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Honoring the Mysteries of Samhain
Posted on: Oct 24, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Excerpt: Path of She Book of Sabbats
Your journey of soul brings you face-to-face with profound endings and weighty choice making at Samhain. Nature’s death-like state and the potent mysteries of Samhain draw you into the deep roots of your spiritual journey as you embark on a new cycle of healing and personal growth.
Nature makes its final transitions into its winter mode of dormancy at Samhain. The outer appearance of things changes dramatically. Deciduous trees shed the last of their leaves. Some plants and animals die. Others alter their life patterns, slowing down their metabolism, putting on a thick winter covering, and hibernating. Sleep and stillness spread across the wild landscape.
Our human realm also turns its awareness toward death and endings. The final crops of the season are harvested. Cultures around the world celebrate and honor their beloved ancests at this time of year. Halloween traditions and imagery harken back to the pagan belief that the veil between the worlds is thin at Samhain, allowing for communion between the living and the dead.
Yet endings are not what they appear to be. The death-like state of Nature at Samhain is an illusion. Yes there is physical death in the wild world, but there is also gestating new life. Underneath the outer dormancy, life is present, resting and rejuvenating in preparation for the glorious rebirth of Spring.
So too the profound endings that arise as you embark on a new cycle of your journey of soul contain the promise of new beginnings. And like the natural world retreating deeper into darkness at Samhain, your journey takes you deeper into the mysteries of the sacred dark.
Hecate is not the evil cartoon hag of Halloween and Hollywood movies, nor the corrupter of men portrayed in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. She is more primal and powerful than the Goddess that comes to us through Greek mythology, though Her crossroads magic is preserved in these mythic accounts.
Hecate is the Dark Mother who has been with us from the very beginning of our specie’s birth from the starlit realm into our flesh and blood form. And She has guided us always in the ways and mysteries of the sacred feminine, and in the trials and triumphs of our spiritual evolution.
Her crossroads can reveal many things, from the critical juncture we collectively face in these Great Turning times of societal upheaval and transformation, to the profound endings and new beginnings that will guide your personal pathwork in the months to come.
In Hecate’s loving presence and the potent mysteries of Samhain, you can choose your path forward into Her life-centered ways and your greater becoming. And in this choice making, you can naturally play your part in the positive, evolutionary momentum we can create together in these Great Turning times.
Honor the Mysteries of Samhain
with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Artwork by Menton J Matthews III
Lammas: Harvesting Your Soul Lessons
Posted on: Jul 24, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Lammas marks the end of the current cycle of your journey of soul. The wheel of the year has turned from darkness and death, through light and life, and now shines out the last of this season’s light before a new cycle begins. So too you’ve come to the end of one turning of your journey; it’s time to harvest its bounty of life lessons and personal growth, and to seek out the seeds of your next cycle.
At Lammas, the summer sunshine has baked the land a golden yellow. Fruits, berries and grains bend branches and stalks with their plump ripeness, ready to offer up their bounty to the harvest. Yet the outer look of things can be deceiving. Day by day, the light wanes and the dark waxes; cold will soon replace heat, and the powers of death overtake those of life. The balance has shifted, and the abundance that is now so evident will soon be gone.
This theme of self-chosen sacrificial death in support of life and rebirth infuses the mythic roots of Lammas. The Corn King, John Barleycorn and the Harvest King are some of the names given to the sacrificial God who gathers His energy into the crops that are cut down at Lammas to feed the living and to ensure a new harvest in Spring. In Celtic mythology, the Goddess Tailtiu cleared the land for cultivation as a gift to the people, and died from Her tremendous efforts. Lammas is also called Lughnasadh, in reference to the Celtic God Lugh. Tailtiu is Lugh’s foster mother, and legend has it that Lugh instituted a Lughnasadh harvest festival and games in Her honor.
It is Lugh — the Shining One, the many-skilled God, bearing His Sword of Light — that illuminates your Lammas harvest pathwork. Lugh meets you on a hilltop, offering you a wide-ranging viewscape that can help you see deep into the heart of your life story, and deep into the heart of the struggles of the Mother Earth, as one cycle of your journey of soul and one turning of our collective humanity end, and a new cycle and turning begin. In these profound mysteries of life, death and rebirth, Lugh is your luminescent, loving guide as you embrace the incisive, demanding, and often painful tasks that Lammas asks of you.
At its core, Lammas is a season of hope and the miracle of new beginnings. In the golden field that is your life story, you can find everything you need to heal your soul, transform your life and mend our world. Within you are the lessons, endings and seeds of a powerful new beginning that can lead you ever closer home to your Deep Self and authentic humanity.
Celebrate Lammas with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Artwork by Qistina Khalidah
Celebrating the Summer Solstice
Posted on: Jun 12, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Excerpt from Path of She Book of Sabbats.
At the Summer Solstice, your journey of soul invites you to blossom, shining forth the true essence and beauty of your Deep Self into the sunlit world of your everyday life. Emulate Nature in this summer season of generosity and abundance by cultivating your soul-sourced authenticity and sharing your best gifts and qualities with others.
The Solstice marks the first day of Summer and a peak in the powers of light before the scales tip once more toward the dark. Nature grants us a heady display of its fully unfurled beauty and overflowing munificence. From the mighty oak tree with its vast, green canopy to the fledgling robin casting itself from the nest, what is inside, the unique, luminescent spark of Creation within each living being, seeks its destined place in the sunlit world.
Midsummer festivities are part of our ancestral heritage and are still celebrated around the world. Bonfires are lit, honoring the brilliance and fertility of the summer sun. Merriment, music, dancing and feasting abound, reminding us to take pleasure in the good things in life while the days are long and hot, and the natural realm shares its plentitude.
The life-centered ways of the Goddess and the sacred feminine are revealed in this plentitude. The Mother Earth holds us in Her loving, generous embrace, showering us with beauty and nourishment for our hungry bellies and souls.
The robin cannot help but embrace its powers of flight, navigating the air space on its outstretched wings. The oak cannot help but burst forth from the acorn, sending its brown roots earthward and its green arms skyward. We cannot help but reach for our place in the greater world, drawing on the essence and gifts of our Deep Self. We may repress and truncate this primal soul imperative, yet our innate, unquenchable desire to flourish in our own unique way remains, ready to bloom outward, in all its brilliance, into a waiting world.
At the Summer Solstice, the Divine power that waits for you is your own Goddess Self who holds your remembrance of the ways and mysteries of the sacred feminine. She resides within the core of your being, connecting you with your inherent, indisputable beauty, worthiness and sacred purpose. She will show you the parts of your beauty and purpose that are ready to blossom, and will guide your journey of soul as you cultivate this blossoming in your everyday life.
When you offer your very best to the communal table of humanity, in a spirit of grace, goodness and generosity, you are making abundance a real, substantive part of your life and the greater environment of your family, workplace and community, and encouraging others to do the same. From these small and big changes, an ethos of abundance can take root and flourish in our human society where there is enough love and nourishment to feed, mend and transform our lives and our world.
Summer Solstice excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats. Available in paperback and e-book at Amazon. Click here to purchase.
Make your own transformative magic for the summer season with the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess. The Summer Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of summer’s teachings about abundance, goodness, self-love and blossoming.
Your Summer Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Summer Journey Guidebook and Summer Journey Journal, and the Summer Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).
The cost of this integrated Summer Journey package is available at the Path Store for $16.99. Click here to purchase.
A Beltane Meditation: Making Life with the Green Man
Posted on: Apr 28, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
For everything there is a season, and Beltane is the time to embrace your life-making instincts for the new and beautiful to take root and flourish in your world. Whatever you seek, the Green Man will give to you, for He is the lover-God whose ardor can spark new life and possibilities.
On Beltane, in the heat of daylight hours, seek out a patch of the wild world where you can privately commune with Nature, preferably with soil at your feet and the sky overhead. Make sure this is a space where you feel safe and comfortable to go deep. If you can’t be outdoors, settle yourself in front of an open window that lets in ample natural light and fresh air.
Close your eyes and use your breath to ground yourself. Track the soft, sensual rhythms of your breath, slow, slow in, slow, slow out. Savor the tingling passage of air through your nostrils, filling your lungs and stretching your muscles and ribs outward, and the long, gentle release of breath, flattening your belly inward toward your spine. Follow this pattern over and over, emptying yourself of thoughts and concerns, until your body feels supple, enervated and relaxed.
Focus your consciousness in your solar plexus and then reach your awareness and senses outward toward the exuberant ways in which Nature is bursting forth new life in your part of the world. With your eyes still closed, immerse yourself in the smells and sounds of the burgeoning life around you, and the wild-world energies of sex and birth; draw these energies into your body and let them connect you to the erotic, sensual currents that infuse the Green Man’s Beltane magic.
Take a few minutes to check in with yourself in this exchange. Beltane energy is edgy and intense, and can sweep you off your center or dredge up any shame or wounding you may have around your body, sensuality and sexuality. Be very, very gentle and compassionate with yourself, and only take this work as deep as is good for you at this moment.
Yet do not retreat back into the shadowy places in your psyche. For everything there is a season, and now is the time for you to embrace your life-making instincts for the new and beautiful to take root and flourish in your inner and outer landscapes. No matter your personal doubts, resistance and judgments, or those of others, know that life loves you as you are and longs for you to embrace and live from your deepest beauty.
Know that it makes no difference whether you are straight or queer, man, woman or transgendered, a blade of grass, a frog in heat or a nesting eagle — the Green Man is beloved and lover to us all.
In your inner landscape, let your wild instincts paint for you a forest wilderness decked out in its glorious, Beltane display of new growth: the bright, leaf-green canopy of trees, the musky scents of mating animals, and the melodic communion of nesting birds. Feel the heat rising from the soil, from the branches and foliage, and from the creatures of this place.
Feel a mirror heat emanating from your soul’s desire. Surrender. Become the lover that says yes to life’s embrace.
Imagine the Green Man emerging from between the trees. Take in His physical appearance, His scent and the way He moves His body. Feel how your body and heart respond to Him. Sense the energy field between you, and His magnetic pull on your body and soul. Share whatever words of welcome and communion come to you.
Abandon yourself to the love- and life-making dance that arises between you. Whatever you need, in whatever form, the Green Man will give to you, for He is the lover-God whose ardor can spark new life and possibilities within you, rooted in your deepest essence and beauty.
Do not rush this embrace. Leave behind all traces of your old stories and hurts, and anything that stops you from being fully, wondrously present and sensually engaged. Luxuriate in His delicious companionship. Savor His taste of the wilderness and the delicious joining of your outer forms and inner energies. Let Him fill you, fill you, fill you, and receive His igniting, transforming magic with your whole being, making fertile your soul’s desire to live and flourish from your Deep Self.
When this magical union feels complete, seal it with a sweet, gentle kiss. Then say goodbye to the Green Man with words of love and gratitude. Let the forest landscape fade away. Use your breath to bring you back into your physical body and waking reality. Slowly open your eyes to the bright light around you.
The shadow-side of humanity runs counter to the Green Man’s magic, and you may come up against tender, wounded places inside yourself. These things may resist and block your impetus for new growth. So be gentle, take care of yourself, but do not let the old, stuck places hold sway on your journey of soul.
You must become the lover of your own life, tending your new growth, cultivating your deepest beauty, and making the most with what you have been given. It is time to dig deep, shine bright and embrace the magnificent gift that is your Self.
Artwork by Amdhuscias
Excerpt from Path of She Book of Sabbats. Available on Amazon.
Make your own journey with the Green Man into the wild, delicious, life-making powers of Beltane with the Path of She’s Beltane Guided Meditation. Available at the Path Store for $9.99.
A Spring Equinox Meditation With Demeter
Posted on: Mar 14, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Spring has arrived and Demeter awaits you, just as She has waited for Her daughter Persephone since times immemorial. Let Her guide you in this season of equal light and dark, life and death, and joy and sorrow.
On the day of the Spring Equinox, settle yourself in a private place in your home where you won’t be disturbed. Open the window to let in the fresh spring air. Close your eyes and consciously use your breath to loosen and relax your body. When you are done, return your focus and breath to the center of your body, anchoring in your core and emptying your mind of any remaining thoughts or stress.
In whatever way this resonates with you, and where you are on your journey of soul, feel the power of this moment, inside of you, outside of you, and in the listening, waiting Cosmos.
Now imagine Demeter waiting for you, just as She has waited for Her daughter Persephone. See Her as Goddess and Earth Mother, in Her immense power, strength and queenly beauty. Let Her enfold you in a motherly embrace, knowing that you are Her beloved child, returned to Her side after your long journey of trials and sorrows. Draw in Her living-earth scents, life-affirming energies and Her infinite love. Share whatever words of connection and reunion arise between you.
Clasp Demeter’s hand and join your consciousness with Hers as She takes you far, far upward — past the swaying treetops and the deep-blue sky — beyond the outer limits of our atmosphere — into the cosmic dance of Earth, moon and sun. Witness this wondrous dance, with its perfect balance of night and day, and dark and light, taking just a tiny drop of its vastness inside of you.
Ride these mighty influences back down to the Earth’s surface, where the kiss of sunlight coaxes seedlings to cast off their winter rest and send out their tender shoots of new growth. Dive into the dark underside of the soil, where beetles, worms and microbes mix the compost of decomposing matter that nourishes the living land. Sense the lingering clutch of Winter in the deep digging roots of the trees. Again, take a tiny drop of this vast complexity inside of you.
Then follow Demeter’s awareness as it enters your inner landscape, revealing these same mysteries and complexities within you.
Sense the energetic tug of Earth, moon and sun on your flesh. Feel the equal presence of day and night, and light and dark on your psyche and core body patterns. Take in the quickening pulse of Spring coursing through your veins, enticing you with the thrill of new possibilities. Open to your own dark underside that holds your losses and suffering, and imagine it as rich compost that nourishes and guides the new growth emerging from within you. Feel the cold, wounded places inside of you that don’t want to let go and seek to cleave you to their long winter of soul.
This bigness of being is equanimity in motion. And it is this state that can take you to the other side of your story and the spiritual evolution that awaits you there.
Breathe this experience of equanimity and balance into the core of your being. Let it shift and rearrange your current state of mind to help you feel more self-acceptance and peace with the complexities and polarities of your own life story and pathwork at this moment on your journey of soul. Take your time, and lots of deep breaths, until you find your inner state of equanimity and balance.
Then gently separate your consciousness from Demeter’s. Use your breath to sink back into your personal center and field of awareness.
Demeter turns to face you. Gaze into each other’s eyes. See yourself through Her loving heart and presence. Know that She bears witness to your struggles, your strength and the hard work you have faced to come to this transformative moment. Drink in Her trust and belief in you. Take all of this mother love inside of you, and trust and believe in yourself. Express your deep gratitude for Her guidance and say goodbye. And then, in a heartbeat, She is gone.
It is time to return to the waking world, bringing this vast experience of equanimity and balance with you. Use your breath to anchor your awareness in your physical body. When you feel yourself fully returned to the sunlit reality of your everyday life, settle inside yourself and notice that something has changed. You are on the other side of your own story, with the powers of life compelling you forward into the spring of a wondrous new beginning.
Celebrate the Spring Equinox
with the Path of She Book of Sabbats
Artist: Unknown