Goats in the Tree: Slowing to Eclipse and Surrendering to Capricorn in 2020

The Tree Climbing Goats of Morocco

Since the Winter Solstice, I’ve been going slower and slower, surrendering to this time of the year and to the demands of my body. On one side of the December 25th New Moon and Solar Eclipse, I fell on the ice and sprained my wrist. On the other, I got a cold, caught from my wonderful, visiting nieces and nephews. I felt depleted, underground, depressed. I lost sight of my purpose and felt pain. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t do much of anything. I had to surrender. What did I surrender to?

First I surrendered to the New Moon in Capricorn. Capricorn energy is a goat scampering up a huge mountain, from the depths to the heights he strives, but the going is tough and he doesn’t have much room on the ledges he chooses to pause on. During a climb, there is always that part of it where you have to surrender to the fact that you are climbing. I read that it wasn’t a good New Moon for making intentions and for manifestation and I felt this too; it was better to observe. So that is what I did.

Uphill, downhill. I trudged and drove up and down, back and forth between my house and the house where my family was gathered. As happens when family is about, I had to see and surrender to the things in my life that I don’t like. If I am a goat, it means I don’t mind going where it is hard for others to go. I’m climbing towards the sun even when it is dark. I’m climbing out of the cave, off of the page. Restrictions. I think this was all good practice for the year to come. It will be a year filled with this Capricorn energy. We’ll have to adapt as best we can as Saturn conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn. Right now, as I write, Jupiter is there conjunct Mercury. The Sun is moving through it towards Saturn and Pluto which are almost conjunct. I don’t know how anyone can imagine moving quickly. I can barely move at all, what with all these goats trying to climb and so little room. I’m left laughing though, with that image in my mind of the goats that climb the tree. Maybe that is a better image of the year for me. The tree the goats like to climb is an Argan tree, which grows in Morocco and produces one of my favorite oils. It whispers to me of abundance in aridity and longevity; it’s known for keeping the skin youthful. I’ll keep that message with me.

I’ve been thinking about what an eclipse is. In expressions, to eclipse something means to leave it behind, in the dust, to make it disappear. Literally an eclipse means that darkness, the moon, covers the light, the sun, leaving a halo before moving on and revealing the light to us again. This ring of fire exists because of the darkness, reminding us of the sun and how it will come again. On this side of the Solstice, though we are still deep in Winter, I know that the buds on the empty trees are already getting ready, beginning to swell, light yellow on the horizon amidst the grey. But first there is more to let go of, and often an eclipse will help release things we have been unwilling to release.

With letting go we find restrictions too. Sometimes I feel bound by the things I want to keep. Yet what is hardest to let go of? I realized this season that, ironically, what is hardest to let go of is what I don’t like about myself. These parts are hardest to let go of because I haven’t owned them yet, I don’t even want to see them. How can I accept these parts of the real me that I don’t like? I found that just being with them, instead of fighting with myself about them, or thinking about how I could change them, made them fit to my skin, and though itchy at first like a wool suit, I found I could adjust to them and then slough them off, letting them drop in the fire, like the thoughts that come unbidden in the morning, reminding me of my failures or shortcomings. I could befriend them. I could even feel happy and content with them. I could enjoy my family gatherings with a cold. I could be with people and not have to do anything. My hurt wrist prevented me from overdoing, trying to please, or even doing the minimum to help. I had to sit back and surrender to the restrictions of my injury. It wasn’t so bad actually. Everyone helped me and no one complained. I even got to be a little bit princess-y. So though I felt down, I also felt held in the dark, thankful for sleep and rest. These days I wake up in the mornings thrilled to be in my warm bed, with no thoughts at all in my head. I’ve taken the time to do nothing.

So as we move into 2020, it’s heavy there on the South Node, with all those goats in the tree. Maybe that’s you and me. Maybe the smartest thing to do is not to move at all, for we might fall and I don’t think I can catch you. But if we balance, if we let things be, we might get through, and hear the wind in the trees, and what the essence of the tree is telling us to do. I’m starting to get an idea. Are you?

If you want to talk about the cosmic energies, and the ones the plants might be whispering about to you, make an appointment with me here. I’m currently accepting new creatives who would like to deepen their creative practice by honing their Earth connection with the plants for three or six month online, one-on-one programs. What would it be like to work with me? Make an appointment for a free consultation to find out!

Stars Are Arrows that Arrive: Taking Action With the New Moon in Sagittarius

Mugwort in the frost…

It is the first day of December. Last night, in the waxing moonlight, the stars were a reflection of the snow-sparkle on the ground, and I was held between in the clear and silent cold as I walked up the hill to my home. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, just there, breathing in the cold air and hearing only the crunch of my steps, dizzy from tipping my head back to feel the sky. I’m slightly off my moon cycle blog writing schedule, but today feels like a good day to give you the download from last Tuesday’s New Moon in Sagittarius.

Sagittarius is a fiery sign, the image of a centaur letting an arrow fly, Chiron, or the son of Pan, Crotus, who invented archery. Both of these images represent someone taking action, and this is what my download was about. I saw myself taking action on my desires, and thinking about how to become more skilled at doing this.

Taking action has never really been my strong point. I sat on my dissertation for a long time. I enjoy the feeling of having lots of time and not having to take action. I like putting things off to the point that I have sometimes missed opportunities. I can over identify with the feminine energies of allowing, of being passive and responsive instead of assertive, so I know I need to bring some balance to this aspect of myself. Maybe it is also how I define myself that keeps me from being active. I was programmed to see myself as a woman, learned early on how to identify as a victim, and spent much of my early adult life putting myself in dangerous situations which allowed me to learn that I needed to protect myself. On my bulletin board there is a card I have travelled with for a while, the image of a princess waiting, fragile and sore. The romantic ideal relies on this idea of a passive female figure. To my credit, as much as I have identified with this version of the feminine, I have also always loved mythological female figures that are active, daring and dynamic. Diana hunts, Athena wages war and commands the intellect, Medusa turns you into stone with her eyes. Yet it is hard sometimes to forget the negative perception of active female energy, best summarized in our western ideology by the story of Eve and the apple. My experience has taught me as much. How many times have my actions resulted in rejection, in coming across as too much, in being misunderstood? And though I love envisioning female desire as active, it is often easier to sit back and not take action. I feel safer that way, and when I want to take action, a lot of fear comes up. So I’ve often gone back and forth between these two extremes, conscious of when I accepted being passive, then revolting against it. A lot of my intellectual work as revolved around thinking about love and working out how to imagine both sides of the love equation as active. Maybe part of the problem is the polarity of this thinking: I’m either doing or not doing. Maybe there is a middle ground, and if there is one, I think it is located in the seed of my desires.

My desires, especially my deepest ones, do not want to be given short shrift or left in the closet of my consciousness. Lately I have been paying attention to them, unearthing them and accepting them. My desires are powerful, they are keys to creation, and if I want to improve the world, I need my will, however refused or demeaned it has been. I think it is important though to be able to define true desires versus false or imposed desires. My material needs are met, so I need to be wary of wanting more, in a superficial way. And it is important to know why we have certain desires. Are they coming from the right place? Do I want something or someone because I need reassurance or attention, or is my desire the reflection of a deeper need, a universal imperative for the good of all? Lately I seek to identify which of my desires deserve to be held up to the light of manifestation. Which ones are false projections and which ones are true?  

Which leads me to action. Which desires do I want to take action on? Will my actions harm anyone or anything around me? It seems to me that the desires that come from a true place within me are easy to take action on, whereas those that are superficial feel harder to act on, sometimes come from a place of fear, and have the potential for negative fallout. But if I can first identify my true desire, I can then work on right action. This all feels very hypothetical to me at the moment. Let me see if I can give you an example, related to my work with the plant world:

When I started my business, it came from a place of wanting to share my gifts with the world in a way that would improve the situation of the Earth and her inhabitants. Taking action at first came easily, and still does, when I listen to the plants. They remind me of our interconnection, and point me in the right direction. They help me see my true desires. Mugwort reminds me I want to see clearly through my dreams, so I need to write them down in the morning. White Pine has lately been reminding me I want to stay healthy through the winter, I want to feel grounded and safe, and if I tune into these desires, I know which actions to take on a day to day basis: drink lots of water, spend time outdoors. Lemon Verbena reminds me to relax, and leads me to using her salve in certain ways. Somehow, listening to the plants helps me identify my true desires and be able to activate my will in a way that will not harm and will help myself and others. Sometimes it is hard to listen to this outer voice of my desire, but I find that if I listen from a place of connection, I can stay in the flow of my action and I will not cause harm . This leaves me in a place of gratefulness and right relationship. Listening to the plants brings me home.

This reminds me of an Aleutian story I learned this summer, Fox Woman, and how, after many trials, her running steps planted stars. I wonder how you integrate and contemplate your desires, and how they lead to your actions. If you would like to talk to me about how to feel more interconnected and how to take action based on this feeling, make an appointment with me here! I would love to talk to you about how to activate more heart-centered actions, and this dark time is a good time to unearth some forgotten desires. I’d love to hear what the plants have to say about yours, and help you listen in yourself.

Here is to all your pointed arrows that reach their destinations and arrive, shining brightly and leading you home.

Lots of still and frosty love,

Amy

A New Moon in Libra: How I Broke Up with My Phone and Learned to Relate to Myself

Holding Calendula instead of my phone. She’s much sweeter!

Lately I feel so strange to myself. My phone broke. I think it was because of a flower. The last picture I took was of a Datura I was communing with in a friend’s garden. And then an update wouldn’t take, and wouldn’t take and wouldn’t take until it wouldn’t turn on at all. So I’ve left it on a chair. I broke up with my phone.

My life without a phone: I miss my astrology application that tells me about the times and placements of alignments and risings and settings of planets and sun. I miss my menstrual cycle tracker. I think that’s about it. What I don’t miss are the hours I wasted staring into a device that doesn’t reflect the world around me or allow me to engage with it. It’s scary to think we are all so used to doing this, to perceiving the world more and more through this interface.

My first smart phone was given to me by a boyfriend in 2012. I felt some resistance, but agreed to engage for a little while. Unfortunately I did not give up the phone at the end of the six month relationship and it has been with me ever since. But I don’t think my phone is compatible with plant communication somehow, so it’s interesting that it has given up the ghost now. What I notice since living without it: My sleep is different, longer or shorter, and more intense. My days are longer and I do more. There are more hours. I engage more with my surroundings. I see more beauty. I talk to more flowers. As I go phoneless, I receive more messages from the universe. It’s that simple. And what do we receive from the Universe? The love that starts us and keeps us going. I never received that from my phone.

This new moon is about receiving love. Venus will soon rise as the evening star and beam down on me. Am I ready to take it all in? I think my phone was getting in the way. My other blocks to receiving love are still there of course but it’s as if I can see them more clearly. Maybe it’s because I’m not staring into a screen to avoid them. I’ve lost my main means of distraction from myself. I wonder at this object, small and shiny, produced as a product to make me into one (conversations at the farm have been about commodification of the self) and as I take a step back from it, I become more myself. The world spins. I make decisions. I may take fewer pictures, but I see more. I don’t have anything to show for myself, but I am more myself without this constant thing to check. It does make it a bit strange to be in the present world, but I suppose no stranger than it is for a flower to be today, or a butterfly. I want to be whole and rooted. I am seeding thankfulness and gratefulness, sun-ward, like them.

I also wanted to write about wholeness – another moon whisper. The cosmic energies are not particularly harmonious at the moment: Venus is square the Moon’s nodes and Saturn who sits on the south one, so there is a karmic tension about endings. Fall has come and we are descending into darkness, moving away from our mothering aspects of self. Perhaps we are being too harsh on ourselves. I’m thinking about relationship and those that brought me into darkness and those that brought me out. I’ve often felt, and been told, that I give too much, but I see now that my giving was seeking to fill a void I sensed, to bring balance, to fill in what was missing there: a too cold heart, an unfeeling mind. My balancing act with others was a beautiful, if sometimes painful, art. I’ve since learned that the only void I can really fill is the one inside myself and that people should do their own void filling for themselves, so I don’t try so hard now. I’m finding my own divinity and learning from this divine within myself. The planets of my birth chart as they move through the sky remind me of the universe moving within myself, all these complex aspects, singing together. Outside as inside, that old saying, the moon reminds us too, balancing the dark and the light.

 What are your new moon intentions? Now is the time to send out what you would like to bring in. The new moon is dark longing, followed by, when she meets the sun, receptivity and becoming, openness to change. I feel the moon slipping down to the void of herself, the void of me. I’m a thin sliver now, dreaming of the dark, not yet anticipating Spring, but reveling in what the roots speak to me. This morning I made an altar and petitioned the planets for a little while. I’d love to help you start a moon centered ritual cycle. Let me know if you think creative coaching with me might help you connect to the universe and write, paint, sing, draw or work on your pet project with the help of the plants! May you listen deeply!

A New Moon Wind: Virgo vs. Pisces or How to Love Your Non-Duality

The divided world… Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, 11th Century

I woke up last Friday to the sound of the wind, blowing from the South, and I thought of the forest fires in the Amazon and the hurricane preparing over the southern oceans. Where was I feeling this storm, this burning? A few weeks ago I had the shingles and felt that they were the reflection on my skin of the forests in Siberia burning. The Amazon, I think, I’m feeling as a burning from within. There is a rage at how things ARE. I observe this destructive time and the small or big ways I see it all around me. Then there are the ways this destructive time is within me, and I am a part of it.

I recently I bought a car. This is something I thought I would never do, since I saw the car as the epitome of all I dislike about our current system: speed, waste, environmental destruction, blind humanity racing towards its own demise. But the reality of living in rural Vermont has dawned on me and to my surprise, now that I have bought one - with all the harrowing emotions of the first time! - having a car is one of the most freeing things I have ever done. So I’ve had to hold these two parts of myself as one: the me that hates using fossil fuels and the me that loves to be independently mobile and who is a very part of the destructive world I can observe as if I were separate.

This realization was humbling. Seeing the world as separate from ourselves equals holding ourselves above it, and I think so many of our problems come from this perceived division between ourselves and the world around us. I put a barrier between myself and others, between me and the Earth and Sky, because I fear that I can’t integrate my own complexity. But my recent illness taught me once again that we are one: my body is your body is the Earth’s body.  

When I sat down to listen to the wind, the New Moon in Virgo spoke to me of duality. Virgo wants to do everything right (one of the first things I saw when I woke up was the image on the right, the cover of a magazine on the kitchen counter!) and on Friday the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars and Mercury were all there, in Virgo. That’s called a stellium in astrology speak, and that’s a lot of energy focused on everyone wanting to do everything right. My Sun is in Pisces who sits opposite Virgo in the sky, which means that all of these planets were hanging out reflecting the light of my natal Sun, my shining Self (some call it the ego). Pisces, in some ways, represents the opposite of wanting to do things right. Sometimes Pisces is the opposite of doing anything at all. Virgo is about distinction, contrast and duality, while Pisces is about merging, nuance and ambiguity. Virgo doesn’t want to go with the flow. Pisces is content to sit in the water and float. Sometimes she doesn’t even care if she is going anywhere. So I know this duality. And we all have it, just as we all have all the other contrasts that the sky represents for us: the outgoing and the shy, the confident and the embarrassed, the joyful and the depressed. These all make up a part of the little fractal beings that we are and each one of these parts is illuminated differently by the stars at different times. It can be a lot to get used to. Especially with all the planets staring at you.

So just as the darker parts of ourselves can seem overwhelming at times, sometimes the devastation we see on the outside, especially if we focus on it exclusively, can seem like a lot. People are more or less touched by it and we all have different strategies for dealing with it at our disposal. I think it is good to remember this too, that we are all touched differently by the outside world, with more or less privilege and protection, and this realization can also bring its own breath of welcome humility. As for my strategies, I tend to search for historical explanations and create through it, that is I use the catastrophe to motivate me towards some form of artistic expression, or the destruction becomes the matter for creation. I like seeing the big picture too, and if this doesn’t work, I notice my divisive thoughts and choose not act on them. I may choose to open them up for discussion with a trusted friend or two. This often reveals my contradictions for what they are and helps me step back into a more holistic view. The plants also help me do this. They are constantly reminding of the blessings in perceived difficulty or darkness. I realized my illness – the shingles! – as uncomfortable as it was, was also an introduction to the healing powers of Saint John’s Wort, who is now forever in my heart, in my apothecary and within my body of skills as a healer to offer when someone else might have need for it.

It’s also good to see our one-sided vision for what it is: a kind of blindness. Not that we should ignore the calls for change, the new wind that is blowing, which are becoming louder and more demanding by the day, but just that we should insist on seeing the whole picture, for ourselves and the people around us. My whole picture includes driving a car but also doing a lot of work on the land and in my community in order to embody the change I want to see. It’s not going to be perfect, I’m not going to do everything right, but I am going to live in my corner of the world and shed light and peace around me, as much as I can. You are probably doing this too.

The fires are burning and the animals are dying, but more and more people are waking up. It’s as if the fires are lighting up collective consciousness, showing us the way. And in the burning, there subsists a little green. I talked to a fisherman the other night and he said there were no fish in the streams, but I took a walk through the woods to a pond and saw them, small, swimming upstream. I don’t know where the world is going, but I know it’s going to be okay. I’m becoming more and more friends with myself every single day.

A friend sent me bits of this poem by Mary Oliver the other day. Here is the whole thing, for her, and for you. It captures something.

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

                                             1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
    of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
    forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
    of this gritty earth gift.

                                             2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
    are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
    thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

                                             3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
   still another.

                                             4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.

And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.

                                             5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
   change.
Congratulations, if
   you have changed.

                                             6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
   fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
   your life—
what would do for you?

                                             7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
   though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

***

The poet is clear here, so I don’t need to say anymore.

Love and later summer gleaming,

Amy

P.S. Let me know how this new moon felt to you by getting in touch (amy@enosburghessences.com) or setting up an appointment to talk!

Tending the Fire Inside: Shingles, Lughnasadh and the New Moon in Leo

The last month has been a deep delving into old-new territory. Things feel familiar and strange at the same time. There was some travel. I flew to England. I spent a few days in story with wonderful teacher and story master Martin Shaw and new friends on the same path of searching within myth time for meaning. I watched the partial full moon eclipse with them by a fire and didn’t write an update here, too much in the shadows to share. I wandered for a day on the moor in Devon and had what I think was an initiation with Hawthorn that I’m still digesting and wondering how to share. I went to an academic conference and shared research I did a few years ago on Wilton Abbey and the women that read there in the 13th century. I recently had an important realization about the relevance of this side of my work. A discussion in July with an evolutionary astrologer Sabrina Monarch which led to a discovery about my life mission: not speaking for the flowers but bringing the past to the present. Maybe speaking for the flowers also brings the past to the present in a way. I’m nurturing forgotten connections, often feeling I’m in direct contact with plant ancestors when doing so, and this, like academic research, takes some time and processing. Then I went to Montreal for a few days (the city! the botanic garden! the market! the heat! the poutine! the nine breathing bodies in the hostel room!) and got the shingles.

So now I’m home in Vermont with the shingles, feeling the burning under my skin, deep in the nerve system, and how it reflects the ripening time out there: this fire inside of reds and yellows and oranges that has come to the surface. I feel like my illness is also the culmination of the eclipse time when I was working with my shadows and focusing on what I wanted to release: here is the proof on my skin, blisters of what I want to be free of, my own dis-ease in the world. There is anger there, diffuse, at the way the world turns, at the men in charge, at the way I am seen, at the damage done. A first harvest of this, erupting. I like working with illness this way. How do my symptoms reflect what I am feeling? How do they reflect what is happening in the world? It helps to bear the illness not to take the symptoms too personally, and to understand how our understanding of the symptoms is a part of the healing. I’m taking Saint John’s wort tincture made by a neighbor, a mushroom tincture made by a local herbalist, Swiss Echinacea tincture, and an antiviral while slathering my sores in Saint John’s wort oil (made before I left and left outside while I traveled) and calamine lotion. Let me know if you want to know more about my protocol that seems to be doing me well! A good mix of allopathic and herba medecine, after an urgent visit to the doctor, though I do not wish this tingling painful curse of secret stocked virus on you.

Lughnasadh is the Celtic festival of the ripening time, when everything is at its most green. It celebrates the god Lugh, of the Long Arm, the Shining One, god of the spear and the sun. The Romans associated him with Mercury, who appropriately went direct this week. We are now called to move forward boldly with our skills. I had a fire last night to outwardly burn what needed to go, old remnants of words written long ago and some herbs saved through the seasons to give to the fire and purify our purging. Life is quick and flowing now. The monarchs are out and they never rest. The robins have placed three more pale blue eggs in their nests, and the bird song is crystalline in the forest. I saw a doe with two fawns across the pond, flicking flies away with the whites of their tails. Life runs quickly now, and I’m in it and I don’t know how to catch it. I don’t try. It’s warm and fast and busy and buzzing. I feel in this sanctuary here, where you can still hear the world the way it wants to be heard, where the silence isn’t silence and the stars still sing as they are born. And I’ve been drinking the richest raw milk and fermented things and sleeping, and dreaming of the gifts I want to offer the world. 

And yet death is also here, perhaps never so present as during the peak of the harvest. Lugh’s grandfather was Balor who lived in the underworld. While I was away my old rabbit died, after fourteen years of companionship, and it’s hard to be without him now, my old friend who was so true. The eclipse time is one of leaving. In the forest I found Ghost Pipe clusters and a deer skull with some teeth still in place. I could wriggle them but not get one to come out. I don’t know how to read the signs of this death. I can only stare. And the shingles burning makes me think of my own certain demise, our brightness that will one day burst into darkness and go back to the earth, or maybe the stars. So the wheel comes around again, and we know that we are living bright and special days of leaves and flowers and sounds. And I am grateful and tend to the fire inside. The new moon is a special time for this tending, after the dark moon and the dying. I made a wish on Jupiter who came out first and bright last night, and saw a long-armed shooting star who took my wish on. I like thinking of Lugh and the Lion as bright bearers of this month’s intentions.

Blessings to your fires of summer! Please get in touch if you are interested in following the cycles of the year with me. New offers are a two-hour class on plant communication and flower essence making and individual creative coaching with the plants. I’d love to talk to you about them and you can make an appointment here. You can also support me on Patreon where I offer plant inspired poetry and flower wisdom. I’d love to roll into autumn with you, with whatever you are releasing or calling in.

May your wheels keep smoothly turning and your harvests be fruitful!

Eclipse Season Drama: The Ending of the World and a Prayer for Summer

I’ve been waiting to post since the New Moon because of the eclipses. What do they want me to say? It has been a rich few weeks and I haven’t wanted to say much. I had a very deep essence making experience with Cramp Bark the weekend of the Solstice at a Flower Essence training and since then I have maintained a feeling of permanent connection to the green realm. As a result, I’ve felt disconnected from this one. Making the magic with plant connection lifts me up and sets me down differently. Cramp Bark essence will be part of a line of essences meant to aid shadow work. It isn’t up in my shop yet, but its message is about helping us embrace our whole selves, dark and light. Let me know if you want some. I call it Erasure of Duality. It helps us own the darkest side of ourselves, integrate our most difficult experiences and calm our harshest judgments which depend on our belief in polarity. I shared the poem she offered me with the second tier and up of my Patreon supporters. You can get the full download here. I’d love it if you wanted to join me there!

So I’ve met myself whole, with the help of the plant realm, and I’m looking for words to describe what that feels like.

But this New Moon Solar Eclipse in Cancer has me also searching to answer other questions. Within this unity, who am I? Who am I without my stories and my past? Cancer is about home and mothering and I am home with my mother, watching how she mother’s herself, how I mother myself, and the connections between the two, seeing the old patterns of feeling and relating with my father. Who am I without the stories of my parents? I learned that until we are three, we share our energy centers with them, so any insecurities or lack of self-love of theirs become ours. Ancestors pass things on to us too, down the gene lines, the DNA chain. Who am I without the steps of my ancestors? Depending on how far back you go, we also share our DNA with the trees. My wholeness resides there I think, back in the time of slow plant evolution, back to soil and bark and loam.

A total solar eclipse feels like the end of the world in some ways. Slowly the sun goes dark. I remember a children’s book I had when I was small about some farm animals who become increasingly panicked at the growing dark. They gather together and tremble. And eclipse season is a time of deaths, people go, we let go. I’ve been spending a lot of time with my very elderly rabbit, and Cramp Bark showed me how death is inside all life. I am constantly dying to outdated versions of myself. It feels good to let these selves go, but then arises the fear of the unknown. What if the Sun doesn’t come back? In Cancer we can feel like children in need of safety and reassurance. Especially today. If I watch the news, it feels like we are only minutes away from certain and complete disaster. Yet I wake and the birds are singing. I feed them and I eat and sleep and dream. I meditate and write.

With these thoughts in mind I wrote a prayer for summer. Feel free to recite it daily to your garden, and to add your own stanzas.

An Edward Burne-Jones Tapestry

A Prayer for Summer

May there always be
an abundance of birds
and the small insects
and larvae and caterpillars
they eat. May they always
mate and mate again,
nest and wait and feed
and nourish their young.

May there always be
moths beating their wings
at my window and
fireflies winking me to sleep.

May it always be hot
in the sun and then cool
in the shade or the lake
or river or pond or pool
before bed at twilight.

In the morning,
may the dew always come
to water the petals of my dreams.

May all things be allowed
to ripen and flourish and live.

May the peonies and the
lupines and the mallow
and the roses always say
there is more to come
more to come
more to come.

Cancer season also has me remembering and reading of how, as children, the gateways of our perception are open, and as we choose to open them again today, as if for the first time, there is the same awe and joy at what we find and see. This feeling comes first. I hope it still comes first for you, these ripening days.

Much love,

Amy

Tender and Fierce: Aries Season, My Pointy Green Shoes and a Story for the New Moon

Spring is tender. Spring is fierce.

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Cicely Mary Barker

Walking through the world I’ve been feeling these two contradictory sensations of Spring in the world. But are they so contradictory? To break through something, you need a certain fierceness in your green newness. The buds of leaves I love, in their tender green, must break through harder protective layers with life force. The “The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drive the Flower” is not a passive poem. The butterfly’s tender wings must break through the cocoon. It’s violent, and Spring has its violence too. It’s fierce, in like a lion, and tender, out like a lamb. March is my birthday month and I remember birth has its violence too, a radical transition. I came through in breech position, butt first. I feel held by these two forces as I walk the world, fierce and tender always.

I Walked Home In Its Light

The recent planetary line-up has been intense. The Equinox coincided with the Full moon in Libra and I walked home in its light, the flowers in the night still growing towards the light, reaching, ready, not yet open, waiting. Excited! Effervescent. I felt giddy and then angry and frustrated. Aries season. Head first with horns then abruptly blocked, for there is still more to work with, let go of, move around. But with the Equinox there is courage and belief in the new season. I am taking Hibiscus flower essence, red and pink, faith and confidence, a perfect message for now. Pluto on the South Node seems to be squaring everything and I feel like I’m in the depths of deep transformation.

Pointy Green Suede Shoes

Speaking of violence and tenderness, I feel like growing up is often a process of muting our tender love for self, and that this is often learned between girls as they grow. In seventh grade I had a pair of pointy green suede shoes. I really loved these shoes and I felt like they expressed the essence of myself. They were soft and comfortable, they smelled good. I loved wearing them and I loved looking at my feet in them. I must have been doing just that when a girl at school called me out on it. “What are you doing, are you staring at your shoes?!?” and I immediately stopped and felt guilty for having shown that I loved this part of myself, those pointy green elf shoes that I identified with so much. I can remember other instances of this girl on girl criticism, in the ballet school changing room, in the classroom when you had to pretend you weren’t so smart. It was normal and cool to criticize your own body, it was expected to belittle yourself. None of us were ever beautiful enough. It seems so strange to think about now. There is a price to pay for enforced humility. But is this even humility?

Humility, But A True Humility

I went to look at what the stars had to tell me. The therapist I see who works on archetypes and story with me brought to my attention the story of Cassiopeia, the proud queen who thinks herself more beautiful than all other women, a bit like the evil stepmother in Snow White. She is a big W in the sky, easily identifiable, one of the ones I always see, sometimes called the Throne. This Queen is so vain she thinks herself more beautiful than her daughter Andromeda, and she tells the sea god that her beauty outshines that of his Nereid wife. This enrages the god and he punishes her by flooding her kingdom, telling her that the only way to save it is to sacrifice her daughter to a sea monster. She attaches Andromeda to a rock on the coast, but Perseus the Solar Hero rescues her. He then proceeds to punish the Queen, transforming her into stone by showing her a hideous head that he draws out of a bag. She’s silent now, in the sign of Aries. Maybe the lesson she teaches is humility, but a true humility, not one that puts yourself and others down because you have to hide that you secretly want to be the best. Also she’s really scared of aging and death, but all this does is petrify her, literally.

I Told The Story To The New Moon. I Think She Liked It.

Story can help you identify the tyrannical aspects of your shadow so that they release some of their control, and I feel more at peace with this un-self-loving part of myself as I sit in this story. I told the story to the New Moon. I think she liked it.

This is the last post I will be updating here! If you want to keep following me, head over to www.enosburghessences.com and put your name and email in the little box so you can get on my mailing list. I’ll send you my cosmic updates and news of my offerings as they develop. For now, you can schedule a free exploratory meeting with me to discover how we could work together with the plants to open up your creative flow channels or anything else you want to talk about (contact me if the times don’t work, I’ve only put morning hours but I’m still in Europe so this will be a problem for US friends – amy@enosburghessences.com) or you can book an energy healing treatment. Flower essences will be available in my store on there soon.

I hope you are all feeling the motivation to be more truly yourselves, to move forward with the spring, and to appreciate every living green thing!

The Red Earth: A New Moon Solar Eclipse in Capricorn and a Welcome into 2019

This morning, meditating on the new moon eclipse in Capricorn, I had a vision of a woman rising, round faced, like a tree, growing up out of the ground and spreading into the sky so that there was little else to see.

I’m in Kenya, where the earth is red and well-packed roads lead to where you were always going. My first impression, before arriving here, upon arriving here, was that I was going to a magical land, where strange and wonderful animals still lived and people still smiled a welcome you didn’t need to deserve. This morning, I thought of the whole earth being like this, a magical land, where people smile a welcome, where strange animals and birds roam, whether the soil is black or red. Here we are reminded of it because you can’t escape it. She sticks to your shoes and skin, leaving her red mark. Don’t forget me she says! Smile your welcome.

Reducing Whatever Was Left Of My Hard Outer Shell

For me I think 2019 will be about reducing whatever was left of my hard outer shell down to nothing so that I can better serve the world. Capricorn is the goat climbing steadily up the mountain, and I want to slowly grow my business, to keep talking to the flowers, offering their wisdom, speaking more broadly for the non-human worlds. I’ll keep forgetting who I am in the process. Saturn conjunct the sun teaches the value of hard work and humility. All this cardinal Earth energy demands contribution, retribution, reminds us that, in the darkness, something new is beginning, and it isn’t about us as individuals. Don’t take it personally. Whatever changes have swept over you are for the greater good. Pluto is there too, reminding us that perhaps there will be further sacrifice demanded of us. Perhaps total transformation is now the only option.

Sometimes The Earth Seems Fragile

Sometimes the Earth seems fragile. Everywhere I read news of breaking cycles, vanishing animals, emptying seas. Sometimes it seems solid, like it does here, holding us up, even in mud, with the trees. I’m near the equator and the shapes of the stars are different. In the garden many flowers grow, and along the roads, hibiscus, a yellow bush I don’t know, small tubular orange blooms clustered together, a bush whose clusters, like a sunset, fade from orange to pink to yellow. I don’t know their names. I think today I will make a hibiscus essence. She whispers to me of faith, faith in this trembling world, which, like a mirage, might disappear at any moment, doesn’t always seem real, so that I remember my own fragility as I walk upon it. Here I go.

All That Is Real

Yet the Earth isn’t going anywhere, she’s solid and strong, present, all that is real, and she’s letting us know. Like her, I’m solid and strong, not a wisp anymore. Perhaps as I walk upon her, I could be more imposing. Perhaps, as I walk upon her, I need to be more imposing, to encourage whatever transformation for the good is naturally happening. With my voice I’ll spread wide into the sky like a tree, and tell everyone how the birds speak to me.

Sacrifice and Synchronicity

Speaking of sacrifice, if you want to join a group learning experience to follow along with the currents of our changing world, it is the last chance to join Charles Eisenstein's Living in the Gift course in its first round. This month's theme is sacrifice and synchronicity: I just had an experience of the latter when, after mentioning sacrifice here, I read an email from the course and found that it was the theme there this month as well.

Keep your eyes out for my new website which will have a place to purchase my flower essences, some offerings to grow your creativity with the flowers, a cosmic blog and other as yet undreamed of offerings.

May your hard work and persistent visions be blessed. May your dreams, however dark, be transformative, and may your actions support the health of the communities and ecosystems you are a part of.

Karibu!

(Originally posted on January 6th, 2019)