Since the passing of the Winter Solstice, my entire feeling and perceiving nature has utterly transformed.
Before the solstice, as the days grew increasingly dark, my exterior energy field shuddered with pain. To walk outdoors was to feel this strange rushing escape of all my energy from my own possession. It was like the energy of my physical body formed a shield composed of scales over me, and when met with the winter's freezing darkness, the scales immediately pricked upwards so as to stand on end and allow all of my inner light to fly out. It was as if the world had turned to black and white and no matter how many times I blinked or shook my head, the illusion would not disappear. To stay inside was even worse. I was imprisoned within dark little boxes, constantly waiting to be released out into yet another dark little box. Something deep within me was in profound mourning over the loss of the Earth's light.
Over my years of living in Michigan I have observed something *very* noteworthy about the seasons in relation to elemental spirits and Earth energies. In the Summer, when I feel most alive and free, all of the elementals and earthly energies are flying about in the open in great abundance. They are everywhere to commune with. The very act of breathing outdoors is enough to renew the spirit. As the Summer ends, the nights creep with coldness sending the faint fingers of panic up from my toes to my beating heart.
The Autumn is upon us and all of the earth's energies are getting SUCKED down towards the ground. Oh! The intensity of sensations! The GRAVITY of it all is pulling me from extreme to extreme. I feel exhilarated and all at once empty. I feel like all I want to do is party (which is all I feel like doing in any season.. but in the Autumn it rushes upon me with such a passionate, moony desperation). I feel like throttling the demure night waves of lake Huron or hammering myself deep into the soil and shouting with the trees. To harbor and channel this SUCTIONING of the elemental world calls for DEEP and SAVAGE celebration at ANY cost.
Well the Winter comes eventually. I deny it and deny it and plead with it to stay away (And usually the weather graciously complies with my needs). But there comes the day when one realizes that all the sucking and pulling is done, for all of the elemental spirits have retreated deep under ground. There they stay hidden in the warmth, incubating in a giant communal chrysalis or mycelium telling their stories and churning in their sleepy winter-dance.
Of course, my darlings, the Spring always returns and OH the bursting upwards from the soil is equally as exciting and extreme as the suctioning downwards was in the Autumn. Everything is shooting upwards and crawling all over your forehead with grassy finger tips, touching you with scents and passions you thought you'd forgotten forever. Everyone is falling in love with themselves, ideas, experiences, and one another....Ah...But lets return to the Winter, for I can't bear to imagine the Spring for too long without feeling desperately impatient.
This winter I have been working very closely with the Goddess Persephone. After receiving some wonderful guidance reminding me to work with the Goddesses, I specifically decided to reach out to Persephone for help with this extreme pain at adjusting to the season. At first a part of me said, "This is silly. Persephone probably doesn't even exist." But my better judgment (and intuition) is thankfully much stronger. You see, the myths hold such deep ancient wisdom encoded in their tapestries. In the case of Persephone, for example, the goddess absolutely exists for there is an undeniable universal energetic archetype of the retreat of the earth's energy underground. It makes perfect sense that that archetypal flow of energy would be conscious! It is Persephone! Hers is a sacred cycle beholding such deep karma, painfully sweet like honey-mead. There is so much to learn in it.
Anyways.. I reached out to Persephone and she immediately answered me with such an embrace of Love. She cradled me like an infant against her cheek and thanked me with such Love for calling to her. I picked up my Ukelele and began to play. For hours I explored the melody she gave to me. When it had grown too dark to see, I lit some candles and soaked in the fire-light as I continued to play. The melody was saturated in some sort of aged heavenly sweetness, like brandy soaked into in a dark sugary cake. Its movement *always* made a double helix, kissing over my energy to heal it from the rough shattering it had endured at the winters onset. I lay back and dream of sparkling ruby pomegranites, continually exploring the melody, my fingers moving automatically now. I sing longingly of the sea.
I told the dearest of my friends about my startling blind plunges into anxiety over the winter. Relating the experience to other souls made me feel more human and safely grounded. Together we went to a gathering of the Detroit Fire Guild, a weekly event my friends and I now refer to as "going to the underground". There I saw the most fabulous collection of odd, beautiful people. I imagined that I was Persephone as I watched their fire dancing. I imagined that they were graceful demons of the god Hades. Hades has set all of these fire demons to dancing for me in an attempt to win my love. I drink it all in, grateful for such a beautiful opportunity to ritualize fire: one of the only elements remaining vibrant, accessible and unfrozen. What better setting than an old warehouse in Detroit to represent the underground vaults of Hades' palace? Someone ought to make a gorgeous romantic and tragic film about it.
The fire had become my solace. My friends and I gathered in a great room (completely unheated and un-lit by technology) around roaring fires in celebrations we named "Weird Alchemys" where all commune in art and metaphysical energy work. They're a sort of techno-pagan spin off of the old schubertiades: parlor gatherings for music, poetry and dance; nesting grounds for the creation of radical new ideals in art. In these my workings with Persephone have grown.
During one of these occasions we found ourselves wandering away from the fire and outside into the falling snow. Here something extraordinary occurred. I was completely unprepared for the cold in what I wore.-- A thin cotton dress with tights and a light sweater with thin cotton boots. I had reached a state of awareness in which I was beyond immediately rejecting the cold, letting emotions of revulsion take over to heave me back into a warm space. Instead, I felt a sense of blossoming awe at being outdoors at that very moment in time. I took a deep shuddering breath and trudged right out into the snow. I felt so overwhelmed with energy that I couldn't speak to my companions at all. I felt magnetically drawn to the trees. I walked straight up to them, touching their trunks and breathing deep. By this time my whole body was shaking violently from the cold, but somehow I knew that this was good for me. I continued to breathe in the painful, clean air letting it tunnel through each branch of my veins. I felt as if I had left a major chunk of my sense of identity to die with my decision to meet the wintry earth totally unarmed.
Upon returning inside to the hearth-side I realized that I had in fact been stripped to the point of sensing everything that came to pass on the mental plane. I felt the conversational strings between my heart and each of the people around me. I felt a wordless connection to each one that immediately showed the truest form of my relationships with them. I felt each thread of desire, motivation, fear, love, trust, dysfunction, etc. working between the hearts. It was SO plain in fact, that it almost seemed ridiculous that people carried on conversations at all! The words we spoke to one another seemed so relatively meaningless in the face of these energetic threads. It seemed more theatrical than anything else to dance a social dance by way of linguistics.
I set immediately to work at healing the dysfunctional threads. I bowed my head towards the fire, resting my forehead in my palms and let my consciousness travel the heart-threads. I sent light and light and light into each. At some points I found blocks coming from the other people. There were moments when it felt as if they were unconsciously choosing not to ascend to a new way of relating with me because of illusions related to wanting to be "in control". In control of WHAT I'm not sure-- but I know that whatever it is it can't be important, for its only a fleeting illusion promised by fear. Anyways, I retreated back to myself and worked on my own light-network. I found it full of funny ideas that seemed to limit the extent to which my light beams could reach outward. I breathed and let go of them so that the light could expand higher and wider. It felt SO good, mentally and physically to do this.
Eventually I noticed a VERY distinct thinning in the energy around me. I realized that it was the onset of morning. Morning was coming and night was retreating. The whole earth was stretching and with that stretching came a thinning sensation. I pondered this for a moment and realized that at night, there is a great thickening in the energy-- making for sleepiness or a certain creative precision in those that stay awake for it. In the morning, the energy thins out, making things more buoyant, causing an awakening. I believe I was sensing the motions of circadian rhythm. And the remarkable thing to note here, is that circadian rhythm isn't some slight force that occurs only within your own individual body. No, no! It occurs EXPANSIVELY by waves of the whole earth, including you IN it as well as all creatures connected. Can you conceive the possibilities we might discover of healing and optimizing our lifestyles if we are to truly explore circadian rhythm deeply in this way?
The solstices are another form of this circadian rhythm I have described. The same thinning and thickening, pulling down or pushing upwards of energy occurs with the motion of the earth to sun and moon on a grand seasonal scale! After this Winter Solstice I felt so renewed. I felt as one who had fought all bouts of sleep-calling long into the night and had finally prevailed into the morning, my sanity and focus tried, but still in tact!
Two days ago I was running through the snow in the daylight. I found that I couldn't STOP myself from hugging the trees and breathing in their sweet, live scents lustily. Suddenly from the corner of my eye I saw the brightest red bush as one has ever seen. In being deprived of such colors in the natural world for so long, the effect of it absolutely bowled me over. It seemed to glow. Stunning, this bush was absolutely bedecked in tiny red oval shaped berries. I walked to it and gazed into its branches. Playfully it showed me images of a lovely pixie face, taunting me with eyes dancing like baubles on a breezy bough. She pointed towards her thorns and laughed sending me images of the birds she loved so much who could navigate her thorns and perch on her tiny branches. I asked if I could have one of her berries and she said that I *must* have one but please don't eat it. I laughed and put a tiny berry in my pocket. The sun is already dipping fast towards the horizon, sending golden shivers down my forehead. I say goodbye to the sweet bush wishing I could kiss it but for the thorns... I ran through the snow again, savoring the last moments of dear, dear sunlight. I know the long night is coming back for me, but oh how renewed I feel by this one sweet kindness, this hour outside under a clear sky.
The light is returning to us. To all of us. Do you feel yourself gathering it in each delicate snow-crystal? Together we're collectively reflecting it back to the moon and stars, creating a silvery white epic-tale. The dawn is near. Do you feel the stretching of this our blessed earth-dimension? Its womb-like walls breathe a loving sigh as we extend our fingertips and toes for the very first time, contemplating our own gestation. Into the light, we'll be born, ready.
