Death of Binary Perceptions Pt. I

A Prayer. A Song. A Ritual.

I saw her. The version of me that was no longer exploring gender. I saw them. I felt them cup my hands together and whisper it’s okay, while embodying a non-binary form of she, they, and everything to nothing, all at the same time. They moved like they had a throne in the Underworld, like red has always been our color, and like we’ve always known our destiny. The truth of it though is that we do, it has, and we’ve always known. But I am not them yet, for I still feel slightly prisoned by other peoples perception of my gender while simultaneously feeling awkward and defined by nothing, even though I’ve been picking apart this cage for some time now. Every minute change we’ve made has created huge waves in our ocean of tears, sweat, sobs and wails, divined and blessed by the moon, that wax and wane of progress - three steps forward, two steps back.

I am not them yet, but I do get glimpses while we sit under the apple tree together. We gab and go over future plans while I describe in detail the trails I notice they have left for me to follow; experiences strung together to support my inching closer to the great becoming. Trails marking milestones and knowledge we’ve always secretly known, like the excitement my inner child feels when I talk about the possibility of wearing a binder for the first time, how I almost cried when the host of a class introduced me using they/them pronouns, the power of exploring other bodies in safe settings, the way someone calls me beautiful as we lay in bed together knowing that sometimes I feel most beautiful when my leg hair is just coming in, the way lovers play with my hair knowing that just because it is long, it doesn’t make me a girl. It doesn’t even make me a woman.

Being a woman in my ancestral lineage has meant more things than I can count on my fingertips. Traditionally, it has required bearing and raising children, tending to and running the home like a well-oiled machine, marrying people one didn’t choose to then finding spouses in the same way for their own children, needing marriage to a man for survival, and then running from abusive and alcoholic men. The patriarchal feminine. Being a woman in my lineage has also meant learning how to farm, passing down necessary skills to the next generation, falling in love with good men and other women, creating women’s circles in the tea houses, tending to medicinal gardens, keeping our family magic secret but thriving, growing into wise crone women and guiding the living after death. The divine feminine.

Humming.

Being a man in my ancestral lineage has traditionally meant providing for the family, marrying women because they also had to and simultaneously being privileged to never marry if they so chose, learning to be stoic, upholding values and beliefs that do not support liberation for all, addiction, recklessness and risky gambling behavior. The patriarchal masculine. Being a man in my lineage has also meant educating one’s children to question the world, learning and sharing knowledge, mastering the art of sewing and becoming famous tailors. It has meant becoming brilliant palm readers and dream seers, upholding the magic in our bones. It has meant loving unconditionally, immigration, and creating everything from nothing. It has meant revolution. The divine masculine.

I wonder though, where am I to find myself here? There hasn’t been a lot of room for those in the in-between, at least outwardly.

Drumming.

Although no one wants to admit it (except my beloved dead who know the truth) there have been many folx in my lineage who were queer, confused, and didn’t fit the box. One can see their bits of flare, hidden within social structures played for safety. They saw something grander for themselves and their homeland, the motherland. They believed in a more expansive life. They knew of mystical enlightenment beneath the surface, down below the roots of trees, and could lick their fingers, raise them toward to sky and foretell the future. These people felt small in their large cages and knew where to find the hidden candlesticks in obscure drawers, for sneaking out in the middle of the night with the sole purpose of uncovering veiled ancestral codes in foreign tongues under foggy moonlight.

Ah. There I am.

I have been many of these people in my ancestral line. I have been all of them and more. I have been silenced by and afraid of men I was in relationship with, those who said they loved me and swore to keep me safe. I have been blinded by values and traditions passed down that did not support me or others. I have known addiction and been lost, confused, and have acted small. I have also craved for more. I’ve unleashed our magic, predicted the future, talked to the dead and summoned them, I’ve changed course for myself and ancestors past and let our old harmful ways disintegrate. I’ve shown skin. I’ve kissed women. I’ve learned from the Great Mother above, The Devil below, and the Dark Mother within. All for those who couldn’t - like an agreed upon possession, the more I honor my embodiment, I honor theirs as well and all the things they never got to do.

Humming.

In modern society, we find ourselves at a crossroads and like the Three of Wands in the Tarot, I now look over what once was and what still lives within me. I peer out over ancient Sumerian lands growing with English gardens. I hear the drums of my Scandinavian ancestors, the prayers to Odin and all Hail Hel. We have always be devout to The Dead and all its Realms. And I see them with me, in the prick of my finger for this blood ritual, their strength, lessons learned, the survival patterns and habits we share, and visions of magnificent, secret rituals - wisdom passed down from seer to seer. Root worker to root worker. Doula to doula. Witch to witch. Mystic to mystic. Silenced to silenced. Each braid in our hair, those three strands like mother, maiden and crone, weaving a story for no one else to hear. So we stand on our cliff, in our make believe palace from generations past, and gaze out among desert caves and borage fields abound. It is time to plan our future with more conviction, they say, you know these lands, the ones that taste like blood, freedom, grief, and rebellion.

Drumming.

So, this is not only a prayer, but a song, rising with The Dead. A ritual. When we do magic, we hum. I see my Persian Grandmother. And when we do magic, says the Norse Mother, we drum, we smash, and we dance like Jörmungandr has let go of its own tail. I see Me, as I am the last one to wield this sword. So I tighten my grasp and make the needed incision - right down the middle, from the top of my head to the space in-between my groin. And suddenly, I’m screaming a very personal war cry I have known since I was an infant. Wash me, I shout, like we do our dead and remove the grime from my right and left side. I never wished for a womb nor do I need another cis-gendered woman to tell me that is where my history lies. For history has deemed the left side of the human experience to represent the feminine and the right side, the masculine. Both sides feel like they’re getting way too heavy. So, I plead, take this weight created in the binary cauldron and remove these chaotic stories of the masculine and feminine, from the old world and the modern monstrosity that is currently, and then put me back together. I am cutting the blood supply off so that this sheet of cellular makeup that has been put on me by generational expectations can be ripped into a million shreds, disintegrate, die and then like desert clay, be re-made. Because there’s another song stinging my vocal cords and the chorus rewinds itself in my head: I need to leave these binaries and learn how to live in the in-between.* For it is not the early bird who gets the worm, but the one who is willing to die and rise from the ashes, again and again. The one who challenges their cage and dares to tie vines of the past together like a rope of DNA, one that can be crushed up like a placenta and heal the whole village for eternity.

This is when I call to her. I call to them. A song of resurrection and coming back home to the self. A shedding scream to ignite a new, holy text read by the way we take up space. Every movement a mourning for the woman we used to be, the woman we never were, the womb twin we could have been…we can unclench our jaw now. It is okay to simply be. Every move, an integration of ancestral hymns growing strong in the cellular makeup of virgin limbs. I swear it, I saw her. I saw them. I may not be them yet, the version of myself who understands our gender well and isn’t drained by binary perceptions and pressures, but I am willing to take delicious bites out of our apple, the tree of the underworld, fruit and bark of forbidden knowledge. And thus, I am becoming. Blooming, even. I can see her. I can see them and the truth is, they’re not so far away. I can even see their footprints in the path before me, so graciously left as an offering, a roadmap encouraging where to step. Muddy impressions filled with roses and protective amulets gifted from the maternal and scythes for the harvest and sewing patterns for new structures passed down from the paternal, still with room for me and the sweet in-between.

Humming.

Love, Hannah

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*Most of the time I don’t want to be masculine, I don’t want to be feminine, I just want to be. At some point I may come back to the concepts of divine femininity and masculinity and have new definitions, beliefs, and feelings with fresh eyes but for now I need to be cleansed. I understand the need to analyze the toxic versions of these concepts and rebuild, but for now personally, I need to put the exhaustive definitions down for but a moment. It may be naive of me and it may be wrong, to ask us to put these concepts into a grave for now, because I know the importance of swinging the pendulum. (But) what I have witnessed is often it gets swung fully to the other side and we find ourselves being strangled again. I also understand how these concepts help others explore and define their gender. Personally for me right now, I find myself being suffocated by it, especially modern societies push for the divine feminine. (I get it - it’s needed and also there are many spaces where it is getting warped). I also have sometimes (not always) found shapeshifters pretending to be the healed masculine, a manipulative wolf in sheep’s clothing. We have built structures, philosophies, teachings, and businesses out of stripping and rebuilding the concepts of masculinity and femininity. Might they all be somewhat distorted? Might I get to decide what they mean to me and continue to carry my own sword of discernment, as long as I do not harm others in the process? (To be determined and circled back to - as this is an evolving conversation).

This Substack is a continued love letter to Sacred Death about the complexities of life, death, and the in-between from the viewpoint of a specific Persian Death Witch. Thank you for taking the time to read this love letter with me. ~ Hannah Haddadi {she/they}

Next essay: Death of Binary Perceptions Pt. II. Coming Soon.

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