Guerrilla Acts
of Beauty
The most important step of working through the Beauty Pentacle is sharing it with the world. This section is full of guerrilla acts of beauty. What is a guerrilla act? Well, the word is Spanish in origin and translates as “little war.” This term was co-opted by a San Francisco mime troupe in the 1960s where they would basically do flash mobs of mime performance to protest war and other social issues of the time.
Guerrilla acts of beauty could also be considered beauty flash mobs, but done covertly—get in, get it done, get out. The goal of a guerrilla act of any sort is to replace an old broken system with a new order. With the following guerrilla acts, the goal is to bring in a new power of beauty that shifts negativity, depression, and disconnection. These activities will give you the chance to spread beauty throughout the world. The catch being that you don’t get credit for it. These are covert acts done as an offering of beauty to your friends and community. Use these as a jumping-off point and then begin creating your own.
Guerrilla acts are an important part of Walking in Beauty because inspiring awe—giving a moment of beauty—to another person is powerful. You spread the beauty to others, and it creates an opportunity for their moment, hour, day, or life to shift. Your small—but revolutionary—guerrilla act of beauty could totally transform someone else’s day. That’s massive power. Best case scenario: that moment of beauty unfolds and continues. The person impacted by your guerrilla act goes on to share that experience with another person. The person then shares the story with others, and it continues like a ripple, spreading beauty to all it touches. The power of a guerrilla act of beauty goes far beyond the action that you take. That kind of power will change the world.
Beauty Blessings
Get a stack of note paper that has a sticky back and a pen. Carry these items with you for the next week. Every time you encounter a public space with a mirror, leave a note of encouragement so the next person to visit will see it. Here are some potential beauty blessings to write:
• “You are beautiful”
• A heart shape
• “You are a blessing”
• “You are loved”
• “Thank you for your gifts”
• “Have a beautiful day”
• Your favorite affirmation
Secret Admirer
We all have someone in our lives that we admire or appreciate. However, we may have never told them or don’t know how to tell them. Do something nice for the person you admire today without them knowing it was from you. Here are some ideas to whet your whistle:
• Ask to speak to the manager of your favorite server. Let them know how much you appreciate their employee.
• Send flowers to a coworker.
• Write a thank you note and leave it on a friend’s car window.
• Leave a plate of cookies at your neighbor’s front door when they aren’t home.
• Or your favorite way to show appreciation.
Pop-Up Shrines
To help spread beauty through your connection to devotion, build a shrine in secret in a public place. There are a few caveats to this process:
• It must be done in secret—no one can see you put it together.
• It must be in devotion to something—choose wisely.
• It must be created with all natural or biodegradable objects —don’t leave litter, glitter, or plastic in an outdoor public space (or any space, really).
There is a potential problem with building a pop-up shrine. People may take your shrine down depending on where you place it. Conversely, people might begin adding to your shrine, putting their own touches and additions into what you started.
If the former happens, you have to decide whether you want to recreate your shrine or create a new one in a different spot. If the latter happens, congratulations! You’ve just created a working public shrine.
Clean It Up
This guerrilla act requires you to get up, get out, and do something. Go out into your favorite place and pick up litter. No matter where you live or where you like to spend your time, you will be able to find litter that needs to be dealt with. This guerrilla act can be especially powerful if you do it in a place that you are devoted to. This can become an act of beauty and an act of devotion at the same time.
Typically, a guerrilla act requires you to do things covertly and not take credit for the beauty that has been unleashed upon the world. This guerrilla act is no different, but it requires an added level of anonymity. You may spend a whole day picking up litter, and no one will notice. The work that you have done needs to be the reward, not the accolade for doing it. That is the whole point of guerrilla acts.
However, if you really want to make a difference with this guerrilla act, make it a bigger project. Organize a cleanup for your coven, family, friends, or neighborhood. Get other people involved in the process. Wait for a larger organization’s cleanup date and get your people involved.
And, if spending a day physically cleaning up a space isn’t something that your body can do, help organize. Make phone calls, send emails, and post on social media to help other people find out about these outdoor cleanup dates. Use your power to get as many people involved as possible.
At the very least, every time you leave your home, pick up a piece of litter and place it into a proper receptacle. Trust me, there is plenty of trash on the ground; no matter where you go, you will be able to find plenty of garbage to pick up.
Feeding the Wild
Working with beauty requires you to connect to the world around you. This includes the green bloods (or plants), animals, birds, and yes, other humans. Supporting the ecosystem around you is an important part of the Beauty Pentacle. To complete this guerrilla act, pick a wild neighbor and figure out what you can do to support the health of that being.
For example, I keep a bird feeder in my backyard all year long. This helps my local bird population during the winter. Plus, it brings me the added benefit of connecting with the winged neighbors that live in my area. It is a responsibility to keep the bird feeder clean, full, and safe from potential predators (like my cat). It is something that my family does in devotion to our little piece of land and the creatures we share it with.
Free Art Fridays
There is a social media art movement called #FreeArtFridays. I stumbled into this movement quite by accident. I was on a hike at a local park. About half a mile into the walk, I came across a very large canvas with a red heart painted on it. On the back of the painting was a note with the hashtag “Free Art Friday.” This piece of art was left as a challenge for another artist to take the canvas and continue the painting.
I am not a painter, but I was excited about the prospect. I took the canvas home and added my own touches to the heart. It still hangs in my living room. I love it.
What I learned by following the hashtag was that every Friday local artists were leaving pieces of their artwork somewhere out in the community. Through social media and the use of the hashtag #FreeArtFriday, directions and hints about where the art is hiding are left like breadcrumbs for people to follow. Whoever finds the art piece first gets to keep it!
Start a Free Art Friday in your community. Use art pieces that you create, or work with friends and loved ones to create pieces just for this process of spreading beauty.
Beautiful Images
Cut out beautiful images from magazines, buy a deck of beautiful tarot or oracle cards, and gather up old postcards from thrift shops and carry them with you. Any time the inspiration strikes, leave one of these images for another person to find. Here are some suggestions on where to leave your beautiful images:
• With a tip at a restaurant
• Tucked in the pages of a book at the library
• In the pocket of a coat for sale at a thrift store
• On the windshield of a car
• In the pocket of a purse or wallet for sale
Special Delivery
There are lots of unsung heroes in our lives. There may be people whose services you utilize on a daily basis and may take for granted. Think about the nurses, bank tellers, baristas, retail workers, delivery drivers, mail deliverers, secretaries, waitresses, and so on that work hard and often get very little appreciation back for the work that they do.
In this guerrilla act, take a moment out of your week to honor one of these people in your life. Take coffee to your favorite bank teller. Give the barista who made the coffee a bouquet of flowers. Write a note to the florist expressing your gratitude for all they do for you. Spread the beauty and pay it forward.
Hello
For the next week, say hello to everyone you walk past. Yes, everyone. This means anyone you walk past in the hallways at work. Anyone you cross on the street. This is including anyone at the grocery store or at the dog park. Say hello to every single person. This also means saying hello to the neighbor you typically ignore or the coworker you don’t really like.
This may sound too twee or easy, but a simple greeting, merely saying hello, can totally make someone else’s day.
Compliments
Spend one day over the next week in a complimentary attitude. Just for this one day, offer a sincere compliment to every single person that you encounter. The challenge here is that the compliment needs to be a sincere one. Notice how this makes you feel and notice the reactions you receive from the people you compliment.
Random Acts
Before bridge tolls in the Bay Area became automated, I would always pay the toll of the car behind me. It was a small act of kindness that cost me an extra two dollars but potentially made another person’s day. There have been viral stories about someone paying for the person behind them in line at a coffee shop and this phenomenon continuing throughout the day, where each person paid for the next person in line. These simple acts don’t take a lot of planning or work; that’s the beauty of them. Here are a few random acts to get you started:
• Pay the bridge toll for the car behind you
• Put some coins in the meter for a street lined with parked cars
• Buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the coffee shop
• Let someone cut in front of you in line at the grocery store or movie theatre
• Leave a book in a waiting room you visit
• Hold the door open for someone
• Give up your seat on the bus
Thank You
When was the last time you wrote a thank you note? Thank you notes can be for more than wedding presents or baby shower gifts. A handwritten note used to be something that we expected; it was just good manners to send a little thank you note. But this is a lost art. We no longer take the time to send a handwritten note to thank anyone for anything.
In this guerrilla act, it’s time to take up a pen and paper and write those thank you notes. If you receive exceptional service, send a thank you note. If you had a deep and moving conversation with someone, send them a thank you note. If you were given a gift, send a thank you note.
The most challenging part of this process is collecting physical addresses. Most of us don’t have a lot of folks’ addresses saved. But this can be part of the fun. Making handwritten notes a regular part of your practice literally mails beauty through the world.