Posted on: Jan 29, 2021 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Imbolc: A Dance of Light and Shadow
Imbolc Excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats.
At Imbolc, profound change is stirring on your journey of soul. As the seasons turn from Winter into Spring, the returning powers of light and life activate your longing for new beginnings, and coax you to leave behind the stasis of what you know to seek out new possibilities.
The Earth is waking at Imbolc, casting off Her winter cloak of cold and darkness, and prodding the natural realm to stir from its long rest at the first signs of Spring. Nothing seems certain at this time of year. Nature can be in the throes of snow and frigid temperatures, or it can offer up warm, sunny days that entice brave snowdrops to rise from the still-frozen soil. No matter how hard Winter tries to hang on, the days get steadily longer and warmer, and Nature opens itself once more to the life-giving powers of the strengthening sun.
Groundhog Day is the secular custom that coincides with Imbolc. The groundhog is a weather diviner; according to tradition, if the groundhog emerges from its hole and see its shadow then Winter will be digging in for another six weeks. If it doesn’t see its shadow, Spring is near at hand. Regardless of the groundhog’s predictions, Imbolc is a time when we turn our mind and intentions toward the seeds we would like to plant in the Spring, both in our gardens and in our life.
At Imbolc, you turn your mind to the seeds that hold the next pieces of your pathwork, sourced from the beauty and wounding of your Deep Self and life story. As you draw these seeds into the light of your conscious awareness and engagement, you will also encounter the shadow-side of the wounded, denied parts of your life and our world.
To journey on the Path of She is to accept and work with your whole/holy nature and life story, both the light and shadow, and beauty and wounding. You cannot truly change yourself or your outer world without showing up to the naked, raw truth of who you are and what you’ve experienced.
You need not be alone in this momentous task. Brigid is a mighty Goddess, with powers of healing and inspiration, who comes to us through Celtic mythology. Some tales of Brigid tell how She came to the Earth when all was blackness and chaos, and placed Her mantle around the planet, transforming it into a place of beauty. Brigid has endured through the turning times of humanity, both as Goddess and as Saint, and Imbolc is Her festival day.
These wondrous things Brigid will grant us, but we must seek Her out in Her realm between the worlds, and consciously choose to embrace Her healing ways. And we must make a vow, a soul commitment, to tend the seeds of our beauty and wounding, and to follow where they lead us on our journey of soul. She can offer us healing, wisdom and support, but only we can do the hard work of transforming our life and mending our world.
Celebrate Imbolc
with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Photo Credit: Aleksandar Kyng on Unsplash
Posted on: Jan 2, 2021 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Winter Journey: Your Rebirth Magic
Excerpt from Winter Journey: Your Rebirth Magic, this season’s offering in the Path of She Guided Series. Available at the Path Store.
Winter is like a long, slow in-breath, with the living world drawing deeper and deeper inward to death and dormancy as the days get darker and colder. The Winter Solstice is the still, held breath of the longest night, a moment when it can feel as if the cold, dark of Winter will last forever, and then the balance shifts back to the returning dawn light of a new solar year.
Nature gifts us with a profound stillness and silence. The outward signs of life are stripped down to bare bones. Plants and creatures surrender to death and dormancy, retreating into the dark belly of the Earth. There’s no despair in Nature, nor any resisting, hiding or running from the inevitable and inescapable. Life comes to an end. Everything must return to its origins.
Yet this death-state of Winter is an illusion, a time of rest, rejuvenation and gestation that gives forth the light of a new dawn on the Winter Solstice, and the returning life of Spring. Death and darkness aren’t absolute endings, but more beginnings where something fresh and beautiful is reborn into the world.
To turn your mind to your inner darkness can be a scary proposition. If you’re like most everyone else, your shadow-side that holds your personal wounding resides within the hidden folds of your inner darkness. When you turn your awareness to the deep, dark places of your innermost landscape, you’re going to meet your wounded self, and the lost parts of your life story that hold your losses, pain and sorrows.
Rather than running from these parts of yourself, remember Nature’s Winter rebirth magic: new life emerges from the dark, death-like places in the belly of the Earth. What you find in the belly of your inner darkness are the makings of powerful rebirth magic.
You don’t need to make this journey alone. The Dark Goddess is your teacher in these life-transforming mysteries of darkness, death and rebirth. The Winter is Her season and Her mysteries are most potent on Winter Solstice eve. The ancient Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna’s descent to the Underworld realm of Her sister, the Dark Goddess Ereshkigal, can guide your journey of soul as you descend into your inner darkness in search of the rebirth magic that is emerging for you at this time.
Though She is a perilous taskmaster, the Dark Goddess’s promise is to help you travel Her Underworld realm of the sacred dark, both inside you and in the greater mysteries of this world, and to help you grow into your full power and potential. Like Nature, She shows you that the ways of death, darkness and descent are inevitable, inescapable, and essential for the rebirth magic that can grant you new life and new beginnings.
Your Winter Journey, through integrated writings, activities and a guided meditation, helps you explore and embrace these powerful teachings, and make them your own as you embark on your own rebirth magic from the darkness into the light of a new you.
Out of darkness and death, light and life are reborn. So too the light of your beauty is reborn from the depths of your wounding. Let these life-changing truths inspire and guide your Winter Journey.
Winter Journey – Your Rebirth Magic: Braving Your Inner Darkness
Turn Inwards ~ Discover Your Rebirth Magic ~ Make Your Life Anew
Let the Dark Goddess and Nature guide you in this season of darkness, death and rebirth magic.
Your Winter Journey includes: two pdf ebooks the Winter Journey Guidebook and Winter Journey Journal, and the Winter Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).
Posted on: Dec 28, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Walk the Path: The Yes of New Year’s Resolutions
The turning of the calendar year closely follows the beginning of a new solar cycle at the Winter Solstice. Traditionally this is a time to make New Year’s resolutions.
On the Path of She, we work with yes magic. Yes is the most powerful magical word in our vocabulary. It is the word that the Universe pays closest attention to. Say ‘yes’ and doors of possibilities open. Say ‘yes’ from the depth of soul, and we can transform our life.
Yes magic aligns the dynamo powers of desire (what we want) and will (our ability to make things happen) through a specific, consciously chosen intention. When we make a New Year’s resolution, we’re focusing our will by setting our intention for the coming calendar year. This is a perfect opportunity to use yes magic in service of our journey of soul.
In setting your New Year’s resolution, spend some time turning inward to your own sacred darkness. Tap into your desire for deep, spiritual healing and transformation and see what is stirring within you at this time. What healing and personal changes are up for you right now? What are your fears and hopes for the coming year? What seeds of change emerge from the darkness to the light of your conscious awareness and engagement? What new direction do these things suggest for your spiritual pathwork?
In the coming weeks, follow through on your resolutions, backing your yes words with yes actions. In addition, continue to explore the seeds of change emerging for you. Pay attention to how they reveal themselves in the insights, dreams, issues, challenges and opportunities that come your way. Expect to be surprised, to dig into places that you would rather avoid, and to be led by mysteries that you don’t fully understand.
Even though the new solar year has begun, darkness still holds sway in the natural realm. You too are still travelling the dark ways of the sacred feminine, beyond the edge of your known world into the wondrous new beginnings that await you.
Excerpt The Path of She Book of Sabbats. Available in paperback and e-book. Check out the Path Store.
Artist: Catherine Hyde
Posted on: Dec 16, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
A Winter Solstice Meditation: Ereshkigal and the Great Below
Guided Meditation excerpt from the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
On the Winter Solstice eve, set up a cozy, private spot in your home where you can be warm and comfortable. Turn off the lights and have a candle close at hand, but do not light it. Close your eyes and begin to track the movements and sounds of your body with breath.
On every in-breath, infuse yourself with the still, quiet darkness that surrounds you. On every out-breath, release any stress you may be carrying from the holiday season. Soften your facial muscles, loosen the stiff, tight places in your body, and empty your mind of thoughts and concerns. Be with yourself in the all-encompassing dark.
Stay in your center and observe any emotional reactions that you may have. No matter what arises, be it fear, anticipation, pain or joy, just keep your breath slow and steady, and your body and awareness open and receptive. Winter Solstice work can be edgy, awakening painful, fragile places in your psyche. You travel these pathways by your free will, so set the intention to be guided by your highest good and only go as deep as is right for you at this moment.
Continue to breathe and ground, slow and steady; let go of your emotions and settle into the empty silence within you.
Like Inanna, turn your mind to the Great Below, seeking out its rebirth magic to guide your journey of soul. See a portal before you with a passageway that leads down, down, down to the realm of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. As you make your descent toward Ereshkigal’s throne room, sense yourself traversing a series of gates where invisible hands strip you of your worldly masks and pretenses, and anything else that stands between you and the new beginning awaiting you this Winter Solstice eve.
When you reach this point, you will find yourself on the threshold of Ereshkigal’s throne room. Look deep, deep inside: is there one more thing that you are still clinging to that must be surrendered to the dark? Name this thing and gently let it fall away.
Step past the threshold and stand before Ereshkigal, empty and humble. Take in your surroundings: the look and feel of the Great Below, the fearsome and beautiful presence of Ereshkigal on Her throne, and your physical, emotional and energetic responses to this sacred, powerful place.
Bear Ereshkigal’s scrutiny in silence, waiting for Her to speak and direct your engagement. This is Her sovereign realm, and you are here by Her grace and consent. Yet also stand proud and sure of yourself; you have made this descent and brave this encounter of your own volition.
Ereshkigal descends from Her throne and directs your attention to a mirror of polished, black stone. This mirror has special powers; it can reveal the parts of your inner landscape and life story that are ready to return from the shadow places in your psyche to the light of your conscious awareness.
Focus your awareness on its reflective surface, and whisper to the mirror, “show me my beauty and wounding.”
Open yourself to the images and energies the mirror reveals: the hidden gifts, dormant potential and secret desires of your beauty, along with the repressed and forgotten pain, losses and suffering of your wounding. Do not deny or push anything away. But do practice self-care, and only delve as deep into your wounding as feels right for you.
See the intertwining of your beauty and wounding, and the blessings and challenges offered by each. Spend as much time as you need to connect with these vital roots of your life story
and spiritual unfolding. Then reach for the parts of your beauty and wounding that are meant to guide your journey of soul at this time, and imagine them transforming into warm, fleshy seeds in your cupped palms. From these seeds, your pathwork of new beginnings will be born.
Hold the seeds outward for Ereshkigal’s perusal. Like Inanna, surrender yourself to Ereshkigal’s wisdom and ways. Heed Her words of guidance on the potent pathwork offered by these seeds, and let Her presence and rebirth magic settle into your flesh and bones. Though She can be a fierce and demanding taskmistress, Ereshkigal’s sacred intention is to help you transform into the fullness of your Deep Self.
If you are ready to do the pathwork revealed to you this Winter Solstice eve, bring these seeds of beauty and wounding to your lips and swallow them as a conscious act of receiving and ingesting their transformative energies. And in this powerful act, know that you have truly begun the work of mending and reclaiming your beauty and wounding, and of birthing a bright new beginning on your journey of soul.
Look one last time into Ereshkigal’s eyes as you bid Her farewell, seeing beyond Her ferocity to Her infinite love. Bow and offer Her your gratitude and reverence, for it is She who has guarded these lost parts of your life story and Deep Self, and the rebirth mysteries of the sacred dark, for the time when you would remember Her sacred presence and your own.
Use your breath to bring yourself back to waking consciousness and your physical body. Open your eyes and sit for a few minutes in the enveloping darkness. Then light a candle as a symbol of the new light and new beginning that will be born of this Winter Solstice magic with Ereshkigal. Take this light into your core, infusing the seeds in your belly with the hope and promise that from death comes new life, and from the darkest night of your wounding, the new dawn of your beauty is born.
Give yourself a gift of soul this Yule season. The Path of She Book of Sabbats takes your deep into the Winter Solstice mysteries of death, rebirth and personal transformation. Available in paperback and e-book at the Path Store.
Artwork by Christian Schloe
Posted on: Nov 4, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
When Death Arrives On Our Doorstep: A Primer for These Times
My friend comes home after an evening of dancing and moving energy with her activist friends. She’s exhausted from an intense week of community gatherings — first a Samhain ritual in honor of the beloved dead, with so many passing this year and so much collective grief in the air, and now tonight, a passionate, full-embodied group prayer for peace and justice.
All of this was a preparation for what awaits her. Death has arrived on her doorstep.
The bucks are exhausted, terrified. Fortunately she has a friend who is a gentle hunter. When he arrives, he’s able to take clean shots, killing the bucks instantly and saving them from an agonizing death. Strangely, in their dying the second stag lands on the first. In death, the combatants lie serenely on top of each other, like a pair of sleeping cats.
As sacred witness and gentle hunter, these two friends speak to the fallen bucks, pray for them, and mourn their passing.
The image of the bucks and the story I’ve just shared, in the words of my friend, appear in my Facebook feed. I stop what I’m doing, my heart wide open and broken, understanding that these bucks have gifted my friend, our community, this world, with a powerful vision that speaks to the tumultuous change of these times.
I too have been sacred witness this week, at our local Samhain ritual. In this role, I sat veiled and silent, dropped into the deep dream of our magic, watching between the worlds as the names of the dead were spoken, and our community danced a spiral in honor of the blessed newborn.
Another powerful vision that speaks to these times: a thousand deaths for a thousand births — we are living an epic death-rebirth moment
These two vision brew in me, colliding with the intense drama and building momentum of political, social, economic and environmental crises and unrest, and the mythic forces moving through our world calling us to an evolutionary, change-or-die revelation.
We know, in our flesh and bones, that things have reached a tipping point; we just can’t keep doing what we’re doing to the planet, and to each other, without dire and lasting consequences.
Take a deep breath. Feel your warm heart beating inside your precious body. Don’t despair. We’ve been heading toward this exact moment for years, decades, millennia.
This net is our known world, woven of the threads of our inner and outer conceptions of reality, and the infrastructure of culture and society. This net is everywhere, interweaving every aspect of our life in webbing that is strong, resilient and specifically designed to ensure there is no escape. Many of us call this net patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy, global capitalism.
Together in this net, we thrash about, stuck in the stories we tell ourselves about our world, each other, and this mess we’re in. We lock horns with the enemy, be it our politicians, those who hold contrary views, or who live by values and beliefs we find abhorrent. We lock horns with our inner demons and personal wounding that tangle us in our pain and our past. We lock horns with our judgments, rage, fear and despair.
Many of the stories we tell are true, and the battles are necessary to protect the Earth, the vulnerable and marginalized, and each other. Yet there’s always a combatant, across the battle lines, with a different story and agenda, ready to meet us full on. So we thrash about, terrified, exhausted, and headed for an agonizing future that will take us all down, and our planet home with us.
The sacred witness knows she can’t stop this battle. She can’t disentangle the combatants from the net. She honors death as a messy, heartbreaking business. She can only witness what is, knowing that this stuff of life — the angst and longings and beauty and horror and struggle and triumphs — is the crucible of our greater becoming and our deepest dreams coming true.
From a thousand deaths come a thousand births. Rebirth is not possible without death.
Her only desire is to ease the suffering for both sides of the struggle, and to bring a quick, clean ending. So she calls the gentle hunter to her side — to speak, to pray, to mourn, to facilitate death. This gentle hunter can be many things — a loving touch, a listening ear, an open mind, an incisive word, compassion, forgiveness, goodness, gratitude, tolerance, justice — qualities that are deep and ancient, arising from the best of our nature, outside of the net, outside of the battle.
What comes next for our humanity is unknown. We ride the razor-sharp edge of our evolution, still in the midst of the battle and the tangle of the net, and things have definitely taken a turn for the worse.
I won’t pretend that I totally understand these visions that I’ve shared. They’re new, raw, emerging out of the depth of my community’s magic, the power and presence of my friend, and my own deep-dreaming soul.
We’re combatants, tangled in the net, fighting for our life, our beloveds, the vulnerable and marginalized in our midst, and the Earth. We’re sacred witnesses and gentle hunters, bringing love and presence to the battle and the combatants. We can hold all of this, be all of this — complex, resilient, bruised, wise, powerful, loving — knowing that death will come, one way or another, because the world as we know it, the net of patriarchy, colonization, white supremacy, global capitalism, has run its course.
In these visions and realizations, I find my hope, my inspiration, and this prayer, from my open and broken heart to yours: out of our struggles, out of the pain and suffering of so many, out of the great harm we have inflicted on our Mother Earth, out of the thousands and thousands of deaths, rebirth will come; we will live once more from the love, beauty and goodness that are the best of our nature, and the world will be forever changed.
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Photo Credit: Shellyse Szakacs