The Scarab teaches us how we transform our despair into a creative, circular economy for a post-capitalist new Earth
We’re dealing with some serious shit. And today, I’m going to ask you to build a garden from it. (Metaphorically speaking, of course. Though you should definitely start a garden too.)
Between climate chaos, economic volatility, systems collapsing left and right, and the general feeling that our collective vision for the future is a work-in-progress (to put it kindly), you might be wondering how the hell anyone is supposed to build something meaningful or follow their dreams in these conditions.
Why bother? Who can grow tomatoes without sunlight?
This post is to convince you that you carry the Sun with you, and you can roll up all the shit we’re dealing with into a neat little ball and use it to create New Earth Economy.
I saw a post recently from someone who shares both climate realism and hopeful climate news. They got a DM saying the hopeful content made them miserable because “we’ve passed the point of no return” and “false hope” hurts more than facing the reality of collapse.
This really affected the poster. They took a break for a couple days. And honestly the exchange really affected me too.
Because here’s what I want to say to that person (and maybe to you if you’re feeling the same way):
Your despair is normal. Biologically, spiritually, rationally. You are having a completely rational response to watching our environment, your economic security, and our future get systematically dismantled.
But what if I told you that working WITH that despair — rolling it right into the shit ball it is and still try to make something from it — is exactly what the Ancient Egyptians saw as a power in the Dung Beetle?
And what if this approach, if adopted by all of us, could become our secret weapon for building the alternative economy of regenerative businesses and communities we desperately need for our survival?
Meet Khepri: The Scarab-Headed Egyptian God Who Pushes the Sun
In Ancient Egyptian mythology, Khepri is a scarab-headed god who literally pushes the sun across the sky each morning. He’s a version of Ra. Specifically, he’s the version Ra takes at dawn to manifest himself from the darkness.
The supreme god in the form of a dung beetle. Do you know why those little critters are pushing those balls of dung around? Because inside of them are their eggs.
The Ancient Egyptians looked at a bug that spends its days working with literal shit and said, “Yes, THAT is our god of self-manifesting, transformation and renewal.”
There’s a lot we can learn by observing the scarab. It doesn’t wait for perfect conditions, for one. It also doesn’t demand better raw materials. And most importantly, it takes what’s available (the messiest, most broken-down matter) and transforms it into the very foundation for new life.
I’ve shared before that I think you need to visualize your business or creative project as a garden. Today we’re going to dive into how to tend to that garden by embodying Big Scarab Energy.
Before we get started, think about you. What are you hoping to accomplish next? Are you starting a venture with a friend? Kicking off a new creative project? Are you an artist? A solopreneur? A community builder?
Wherever you’re planting your garden, we’re going to explore how you build resilience to show up for that business, project, or community each day — even when it looks like we’re past “the point of no return.”
The Scarab Method: Transformation Through Sacred Pushing
I believe we need to apply Khepri’s energy to entrepreneurship in our current moment. This can teach us sacred resilience: the spiritual practice of conscious engagement with challenging conditions to create meaningful change.
Think of it like a spiritual energy system for your work life:
- Scarab Work = Your daily sacred labor (the practices, rituals, and intentional actions that connect you to your purpose)
- Sun = Your inner calling (the vision, creative voice, or mission that wants to be born through you)
- Garden = Your creative output (business, art, community projects—whatever you’re growing in the world)
The scarab work charges your Sun. Your charged Sun nurtures your Garden. No scarab work = dim Sun = dying Garden.
Now, here’s the spicy bit.
A LOT of people (including many of my first calls with clients) think: First I’ll figure out my calling, then I’ll build something meaningful.
No! You need a reframe with Big Scarab Energy. It’s: First I’ll do the daily sacred work, which will illuminate my calling, which will then grow into something meaningful.
Your morning pages, your meditation practice, your values-aligned choices, your creative experiments, your volunteering… this is your scarab work! This work energizes your inner calling (your Sun), which then shines on whatever you’re building (your Garden) in this messy world.
How to Be a Scarab in 3 Easy Steps (Capitalists HATE This Guy!)
1. Look Around at What IS
Your scared task is to practice responding to collapse with creation.
Before you, the Scarab, can transform anything, you have to honestly assess what you’re working with. No romanticizing, no denial. Just clear-eyed evaluation of the actual conditions.
For entrepreneurs and creators building in crisis, this usually means starting with an inventory of your actual reliable resources (skills, connections, financial runway, your values or belief systems, health, community support, educational opportunities).
Do this with the express intent of rather than waiting for ideal conditions, you’re going to work with what you have.
Then practice acknowledging the scope of systemic breakdown (climate, economic, social, governmental) without getting paralyzed by it.
2. Build Your lil’ Ball of Dung 🙂
Dung beetles are little shit goblins. They carefully gather material from their journeys, continuously rolling it into a perfectly formed ball full of eggs that will become the foundation for new life.
Yes, it’s a little gross and uncomfortable. Just like wealth inequality!
Putting your Scarab hat on means combining your diverse skills, resources, and experiences into something uniquely valuable or interesting. This might be combining your corporate or professional background + your spiritual practice + your creative gifts = your distinctive offering. Or it could be as simple as seeing a need in your neighborhood for a “third place” and having a vision for what it could be.
Fearlessly pack in your anxieties, regrets, worries, and everything you’ve ever learned into that shit ball. And move forward.
3. Now PUSH, Babe! With Consistent, Devotional Action!
Most people get stuck because they think transformation should feel easy, inspired, or naturally motivated.
This is kind of true. When we’re in alignment with our destiny or in harmony with our natural rhythms and skills, things DO come easier.
But the Scarab teaches us a kind of heart-fueled devotion to something larger than yourself, showing up consistently even when (especially when) you don’t feel like it.
Sacred pushing means working through resistance and doubt as spiritual practice, not personal failure, and treating setbacks as course corrections rather than evidence that you should quit.
The scarab pushes the Sun up over that horizon every single day. Some days are harder than others. The sun still rises.
What ISN’T Scarab Work (The Energy Drains)
A special thing about Khepri, as the Scarab god of dawn, is that he specifically represents the beauty of the sunlight, rather than just its power or brilliance. The feeling of RENEWAL at witnessing a beautiful sunrise cast light on the clouds and over the landscape is a beauty that is always perfect, without need of critique or wanting more. It’s the light itself which is the everlasting treasure. And Khepri is the beauty of it all.
Scarab work is intentional sacred pushing of your own beautiful energy, your radiance, your magnificent risks, your creative impulses. Everything else is just… pushing.
The work that depletes your Inner Sun instead of charging it might be (and this is different for everyone, I’m not judging):
- Busy work – Motion without meaning, checking boxes without purpose
- Unfocused scattered energy – Trying to do everything instead of the essential things
- “Should” work – Building what others expect rather than what wants to emerge through you
- Distraction disguised as productivity – Instagram research, endless course consumption, perfecting your website instead of creating
- Misaligned strategies – Trying to market like someone else, selling in ways that feel gross, building systems that don’t match your natural rhythms
- Building someone else’s vision – Projects that look successful on paper but don’t express your unique creative fire
The Scarab pushes forward light.
Supernal Radiance (aka, Embody Your Purpose)
Your supernal Inner Sun isn’t synonymous with your “purpose” or “passion” or even your destiny. It’s your divine creative frequency, the specific way Source or Spirit wants to move through you to create something that didn’t exist before.
How to Recognize Your Inner Sun:
🔥 Divine Vision. It’s more than an idea. You can see or feel it with startling clarity. The vision feels more real than your current circumstances. You have a penetrating perspective that others don’t seem to have about this particular thing.
⚡ Spiritual Ignition. It lights you up from the inside. Not just excitement (though that’s there), but a deep sense of “YES, this is why I’m here.”
✨ Aura Amplification. Working on this project makes you more yourself. Your confidence increases, you feel in flow, you trust your instincts more. People notice something different about you when you talk about it.
🎯 Present-Moment Penetration. You’re not just daydreaming, you’re channeling!! You feel completely present while simultaneously having clear vision of the essence of what wants to be created. Time feels different when you’re in this zone.
When Sacred Work Makes Everything Easier
This isn’t about abandoning responsibilities. When you’re truly aligned with your Inner Sun, the “regular” stuff gets easier, not harder.
When you’re the Scarab, you become so energized by your core work that you have overflow energy for everything else. When your Sun is bright:
- Resistance to mundane tasks decreases because you’re fueled by purpose
- Decision-making becomes clearer because you have a North Star
- You respond to life from empowerment rather than reactivity
- Even the boring stuff feels like it’s in service of something meaningful
Your Inner Sun doesn’t compete with your responsibilities—it energizes you to handle them with more grace and efficiency.
Building the Economic Ecosystem That Will Save Us (AKA the New Earth Economy)
Projects aligned with your Inner Sun have a particular quality: they’re not just personally fulfilling, they’re regenerative. The cyclical nature of Ra’s journey through the sky, into the underworld, and return as the Scarab at dawn means that aligned businesses, projects, or communities will ALSO operate in an inherently circular way. They add to the collective flourishing rather than extracting from it.
You can feel the difference between ideas that serve your ego vs. ideas that serve the larger becoming.
Between projects that replicate existing systems vs. projects that model new possibilities.
From work that depletes the collective resources vs. work that generates abundance for all.
If all of us soulful folks took this approach to business and our projects, we would have a regenerative economic ecosystem to replace capitalism.
Instead of waiting for top-down systemic change (which clearly isn’t happening fast enough), we start building bottom-up alternatives that prioritize:
- Relationships over transactions
- Long-term sustainability over short-term extraction
- Community resilience over individual accumulation
- Earth-honoring practices over profit-at-any-cost models
The Sacred Response to Collapse: Create Anyway
So back to that person who said hopeful content hurts because we’re past the point of no return…
I get it. The grief is real. The collapse is real. The shit we’re dealing with is overwhelming.
But here’s what the Scarab can help you do that despair doesn’t: even if we ARE past some point of no return, we still get to choose what we create in the time we have. Even if the old systems are dying, we still get to plant seeds for what comes next.
Your climate anxiety, your rage at wealth inequality, your heartbreak over what we’re losing…. I don’t believe that these are something to overcome. I think they’re the raw material you’re going to roll into your sacred work.
While others debate whether it’s too late, you’re busy being the proof that another way is possible. Every regenerative, ethical, future-forward business launched, every creative project, every community built on care instead of extraction – this is sacred rebellion against despair.
Instead of false hope, let’s express hope with our hands. Hope that works with whatever conditions exist.
The sun still needs to be pushed across the sky tomorrow. Will you be the Scarab?
An Invitation to Scorpion Medicine
Ready to go deeper with your sacred work? Scorpion Medicine is a 6-week email course where we use Goddess Isis’s resurrection magic to transform career betrayals, workplace trauma, and professional setbacks into creative wisdom and unshakeable leadership. Perfect for Scarabs who are ready to stop pushing into the void and start building with fellow changemakers. Join the waitlist here.
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