DS CLAYWORKS and MAMA LOUX Ritual Resin INcense Ritual Bowls

Before the Naming — A World That Is Alive

Name: RITUAL BURN KIT
Brand: Mama Loux
Price: 233.0 USD
Availability: OutOfStock

There is a way of seeing
in which nothing is still,
nothing is inert,
nothing is without voice.

In the old stories, everything speaks.
Stones hum. Trees listen. Objects move of their own accord.

I have always felt this—
not as an idea, but as a quiet knowing.

And yet somewhere along the way,
we are taught to call this way of seeing imagination.
Projection.
An old story we no longer believe.

But what if it is still true?

What if it is a remembering.

The Thin Line That Was Never There

We have tried to draw a line—
between living and non-living,
animate and inanimate.

But the line does not hold.

The breath that moves through you—alive or not?
The water that forms you—alive or not?
The moon that moves the tides of your body—alive or not?

Remove anything from its relationships
and it appears still.
Isolated.
Object-like.

Return it to the field—
and it reveals itself as part of a vast, moving continuum.

This is something I return to often in my own work—
this softening of boundaries,
this listening for where life is still moving
even when we’ve been taught not to see it.

DS Clayworks Ellipse Ritual Bowl

The Trouble with “Objects”

Object.

Thing.

Words that flatten.
That sever.
That forget.

To call something an object
is to remove it from its story—
from the hands that shaped it,
the elements that formed it,
the life it continues to participate in.

And in many ways, this is what we have done—
to materials, to land, to the things we live with.

But there are no objects here.

Only relationships.
Only continuities.
Only forms of life we are learning, again, how to feel.

There is a growing recognition—even within material culture studies—
that what we call “objects” are not passive at all,
but active participants in the worlds they inhabit. (see Objects Are Alive, in The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies)

Stone — The First Body

Before vessel, before form—
there is stone.

Stone that remembers fire.
Stone that becomes structure, conductor, carrier.

We call them inanimate,
and build our entire lives from them.

We hold them in our hands all day—
glass, metal, silicon—
listening, speaking, exchanging.

Talking to stones.

Our modern oracles.

Stone has always been speaking.

Some research now begins to echo what the old stories have always held—
that early human cultures did not imagine a living world,
they lived within it, (see The Neolithic Mind)

Clay — The Living Earth

And then—
there is clay.

Earth softened by water.
Mineral made receptive.

Across cultures, across time,
again and again, we are told:

We come from clay.

This has always resonated deeply for me—
not as metaphor, but as something felt in the body.

Remembered.

Clay that forms.
Clay that responds.
Clay that holds.

A material that is not passive,
but participatory.

A living earth that invites relationship.

There are even strands within contemporary science that begin to suggest
that life may have first gathered itself in clay—
mineral surfaces quietly guiding the formation of complexity.

Those Who Never Forgot

There are traditions that never lost this knowing.

Where clay is greeted.
Fed.
Listened to.

Where vessels are not simply made,
but entered into.

Where the kiln is a threshold.
Where transformation is witnessed, not forced.

In many Indigenous traditions, pottery remains a living practice—
carrying lineage, spirit, and relationship across generations. (see Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery)

This lineage of relationship is something I feel immense reverence for—
and something I hold with care in the work of MAMA LOUX.

DS CLAYWORKS Earth Smudge Ritual Bowl

The Becoming of a Vessel

At MAMA LOUX, our ceramic ritual bowls are created in collaboration
with a small scale of ceramic artists—true artists.

Each one working in deep relationship with their material.
Each one bringing years—often lifetimes—of devotion to clay.

There is an alchemy in their process:

Earth.
Water.
Hand.
Fire.

But also something less visible—

Intention.
Attention.
Presence.

These bowls are not mass produced.
They are formed—slowly, deliberately—
with a felt sense of purpose.

What emerges is not just form.
It is a body.

In many early cultures, vessels were never simply containers,
but extensions of the body itself—
formed, inhabited, and understood as living presences. (see Bodies of Clay: Prehistoric Humanised Pottery)