– A Time of Dreaming –
We have crossed the threshold of Winter Solstice. But, darnit, it is still dark! We called in the light in holy ceremony, but where is the actual light?
The ‘pull’ towards the abyss has ceased. We have had our brush with the great shadow, sat through our lessons with Grandmother Darkness. Some of us have even plummeted into and crossed the Abyss. Those that have plummeted and not returned have passed on to other worlds, to be mourned by those left in this one. What do we do with all these leftovers from the Death feast of the season passed?
To understand this, we can look at the Wheel of the year in a few different ways. Firstly as this big wheel with huge powers on it’s opposite sides, of Sun and Moon, Light and Dark, Life and Oblivion. Creation. Disintegration. The closer we are on the wheel to one of those powers, the more we are under it’s influence. So, it being just post Winter Solstice, we are still heavily under the influence of the great shadow – but in a different way than before.
Different, because the great Wheel is moving. There is a movement. When we are before a pole like the sun or moon, we are being pulled towards it. Once we have crossed it’s center, we have been released. The great event is over and all the ‘making sense of things’, repositioning, realignment, refinding, digesting.. all that after-the-event stuff happens. We are now riding on momentum. The light may be dawning but it won’t be until Spring Equinox, one of the balance points between the poles, before the Sun is able to catch us up in his infectious spell and pull us towards his massive heart.
Back at the time of Samhain, when the great gates to the yawning Abyss opened, it was a time to release, as the great forces of the void pulled us, inescapably in. We went into stasis, the time between Death and Life. During that stasis, under the influence of the sacred darkness, some Thing built up and happened. Some alchemy occurred. An event, which peaked and then made room for a pin hole of light to return and begin to expand.
So now, after the Solstice, there is another release while the light enters. We, tired again from the drama of conception, rest in the unfathomable womb of the angelic mother as our guardian spirits move in to dream with us the dreams of our new incarnate existence. Therein is the gentle complexity of a life’s layers being grown. There is the simplicity of lying fallow under the inexorable, slow dawning of the nurturing sun.
We are preparing for the moment when we nail down our intentions with the naked force of our honest will – or more gently put, plant our seeds. This happens on Imbolc, Feb 1st.
But true intentions cannot come before the dreaming. We are still dreaming.
As we sleep, inspiration touches us, sending reverberations into the bones of who we are. There arises a yearning for what is next in the truth of what we are. More inspiration comes and this yearning, an open space, a ‘need fire’ as they say in the runic alphabet, combined with the love of the inspirational spirits, (this sublime safety we feel with them which gives birth to devotion) this, altogether forms a seed.
A most precious seed of life, dreamt in the most sacred way. For we do not create in this world as humans. We co-create.
Such is the sublime ecstasy of living.
by Tasara
