The Keeper of the Flame
They call me flame tender. Root singer. Keeper it lives not in doctrine, but in breath. not in perfection, but in presence. not in answers, but in the alchemy of being with what is. this flame was not given to me in ceremony. it was found in grief. tended through silence. carried through fire. it has flickered in the quiet hours of my becoming when i didn't know how to receive, when i forgot how to feel, when i wondered if i was too much, or not enough. still, the flame remained. it lives now in the way i hold space with reverence, softness, and strength. it moves through cacao, through ritual, through story, through stillness. it speaks in symbols. it hums in the body. it is ancient, and it is alive. this is the flame i offer you not to fix you, but to remind you. of what is sacred. of what is real. of what is already burning within you. come close. the fire is warm. you are welcome here. with flame and tenderness, the keeper
The Keeper's path
the path made me the keeper. the flame taught me how to stay.
ashley doucet
my path has not been a straight line. it has been a spiral. a slow unraveling. a descent into the dark. a rising not all at once, but in soft, sacred layers. there were years I didn't know how to feel safe in my body. years i didn't know how to ask for help, how to receive love, how to believe i was worthy of being held. i learned how to listen before i learned how to guide. i learned how to grieve before i learned how to open. and even now, i am still learning not how to be perfect, but how to be present. it was in the quiet, the ache, the stillness. that a story found me. a seed, ancient and forgotten, buried in the dark. a serpent rising from the deep, carrying fire. the spiral between them death, rebirth, and the rhythm of remembering. that myth lived inside me long before i could name it. it whispered through my breathwork, sang through the rituals i was called to create, and stirred each time i placed cacao to my lips. the serpent & the seed isn't just the name of this temple - it is the story of how i returned to myself. how i beame the one who tends the flame. I've studied spaceholding, energy work, and ritual. but nothing taught me more than life itself. than the spiral path of falling apart, and choosing to rise again. this is the path i walk. this is the path i offer you. not to be saved. not to be fixed. but to be seen. to be held. to be witnessed. and maybe, to remember something ancient in you too. and so together we spiral. root to flame. shadow to bloom. serpent to seed.
the serpent & the seed
the living myth of this temple
in the beginning, there was only silence beneath the soil. the earth dreamed in stillness, and within her womb, a single seed stirred. ancient and full of promise, yet unawakened. the seed held the memory of what had been lost: the sacred union between shadow and light, between the depth and descent and the bloom of becoming. but the seed could not awaken alone. from the hollow roots of the world, the serpent began her slow ascent. she was not the villain of old tales, no tempter, no deceiver. but the guardian of wisdom, the pulse of the underworld, the divine current that coils through the soul. she moved not in haste, but in rhythm with the cycles, the blood, the moon, the breath. and when she reached the seed, she did not consume it. she circled it. sang to it. breathed into it the fire of remembrance. and the seed stirred. bathed in darkness, it cracked open not in pain, but in initiation. roots reached downward into shadow. a shoot reached upward into light. not in denial of the dark, nor in pursuit of purity - but in devotion to wholeness. and the serpent whispered: "to rise, you must first return." "to bloom, you must first break." "to awaken, you must feel." and so the seed became the tree, and the serpent became the flame that spiralled through its trunk life force, soul fire, creation uncoiled. from their union came the rites, the altars, the ceremonies not to worship a god above, but to remember the sacredness within. from their union came rhythm: death and bloom, grief and grace, descent and return. it was not a love story. it was a truth story one we carry in our bodies still. we are all the seed: hidden, ancient, waiting. and we are all the serpent: wise, coiled, aflame. we are the spiral - remembering what we are as we become. this temple is built in their image. it lives in the soil of that myth. its breath is ritual. its fire is truth. this myth lives on in every body that dares to descend, in every heart that breaks open to rise, in every ritual where silence meets song, and the serpent awakens the seed. and if you are here, perhaps some part of you is stirring too.