Emptying to Receive: February Full Moon in Virgo

L’Arve

I'm back in Switzerland for a little while, feeling this strong and spiritual full moon. I went on a walk towards the trees and the river to reflect on her message. I have been thinking about cycles, my own cycles, and the longer Moon and Earth cycles.

I'm back again in Geneva where I lived as a child, though my ties here feel thin now; I think my returning is coming to a close. Still, coming back here is part of a cycle, one started when I didn't decide, now reinforced and regular, like the tide.

And The Tides Will Feel It

This moon is the closest one of the year, and the tides will feel it, and I imagine the fish too, feeling pulled by the water. The sun moved into Pisces yesterday and I'm feeling pulled by the water too. The river called and I went to her, felt her banks under my feet. Cycles are reassuring, for Virgo too.

I Am Not Destined To Be Subjugated and Resentful

Last year I read an important book called Mysteries of the Dark Moon by Demetra George. I began to come to grips with the longer cycles of the Earth, understanding on a longer timeline the coming of patriarchy and the return of the Goddess, who is coming now, as naturally as the dark moon becomes full again. This understanding of what has happened on Earth in the last two thousand years, as a result of a society in which the feminine was silenced and destroyed, has the advantage of encouraging women, and men, to let go of the sense that there have been victims and perpetrators. This allows for more personal agency. I can change society because I am swept up in a broader change which is inevitable, and I am not destined to be subjugated and resentful. I can sweep up the change in my hands and carry it along, staying clear in my connection to the Earth and my intent to care for her. I spent the day in various ways enjoying this return through learning and meditation: with my mentor Jocelyn Mercado's Fearless Female Entrepreneurs broadcast, with another symposium, Wise Womb Way, organized by Naomi Love and a Full Moon Meditation with Clare Dubois of Tree Sisters. I can feel the change happening in a massive way, this turning back to feminine modes of knowing and being, indigenous wisdom and the healing sensuality of the natural world whose erotic resonance we are a part of.

I Am So Done

My personal work with the full moon today follows similar motivations: the desire to release my own personal story of victimization. Chiron just left Pisces and Uranus just left Aries after their respective eight year stays, and I am so done with the last eight years of my life narrative. I can't even talk about it anymore. It's like a bad movie. I'm stepping out of it, letting go of the past and that story of myself. Yet in it I can also see cycles, useful short cycles of leaving and return, of learning. So I'm also taking every dreaded event and making a catalogue, in order to bury it in thankfulness. I'm grateful, I'm grateful for the learning brought on by these cycles. On these mounds of gratefulness I'm planting forgiveness. I'm taking the Hibiscus flower essence that I made in Kenya, trusting that everything is going in the right way.

The City Feels Close And The Wild So Suffocated

The city feels close and the wild so suffocated here, tamed by too much civilization. Switzerland, who is a Virgo (check out the country's natal chart), can overdo tidy, as Virgo's sometimes do. But when I came to the water's edge, I felt enormous recognition for being in such an ancient riverbed. The calm areas of crystal blue-grey led me to sound where the water breaks and rushes. She's been running this way for eons, and though the roads have grown up around her, her contours remain wild and deep. What a privilege to be in such an ancient riverbed. The internet tells me that the name of the river, the Arve, comes from Aturaua, meaning source or fountain, which in Basque took on the meaning of “destiny", or “magical wave". I like this idea, that this river I'll be walking by for the next few months will help me flow in the right direction, will help me find the next place I need to be, guiding my future with her icy depths sourced from high-up, glacial mountains. I'll trust her, letting go to receive, emptying out to be filled again.  I'm glad for some quiet and emptiness. I think I'll go to river quite often.

Progress Used To Mean Journey

I hope this full moon has illuminated areas of your life that you can release, and that the land offers you deep moments of inner contemplation along with exterior symbols of your progress. Another important book I read last year, Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin, reminded me that progress used to mean “journey" in Old English (like in The Pilgrim's Progress I suppose) and that this is all we are really doing here: moving over the Earth towards truer versions of ourselves.

(Originally posted February 19, 2019)

From Bones to Air: The New Moon Portal of Imbolc

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)

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)

This Land Is Not For Sale: Full Moon Eclipse in Leo

A lion on the horizon, a new self to shine in. This land is not for sale.

Lions in the Masai Mara

The sudden yellow feathers of weaver-birds reminding me of my resilience. I’m building a nest to live in. This land is not for sale.

Warm tortoises moving slowly in the sun, eating hibiscus blossoms. The quiet and growth of owning my privilege, of learning to be grateful, of doing more. This land is not for sale.

Shedding Skin and Selves

I’m almost at the end of my trip to Kenya. I will have spent almost a complete moon cycle here, a little more than one waning moon period, shedding skin and selves. Before coming I had reservations, about participating in what seems sometimes like exploitative tourism or expat living, the trash and development that goes along with it, the travel I no longer want to do by plane, but the land and people here have opened my heart in a way that I think makes it all worth it, and the people and the land here need the money and the visibility of something other then terrorism, something else than exploitation. So I’ll give voice to that, and do something about it. This is right in line with the eclipse – a surprising opening to love that changes one’s perspective and ones actions, from dark to light.

Taking Time To Process and Distill

It feels hard to summarize what I have discovered here and it may take some time to process and distill what I have learned. I made two essences, one, Hibiscus, about faith, in perfect time to counter what has been a continuous flow of bad news, pointing to death and stagnation. The second, a native Sandalwood, made in beautiful bush-land in Kajiado county at the home of dear lifelong friends’ of my parents (now mine), gave me an abundant message. She is appropriately good for transitions, crossing boundaries, moving to new and unknown realms:

This golden skin I’m in, translucent.
It’s very easy for me to detach.
I’m floating above the ground.
There is no ground, I’m floating,
the material world is abstract,
the spiritual is grounding,
what is ephemeral, solid.
It’s easy for me to detach.
I am peaceful in the midst of material difficulty and strife. I rise above, becoming more than my body.
It’s easy for me to detach.
I am sound and senses.
This golden skin I’m in, translucent.

The Intellectual Details

Funny, I think the flower’s message does indeed summarize my trip here, minus the intellectual details:

At an expat party, learning that helping women with menstrual health is difficult because many girls simply don’t have underpants in which to put the reusable pads a German gynecologist acquaintance wants to give away.

Clothes almost free in the markets, many of them coming from European charity shops: how Africa must deal with the results of so much inordinate consumption in Western countries, these piles and piles of clothes.

Money, so abundant in some areas here, is non-existent in others, so that prices are hugely variable; in a Masai village, being asked for 100 dollars for a visit, not wanting to pay it so negotiating it way down then buying lots of crafts from them anyways, knowing they will all share in the earnings. Being repulsed by this cultural tourism yet loving the sound and the colors and feelings and smiles that were shared with us anyways (these people still so connected to the land in its vibration).

Learning: cost is relative, we are all in this together, share!

Wonder and Humble Awareness of Exactly Where We Are At

Open, open, open up to the horizon and see as far as you can see so that every detail of the landscape could be an animal. Elephants! It was explained to me that the whites living here are mostly the ones involved in conservation because blacks think there are lots of animals here, and there are. I see them! Roaming families of elephants. Still the land is emptying of other beings as it fills with humans, you can feel it. There is only a few small steps between the feelings of abundance and those of lack. Where do I want to place myself within that? I adopted an orphaned elephant and didn’t mind giving my money to steal a giraffe kiss. I reveled in it and felt her prickly lips on mine for days. I suppose it comes to that: amazement and appreciation, wonder and humble awareness of exactly where we are at as a species on this planet. I interact as much as possible with the non-human. It reassures me.

This Land Is Not For Sale

This land is not for sale: the sign I most often saw on plots of land in Nairobi, to warn people of con-men selling plots that they don’t have any right to. The city is growing at an unimaginable speed, some areas, for as far as you can see, filled with concrete blocks rising up, which means the middle class is rising, but still, lots of girls can’t afford underwear (this thought keeps coming back). All the beds and couches for sale along the busy roads are directly linked to this new housing, and I think of all the trees required to supply furniture for this new middle class. Yet I notice how lush and green and giving the land is. On the road back to Nairobi from Lake Naivasha I notice the new tree plantations of non-indigenous trees in rows. Just as in more northern countries, this can't be good for the land. I think about the struggle of the giraffe; it can’t eat them and wouldn’t be welcomed on the land there. I imagine there used to be elephants everywhere.

Money Is Really Some Strange Kind of Magic

I try to understand salaries and the huge differences between, say, what I make in Switzerland and what a cook is paid in one of the cafés that cater to the affluent in Karen, their daily salary as much as one of the dishes on the menu. I can’t really understand that, other then to take it as confirmation that money is really some strange kind of magic that makes us feel either wealthy or poor, and act accordingly. I know how I want to feel about that.

I went to a girls’ school, Daraja Academy, near Nanyuki, where the girls were so thrilled to be learning; they wouldn’t have been able to go to high school if they hadn’t been chosen to attend. I helped the English teacher with some lesson planning and befriended the girl I shadowed. I loved our exchanges, her hopefulness and dreams, her realism too about her struggles and the struggles to come. Many girls get pregnant early here and have no choices about what they will become. We talked about wanting to change the world and how to do it. I felt understood. I think I’ll go back there to volunteer in the future. I understood why my father spent his life working for schools like that.

The Nest

Yesterday I gave lots of love to some babies at an orphanage, just for a little while. We had gone to pick up my niece from her community service. The place is called ‘The Nest', and if you are in Nairobi, you should go to their baby village and hold the babies there. They really appreciate it, looking up at you with their big eyes and reaching up, up. I think about all the babies, all the ones that don’t survive, all the ones that do, all of them becoming, moving around like us on the planet. My heart opens. I hope yours does too. I think really all we can do is allow for it and see what the consequences are.

The final message of Sandalwood and the Full Moon Eclipse which kept me up last night: I’m thankful for this experience and the ease with which I can be free.

(Originally posted January 21st, 2019)

Sensing into Autmn: Venus Retrograde, Full Moon in Taurus and Shadow Work

The leaves are falling, the flowers are sleeping in their seeds, and we are turning inwards again on the wheel of the year. I flew to Geneva again for some seasonal work, leaving behind the golden mountains of home, and jetlag has given me some strange productive hours. There are many things I want to share, for the first time in a while, and I will try to weave them all together here.

Shining Light on Our Darker Places

Yesterday the Sun moved into Scorpio, shining light on our darker places, the obsessions we'd rather not have and the pain we would rather bury sometimes. But I've been there for a while; Venus has been retrograde for a few weeks and she's been bringing me events from the past to survey, times when I didn't feel good enough or loved enough. Tonight, at the Full Moon in Taurus, Venus will cross paths with the sun, forming one of the points of her star shaped movement through the sky and reflecting back to us the beauty of our wounds. I've been working with my shadow for a while now, since she first went retrograde at the beginning of October, and this time around she's brought to me an even deeper compassion for my darker places.

Existential Kink

A gentle place to start exploring the shadow is through the book by Robert Johnson, a Jungian thinker and analyst, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche (1991). He explains what the shadow is in a reassuring way, from the perspective of its Jungian source; we all have one, it's okay, we can represent it for ourselves in concrete ways in the material world and rise above it's tendency to bite us back when we are least expecting it. I didn't begin with a gentle exploration of the shadow though; I jumped right in a few years ago with a practice I learned from Carolyn Elliot, in her course INFLUENCE, which she has coined Existential Kink, EK for short. This practice basically entails allowing your body to find its ecstasy through the fulfillment of desires it usually refuses, in a completely safe way and on its own terms. It's based on the premise that having is a sign of wanting and it turns around our tendency to feel like the victims of our lives. Allowing the body to relax into and enjoy the painful events of the past is liberating in a way that is hard to explain - you have to try it! It's probably best to hear Carolyn herself talk about it:

https://www.dreamfreedombeauty.com/witch-carolyn-elliott-on-shame-the-heroines-story-why-not-to-be-careful-what-you-wish-for-episode-54/

I think she's writing a book about it, so hopefully more people will have access to this powerfully transformative way of dealing with trauma. The practice has felt especially healing for me lately, so this Venus retrograde in Scorpio period that I was apprehensive about has actually been extremely liberating. I feel more free and accepting of the past then I ever have before, which is helping me be less troubled by the troubling events of our present, if that makes sense. There is a breath in, a breath out, and a real reaping of my introspective work, which has often been heavy and daunting, lasting for days if not for months sometimes. Phew. Shadow work pays off.

Not Blindly Giving Our Power Away

On the plane over I read another Robert Johnson book, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection (2008). This short book was also very healing, and I learned again the importance of recognizing when we are putting our gold into someone else's lap, and the need to be conscious about drawing our soul light back, standing in our own light when we can, and not blindly giving our power away because we don't want to or are unable to hold it. In the sky, in the dark, I held my light in my lap and cried, one step closer to accepting myself and my life's learning journey. I wrote this poem a few months ago, but it expresses this current calling back to myself of my desires:

So I'm calling all my desires back to myself,
Every one wanted and then refused.
Every cell, blood red, that went out to gather
Vampire-like, ill-used, I call back to myself.
Every body touched and hurt
in darkness, every sun that shown
on my desired one, every wish fulfilled or spurned
every one, I call back to myself, as one.

I think it's a spell. I suppose I cast it back then, and now, here I am living it. I'm grateful, a step closer to feeling my wholeness, which I sometimes forget is there.

Embodied Earthiness

The sensuousness of these experiences are brought to you thanks to this Full Moon in Taurus, where she shines ample and worthy, embodied earthiness. See if you can feel into any of the discomfort she might illuminate. It might appear in the form of frustration, anger or animosity towards yourself or others. She is conjunct Uranus at the moment too, so our feelings may feel especially electric, new, or charged. As you sound them, see if you can use this energy to shine a light in the darkness and bring a playfulness to your story, however challenging it may be.

Lunar Wisdom

Enjoy her healing light tonight! Some lunar wisdom I've enjoyed reading that moves in the same direction as this and might bring you even more healing introspection are:

Sabrina Monarch, at Monarch Astrology
Mystic Mama, at http://www.mysticmamma.com/astrology-full-moon-in-taurus-october-24th-2018/
and Anandashree Astrology, for a soothing Vedic take https://www.anandastrology.com/blog/full-moon-soak-it-up-ashwini-vedic-astrology

If you want more of my writing on the shadow journey, as Persephone's choice, read https://badwitch.es/heroines-journey-persephones-choice-embracing-shadow-rewriting-myth/

A prose piece of mine, “Origins", which is largely the product of my own work with shadow and myth, was just published in Dark Mountain: Issue 14, TERRA, https://dark-mountain.net/product/dark-mountain-issue-14-terra/

I'll be writing more as the flowers are sleeping! I'm looking forward to sharing. Keep connecting! Our sparks in the dark.

(Originally published October 24th, 2018)

Eclipses, Flowers, Flow

I was able to make three new essences on the July 27th lunar eclipse, with some help. Virginia Trumpet, Honeysuckle Rose, and Mint. I'll post them on the Flower Essences page soon.

Remake The World

I've been staying in a perfect little French village for the past week with one of my oldest and best friends. I love our discussions. We “remake the world" as you say in French, and talk about our true struggles, with life, with the meaning of things, with how to change, where to live, what to be. It feels very essential and necessary to me at this time.

I’m In A Garden. We Talk About Love.

Also I feel a bit out of the way, away from the maelstrom that is the world, that makes me cry, of dying birds and fires, volcanoes and violent winds. I'm in a garden. We talk about love. I have a safe space in which to observe the mental patterns and behaviors that I want to let go of.

I've read a lot of astrological commentaries about this period. I especially enjoy Aeolian Heart's useful literary and musical takes on the planets and stars and their energies, as well as Monarch Astrology's insightful probing of their meaning. AnandaShree Astrology gives her intuitive Vedic take on the sky which is soothing and purposeful.

Well Accompanied On My Way

Full Moon Eclipse

And I? I've been flowing, with the present as it presents itself and the travel as my path unrolls before me. I'm not sure where I am going, but I do feel well accompanied on my way. I'm appreciative of all my teachers, and the lessons, both the ones I wanted and the ones I didn't. I'm gathering myself together and weaving the new. I'm writing. How about you?

(Originally posted July 30th, 2018)

Summer Solstice Dreams: A Golden Heart in a Sieve

Inge Prader

I didn't post on the new moon. I've been in a very interior place and it's been hard to know what to bring out, to present to the light of day. Ironically, I was talking to a new mentor the other day, and she compared this time in my life to a winter time, and that is true. I'm gestating something. But still, I'd like to present a few things to you.

A Part of My Green Soul

Some new messages from the plants on my Flower Essences page: Yellow Pansy, Self-heal, Speedwell. I've been playing with making poems of the messages since this time the messages didn't come in poems but in images that I put into words, or sentences that I elaborated on. My communication with plants seems to expand and change as I change, as though they are an element of myself. Oh, of course they are! A part of my green soul. They do remind me how we are all connected, one big interwoven web of crystal consciousness, with or without our digital web of signals and words.

The New Earth

To prepare for Solstice I stayed up late and listened to New Age videos about the New Earth and the waves of new DNA that are installing themselves in our cells. I like thinking about this total change that is happening under the surface of the repeated traumas we see as we scroll through our feeds or pay attention to the news. The plants are our allies in this. Maybe flower essences are even a way of working with this new DNA! Even if half of me listens with a skeptic smile and giggle, I love the poetic language of these space messages as transmitted by the Earth messengers. I like it enough to imagine a New Earth and that is what I meditated with, all of us in this Uranus in Taurus era, gifted with all the necessary evolutionary tools to live peacefully with one another and the plants and animals. I think I've gotten there with the snails on my window ledge. I've been letting them eat my verbena plant and contemplating their snail life. Still going slow, doing things more slowly, still with Saturn.

Moving Forward On My Own

My leg, which was bothering me, doesn't hurt anymore. I think it is because I stopped dancing and started walking on the grass barefoot after watching this video on grounding. Do it! Ok, I also used arnica salve and ice and other aids for muscle and joint healing and listened to my leg a lot. It has a lot to say about moving forward on my own and going slow too, so it must have gotten its message across.

Some summer plans fell through (a permaculture course I guess I didn't really need to do) but I've decided to stay where I am a few extra weeks before gallivanting in France to focus on writing and preparing for publication parts of my dissertation. So I might remain pretty distant from this site for a little while, but it's just me taking care of older business as I brew what's new. But I'll be thinking of you and wishing you well. Enjoy the flower messages! And the precious warmth of the sun.

(Originally posted June 22nd, 2018)

A New Dress On: Full Moon in Sagittarius

I've been thinking that this full moon feels like putting a new dress on, and this was confirmed in Mystic Mama's recap of the moon's influence:

Newness and freedom, a new dress with nothing else on.

“And ELLIAS LONSDALE Star Spark for this Moon’s degree is: “A man with green skin. He is dressed in leaves."

I've been hearing of people leaving the material plane more frequently lately, some by choice, others not, and I get it. This transition for some (Uranus in Taurus) is better done in a concrete way. Let me just go. Then some new people are coming too, babies in this new era, so there is continuity. Personally I feel neither young nor old, like I'm floating between, neither done nor begun. How are you feeling?

Checking In

In the morning I remember to check in with my physical body, my emotional body and my mental body. Everyday there is a differing combination of sensations and feelings and thoughts. I check in with this new dress I am wearing. Today I am fasting. I usually fast with the new moon, if I am not feeling poorly, but I feel this full moon needs a fast, to be more aware of the newness. I'll drink herbal teas and listen in. In terms of work, this work, soul work, seems like the most important work, and I'm glad I have the time to do it.

I Am Taking In, I Am Giving Back

Studying astrology: I've been feeling overwhelmed, so I'm going slow. Also, I'm a bit confused amid the signs and synchronicity, I need to take some time. I've been meditating daily and remembering that I'm held between the Earth and the stars and other Planets, which helps; as above, so below. I've been doing yoga everyday to remember I am grounded and rooted and to pay tribute to Saturn with discipline. I've been walking and remembering that I am watched by the plants, that they are company, and they tell me things, mostly their surprise at the city that is growing up around them. I agree, it is a bit shocking. I miss the countryside. But then, here in Geneva, I've enjoyed seeing how people save trees, the roads are enlarged around them, the grasses are left to grow high, the insects and butterflies come by, the snails move across my windowsill, and each morning and evening I take in the song of birds singing to the sky. The smells of blossoms make fragrant rooms in this city that I walk through. Breathing I remember I am taking in, I am giving back.

Speedwell Essence

I've been taking Speedwell essence and remembering to be gentle with myself. I've been singing some. I'm really thankful for my teachers. What are you thankful for?

And I've started drawing plant portraits for a presentation I will make when I'm back in Vermont in the fall. It's amazing how their individual planty-ness (I wrote personality first but that's not right! ) pops out. I'll post some!

Blessings of smoothness in all this newness and enjoy your new dresses on.

(Originally posted May 29th 2018)

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)

Healing into Taurus with Uranus: Wholeness, My Lyme, and a Desire to Define

Paul Manship: The Flight of Europa

It is still Taurus season and I'm still in Geneva, weathering the New Moon and Uranus entering the bull's sign rather well. It feels epic, actually. The change and me, all of it in relation to the Earth. I'm riding a bull into the horizon as the sun sets. I'm excited about it. It feels lush and perhaps chaotic, yes, but also genius and creative, productive and juicy, like a big, messy peach. I'm excited to see where it takes me.

We Are All Healers

My friend Mayumi just shared on her blog what she feels about healing and it created quite a response in me (since then she has erased this post but I still highly recommend you read her take on what it is like to be human - basically she said that none of us really need healing), so I thought I would share my thoughts about it too, especially since I call myself a plant spirit healer and I talk about healing journeys. It's true it's a trendy word, but I can't think of a better way to describe my life, a healing journey. I agree that healing is not something that can come from outside of me, but I have had a lot of help along the way. I like to use the word. I think we are all healers healing each other, but I agree that the impetus must come from our own souls wanting to stretch and grow again into the wholeness from which we came.

On Wholeness

On wholeness: After reading Mayumi, I went on a little research adventure to find out about the word ‘to heal'. It comes from the Proto-Germanic word hailjan, a word meaning ‘to make whole', which later was applied to Jesus' holy touch. In Old English he was haeland, a healer, one who makes whole. In French we don't have that word; we have guérir and soigner, which come from, respectively, words that meant “to protect" and “to worry about". But that's what we want to do when we love someone, and love makes whole, as Jesus taught.

Energy Healing

On the Energy Healing I am learning: it is very clear, when we do it, and as we learn to do it, that the person's soul is in charge of the healing that is happening. The healer is a conduit for Source which guides the soul in its healing. The only healing that happens is healing that the soul wants. But still, we need that impetus; our souls do sometimes need that guidance and help, which makes me think that healing is ultimately about connection, and love, even in its harshest and most invasive modern forms. Anytime I practice on someone, I also feel healed, so the healing is mutual.

Paul Manship: Dancer and Gazelles

I also wanted to write about my healing episode that happened just when Uranus entered Aries 7 years ago. I've been thinking about that period because according to an astrologer I like to read, it is the key to understanding the Uranian era that is ending and the one that is coming in. In early Spring, 2011, I got a swollen knee that turned out to be a rather extreme symptom of Lyme's Disease. I don't really remember what happened during the three months that I was healing from Lyme (I couldn't really walk and I slept a lot), but I did heal from it, and I'm wondering why. A lot of people don't. What I do remember is being completely preoccupied with listening to my body, with the healing process. I spoke to and meditated with my knee and my entire body. I took antibiotics which made me want to die. I stopped eating wheat and dairy. I ate six cloves of garlic a day and a lot of echinacea tincture. It was before I had met the flowers, so I wasn't working with them yet, but I wanted to try everything I could. I saw a rheumatologist and got to look at the liquid that he took out of my knee with a huge needle. I also had a lot of help from body workers, several kinds. I got lots of lymphatic massage and regular Grinberg Method sessions. I had a session with Avi Grinberg himself (who is also all about teaching others to heal themselves) who was so completely inappropriate with me, as a “healer" - he rather rudely told me I wanted to die - that I got incredibly angry, and I think maybe that cured me. Incidentally, he was right, I did want to die, profoundly, and it wasn't just the antibiotics, it was a general metaphysical approach to life and it wasn't working.

Learning from Lyme

I learned a lot from Lyme, which got me thinking that illness is a gift that comes to teach us something, whether or not it takes us away. And I did survive, through to this new Uranian cycle. I remember at the time feeling also that my Lyme, which I got from a field in Vermont where the deer roam (I remember the day it probably happened, the desire to walk barefoot out into the field, towards the forest, prime tick territory, in shorts!) was actually a gift from the deer, and they have always been one of my protective spirit animals.

Remembering Our Connection to Everything

The plants have taught me that healing happens only as I can open up to it in my own body with my mind. The plants help me open to it, and since I can speak to the plants, I can help the plants help other people open to it. That's why I call myself a plant spirit healer. But you can become one too, you just need to learn to listen. Maybe it was my Lyme that taught me how to listen. I suppose healing for me is basically about remembering our connection to everything, our wholeness, mending the separation we feel before we go to the place where there is no separation, where we are all going anyways, when the soul is ready to go. In the meantime, I think the soul enjoys learning, in the myriad ways that this manifests, through pain, joy, suffering, health, illness, fatigue, disease and ultimately death. At least that is how I think of it, my healing journey.

Gustave Moreau: Europa and the Bull

I made two new essences on Beltane: Speedwell and... Self-Heal! How appropriate. Descriptions will be up on my Flower Essences page soon.

May all your journeys be sweet and the darkness as complete as you need it to be to integrate your healing!

(Originally posted May 16th, 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)

Magical Mullein

Happy New Moon in Aries! This is a powerful new moon for new beginnings. Here in Vermont the leaves are still only thoughts in the minds of the trees. I'm still sitting by the fire and wondering how white tomorrow's morning will be. I haven't called down the moon yet, though my intentions have been made, and I've thought of what I want to release.

Meet Mullein

I want to share with you something that happened on a full moon last fall when I gathered Mullein. Have you met Mullein? I have been traveling with her for a while, with her root. I did so intuitively, but recently I learned that doing so protects healers, so that’s appropriate. Her root is smoothly curved, and she sits by my bed or under my pillow. She has been calming my lymph, and I chewed her for toothache. I made a wonderful oil with her leaves, which despite growing mold and repeatedly calling to be peeled back while infusing, has calmed my friend’s large thyroid and, put in my bath, made me feel like I was turning green, green with life and pleasure, energy and health. I highly recommend you meet Mullein!

Messages From Mullein

In the moonlight she called to me, tall stalk and soft leaf. She's a weed, but my father lets her grow tall. She likes to grow by the old stone wall across the road and near our garage, rearing two, three friends. She reminds me of a he, actually, with her tall yellow stalk, standing erect and proud. She grows above our heads. Her dried stalks used to be used as candles by witches who dipped them in wax, I've read.

I pulled her out of the ground, turned her stalk around and she was a staff as I talked to the moon. She said:

The roots are the trees are the roots.
I'm underground
and the moon is the sun
and the dark is the light
and inside is outside
and fire is night
the day is the dark
and the night is the day
and I'm sitting her mooning
my sun tan away.
The winter is spring when you're the other way round
and bedtime is morning
when the stars shine on the ground.

Gather at the roots, she told me, gather at the roots.

Unearthing The Lesson

There are lots of lessons there, about embracing paradox, and going deep with each other, of spending more time in the dirt and with friends.

I enjoyed the feeling of the night on my skin and the small sound of the wind and the bigger sound of the water. It was November, almost exactly six months ago, and it was the Beaver full moon. I thought of the beavers, and I felt so alone here without all the animals that used to roam.

On this new moon in April, a cold early spring, I remember the promise of Mullein, how she will grow, and fill myself up with soil and seed.

(Originally posted April 16th, 2018)