the tantric map - anubis

this is part of my personal practice.

this is the last pairing in the map. and it may be the one i've had to sit with longest.

i don't sever bonds easily.

when a relationship runs its course or shifts in ways that can't be sustained, my instinct isn't to end it cleanly. it's to find the form it can still take. to de-escalate rather than dissolve. to arrive somewhere we can still be in each other's lives, even if what we are to each other has changed. i've always understood this as care. as respect for what was built. as refusing to treat something real as if it were nothing.

but sitting with Anubis and Yamantaka i've had to ask myself a harder question: is some of that fear?

in the kemetic tradition, Anubis is the god of death, embalming, and the passage between worlds. he stands at the threshold and guides souls through. he is the one who weighs the heart alongside thoth, who prepares what is ending for what comes next. what strikes me about Anubis is that he is not feared in the tradition the way death is feared in western culture. he is trusted. he knows the threshold completely and stands at it with steadiness rather than dread. his quality isn't morbidity. it's presence with endings.

in tantric buddhism, Yamantaka is the deity who conquers death · sometimes described as the wrathful form of Manjushri, wisdom turned directly toward mortality. a bodhisattva in the deepest sense · a being who has reached the threshold of enlightenment and chooses not to cross it alone, delaying their own liberation to remain present for all who suffer. the tradition teaches that fear of death is one of the deepest roots of suffering. Yamantaka doesn't defeat death by avoiding it. he masters it by looking at it completely, without flinching.

what i recognized across both traditions: mastering death is not about welcoming endings. it's about being fully present with them without needing them to be different than they are.

there are two things that make release hard for me and i want to be honest about both.

the first is investment. when i've given real time, real love, real presence to a relationship, releasing it asks me to let all of that go without a return. not just the person but everything i poured in. that's a specific kind of grief that doesn't get talked about enough · not the loss of who they are but the loss of what i gave. Anubis doesn't look away from that. he stays with what is being released, honoring it fully, before it passes through.

the second is leaving someone in a hurt state. this one sits differently. it isn't about holding on for myself. it's the unease of being the source of unresolved pain in someone i've cared for. walking away when someone is still carrying something because of me · that brings its own weight. i recognize the osiris quality in it · the compassion that doesn't want to leave someone alone in their suffering. but i've also had to sit with whether staying, in some cases, is more about my own discomfort than their wellbeing.

when something is clearly toxic the release is easier. the clarity is there. it's the ambiguous endings that sit heaviest. the relationships that aren't harmful but aren't working. the ones where there's no villain, no betrayal, just a truth that's hard to hold: this has run its course. those are the ones where i feel the pull to find the form it can still take, to de-escalate rather than release, to keep a thread where the thread may no longer be serving either of us.

i'm not sure that impulse is wrong. transformation rather than severance is real and sometimes it's the right thing. but i've started to wonder how much of it is Anubis · genuine presence with the passage · and how much of it is the fear of what full release would ask of me.

i don't have a clean answer. this practice is where i'm sitting with the question.

in polyamorous relationships and community this quality surfaces constantly. relationships change form. people de-escalate. someone leaves the constellation and the network reshapes around the absence. a version of yourself that you built inside a relationship doesn't survive the relationship ending. these are deaths. small ones and large ones. and the deity yoga practice · the visualization of Anubis, the sitting with his quality · is asking me to be present with each of them without grasping, without forcing a continuation, without making the ending mean more or less than it does.

Anubis doesn't rush the passage. he doesn't soften it either. he stands at the threshold and stays.

that's the quality i'm reaching toward. not the absence of grief or fear. but the willingness to be present with an ending completely, and to trust that what comes through the passage is real.