Adorned & Aligned: How To Use Your Beauty Rituals To Tap Into Ancestral Power

If you follow the spiritual girlies on social media, you’ve likely run across the phrase “glamour magic.” While often presented as the act of using beauty practices to manifest your desires, diviner and spiritual wellness teacher Tatianna Tarot would caution against getting too attached to semantics.  

“‘Glamour magic’ is more simplistic than we make it out to be,” Tatianna insists. “I would say that if you find it particularly triggering, the words ‘glamour’ or ‘magic,’ you can find parallel words that are synonyms or representations of the same energy or the same concept.” More commonly referred to as “beauty ritual,” investing time in personal upkeep is less about vanity and more about intention and ancestry.

In many traditions across the Black diaspora, adornment, skincare, hair care, color, and fragrance have historically been utilized beyond aesthetics for protection, attraction, and self-empowerment. “I think what a lot of our ancestors recognized back in the day that we’re just kind of acknowledging now, was that beauty is a superpower,” Tatianna declares. “Beauty is also parallel to your inner radiance, your inner being.” 

In ancient Kemet, kohl eyeliner was used to protect the eyes from dust, disease and negative spiritual intentions. For the Yoruba people of West Africa, hair threading or “irun kiko” doubles as a protective >chébé powder as a gift from God that blesses femininity through the growth of long hair. Similarly, Africa’s Sahel belt has long considered shea butter a divine feminine gift, dubbing it “women’s gold.” These practices have survived enslavement and colonization, rewiring themselves into modern-day “trends” mined from the world’s ghettos, barrios and favelas. 

“Sacred adornment and sacred beautification was not only a symbol of status, but a power tool to bring forth the energies and the elements of that which we wanted to receive,” Tatianna notes. “Not just in ourselves, but in the world around us.” To this end, people of the Black diaspora still hold the deep history of beauty as ritual, signifying self-care as spiritual work from the inside out. 

“I personally believe that ‘glamour magic’ also deals with shifting your belief systems and your mindset to accompany the exterior,” Tatianna says. “Who do you feel like on the inside? What character do you represent to yourself? And how does that character express itself on a physical and energetic level? What are the elements that connect to that?” 

Through focused intention, enacting rituals around how we care for our hair, skin, nails and body conjures up the power of presence. “Beautification calls for you to slow down. It calls for you to honor, nurture and nourish elements of yourself that you would naturally ignore,” she notes. 

Looking to maximize the spiritual potential of your beauty routines? Read on for a deeper dive. 

Energetic Adornment

According to Tatianna Tarot, the way one decides to decorate themselves is most potent when used to amplify their own favorite traits. “Beautification ritual is just the enhancement of the quality that you love about yourself and that you want to nurture and embellish.” She advises exploration of this phenomenon by noticing the materials you feel drawn to.

“With brass, copper or gold in ancient Yoruba traditions with the orishas, these energies, these spirit personifications of nature also have their own ‘glamour magic’ associated with them,” Tatianna notes. “They have their own fragrances. They have their own fabrics. They have their own colors. They have their own metals.” One example is the prevalence of wearing gold to symbolize opulence and magnetism.

Color As Vibration

“Every color represents a particular frequency or vibration it exudes out into the world,” Tatianna says. When utilizing your beauty rituals to elicit energy, one can choose a hue for their makeup or accessories that correlates with their intention. “If you see a woman wearing red, it’s usually that they want to feel in a position of power, dominance and confidence—in a very passionate way,” she notes before also mentioning a second interpretation. “We also see red commonly used for traffic signs and things of the sort, right? That red means ‘don’t do this.’ There’s a boundary.”

Other colors send out a more predictable signal. “Yellow can be the radiance of the sun. So it’s that inner child, that inner happiness, that sense of safety.” Adversely, other palettes have a more grounded effect. “Are you someone that needs to feel connected to Earth? The browns, the greens, the beiges, the yellows, those are going to make you feel in my body, safe, connected, chill, giving very much Erykah Badu.”

Tatianna suggests using your intuition to find your “power color,” the one that matches the energy you want to emanate.

Sacred Ingredients

Coinciding with the ancient practice of honoring the divinity of naturally-occurring beauty ingredients, Tatianna Tarot heralds honey as a representative of Venus, the goddess planet. 

“We can use honey in an assortment of things,” she offers. “Whether that is putting some honey in our tongue to sweeten up the words that we are wishing upon ourselves, wishing upon a lover, wishing upon the world, family members, friends, et cetera.” She suggests adding honey to scrubs, masks and oils and wishing sweetness for yourself. Other elements, like sea salt, have the power to ward off unwanted energies. 

A second hero ingredient in Tatianna’s book is mint. “It can cool you down from anxiety, cool you down from feeling overwhelmed or cool you down from reacting in a way that is not in alignment with what you want,” she says. “But also, mint is used in many traditions as an herb that is cool enough to attract money.” On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tatianna points to cinnamon as a conductor of heat—one commonly used in lip plumper products to achieve a sultry pout.

Divine Timing

When it comes to finding the perfect time for your beauty ritual, Tatianna is clear: “I would not be codependent on any other version of time but that of yourself, because ritual is a life rel=”tag”>beauty rituals

The post Adorned & Aligned: How To Use Your Beauty Rituals To Tap Into Ancestral Power appeared first on Essence.