Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Christmas gratefuls: Children, all the children. Christmas Trees. Wassail bowls. Yule logs. Mistletoe. Holly and Ivy. The whole pageant of pagan appropriations. Merry Christmas, everyone. Snow. Ice. Wherefore art thou? Shadow of the morning. All those who are alone, bereft, unloved on this day in particular. Friends and family. Wild Neighbors and the Rocky Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara, Marilyn and Irv

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Tara brings all black, curly haired puppy Eleanor and all white, curly haired Kingsley; they run down the stairs yin and yang on four legs, out the back door and into doggy freedom, while they play Tara and I talk. Humans, eh?

A Christmas edition of Ancientrails. Nostalgia carries me into Christmas, any Christian embers long extinguished. The pagan accretions, the family and friends celebrating. Yes. The incarnation. No.

Jacquie Lawson, the e-card company, puts out a fun animated Advent calendar and I buy one each year. It’s heavy on traditional Christmas themes like Snow, sledding, Santa, hot chocolate, with a soupcon of baby Jesus. This year’s version had an English village setting with the village gaining buildings as the days progressed. A sweet immersion in the parts of Christmas that still matter to me. Very well done.

Yule makes more sense to me with its Evergreen Trees, Holly, and Ivy. Its emphasis on Fire as the human imitation of Great Sol. Wassailing, feasting, singing songs. Celebrating the essential and inextricable relationship between humans and their parents: Mother Earth and Great Sol.

So throw that Yule log on the Fire, drink from a flagon made of Elk Horn, listen to the lute and the zither, and sing the night away into the coming of the light. You pagan you.

 

In saying my piece about the difficult realms of my inner world I put them out there, on the page, away from the clanging cauldron of my doubts. They no longer have the power of hidden things. Does not make them dissolve, no.

Yet. Their power diminishes in the air. Looking back to yesterday’s post, I can see them as part of my larger whole, and only part. That alone puts them in conversation with the strength of my will, with the love of friends and family, with  the sacred energy of my nephesh which joins  my Self to the collective unconscious. In that broader, richer context the self-insulting and self-negating thoughts have to contend with years of reflection and self-understanding. Their obscurantism evaporates, sending them back to their subterranean homes in Kubla Khan’s caverns measureless to man (sic).

Also, when they’re out folks can raise them with me. Diane helped me today with two stuck places: exercise. I committed to resistance work only for the next few weeks. Being weak really bugs me. She also helped me see that reading and writing can indeed be my purpose now. Thanks, cuz.