Welcome to Roots and Ritual
My name is Chakra Khan, and this space—this blog, this digital altar—is an extension of my work as a root worker, intuitive healer, tarot reader, and guardian of ancestral wisdom. I created Roots and Ritual not just as a place to share teachings, but as a way to remember. To call in. To reclaim.
I write from a lineage of women who were told to hush, to shrink, to survive quietly. I write for the part of you that remembers otherwise.
This blog is a living journal for those healing the witch wound, reconnecting with plant spirits, walking the path of the seer, or simply seeking a place where the sacred is spoken out loud. It’s where I share rituals, rootwork, herbal knowledge, ceremony, and stories—my own and those that live in the bones.
Whether you're here for insight, inspiration, or just a breath of something real in this world, you are welcome. This space is for you.
I was born in San Diego and raised in Ocean Beach—a small, bohemian seaside town where the tide whispered secrets and the sidewalks cracked like portals. My roots stretch wide: my father’s family is Creole, Jewish, German, Portuguese, and Black, with deep ties to New Orleans; my mother is African American, born in San Diego.
I was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness church, a religion that taught me to silence my truth in the name of obedience. My home life was strict, strange, and splintered. My mother was a beautiful, haunted dancer—a free spirit turned witness, who battled alcoholism, mental illness, and a profound fear of dirt and disorder. My father, a jazz musician with a soft heart and a sharp sense of humor, coped by avoiding what he couldn’t fix. The violence in our home was hidden beneath bleach and politeness, spiritual guilt and soft denial. I was caught between a zealot and a ghost.
My brother William and I were twelve years apart—he was more of a shadow-parent than a sibling, born into chaos and pressed into caretaker. He, like my mother, had optic nerve atrophy, but his vision was stronger—he could drive, barely. He struggled in school, likely dyslexic, but no one had words for it back then. He was a quiet artist with a guitar he couldn’t quite master, and eyes that had seen too much too soon. He used to say our mother got pregnant at fifteen and never grew up—“the flower was plucked before it bloomed, so it never will.”
I was the baby, and the brain. I taught myself to read by listening to the My Book of Bible Stories cassette tapes from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and following along with the pictures. By four, I was reading Charlotte’s Web. I did everything well—except math, my one unmovable wall. I was a strong athlete, a natural musician, but I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my life. I didn’t need to—my power moved in sound, spirit, and sensation.
When my mother’s drinking grew too loud to hide, my parents divorced. My father, who had always been a soft, joking presence, flipped into full devotion—becoming a Jehovah’s Witness elder almost overnight. The man who once played bass and shrugged at scripture became rigid, controlling, punitive. My mother, in contrast, collapsed into her unraveling—trading kingdom halls for cheap wine and a neighbor’s bed. I was caught between a zealot and a ghost.
I left home as soon as I could. And one day, walking down the street, I met a man named Timothy Thayer.
He popped his head out of a courtyard and said, “Excuse me. It’s your time. Your guides are asking for you.” I froze. The sign above him read Astrology. I ran.
Witnesses don’t believe in astrology. We were taught it was dangerous. And yet... something pulled at me.
The very next day, I passed a metaphysical shop and heard the same message—this time from someone else. Your time. Your guides.
So I turned around and went back to the man in the courtyard.
His name was Timothy Thayer, and he would become my first teacher.
Timothy was a Hermetic master and astrologer. He didn’t ask who I was—he told me. He sat me down and spoke my life story back to me with precision and power. As he spoke, the walls rippled like water. His face changed. I saw every incarnation he had ever been flicker through his features. And I knew—without logic or language—that I was safe. That I had just walked into my real beginning.
He taught me the languages of the cosmos: astrology, numerology, tarot, and magic. He didn’t give me belief—he gave me tools to remember what I already knew. Under his guidance, I began to unlearn the fear I was raised in and open to something older, wider, and truer than anything I’d been taught in the kingdom hall.
That was the moment the veil tore—and the remembering began.
Part Two coming soon…