Walking Home with Fireflies: A Full Moon Eclipse in Capricorn

Fireflies
My walks home in the dark have lately been filled with wonder: the scattered blinking lights of fireflies that mime, for a moment, the stars. I love how abundant they are above my wild and rampant garden. They make me feel awed at the universe, these little glowing beings looking for love in the dark. Sometimes, in the night, they light up an area of my room, and I’ve learned that if all the lights are out, they do make their way back outside to their sparkling mates.

Stay Here
I’m not sure what I want them to represent for me at this time. I’d like them to just stay there, proof that there are still very dark places where bugs still rule, that somewhere, balance still exists in world, even if it is only a two acre bit of grass and forest. There must be other places like this that survive. The land that stretches behind me and down through a hardwood forest by stream to a pond where the trillium grow by a waterfall is conserved and this gives me hope in the future. I don’t know how long I’ll live on this land, but I do know I am thankful to be here, observe, learn, harvest and grow.

Full Moon Eclipse
The Full Moon eclipse in Capricorn was last weekend. I climbed a mountain in a serious mood. I brought a stone shaped like the moon to the top and left it there, on Camel’s Hump. Camel’s Hump, on the Long Trail, was known by indigenous people as Cat Mountain, and it does look more like a sitting catamount than a camel’s hump, but when you are climbing it it doesn’t look like much of either.The trail was steep and I was with my niece who was having trouble making it up the steeper inclines. It was the perfect thing to do on a difficult Capricorn Full Moon plus eclipse that had me wondering if I could release the habits and behavioral patterns I wanted to let go of. For me, the Full Moon is always a time of release, when I want to go with the movement of the Moon coming to fullness and let go of some of the fullness in my that I no longer need. With this one, the last of three summer eclipses, there were Saturnian energies that felt restrictive, with Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter also in Capricorn, sitting at the end of the sign, reminding me to strive. And I did, because goats climb, but I felt such a longing at the top, for other, freer times, and bigger, bolder mountains now far from my gaze. I had to rally myself to get back down. Mercury has also been retrograde, which brings a slowness to our work, which seems only internal. Mercury goes back direct in a few days, and Venus is moving forwards but she is in her shadow period until July 29th. I remind myself that all this work in the shadows, the feeling of moving up but backwards, is normal.

Striving Upwards
What am striving for anyways? Can I even hope to do things right in the eyes of my inner critic? The harsh judgments of myself and of others at the most intimate levels felt daunting (Jupiter) and dark (Pluto). I wasn’t sure I could do what I needed to do. Can I be present and aware? Luckily, later, in the days following the eclipse, which felt like deep decompression, the fireflies were there, light in both meanings of the word, keeping my eyes sparkling and my heart focused on the stars.

Deer Magic
Sunday morning brought another magical gift. As I was walking down my staircase in the early morning, I spied a dear bedded down not three feet from my house, under the lilac bush, staring at me serenely. It stayed there until the sun rose, leaving the magic of his presence like a quiet breath around the house. I felt deeply held and grateful for the persistent lessons of tenderness and beauty the deer impart to me in my corner of cleared woodland. You may remember my deer encounters in the Fall, and afterwards I wondered if it wasn’t one of those deer I had reached out to in my mind, or perhaps they just felt safe there, behind my house, because of how little I tended the garden and the gentleness with which I try to live. There is a mouse problem in my house. Well, I say a mouse problem, but it was one I fully contributed to by feeding my kitchen mice all winter. They kept me company. I wondered if perhaps the mice had gotten the word out, but perhaps the deer just felt it. No harm would come to them there.

What We Can Do
This long period of outer turmoil, pandemic, systemic racism combined with a general sense of doom about what humans do to the environment, has felt daunting to my attempts to put a positive spin on things. Yet what I do is think and write and build around me a small space of light. We can take action from this halo of grace. I guess that is all we can hope to do. Be like fireflies.

I Offer Support
Let me know if you would like any support while doing this. I offer energy healing sessions, flower essence consultations, and tarot readings. I bring my knowledge of astrology to all of these consultations. I also offer creative coaching with the flowers. If you are curious about what that is, you can read about it and sign up for a free conversation about it here.

The Six-Petaled Flower in Sacred Geometry

The Flower of Life
I’ve also posted a new flower essence up in the shop, Star of Bethlehem. She is perfect for remembering our starry nature. With six petals, she represents the flower of life, a powerful symbol that appears throughout the world on folk art and in religious centers. This symbol brings us peace and can aid in meditation. It’s beautiful vibration reminds us of our connection to all life, and the role we play within it. Flowers remind us that we come from the stars and that to there we will return, in our own time. In the meantime, we stretch up between the two, glowing and growing. Star of Bethlehem helps us remember this cosmic blossoming. She also offers us the support of Mary, virgin mother and goddess.

Garden Talks
On the next three Saturdays I will be giving a live garden talk from my garden on my local community’s Facebook page (Enosburgh Community Recreation). I will be talking about the meaning of the shape of flowers, and how we can receive powerful messages just by closely observing their form. I will focus on the White Borage that is growing near my carrots, another, five petaled flower, that reminds us of our starry natures.

Take care everyone, under this hot sun. Keep things small, listen to the small voices of the plants and insects, and especially to the one inside of you. Shed your light around you, however intermittently, so that it may attract what needs to come.

All my love,
Amy

Daffodils in the Snow: Opening Eyes and Heart with the New Moon in Taurus

It snowed yesterday, and I plunged back into Winter, and into a dark moon internal landscape that was challenging. Snow on daffodils, clumped together, seeing in the dark. My eyes hurt. It was Earth Day. I felt darkness and instability. But today the sun is shining, it is above freezing, and the daffodils have regained their aplomb. I admire them for their resilience and tenacity. I’ll be like them, and bounce right back from a freeze. I’ll open my eyes to perceive a blue sky and the humming of life, if not yet of the honey bee. I’ll feel my bulb in the ground and feel the green stirring in my heart. This is where I am supposed to be.

Collective Grief

The New Moon in Taurus, almost conjunct Uranus and square Saturn, was last night at 10:30 EST. By that time, I had sufficiently attended to my own despondency to realize several things. One is that there is a lot of grief to feel, so I can chalk up my dark moon difficulties to the collective energies as well. A lot of souls are leaving us at this time. A lot of people are hurting more than usual. The Earth had her day, her 50th official Earth Day, and the forecast is grim. We have so far not responded adequately to an ecological crisis that we are witnessing and have been witnessing for as long as I have been alive, and even longer. I feel like a little girl who, born with a certain optimism about the world, does not understand the stupidity of her elders. The world is not as I want it to be and as I know it can be, personally, socially or societally. It’s not the choices I’ve made, it’s not personal despondency, it’s just a feeling we are not where we are supposed to be. Why have we not acted yet? What are we waiting for?

Another World is Possible

Well, apparently we were waiting for the corona virus which seems to be doing the job for us. The Earth is breathing a little easier. It’s still not the world I dream of though, the world of interconnection between all life, the world of listening and careful attention, with humanity safely back in its place in the larger scheme of things, but I’m starting to see my dream of another world reflected more widely around me. We are all slowing down. We are all taking the time to be a little more conscious now that we aren’t speeding around. This is encouraging to me.

The Work That Reconnects

But to get back to the New Moon and the grief I felt with it, there is a lot of grief to feel right now and we need to feel it to move forward. Joanna Macy, inventor of a method to reconnect us to the Earth and each other, The Way That Reconnects, speaks to this, and I know that in feeling some grief, in processing and letting go during the dark moon of just a little of the pain of the Earth and what we have done to her, even if I feel it in a personal way, even as it is pain that relates specifically to my story (especially as a woman), I am doing my part to heal her. I will keep healing her. Reconnecting means reconnecting to the pain that I have avoided, to the wounded parts of myself as well as to the pain reflected around me in the world, in others and in the plants and animals I see.

Uranian Energies for the New

Sparks are flying from all the healing we are doing, collectively and individually too. With the New Moon almost conjunct Uranus in Taurus, we can feel a special spark of desire for new beginnings of all kinds. Uranus has revolutionary tendencies, and we may set intentions at this time that are beyond our usual frame of reference. You may want to totally reinvent yourself. I know I do. And luckily, there is lots of energy there to help us do so. Can you imagine yourself shiny and new, emerging into the world to change it? This is what this New Moon asks of you. The square to Saturn reminds us that this will not be easy work. We need to strive and establish routines. We need diligence, not just passion.

Courting the Wild Twin

As I drove in my car through blushing pink yet still leafless Vermont mountains today, I listened to a beautiful new book by one of my favorite teachers, Martin Shaw. He talks about exactly this, the happy medium between the red and the white, the fire of passion and the goodness of routine. He writes of tempering, an old word that describes the appropriate mixing of the humors and I am reminded of medieval lessons on love. The heart needs to experience both the light and the dark in order to be forged into a diamond, to become the true lover. He tells two stories of the wild twin which tell the tale of this alchemical working, The Lindworm and Tatterhood. I realized that they are the perfect narratives to help me along on the shadow work journey I’ve been on for a while, a journey which asks me to embrace all the remnants of the neglected and exiled parts of myself, the bits of passions denied because they didn’t fit in or were too dark, and I’m starting to get the hang of it. My large and scary serpent, a gift of my rising sign in Scorpio, is no longer as threatening. When I’ve worked with Martin Shaw in person, he always ask us to consider where we are in a given story, as this can open up perspectives on our own lives. In the Lindworm, I’m the naked white worm getting scrubbed before becoming beautiful and whole. In Tatterhood, I am not sure, but I think my head is no longer hanging on a rusty nail in the witches’ long house. It’s a process in any case, and I am glad to have the company of these tales. I made myself a beautiful personal flower essence blend too, and the flowers help me tell my story in a new way, kissing old wounds away. Click here to find your way to your own soothing flower friend or make an appointment with me here to talk and listen in for a special blend for you.

Expansion and Abundance

The two words I got last night during a group ritual for the New Moon with another one of my teachers, Aeolian Heart, were expansion and abundance. The New Moon is traditionally a time of expansion, for the planting of seeds and the growing of dreams. Taurus reminds me of abundance and the earthy pleasures of this sign, which even if they are tinged with revolutionary fervor by Uranus, remain tried and true and stable. How am I taking care of myself at this time? How can I continue to do so? I pulled the Four of Coins tarot card for this week so I am asking myself what I am holding on to. This card is earthy too, and not always in a positive way, but this week I see it as a reminder to not give too much of myself away. To stabilize my own abundance before offering myself and my energies to others. This seems like a potent lesson at this time when we are being asked to look inwards and tend to our inner fires, however small or neglected they are. May yours move into blooming this Taurus season, and as the moon waxes, may you find ways to celebrate your own expansion into new aspects of you.

The Warmth Will Come

Shadow work expands your heart too. Maybe that is what the daffodils do all winter in the dark; they focus on their hearts, so that in the spring they can burst out into seeing the world with love, however cold it might be at first. The warmth will come, the warmth will come.

Blessings of reinvention and Spring abundance to you!

P.S. Make a free appointment with me here if you would like some guidance with your creative journey. Integrating our shadows unleashes enormous amounts of creative energy and I’d be happy to talk about this process with you.

Two Deer in the Dark: A Full Moon Eclipse in Cancer and the Saturn Pluto Conjunction

My body has felt heavy for days. I can’t blame it on the holidays, which I had trouble getting through, physically: a bad cold, a sprained wrist. I couldn’t DO. I could just be, and watch those around me, and sleep, and drink liquids. I couldn’t lift. I had to be careful with the wood I needed to move to feed the fire. I had to do things with my right hand. I couldn’t write. My body was heavy for days. It reminded me of periods of grief I’ve lived through, but I wasn’t grieving, I was sinking and slowing. Who was I? What was it? Something was changing.

Then the Full Moon came last Friday and I started to see. Veils were lifted and I was exposed. Fires were burning, animals were dying. Here it kept snowing, and I wrote even though it hurt. I wrote poems, about the fires, and the deer I saw in the dark, and the fire I tended here. What was far felt near. I took a bath and scrubbed away all that I know needed scrubbing away. And it feels like what was personal last Full Moon - the dropping of identities I no longer need - was true for humanity. The appearance of what we are - selfish capitalists bent from greed destroying the planet for things we don’t even need - drops away to reveal something sweeter. We help each other. And now when I read about the fires in Australia, that is what I see, stories of people helping animals and each other survive in this situation we’ve created. It doesn’t make it better, but it makes it easier to move forward and to change. The Full Moon in Cancer, eclipsed, made me feel mothered and mothering in the dark. I felt immense sadness, but also deep compassion.

The weight of the darkness and also the embrace of it represent the Saturn Pluto conjunction to me. It is heavy. Saturn makes us feel the weight of time and death and Pluto demands that we become intimate with it. But like a veil, or a thick dark shell, maybe we are breaking out of ourselves and the darkness we have carried all these years. The last such conjunction was in 1982, and on the day of the conjunction, as I meditated with it, I literally felt drop away from me a childhood trauma that has haunted me since I started to be able to see it.. Maybe the fires and destruction we are witnessing are like this too. We have started to see the harm we are doing to the Earth, and the burning is killing, but it is also perhaps the first steps to break free from the destructive habits of consumerism, to break free from wasting energy, to break free from burning our one little blue planet, so precious and alive in the dark. In a way we are breaking through. I like this image anyways, as if humanity, shining as it truly does, is encased in a hard, black shell, and all we have to do is push our way through to become who we truly are.

My hearth fire continues to occupy me. In addition to being relatively immobile, I was also out of wood. This Friday though two neighbors came to help me take down a dead Hophornbeam tree from the woods behind my house. I did not know this tree, but it was carefully chosen by my friend because it was more than ready, and I think it had reached out to him. It had probably been dead for five years he said and it was waiting for its next life in the fire. It warmed me twice, or five times over as I dragged the logs through the snow and down and back again, following deer trails.

I am getting to know this tree now that its wood is warming me. I lugged it over snow in a sled to my wood shed while my hardier neighbors, in full use of their wrists, split it for me. Since warming myself almost exclusively with wood from the land around me this winter, I am endlessly amazed at the abundance the trees give to me, especially since the White Pine fell behind my house and supplied me with an endless amount of needles for tea. And here was this second gift of wood, gift of body. My wish for 2020 is to be always aware of this abundance around me. The quantity of nourishment the animal gives. They way I ate that venison stew for days, made from a two pound gift of a hunter friend who shot it in the ravine behind my house. The way the Christmas ham lasted weeks and we just finished the post-Christmas turkey. It’s unbelievable really. And yet we are fed this story of scarcity which makes us box and package it all and feel poor. Well, I dream of another life for me and the trees. We dream of it together as the Hophornbeam, also called Ironwood or locally, Hardhack, keeps me warm. It smells sweet and burns long. My nights aren’t cold anymore.

I met two deer in the dark.
One stayed, one ran.
I stopped. I sent out
gratefulness to the first,
I thanked her for being there,
We felt our hearts expand.

The second turned and ran
as I kept walking up
the hill in snow.
The moon was out,
more than a half,
my shadow fell.

The trees creaked.
I caught the white of tail
as the second deer ran,
a flash in the moonlight.
I wonder when
we will connect again.

Here is to what you may meet in the dark and the clarity that comes. I hope you have a fire or a candle to stare into and I hope you dreaming is long and your being as true to you as you can muster. I’m looking to work with some new creatives who want to explore their connection to plants, so if you are called, make an appointment with me here. Would you like a Flower Essence to accompany you through the remaining darker days? You can find a selection here or make an appointment with me to see which one might be right for you now.

Stay well and strong.

Amy

Finding Inside Outside: Softening into the Magic of the Cold Moon in Gemini

The snow that has been here all month melted in a single day of rain and higher temperatures. When I awoke yesterday I was sad to see that the sparkling landscape had vanished overnight, but I loved seeing the patterns the melted snow revealed, brown and green grass, a carpet of flattened, dried leaves and moss peaking out amidst the stones, still frozen. I feel excited for this Full Moon in Gemini, as though it holds some secret. After an afternoon nap, curled up like a mouse, I went out to see the Moon rise, but the wind told me to go back inside. Now the ground is hard and white again, the wind still vocal, and I’m sitting by the wood stove waiting for that exact moment of fullness.

Full Moons are points of culmination and as I sit here I’m looking back at what this last cycle brought me. Where did all my arrows of desire land? I took action and though I don’t yet have the desired outcomes, I feel full and satisfied with what is. I had a bath and I’m warm inside. The energy of this moon feels all pointed inside, towards my core, which is warm like the fire I am tending.

Finding inside outside. One of the hermetic axioms all good witches know about, as within, so without, can sometimes be harder to experience than one would like. It’s an essential realization though for magical experience and for me it is also essential to feeling connected to the land we live on. Amongst other things, it is the realization that my body is the Earth and the Earth is my body. Without this realization we can’t do magic, because magic relies on the realization that my outer reality is a reflection of my inner state, and we also can’t heal humanity’s detrimental wound of separation with the land and its inhabitants.

I live in a rural place and roadkill is common. I always feel so much pain for the small animals caught by our large and lumbering machines as they try to make their way through the world that has become so unsafe for them. I play the scene of their accident in my mind when I pass their remains on the road, sometimes several times a day if I’m going back and forth on the same roadway, which I usually am. I don’t know if it is the land that holds the memory of it or if I imagine it, but either way it is painful. I wish the world were not so dangerous to the animals that we share it with. Which brings me to the mouse that lives in my house. He likes chocolate and the roasted pumpkin seeds I leave for it in the corner by the stove. I imagine its little mouth eating through the hull and finding the inside, roasted and sweet. Its a clean little mouse so I don’t mind it. I’m sure there are others where he comes from, maybe he is a she or many, but I like sharing with him the abundance here, regifting. For what are our gifts if we aren’t sharing? That’s the message of this season. And maybe I’m healing some of that useless death by feeding a little life that isn’t really doing anyone any harm, not in this old house.

I’m also thinking about gifts because I am offering a poem a day for advent on my Patreon page. I hope these little offerings of word patterns find their way to the people that need them. You can sign up to support me on there for as low as $3 a month and receive all of my daily poetic offerings this month. At advent, each day feels like a gift, and it is. Gemini for me brings variety, but not constancy, which can be challenging. My moon is in Gemini, and I’ve always felt this as detrimental to my capacity to be creative in a focused way, but I think it also brings to my writing, and to my life, the joy of variety. I love learning and exploring, discovering the world. My curiosity makes me a good teacher and my varied emotional life makes me empathetic, though I can sometimes feel spread too thin. Do you have Gemini in your chart? I don’t think Gemini energy is superficial, it is abundant, and this moon shines light on all our gifts as well, teaching us generosity and gratitude. Focusing on these aspects of Gemini can be one way to soften into this Full Moon. Another way is to literally soften on a material level by taking a bath.

A Full Moon Ritual Bath

Water is the moon’s element, so nothing feels more relaxing to me on a Full Moon than taking a full, warm bath, and contemplating where I have come from, particularly in the two weeks since the last New Moon. What were my intentions then and how have they come to fruition? What am I grateful for?

For me a bath is an important moment of self care and showing love to my body, so it is ritualistic in its own right. I like using an herb that has special significance to me and an oil or oils that relate to the energies I am working with. For example this Full Moon I used dried Basil flowers - Basil is sacred to Venus - and Rose Geranium essential oil - ten drops in two tablespoons of coconut oil (you can also use olive oil). Both of these help me feel loved and cherished. I wanted to soften the energies of Saturn, which is currently conjunct Venus, and generally feel like a goddess. You can also use epsom salts and/or baking soda for added purifying benefits. My favorite is a mixture of both.

Take your time and really soak 15-20 minutes in the bath. I take this time to intuitively feel into what it is I would like to release with the next cycle, setting an intention of letting something or some things go. When I let the water out (if you used herbs in the bath, don’t forget a drain catcher!) I like to imagine that everything I no longer need is also running down the drain (I think I got that tip from Rob Brezny!). This visualization is extremely potent at a Full Moon when we are getting ready for the waning time, for the release of what has grown.

Releasing all that is not essential

This Full Moon I set the intention of releasing everything that is not truly me, so that I can become more like my wild twin. This may seem like a tall order, but it is the darkest Full Moon night and the light of the Sun is shining on all of my shadows. That is what the Full Moon does, it shoes us what we need to see but that perhaps we would rather avoid. So it is a good time to see ourselves and identify those aspects that we no longer identify with. What parts of me need to go? I don’t really need to make an inventory though. I just need to know that I am moving closer to myself every day, with every breath, and that I can trust this process. What I no longer need will fall away from me.

Here is a poem I wrote today on approaching what is inside, on finding it outside, the heart of the fire I have been meditating with most mornings:

The heart of the fire
the sunset
I’d wear that color
like a cloak to go
and walk the forests in
to keep me from harm
an orange firelight halo
since dressed as a deer
I’d be mistaken
for the fawn colored
leap into shadow
moonrise clear
I’ll keep this fire
burning in my chest
on my shoulders
until we walk back
into harmony
with the world
at one with the darkness
and give birth to light.

Here is to all the small animals, and the one in you too, your inner fire, your outside in. And now I need to put more logs on the fire. Write soon.

Love,

Amy

Sensuality, Clarity and Transformation: Drinking Chamomile Tea with Pluto and Saturn on the New Moon in Taurus

Last night I dreamt of bulls, red bulls, pulling me into my sensuality, grounding me.

Last night I dreamt I had a hat that I received in the form of a crown; it came floating down to me out of the sky. When I put it on, it magically changed shape, becoming a red felt cloche, a flowered knit beanie, in accordance with how I was feeling. I felt it adapt and shift to the contours of my head. This hat was a marvel; I was a little girl living in a dystopic future, in a house patrolled from within by a security guard with dogs.

Awake to my own desires this Taurus season, the New Moon feels like a reminder to express myself, to put on my best hat, and to let this hat be what it wants to be, without censoring myself, as visible as a red bull in the world. With Pluto and Saturn on the South Node of the Moon (not an object in the sky but an astrological point, this one related to our pasts), both squaring the New Moon, it feels like Saturn is the guard, patrolling my insides, making sure I do what I need to do in order to grow up, while Pluto is the dog, looking for all the forgotten bits of soul I’ve left behind, sniffing them out and calling them home. He bundles them up, makes something beautiful and throws them away. I love it when the planets show up in my dreams. What’s outside is inside. I know I am okay. The past is cleared away. I feel like a new lover to myself.

I have been drinking chamomile tea everyday for two weeks, a plant diet, going deep into what her lesson is for me. What I keep coming back to is clarity: the clarity of her colour which is also the colour of my hair - the clarity of how she allows me to see - the improved clarity of my perception. I realize how clear and bright everyone’s eyes can be, the dream shining back to me my own light, which is everyone’s light, a feeling of wholeness and unity as her golden essence flows through my veins, cleaning my blood. I feel enveloped in a new way of perceiving that is free of judgments, free of my own thinking, in some sense free of me, full of golden tea. She shows me (and I already knew it but we need to be reminded of it) that I am 100% responsible for how I choose to see the world and what I choose to do in it.

I put on my best hat for the day and go out to meet the forces that play with me. They are inconstant, a running stream beneath me. I am not afraid to wade in. I go out with words. I leave a trace, a filament across the sky, my feet on the ground, in the water, my head in the stars. It feels good to be alive.

I’m encouraged by all the positive change I’m seeing in the world. More and more people are connecting to the Earth as a living organism, more and more conversations about plant communication (I’m dreaming of teaching an online course on that!), more and more stores without plastic, more and more countries banning it, more and more - like the inverse of progress - going back to a reciprocal idea of sustainable nourishment and love, and it all starts with ourselves. Pluto is also linked to love and death, two of the greatest forces of transformation. I’ve always been more interested in that for myself than in security or stability, and this explains many of my (sometimes unfortunate) decisions. This interest in transformation can be challenging for human relationship, but it poses no problem with the plants. Maybe that is why I get along with them so well. They are here to help us transform. Sun at my back, warmth in the cold Spring air, I am here to change and to change the world along with me.

If you would like to talk about how I could help you connect to the plants to creatively own your own transformation, you can schedule a free exploratory session with me. I’d love to talk to about how you are feeling your Earth connection in this sensual season and what kind of expression this connection is asking of you.

I made two essences at the New Moon yesterday, Dandelion - my long time ally and supportive friend - and Bleeding Heart who gave me the following lines (we’d been communing about the transformative power of heartbreak over the dark moon week which was quite emotional for me):

My bleeding heart
bleeding all over
onto the ground
healing and feeding the soil
my bleeding heart healing the soul
a white drop from pink
fertile milk of heartbreak
seeding change
and transformation.

And I’ll leave you with that.

You can read more flower essence messages in my shop on this website. A good way to browse: click on the picture of the first image which draws you in when you look at the page. I’m sure the message of the flower will speak right to you, clearly.

I hope you had a wonderful May Day - Beltane- Easter or however you choose to celebrate this season of change. Stay open and loving and I hope to connect with you soon.

The Palace of Saturn and the Paradise of Books: On Synchronicity

The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, Georgio Vasari, 16th century

My last week has been less of me riding triumphantly on Taurus and more of me slouching towards summer through residual emotional sludge. And so it goes. It seems the more we slouch forward in time, the more opportunities there are to recognize and release old patterns that are no longer doing us any good. I'm taking Speedwell Essence and a heart elixir and being kind to myself. A storm just hit which feels good; there is some release there as well. My heart contracts and swells in the constriction. I know, by this time, it's normal, and a part of my cycle, however much I'm tired of it. Here we go again.

On Synchronicity

I'm going to cheer myself up by writing about Synchronicity. Carl Jung introduced the concept to psychology as a way to talk about those coincidences that are not coincidences, seemingly random events that are linked in a mysterious way, not through any linear understanding of causality, and that give meaning to our inner experience, connecting it to the outer world. I think of it as winks from the world, telling me I am on the right path and that all is well. I love seeing how the universe dialogues with me. I keep track of them and I find that the more I keep track of them, the more I notice them, so that life can feel sometimes like a large network of inter-related meaningful events that I am simply observing. There is in fact nothing I need to do except be there to observe the meaning that is being made for me, that was always already there. Granted, I can go through periods of only feeling chaos, feeling lost in a series of seemingly tasteless jokes at the expense of my ego, but then the fractals start to appear. That's quite Uranian too actually. Maybe Uranus in Taurus will be about us all grasping the strength of our thoughts and seeing in real time how they influence our reality, or at least these ideas becoming more understandable.

But back to Saturn. My employer recently requested I accompany her elderly mother and family on a touristic outing in Geneva. I don't usually do this kind of thing as part of my job, but I thought it could be a fun way of seeing more of Geneva and part of the visit was to one of my favorite places, the Bodmer Foundation, where the manuscript I studied in my dissertation is located. Also, I would get taken out to lunch, so I couldn't say no. We would go to the Patek Phillip Museum and then to Cologny for lunch and the Bodmer Foundation Museum for a guided tour of the current exhibit, on books and gardens.

Getting A Huge Wink From The Universe

Since I started working with Saturn, when it moved into Capricorn back in December, I've been getting a lot of confirmations that the work is going well in the form of signs. About half way through the first visit, I realized I was getting a huge wink from the universe. You probably know about Geneva and its role in the history of the watch industry. Well, I did too, but I'd never thought to go to the Patek Phillip museum. I thought of it as the sort of ritzy thing rich tourists like to do, but I was blown away by the collection and the intricacy of the construction of our temple to the time god Kronos, to Saturn. The marking of time has shaped our world in so many ways, from what we wear to our current technology, to the watch as object. At first the watch was ornament, and simply as a record of human craft, the collection is amazing. There are all forms of beautifully decorated watches to wear and to display, there is a watch made of wood, and ways to mechanically measure most anything, the moon cycle, the tides, the stars. The things humans have shaped with their hands! The intricacy of the inner workings of these sometimes miniature machines! No wonder there has been such pride and belief in our ability to mark it all, to know it and will it to be so, to fill time, to end time. Oh Saturn. There was a beauty and a bitter-sweetness in it for me, standing there, as I am so often in defiance to this masculine sky-god control. It was as though I were just seeing it, in all its glory, for the first time, and all its fall. What will happen now? The objects are there, remembering. You can go see them too. I might go back again, and think of how we've mastered nothing at all, but we've learned to mark time, and in so doing we've also gotten some valuable lessons from Hubris. And how intricate and fragile a construction time is! And how skilled our hands. Remember this.

Des jardins et des livres

The second exhibit, after a delicious lunch, was called Des jardins et des livres and I felt so peaceful there in the smell and world of old books that I love, listening to the curator explain how they had brought them all together; over 150 objects, manuscripts and printed books, from their collection, from Paris and Milan. And all about how people in the past connected to plants! The flowers were winking at me from the pages of four hundred year old manuscripts. I sighed and listened and watched and regretted I didn't have a pen to take notes. I bought a book, a facsimile of Basilius Besler's Hortus Eystettensis, and thought of all I can keep learning from the flowers.  It was two passions, two loves, come together. I'll find a way to do more of that. I want to write medievalist ecocriticism and study how we related to flowers in the literary past. I saw how the garden itself has long been a way of ordering and dividing nature, much like the watch did with time, and, interestingly enough, the two exhibits followed the same timeline, from the 15th-16th century to now, both documenting our changing relationship to the natural world. The exhibit ended with how modern and postmodern writers have delved into the world of plants from a subjective and personal perspective. I want to do the opposite. How do the plants see us? Maybe I'll write a book on that. I'm on the right track.

How interesting to be standing in this place at this time, reading the signs! I'm keeping track. And that these two eye-opening visits, so perfectly in relation to my current train of thought, were offered to me. The world is generous. I didn't even have to ask. Here's hoping you are reveling in your tracks too, at least most of the time.

(Originally posted May 22nd, 2018)

Full Moon in Scorpio: More on Work, Money, Time

As the bus arrives in Boston, pulling through the concrete, tall world of the city, I'm reading E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful and still thinking about work.

Travel and Travail

What is work? I'm always between two languages so I think about travail. This word in Old French meant suffering, so that must be why I don't want to do it. The first recorded use of it is in reference to the pains of childbirth, which makes sense, so it is birthing something, creating. In Songlines, Bruce Chatwin associates travail with travel, they come from the same word: “‘Travel': same word as ‘travail' - ‘bodily or mental labour', ‘toil, especially of a painful or oppressive nature', ‘exertion', ‘hardship', ‘suffering'. A ‘journey' (p. 215)." I'm traveling now, this strange mixture of productivity and suffering that is movement across the Earth. I always write more when I am on the road. In Old English, the main knot of meaning seems to be simply “to do" which leads to a more productive meaning for the word: to do something, to make something. Both words of course now have economic meanings and have been caught up in that all-encompassing, unshakeable structure we call capitalism. Marx of course criticized “abstract labour", the reduction of man to the work he does in support of a fraudulent economy. This runs behind my thoughts; the whole system is corrupt so why would should I “work" for it?

Work, In Many Forms

But I do work. My work is usually intellectual. I work with words, I write, translate, I think, I put concepts together, draw conclusions, read, on repeat. I make and reinforce lexical fields and neuronal connections in my brain. I try to do this with as much awareness and consciousness as possible. I learn. It doesn't feel like work and it makes my eyes and back hurt. I sometimes get paid for it. Then there is the work I have been doing on a farm. I walk to the barn, I check on the lambs, I give them hay. Another day I come in and pack sauerkraut into jars with a crew. I do this till my shoulder hurts and then I ask someone to do it for me and I put labels on jars. This is what many people call work. I'm working to produce something marketable, but I'm not getting paid for it because I like the communal work and I believe that more people should eat sauerkraut. I did get paid for tending the flock. Mostly what I get paid for is teaching, but that feels less like work than all the rest. That is helping someone learn so they can think and then grow from this thinking. I like that work.

It’s A Lie There Isn’t Enough Money To Go Around

So, money? It seems to accumulate when I am not looking and has a function that is actually quite independent from my level of “work". It seems to me to be another big fraud. It's materialized energy that we use to get goods. It is nice to have and not having it makes you feel like you don't matter or even exist. People think they don't have work so they aren't worth money and then it's a downward spiral to not having any. It's our cultural and social currency and some people are purposefully left out of it because our current system rewards greed and being white and male, generally. I feel pretty safe saying this. People look at homeless people and think “They should get a job" regardless of the fact that having a job doesn't even mean that you have a place to live anymore. It seems to me more people might notice all these things that don't line up between what we believe about money and how it works. I'm ready for a monthly minimum salary for everyone so that then we can only do the work we want to do, and it's a lie there isn't enough money to go around, just like it's a lie that we can't nourish everyone on the planet. We say this because we want to keep wasting food and money. I'm not sure why, to keep the whole system up and running? I haven't figured that one out yet, but it also doesn't make any sense. I need to read more about it. In the 1990's Jeremy Rifkin published a book The End of Work which didn't end work and didn't please many economists and sociologists. We are always creating new work.

Cyclical and Mythical Time

What about time? What can I add? Hello Saturn. It's cyclical and mythical to me. I realize I learn in cycles, I go back, the same blocks appear again, I react a little differently because I'm a little wiser. I'll do this till I die. I'm back in Geneva now, again. It's the Full Moon in Scorpio, or was a few hours ago, and in celebration of my more scorpionic showy side, I've posted a poem composed during ritual about being the moon, on my poetry blog:  orphanedline.blogspot.com. I don't know if anyone will read this but I like putting it out there in case it can help someone. Maybe you are the moon sometimes too.

On Being Seen

This makes me think about being seen, and I'll leave you with Asia Suller's beautiful musings on the topic, of how we are always and already being seen by the world around us. Don't forget! https://onewillowapothecaries.com/you-are-seen/

Just the other day a chipmunk watched me from a tree trunk, listening intently as I sang the Gayatri mantra. I'm getting ready to take Asia's Intuitive Plant Medicine class again and I'm very excited about the plants I will meet this time and the things I will learn. I will continue going a little deeper down the spiral.

Enjoy the wheel of time as she turns again to Beltane! I'm getting back to work.

(Originally posted April 30, 2018)

Making Friends With Saturn: Work, Time

The Throne of Saturn by Elihu Vedder

The maples are turning the hills a dark rose with their new buds as I gather my traveling things and my traveling selves together to leave for some work and summer travels. I realize I will miss my favorite season, early spring,  since it hasn't yet come to Vermont and where I am going it has already happened. I will miss that early new green, but I did hear the peepers tonight - a first chorus on my last night here for a little while. Sigh - it's hard to leave. It will feel like a leap in time, and it will be, to another continent, traveling on.

Learning With Saturn

Lately I'm learning with Saturn. His slow, plodding time has been mine. I twisted my ankle again, I've had to really feel my feet. I'm acknowledging the benefits of limitation for soul growth and practicing patience. I haven't been achieving much of anything. On the contrary, though I feel it to be a fertile, healing inner time, I seem to be outwardly blocked. This makes people worry. I haven't found a stable job yet. I'm not really making money. I'm transitioning, in between, I tell adults at parties. I feel for them feeling for me, but I also realize something. I don't want to fill my time and be busy. I don't want to make money. I don't want to make my value dependent on a system I don't believe in. I can of course do this because I'm privileged and was able to move back in with my parents and take the time to look within. To other people it looks like failure and seems unbearable. I get pity or advice or some form of frustration. Sometimes I feel these things too. That's one side of Saturn. But on the other, he winks at me, and I like not using up too much space, not having a car, not creating new humans.  I like living in a house that's already lived in and getting rides to places, working for trade, sharing my gifts. It's a kind of ecological contract with myself where I feel okay because I'm using up a little less of the Earth's resources than I might. I want to give back. It feels like one step closer to the gift culture of the natural world that Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about in her book Braiding Sweet Grass. It's how the plants and the animals give to me. It's the least I can do. I'm having trouble even envisioning how I'd charge anyone for the essences I've made and want to share. It's a real problem for me, imagining a business, becoming successful, making my time be worth money. I'll let you know how I get on with it. Is it just me being the typical self-deprecating female and not seeing what I'm worth? It's tricky. I'd rather like to think it's me wanting to step outside of that whole triangle of time, money, work.

How I Can Stand In The Still Middle

But it seems to still be our planet's burden at the moment. I'm not the only one thinking about it. Just as I was thinking up this post, emergence magazine (go play on their website! - explore time for an oak tree!) posted their issue number one all about time, with an article by Paul Kingsnorth about the myth of progress which features my favorite Walter Benjamin quote on that forsaken Angel we all believe in despite ourselves, that blind Angel being swept backwards by the winds of time: how very Saturnine. And here we are all slaves to time, yet Saturn seems to be showing me, not how wrong I am for not bowing down to him, but rather how the system turns around itself and how I can stand in the still middle and see it all moving around outside of me. I can take the time to wonder where it is I will fit in, or even if I want to. No, I still don't. We wrestle some more, playfully.

Outside The Outside

And I see that I've been looking for approval from the patriarchal Sky Gods, as Chameli Ardagh calls them, and that I won't get that approval, in the form of a publication, a job, some sort of validation, because what I'm doing doesn't fit into the model that is their dominion. I'm outside the outside, so to speak, or inside the in. Either way, I'm most invisible, and must continue on my way alone. At least I'm learning how to make friends with Saturn.

(Originally posted April 27, 2018)