A Nature Worshippers Guide to Summer Solstice
Bringing in the longest day, Summer Solstice aligns us for a shimmering moment with the bright energies of noon and the high tide of the Heart channel itself. It is also a critical pivot point in the almanac, the beginning of the end, and the commencement of the 15 days of peak summer observances that make up this bright, luminous portal.
Wind in the Element of Wood
Through winds lift the kite teaches us how to be both adaptable and creative in the play of force. It demonstrates responsive beauty and malleable strength as it reads the lift and drag, leaning in to dive, turn and rise as its run exceeds its weight and it touches heaven. Navigating not by brutality or determination but by leaning into every nuance of its environment, and choosing to be creative with all that it finds. Knowing this as the step-by-step process that builds great things.
War, Conflict & Violence
There are 32 ongoing conflicts in the world right now ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars. The intensity of each brings us face to face with the blueprint of anger, division, violence, power and control. Each one a village whose leaders and influencers are hungry for ownership, and whose actions have stripped the community of its commonality, and so poisoned the village Well … from the inside.
Early Spring & Young Wood
Through submission to any blockage or challenge experienced, we discover (or release) our true power in accordance with it. Viewing an obstacle as the tangible vehicle through which we become unstuck helps us to grow with an openness that makes anything possible.
“When obstacles are insurmountable
open to the teaching”
I Ching
Lessons from the Spring Equinox
Through Springs's lens, we are neither darkness NOR light instead, we are darkness AND light. We are at the cross-over point of the figure 8 of the Lemniscate, where the Spring winds come to collect their seed cargo and gather themselves for the work ahead.
Farewelling Winter
As we enter the final weeks of August and the end of the Yin cycle, we acknowledge the end of a period of intense inner work and change, reflecting on where we have thawed the Heart and opened the mind to the ‘More’ that is potential within us come the Spring.
The Water Element Vs Alice in Wonderland
I often think of Lewis Carolls Alice in Wonderland as being a wonderfully watery metaphor for the journey of winter. The rabbit hole itself suggests depth and darkness as it crosses the threshold between the outer and inner worlds. Alice is passing bookshelves and cupboards as she falls; the knowledge gained and the things stored away, before falling into a dream-like sleep where time slows and she experiences a separation from the conventional rules of the real world, entering the underworld of mysteries, riddles, enigmas … and Water.
Celebrating Imbolc
Imbolc represents the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. It is the stirring and awakening of the energy of the Yin deep cycles of Winter and Autumn when the dark hag, the Cailleach, shapeshifts into Brigid the Maiden.
The Water Element
Water remains the centre of the world, as much for our ancestors as for ourselves, the medium through which all energy is exchanged be it sunlight and the process of photosynthesis in plants, the sacred fluids in which we are conceived, grown and birthed, or the state to which death will take us, back into the ocean of the divine. It will carve a valley from a mountain as easily as it creates a mountain from a valley, levelling as it goes, and returning all to harmony. No matter where you look in nature, you will find Water balancing out the extremes to ensure the well-being of the entire tapestry.
Finding True Stillness
Within the Yin signature of Winter comes access to the most profound openness and the pure creation of the void. Acquiesce to life as it breaks down the walls to unleash the best of what we can be, and if we can show up with honesty and trust the way will always be easy.
Overcoming obstacles
When hardship, obstacle or defeat make us small it can feel like the very winter of things. This is a Water Element message of optimism without judgment, and the silver lining we have yet to see. On the pathway of the seasons and the Taoist way we discover; it is all good.
Navigating the Water Element
Winter wants us to live without boundaries, like a vast ocean, or the space between the stars. It wants us to live in the intelligence of discomfort and let the whispers of what needs to change swirl around us, with no limits on who we are or who we might become.
Introducing the Water Element
Of all the Five Elements water is the hardest to truly know. Ruling the channels of the Kidney and Bladder housed in the back of the body, Water has a depth and an intangibility to it. Something that cannot ever be fully known or explored, held in your hands, or still long enough to understand.
Death, divorce and Autumn.
Late Autumn Nourishment
Know your daily bread, understand what you nourish and what you cling to in your many small ways, and realign yourself in this last pulse of seasons of surrender for late winter is carry on baggage only.
The Seasonal Journey
If you think about the Five Element Theory like a rich unfolding spiral, a ladder to the stars, a celestial helix of evolutionary layers, it suddenly takes on a richer dimension. It is oversimplified to think we run on a single-dimensional wheel as we move between Summer and Winter, when in fact we are walking the spiralling arms of a labyrinth, stepping up, up, and up through our life experiences on our own uniquely evolving path.
Samhain & the Five Element Theory
The Samhain energy holds a palpable descent as it enters the Yin half of the year, the left hand of darkness, and the potent threshold of the deep feminine cycle. Everything begins and ends in the darkness.
An axe in the forest
The eclipse portals, some of the most powerful evolutionary gateways we experience here in our earth skins, can act on us like giant slingshots, hurtling us forward along our timelines, or calling us in and back to the point of return. As the steel blade that prunes the vine to its original sincerity may slow its mighty progress, but only because it is shaping it for its future.
The Metal Element & the Eclipse Cycle.
The status quo of our lives, shaken from the inside out feels the thunderous shift on the horizon as Autumn's quest for purity rings throughout the valley of the eclipse portal asking us to reflect on how we got here, and where we will go next.
Harvest in the Phase of Metal
Life among the summarizing, distilling, and purifying currents of Autumn is here and calling us to account. A series of seasonal and cosmological events await us in the coming months, as well as the joy of turning up to your practice knowing you are spinning it into Gold. Such is the Element of Metal.