For today's post, I wanted to consider the lighthearted aspects of our journey in Goddess Spirituality. I use Womenrunes on a daily basis, and today I pulled the Sun card, which represents healing and play. We’ve entered the cold and dark season in the Northern Hemisphere, where little sunlight filters through to grace each day. How, then, during the gloomy winter months, do we find our moments of rainbow reflection? What in our busy and over-scheduled lives can provide opportunities to laugh, dance and act silly? And what do we do when it seems no comfort will arrive?
I want to live my life allowing space to watch sunlight and shadow move to center.
As I emerged from our Cauldron Month, I received the Seed card from Womanrunes. This is a rune of waiting and ripening and is the perfect rune to consider during a time of processing and exploration. What did you find in the cauldron? What tender seed are you nourishing? What is getting ready to grow for you? To push up its first tender shoots of exploration and discovery?
Maybe this seems like an odd time of year to be speaking of new growth as the wheel of the year in the Northern Hemisphere moves towards autumn, but as we deepen into the shadows of the colder months of the year, I find my attention turns to those seeds we plant and nourish in our dark spaces.
“… we begin by making new metaphors. Without negating the light, we reclaim the dark: the fertile earth where the hidden seed lies unfolding, the unseen power that rises within us, the dark of sacred human flesh, the depths of the ocean, the night—when our senses quicken; we reclaim all the lost parts of ourselves we have shoved down into the dark. Instead of enlightenment, we begin to speak of deepening…”
One of the things I love about this time of year, is that the evenings are often warm enough to be out and about at twilight, but it gets dark early enough that I can be out at night without overtiring myself. I’m not good at late nights, and around midsummer I often end up in bed before its properly dark. As someone who loves night creatures, this can be a less than perfectly happy state of affairs.
But now, early autumn is upon us, the dark comes earlier and I can be out in it. I go out to listen to the owls – we get little owls, barn owls and tawny owls around my home. They often start calling before the sun has set. Pipistrelle and noctule bats both come out a little bit before the sun sets, too. Most bat species need it to be properly dark, so the odds of seeing them are slim.
We divide our world into all sorts of segments based on time and space: day and night; the four seasons; the ground, the air, and space. Organizing the world into understandable parts is a natural human inclination, and the Minoans did it, just like everyone else. So how did they divide their world?
I have a few ideas. The most obvious is the seasons. Crete lies in the sea just south of Greece and has a Mediterranean climate. That means that, instead of the spring-summer-autumn-winter cadence we're used to in most of North America and Europe, the year flows from the rainy season to the dry season and back again: only two major seasonal divisions. In Mediterranean climates, the dry season lasts from what we might call late spring, through summer, and into early autumn. On Crete, plant life turns crispy-brown and dry. All but the largest creeks dry up, and even the rivers diminish to a flow much smaller than their wet season. This is the dead time of year, the counterpart to winter in the northern temperate zone.
When spring comes, like the creatures in the woods and fields, I feel as though I am beginning to wake up after a time of hibernation. I want to get out doors and spend more time in the light. Even though it also shows the accumulation of dust that is so easy to miss in the dimmer light of winter, I welcome the brightness that comes in through the windows. I get out of bed more eagerly, most likely because the sky is brighter in the morning. Spring also brings me memories of what it was like for me when I was a child and the seasons were more defined by what we ate as well as what we did.
Depending on where you live in the word you will be guided on what your seasons are and how they affect the energy around you. But here is a rough and I mean rough guide for working with the energy of the seasons in general. You will need to consider the weather, the area, the energy and all the other tiny elements that create the energy for any one particular day.
The medieval Scots poet William Dunbar is probably best known for his humour, but he offers A Meditation on Winter that captures the melancholy many feel at this time of year.
Into thir dirk and drublie dayis Quhone sabill all the hevin arrayis With mystie vapouris, cluddis, and skyis, Nature all curage me denyis Of sangis, ballattis, and of playis.
Jet
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