F.A.T.A.L. Eighteen Years Later
When Life Becomes the Degree
As we approach the Blue Moon and prepare to leave the Season of Blooming behind, I find myself reflecting on a threshold I crossed nearly two decades ago.
In 2008, I became a Star.
At the time, I understood that crossing as an initiation.
A ritual.
A degree.
A moment.
What I could not have known then was that the real degree would take the next eighteen years to complete.
Because some teachings are not learned in a room.
They are learned in a life.
For the past few weeks, I have found myself revisiting the Order of the Eastern Star, the Heroines of Jericho, Queen of the South, and the teachings that shaped a younger version of me. Not because I suddenly felt called back to the organization itself, but because I realized something surprising.
The principles never left.
The rituals faded.
The meetings stopped.
My active participation ended somewhere around 2010 or 2011.
Yet the lessons remained.
And now, standing at another threshold, I can finally see them.
The Persistence of Ritual
I was raised within Irish Catholic traditions.
Long before I understood theology, I understood ritual.
Candles.
Holy days.
Processions.
Symbols.
Sacred pauses.
Thresholds.
There was something in my spirit that responded to the language of ritual even as my relationship with religion evolved. (I’m fairly certain this is because of my ADHD)
Years later, that same longing drew me toward the Order of the Eastern Star.
Not because I was searching for certainty.
But because I was searching for meaning.
Looking back, I realize that what I loved was never hierarchy.
It was symbolism.
It was story.
It was the understanding that transformation deserves to be marked.
That crossing from one season of life into another deserves witness.
That becoming deserves ceremony.
When I eventually moved away from organized religion and stepped back from active participation in Eastern Star, I thought I was leaving those worlds behind.
What I now understand is that I wasn’t leaving ritual.
I was carrying it with me.
The Academy is ritual.
The Three Houses are ritual.
The Bridge is ritual.
Seasonal living is ritual.
Community agreements are ritual.
The pauses I create before teaching are ritual.
The thresholds I build into my work are ritual.
I didn’t abandon ritual.
I translated it, transmuted it.
F.A.T.A.L.
Before revisiting these teachings, I found myself laughing at the irony of the acronym itself.
F.A.T.A.L.
To someone unfamiliar with the tradition, the word evokes danger.
Death.
Evil.
Something to fear.
Yet the phrase stands as a reflection on character, integrity, faith, love, endurance, and becoming.
The contrast made me pause.
Because it mirrors a pattern I have witnessed my entire life.
There is a long history in this country of Black gatherings being treated as suspicious, whilst white gatherings are treated as ordinary.
Black organizations are asked to justify their existence.
Black community is scrutinized.
Black solidarity is feared.
Black ritual is exoticized.
Black spirituality is demonized.
Black joy is questioned.
Black success is explained away.
Black power is framed as dangerous.
This article will help you understand the concept more.
Meanwhile, organizations tied to white supremacy have often been remembered through softer language.
The women of the Ku Klux Klan were frequently described as civic-minded women engaged in community service and moral reform.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy helped shape generations of historical memory, erecting monuments and influencing school curricula while presenting themselves as guardians of heritage and tradition.
White women’s organizations that actively supported segregation, racial hierarchy, and Lost Cause mythology were often granted legitimacy simply because whiteness itself was treated as legitimate.
The point is not that Black organizations are beyond critique.
No institution is.
The point is that critique is rarely applied equally.
One of the most effective tools of supremacy culture is not simply exclusion.
It is naming.
The ability to decide what is respectable and what is threatening.
What is civilized and what is primitive.
What is godly and what is demonic.
What is tradition and what is cult.
What is community and what is conspiracy.
What is history and what is propaganda.
The older I get, the less interested I am in accepting inherited narratives.
Which is perhaps why I find myself relating more to the Queen of Sheba than ever before.
She did not rely on rumors.
She did not outsource her discernment.
She made the journey herself.
And perhaps that is the invitation.
Not blind acceptance.
Not blind rejection.
Discernment.
When I first encountered the acronym F.A.T.A.L., I understood it one way.
Today…. I hear something entirely different.
I no longer hear beauty.
I hear wholeness.
Because the older I get, the more I believe the opposite of liberation is fragmentation.
Supremacy culture teaches us to separate ourselves.
Mind from body.
Work from rest.
Power from compassion.
Self from community.
Spirit from action.
We are encouraged to perform versions of ourselves rather than inhabit ourselves.
But “altogether” suggests something different.
Altogether means integrated.
Altogether means no longer hiding pieces of yourself to make others comfortable.
Altogether means allowing every version of yourself a seat at the table.
The teacher.
The mother.
The seeker.
The healer.
The activist.
The lover.
The builder.
The dreamer.
The woman becoming.
Perhaps it was always about integration.
Perhaps it was always about becoming whole.
The Heroines Revisited
When I first learned the lessons of Adah, Ruth, Esther, Martha, and Electa, I understood them through the eyes of a young woman steeped in a colonial Christian worldview.
At the time, there was comfort in the familiarity of the stories.
I had grown up immersed in biblical narratives. The passages felt recognizable. The language felt familiar. The symbolism felt sacred.
In many ways, the Order of the Eastern Star returned ritual to me.
It offered a way to engage stories I already knew through a different lens. One that emphasized character, virtue, reflection, and becoming.
Back then, I did not question much.
I accepted the lessons as they were presented.
I accepted the interpretations I had inherited.
I accepted the roles these women were meant to play within the story.
And like many women raised within patriarchal religious traditions, I often interpreted their value through the lens of service, sacrifice, obedience, and submission.
The women were held up as examples.
Models to emulate.
Lessons to learn.
Virtues to embody.
But rarely were they presented as fully realized human beings.
Rarely were they afforded the same complexity, agency, contradiction, or sovereignty granted to the men surrounding them.
Time has a way of changing how we read.
And liberation has a way of changing who is allowed to be fully human.
As I began dismantling the colonial and patriarchal lens through which I had been taught to view scripture, something unexpected happened.
The women became more real.
More complex.
More alive.
I stopped seeing them as symbols first and women second.
I began seeing them as women first.
Women making difficult choices within systems they did not create.
Women navigating power.
Women navigating loyalty.
Women navigating grief.
Women navigating uncertainty.
Women navigating love.
Women navigating survival.
Women finding ways to exercise agency in worlds that often denied them authority.
The lessons did not disappear.
They deepened.
Adah no longer speaks to me of obedience.
She speaks to me of integrity.
The courage to remain faithful to what I know to be true, even when the cost is high.
Ruth no longer speaks to me of duty.
She speaks to me of chosen kinship.
The radical act of building belonging through commitment, reciprocity, and care.
A woman who chose her people rather than simply inheriting them.
Esther no longer speaks to me only of courage.
She speaks to me of sovereignty.
A woman discerning when to speak, when to wait, and when to risk everything for what matters most.
Not a passive queen, but a strategist. Not merely brave, but wise.
Martha no longer speaks to me of endurance.
She speaks to me of trust.
The kind of faith that remains when certainty disappears and all that is left is relationship.
Not faith as compliance. Faith as presence.
Electa no longer speaks to me of charity.
She speaks to me of love mature enough to survive complexity.
A love rooted not in perfection, but in practice.
Not in performance, but in devotion.
What surprises me now is that life did not change the teachings.
Life deepened them.
The stories remained.
But the women expanded.
And perhaps that is what happens when we revisit old lessons with new eyes.
The lesson is no longer confined to the page.
The lesson begins to breathe.
The heroine is no longer an ideal to imitate.
She becomes a companion.
A mirror.
A conversation partner.
A reminder that wisdom is rarely found in perfection.
It is found in the messy, complicated, beautiful work of being fully human.
And maybe that is what I hear now when I revisit these teachings nearly two decades later.
Not instructions on how to become a good woman.
But stories of women reclaiming their humanity.
Stories of women exercising agency.
Stories of women navigating impossible circumstances with dignity and wisdom.
Stories of women becoming whole.
And in that way, perhaps they were teaching liberation all along.
The Queen of Sheba and the Wisdom of Returning
The lesson that has surprised me most is the one I found in Queen of the South.
For years, I thought the story was about Solomon.
Or perhaps more accurately, I was taught to notice Solomon first.
He was the wise king.
The builder.
The judge.
The center of the narrative.
And to be clear, centering Sheba does not diminish Solomon.
A decolonized reading is not about replacing one center with another.
It is about restoring what was omitted.
The Queen of the South degree itself is built around an encounter.
Not a conquest.
Not a conversion.
Not a hierarchy.
An encounter.
A wise king and a wise queen meeting one another.
A conversation.
A testing of ideas.
A recognition of character.
A mutual exchange.
Solomon’s wisdom matters.
His journey matters.
His discipline matters.
His seeking matters.
The scriptures tell us he sought wisdom above wealth and power. He listened, learned, discerned, and cultivated understanding.
But what strikes me now is that whilst Solomon was gaining wisdom… Sheba was crossing the sands.
The older I get, the more I wonder why I remembered one journey so clearly and overlooked the other.
Because Solomon stayed where he was.
Sheba crossed the sands.
She organized the caravan.
She gathered the gifts.
She undertook the risk.
She left what was familiar.
She made the journey.
She sought the audience.
She asked the questions.
She tested what she had heard.
She did not simply receive wisdom.
She pursued it.
That changes the story.
It ceases to be a tale about a wise king impressing a queen.
And becomes a story about two sovereign people who valued wisdom enough to recognize it in one another.
What moves me now is not Solomon’s answers.
It is Sheba’s dedication.
Her willingness to leave certainty.
Her willingness to make the journey.
Her willingness to discover for herself.
Because Sheba does not rely on rumors.
She does not outsource her discernment.
She does not blindly accept what she has been told.
She goes and sees.
She listens.
She questions.
She weighs what she encounters.
And then she returns home.
Not diminished.
Not dependent.
Not converted.
Transformed.
That feels deeply resonant to me now.
Not only because of my journey through the Order of the Eastern Star…
But because it mirrors so much of my life.
Nobody handed me liberation work.
Nobody handed me decolonization.
Nobody handed me somatics.
Nobody handed me community building.
I crossed many sands myself.
I sought teachers.
I asked questions.
I challenged assumptions.
I left traditions.
I returned to traditions.
I kept what was alive.
I released what was not.
And perhaps that is why this story has found me again during this Season of Blooming.
Because blooming is not passive.
Seeds do not simply wake up one morning as flowers.
They split open.
They reach.
They stretch.
They risk.
They move toward the light.
What I find myself appreciating most now is that the Queen of the South degree honors both journeys.
The wisdom required to cultivate understanding. And the courage required to seek it.
The wisdom required to teach. And the humility required to learn.
The wisdom required to speak. And the wisdom required to listen.
Perhaps that is why this story feels so alive to me now.
Not because I needed to choose between Solomon and Sheba.
But because I finally learned to see them both.
And in doing so, I found myself in the story as well.
Not as a queen seeking a king.
But as a woman willing to cross the sands in pursuit of wisdom, wholeness, and truth.
Because wisdom did not come to me.
I went looking for it.
And somewhere between the young woman who crossed a threshold in 2008 and the woman writing these words today, I realize I have been making that journey all along.
The Blue Moon Initiation
As this Blue Moon approaches, I find myself recognizing that another initiation is taking place.
Not in a chapter room.
Not through a ritual book.
Not through a degree.
Through life itself.
Eighteen years ago, I crossed a threshold.
Today, I understand that the crossing never ended.
Every heartbreak was part of the degree.
Every friendship.
Every community built.
Every community lost.
Every lesson in motherhood.
Every season of healing.
Every act of liberation.
Every moment I chose integrity over comfort.
Every time I returned to myself.
The degree continued.
Maybe that is the greatest lesson of all.
The most meaningful initiations do not end when the ceremony is over.
They continue unfolding across a lifetime.
As we prepare to leave the Season of Blooming and prepare to enter the Season of Expansion, I find myself grateful for the younger woman who sought wisdom through ritual.
And I find myself equally grateful for the woman I have become.
The one who finally understands that the ritual was never the destination.
It was the doorway.
The blooming was always going to take years.
Practice Your Praxis
One of the most common mistakes I see in liberation spaces is the assumption that freedom requires us to either preserve everything exactly as we inherited it or reject it entirely.
Neither approach requires discernment.
One clings.
The other discards.
Both surrender our agency.
Liberation invites something different.
Liberation asks us to become wise stewards.
To examine what we have inherited.
To question it.
To wrestle with it.
To understand it.
To release what causes harm.
To reclaim what carries wisdom.
To transform what can be transformed.
To create what does not yet exist.
This week, spend some time reflecting on the traditions, teachings, and stories that shaped you.
Consider the following:
Self
What beliefs, rituals, traditions, or practices have remained meaningful even after your worldview changed?
What did you leave behind that still contains wisdom worth reclaiming?
What part of yourself is asking to be welcomed home?
Home
What family stories or inherited traditions deserve a second look?
Which ones still nourish connection?
Which ones require healing, revision, or release?
How might you honor your lineage without becoming confined by it?
Work
What systems, institutions, organizations, or professional practices have you accepted without question?
What assumptions deserve reexamination?
Where are you being invited to practice discernment instead of blind acceptance or rejection?
Reflection
What if liberation is not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
What if liberation is learning how to separate the wisdom from the conditioning?
The medicine from the hierarchy?
The lesson from the indoctrination?
The lineage from the domination?
What sands are you being invited to cross in pursuit of wisdom?
And what might be waiting for you on the other side?
Before You Go
As this Blue Moon rises and the Season of Blooming draws to a close, I hope you give yourself permission to revisit what you once thought you had outgrown.
Not everything inherited is meant to be carried forward.
But not everything inherited is meant to be discarded either.
Some things require excavation.
Some things require grieving.
Some things require release.
And some things are waiting to be reclaimed.
The stories.
The symbols.
The rituals.
The teachings.
The pieces of yourself hidden beneath someone else’s interpretation.
Perhaps wisdom is not found in preserving the past exactly as it was.
Nor is it found in burning everything to the ground.
Wisdom lives in the discernment required to know the difference.
To honor what nourished you.
To release what harmed you.
To transform what can be transformed.
And to create what does not yet exist.
As we leave Blooming and step into Expansion, may you trust yourself enough to ask the question.
May you trust yourself enough to make the journey.🌬️
May you trust yourself enough to cross the sands.🌬️
And when you arrive at whatever wisdom awaits you there, may you have the courage to bring it home.
Not diminished.
Not dependent.
Not converted.
Transformed.
Altogether.
Whole.
In Solidarity and Liberation,
Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.
Where Reflection Meets Transformation
Thank you for sharing this. As a Past Patron, I don't often come across this content in spaces outside of the Craft. The exposition was deep and meaningful.