I’m a bit late writing this, sitting at my friend’s kitchen table in Edinburgh and trying to taste the sap to be drawn from the last few weeks, so rich in felt experience, of the interior and the exterior. I’ve had so little time to sit and process and write. How will it all come out?
Seeds Of Love Planted In My Heart
There are themes that go with the new moon in Aquarius, which happened a few days ago: a new surety in my bones, more refined mental patterns, deeper breathing, seeds of love planted in my heart. A new understanding of the two that is one and the one that needs three, as if I can taste the falseness of duality. Here we are, fish flipping around in the dark, where the light becomes itself more deeply in shadow.
Walking Through Land and Myth to a New Place
The wind is blowing and the magpies are not perching. I’ve been searching, walking through land and myth to a new place. I don’t know what it looks like yet. My recent path has been as varied as it was transformational. I went from barefoot and warm, hibiscus blossoms at the full moon, to winter and windy and cold in the city, the litter and pollution fading away into country roads and hedgerows, a story of three star crossed lovers from Ireland, then heading fast and sharply north, through the hills and finally the sea for a frozen new moon of shared song. Well accompanied, I found traveling through the landscape deeply moving, feeling I changed with it as I went along, reflecting, reflecting, not thinking too much. Reflecting on the outside as a reflection of what is within.
The Magpie
At a weekend intensive with Martin Shaw in Devon, I learned that the magpie, a storyteller like Hermes, offers a third way, the blue feather in between the white and black. I realized that all my desires have been divine, coming from another time, as if I had been watching and waiting, hoping to catch from before an earlier, animal longing that I was in touch with, that could not survive in today’s world. There was great relief and a realization of my innocence in all of it. I remembered all the burned witches, felt their longing as also mine, a longing for a better world, like Joan of Arc with her belief in men and strong conviction that she herself had been sent to restore peace and righteousness. It was not her fault that the world was not ready to welcome her vision. There is peace in this knowing, belief in right action, which comes from true intention, in Ghandi’s vision of non-violence. Stepping into this vast longing, it feels spacious. I can stretch out here.
I Was Not Alone
All these realizations were helped along by my conversations with companions along the way. I was not alone. On a morning walk in Devon I was accompanied by a few precious stars, a first quarter moon. I found the mother oak, sat at the foot of a cedar, scared some birds, found my path with my toes, didn’t feel much fear and heard the Earth thumping in my bones. I talked to Snowdrop, Oak, Cedar, Willow. I remembered the song of Rosemary. I rode in trains and cars and shared with an amazing woman from South Africa and an Indian storyteller that lives in Glasgow; I crossed paths with new and old friends who I drank and ate with. They hosted me and helped me find my way.
Sang Into My Bones, Sang Into All Our Bones
On Imbolc, in Findhorn, Scotland, where I went to sing for a week with my teacher Frank Kane, I felt the first glimmer of spring and sang to carrot seeds, gifted my blood to the flowers, felt into the layers of my body and sang into my bones, sang into all our bones. I have the feeling that I have been moving through different layers of the world, the historical and the mythical as well as the earthly and material, from bones to air, as I have been moving through these different layers of myself. The strangest feeling, as if I had strings of words running through my arms and legs, rivers of meaning, all going somewhere, coming from somewhere, running through me like stories, with something to say. It feels like there is no going back now, no forgetting these layers. I’ll build with them, we’ll build with them, until, brick by brick, with our words and silences, a new world forms. I’m stepping through the portal, feeling my cells rearrange themselves, following the glimpse of a glimmer of blue.
Happy New Year of the Earth Pig to you!
(Originally posted February 8, 2019)