirror, and being honest with yourself.
Sometimes it starts with a prayer you write out by hand.
Sometimes it starts with one quiet vow: I will no longer betray my own knowing.
That is a rite.
That is initiation.
That is devotion.
And that is where everything begins.
If this stirred something in you, join the circle. I share my rituals, reflections, and the real-time remembering there first.
Ceremony is where the soul puts what the mind can’t hold.Women are reclaiming the sacred because devotion was never meant to be mediated. The Divine was always meant to be met directly, in the body, in the breath, in your inner compass & in the land.
– Marly Grace
If you’re like me, you didn’t grow up without ritual.
You grew up with a version of it.
I grew up in a religious family. There was structure. There were prayers. There were rules. There was reverence, at least on the surface.
And still, I always felt like something was missing.
Not because I didn’t believe in God.
But because I couldn’t FEEL God.
I couldn’t feel the living breath of the sacred moving through my body and my life.
I couldn’t feel a direct relationship. It felt mediated. Filtered. Conditional.
Like the Divine was somewhere “up there,” and my job was to behave well enough to earn proximity.
And under that, there was something else I couldn’t name back then, but I can name now
Shame.
Guilt.
The quiet sense that my body was suspicious.
That my emotions were too much.
That my desires were dangerous.
That my intuition was not to be trusted.
That my knowing needed to be submitted, corrected, disciplined.
That my feminine nature was something to manage, not something to honour.
As I grew older, I started studying, reading, and walking a path of embodiment. Not as a trend,
but as a necessity.
Because I realized I couldn’t keep living disconnected from myself and call it faith.
I couldn’t keep outsourcing my relationship with the Divine to institutions that benefited from my dependence.
So like many times before, I went into research mode and the more I learned,
the clearer it became.
The narrative I had been raised in was shaped in a way that discredited women’s innate gifts and knowing from the beginning.
It separated people from their own direct connection to the sacred.
It taught devotion, but often stripped it of intimacy.
Stripped it of the body.
Stripped it of the Earth.
Stripped it of the feminine.
It wasn’t just spirituality.
It was a system.
A machine.
And machines don’t thrive when people are sovereign.
A machine thrives when people doubt themselves.
When they feel unworthy.
When they fear punishment.
When they believe love must be earned.
When they stay disconnected from their own inner guidance and natural born connection to Source.
When people live in a state of constant shame and guilt, they are easier to steer. Easier to control. Easier to keep small.
So yes, I have opinions about “organized religion.” And I also have compassion for those who found comfort there. Because I know what it gives,
and I know what it takes.
For me, the cost was too high.
My rebellion against the bastardized, backwards system wasn’t to become atheistic.
It wasn’t to throw away the sacred.
It was to go back further.
Back to the ancient rites.
Back to the path of devotion that doesn’t require self-abandonment.
Back to the priestess path.
The one who listens.
The one who remembers.
The one who tends the altar, not just in a building, but in her own life. In her relationships. In her body. In her home. In her grief. In her joy. In the way she moves, eats, rests, speaks, and creates.
The priestess is not a performance.
She is a posture.
A posture of reverence.
A posture of responsibility for your own connection.
A posture of “I don’t need permission to be in relationship with the Divine.”
And this is where things got really interesting for me.
Because the more I studied on different theologies, the more I realized they are, for the most part, telling the same ancient stories.
One of those paths brought me to the figure of Yeshua, and honestly,
when I took away the dogma created after,
I saw a mystic.
A sage.
A prophet.
An initiate.
A man who wasn’t trying to build an empire of control, but trying to wake something up in people.
A man who spoke in parables because truth is rarely received through force, but through revelation.
A man who sat with the outcasts, touched the untouchable, disrupted the power structures, and refused to worship the institution.
I’m not here to debate theology. I’m sharing my lived realization.
That the kind of person he appears to be, in the way I’ve come to understand him, is the exact type of person who would have been turned away by the modern buildings that have claimed his name.
The irony is almost too much to hold.
The same walls that display the crucifixion are often the ones that would reject the living embodiment of his message.
Because the message threatens the machine.
Not a message of “obey.”
But a message of “remember.”
Remember that the Kingdom is within you.
Remember that you are not separate.
Remember that love is not earned through fear.
Remember that the sacred is not owned by anyone.
Remember that your body is not a mistake.
Remember that women are not a threat.
And that last one is where the wound runs deep.
Because there is a reason women have been conditioned to distrust themselves.
There is a reason feminine wisdom was demonized.
There is a reason the priestess became a problem.
There is a reason intuition was labeled dangerous.
There is a reason the healing arts were called witchcraft.
There is a reason the feminine was reduced to silence and service.
When women remember, they stop asking for permission.
When women remember, they stop outsourcing their authority.
When women remember, they start building lives that cannot be controlled through shame.
And so I choose remembrance.
I choose devotion that feels like breath in my lungs, not a noose around my neck.
I choose rituals that bring me back into my body.
I choose rites that honour thresholds instead of rushing past them.
I choose practices that reconnect me to Source directly, without a middleman.
I choose to build a life where the sacred isn’t something I visit once a week, but something I live with.
Not perfectly. Not performatively. Not as a new religion.
But as a return.
Maybe you feel this too.
Maybe you’ve felt the ache of something missing, even while doing everything “right.”
Maybe you’ve been trying to be good, but your soul is craving real.
Maybe you’re not looking to abandon devotion, but to finally meet the divine without the layers.
If that’s you, I want you to know you’re not broken.
You’re remembering.
And the hunger you feel isn’t a flaw. It’s your spirit asking for ritual. For devotion. For a path that includes your body, your intuition, your feminine knowing, and your direct relationship with the sacred.
The return doesn’t have to be dramatic.
Sometimes it starts with lighting a candle, looking in the mirror, and being honest with yourself.
Sometimes it starts with a prayer you write out by hand.
Sometimes it starts with one quiet vow: I will no longer betray my own knowing.
That is a rite.
That is initiation.
That is devotion.
And that is where everything begins.
If this stirred something in you, join the circle. I share my rituals, reflections, and the real-time remembering there first.
