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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in dark

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Into the Dark

Gods, it's dark.

These mornings I'm mostly up by 5: dark outside, dark inside. We've already lost Summer's long twilights. Now the Sun goes down and wham! it's dark, with nary a time between.

In a moon's time, paradoxically, I'll be able to navigate in here at this hour without turning on lights, what with all the ambient urban light reflected from the snow.

But for now, with the leaves still on the trees, and the creeper on the side of the house, I'm moving by feel.

Every few years, we hold our Samhain on an island at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. In the stone-built WPA hall with its central hearth, it's easy to forget what century you're in.

What I always notice most is how dark it is.

Last time, we must have had 50 candles burning on the tables to light our feast: a spendthrift extravagance of light for this most festive of feasts. Even so, it's dark. I think about the ancestors, who viscerally understood this annual descent into darkness in a way that we, with our electric-lit lives, hardly can.

Walking up the street this morning, the beauty of the waning Moon in the southeastern sky pierced my heart like a spear, the pearly, opalescent colors of crescent and disc precisely mirroring those of the pre-dawn sky. Only early-risers truly appreciate the Wane.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Holy Darkness

The words dark and shadow are not synonymous, in fact when they are used interchangeably all manners of unintentional shaming, oppression and labelling falls upon women, the Divine Feminine and all persons born with skin darker than lily white.

 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Absolutely love this
  • Candise
    Candise says #
    Thank you!

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Bring on the Light

We've passed the solstice so each day a little more light comes into our lives.  This sounds like everything should be lovely.  The light has returned.  In the north, we still have months to slog through frigid, snowy weather.  Weather which goes a long way in keeping us inside.  In essence, we are hibernating in our own way.  

It may be the light part of the year but the light is in its infancy.  It builds a little every day like we learn a little each day as a child.  It will be baby steps until Midsummer.  Each day will bring a little more enlightenment into our lives.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Blessed Light and Sacred Dark

Suddenly this week I am being kissed awake by the Sun again.  It is delightful rising up through consciousness to that warm touch and laying there in bright bliss for a time before leaving that intense caress.  By the time I get downstairs the Sun is now high enough through the East facing window to be a presence where I write, continuing to warm my thoughts and illuminate my relationship with words, a kind of ménage á trois: the Sun, the words, and me.  

 

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I love the current memes that combine a photo of a gorgeous white-haired woman with text celebrating older women. These memes convey an important message.

But there's a serious problem: with rare exceptions, every photo is obviously someone who was blonde and fair skinned when she was younger. This gives the hurtful and disempowering message that only blondes can be wise, empowered, gorgeous elders.

We're all beautiful, inside and out. We're each a goddess with wisdom and power. 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Elizabeth C
    Elizabeth C says #
    What a beautifully written article, thank you for this. I find it amazing the experiences we all have. I was blond as a tiny one
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Aw, thank you for your kind words, Elizabeth. I appreciate you sharing your story with me. People's stories are wonderfully pow
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Dear Francesca - As Billy Crystal says, “You look mahvelous, dahling!” You really do. I always had a deep affinity for brunettes
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    As always, Ted, your insight, humor, and humility are all treasures. I think we all to some degree internalize the insanity of th
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Yes! Thank you for your wisdom and your beauty.
The first 5 days after I received Loki's ring were turbulent and sometimes dark. He was not the delighted and playful skinriding presence I had grown so used to. I was vaguely aware of him as a dark ball of anger somewhere distant from me. 
 
Some of my online relationships exploded, and I had to cut ties. But, some long time acquaintances suddenly grew closer and turned into friends. 
 
At first, I wondered if Loki's absence might be a test of faith. Then I realized that I was better off without the people he kicked out of my life. Old acquaintances suddenly, inexplicably contacted me to renew and deepen old relationships. I realized that Loki had been away arranging my life for my benefit. 
 
I would never have guessed in advance who Loki would kick out of my life, and who would grow closer. I suppose that's the reason he arranged this part of my life for me, because I didn't guess right all the time about who I should be friends with. All the people I fought against online in those few days claimed to be Lokeans. Only when I was trying to get them out of my online friends lists did I discover some of them were not who they seemed to be.
 
The biggest surprise was grower closer to a longtime acquaintance who avoided Loki. Despite that, we started sharing our personal gnosis with each other, and beta reading each other's writing. We evolved into friends as well as colleagues. One of the lessons to learn here is that when people on different paths respect that my path is my path, your path is your path, and we don't have to walk the same path to be friends, we can walk together on our different roads in friendship.
 
Image: fire in darkness, by Anupam Sunil, Creative Commons license, via Wikimedia Commons
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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

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Since I’ve been researching what darkness means—what it means to dive into dark depths and exploring those hidden places of spirituality and human-ness that are so unnerving they are considered mythic, I was fascinated to learn recently about something quite human and relatively normal: the pineal gland. This gland, which I vaguely remember from high school biology as being a fingernail-sized gland above the brain stem, is also called "the third eye” and is associated with telepathy and the seat of the soul. It is considered the place from which we see the brightness of our futures and recognize our potential from the darkness of uncertainty. But I was surprised to learn that the pineal gland actually has photoreceptive rods and cones just like the retina of the eyes. The pineal gland, tucked deep into the folds of the brain and nowhere near the eyes, is what allows us to perceive, while asleep, whether it is day or night, and it makes me wonder: How do we perceive dark—the real Dark, with a capital D?

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