Tag: Wheel of the Year

Samhain Season – Entering liminal lands

by Lynne Speight, posted in Uncategorised
Today is Dark or Old Moon in Scorpio…closing the door on the last lunation cycle, before opening into the new cycle with the Scorpio New Moon, tomorrow at 12.47UK time.
We are beckoned into deep dreaming now….
This Dark Moon is an en-couragement towards en-trance, to feel our relationship with thresholds, edges, liminal spaces, wild or howling depths, tender aching beauty…to close our eyes, to feel our senses prickling within the marrow of our feeling-bones which are awakened on this day.
And this year’s Scorpio Moon happens to be on the day we collectively nod to Hallowe’en, so there’s a vibe which is active within the collective field.
Halloween brings us towards Samhain season, an ancient nature based/pagan fire festival on the Wheel of the year.
It’s the cross quarter festival halfway inbetween Autumn equinox and Winter Solstice.
In some traditions it marked the ending of the Old year….time to look over our shoulders with a retrospective glance, to pause and dwell with the old year and all it has brought.
Our celebration and commercialisation of the Christian festival of Hallowe’en/All Hallow’s Eve on 31st.October energetically begins to bring an ambience of Samhain into the collective flow, whatever our faith or belief system.
This Samhain season, has it’s liminal crossing in today’s Scorpio Dark Moon.
It is woven with deep underworldly drives, feelings and heightened visceral senses.
This vibe is powerfully energised by a Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn opposition, at the end of each of these signs, a powerful moment…. now tightening towards it’s peak between 1-4th.November.
Potent.
We may well fully face both welcome or unwelcome truths, personally and collectively,
Beasts may be raised.
And the lurking deep knowing that all beginnings demand endings before something new may fully birth into being….it is the way of Fate and it’s spinning, measuring and cutting.
What needs to end…inner or outer…or both?
Observe and simply get familiar with your survival instincts, triggers, fears, self-protection, desires for security and defenses which we each erect to cope amidst the winds of Fate.
On a conscious level, we may wish for the deepest level of self-knowing through the empowering process of truth-seeking and enquiry.
Yet in action, engaging with this pathway demands deep courage, ruthless self-observation and commitment, faltering, hesitations, re-commitment to ourselves in all our myriad facets.
There needs to be a connection forged with deep wisdom and compassion….and a deep bond with inner or outer figures of henchmen and henchwomen .
There will be needs for pause and rest along the way (but not too long that we slip and slide backwards into habits of suspension!!).
It is a journey akin to a path through the dark woods of fairy tale and myth.
A mossy spiral staircase into the Underworld where we necessarily face other dimensions of ourselves, life and death, un-knowing and being un-done, experiences of loss and becoming lost…. all part of finding gold within the darkness.
It is on such a journey that we die to our commonly held image of ourselves….meet Fate in the void and rediscover and re-kindle the flame of who we always were, beneath the skins which needed to shed.
The beckoning towards this aspect of life thrums.
Can you feel it?
Samhain season is time to slow down, rest, simply ‘be’, look within, feel into your depths and your body and your bones, seek ever-deepening truth through peeling back the layers, be honest to yourself, foibles and all….sit in this thrumming stillness and open to revelations.
It’s the season to nourish your body and your soul, en-vision and dream, enter into trance-formation…echoing nature’s creatures now entering into their torpor or hibernation phase….nourishing themselves to sustain through their Wintering.
Blessings on Samhain ❣🍁🍂🎃

Spring Equinox

by Lynne Speight, posted in Uncategorised
Spring Equinox blessings!
The Sun entered the Zodiac sign of Aries before dawn here in England today, heralding the end of Wintering and the rising of Spring’s vital potent energy both around and within us.
Creating balance becomes really important now.
We may want to power ahead in some way, or even feel we ‘ought’. Yet this newly birthing rising sap energy also needs deep rest and reflection to generate, grow, orientate and sustain itself.
This reflects the needs of a newborn baby….for love, rich nurturing and deep sleep and dreaming as they enter life on earth and seek to orientate themselves in this new realm.
Listen….notice…be curious.
Witness what is becoming, both within and around you.
What may be unfurling upwards and outwards as a tender and vital shoot of energy emerging from your Winter’s dreaming?
Explore and nurture this essence which is calling and weaving itself through you, into being.
What may be igniting you, driving you…irritating or impassioning you towards creating change?
Attending to the need for any life adjustments, releasing and re-balancing….these are worthy of your focus at Spring Equinox.
Inner and outer Spring cleanings which enable and enhance your natural flow of energy.
And not to be forgotten…giving a nod to all you have experienced, felt, realised, processed and come through throughout the wintry months.
Wisdom gained and tucked into the pockets of your Soul.
These life wisdoms infuse and inspire the casting off of cloaks which have been shrouding who you were always meant to be.
The Unveiling of You. ❣
‘Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it’ – Goethe

ENDARKENMENT – Scorpio season and tending our roots

by Lynne Speight, posted in Transformation, Wheel of the Year

As nights lengthen and the leaves flame and fall, Scorpio season whispers to us across the veil of our everyday being. Sap descends and decaying vegetation seeps underground, nourishing roots and earth. Animals hibernate. Tending the invisible realm begins. At this time of year, we are drawn towards Life’s deep, juicy and pithy strata… deep mysteries of Fate and Free will, playing out in our shifting relationships with life, power, control and taboos. This is the realm of death, desire, sex, passion, truth, empowerment, un-doings, subterfuge, portals, trust, betrayals, hidden agendas. And…the going beyond all we may have imagined was possible in losing and re-finding ourselves.

Into Endarkenment…an echo of nature’s cycle. Heeding the call to tend our depths, perceiving and divining our own process s far, within the yearly round. We may dance with this season and enter the Underworld willingly by seeking solitude, enquiring, unfolding, undoing, revealing, with a sense of the Moirae as henchwomen at our back.

Courage is needed to pause within the stillness and potency of this fertile Void, simultaneously empty and full. Feel it, sniff it. Stay with fears of the dark and potential bogeymen and nothingness. What do you find here? This is a crucial and creative phase in our being and doing, which is frequently ignored. This pause/poise is the balance point which begins and ends the breath of life; the yin in-breath/inspiration and being phase, and the yang out-breath activity and doing. Potent.

During our lives, we may also be ‘taken down’, or taken further into the Underworld by intense or shocking life events (these phases may echo Pluto transits). Times within which we may experience a sense of dismemberment and dis-location from our known Self. Within such experiences, we are poised in profound choice…with consequences. To avoid or to engage….?

Responding with a willingness or magnetic pull to immerse ourselves within this process, we may well discover deepening capacity to face uncomfortable truths; phoenix-survival skills and a more deeply empowered sense of who we truly are. Treasure hidden beneath dragon’s wings. And for this process, it is essential to create a safe container, anchorage and an Ariadne’s thread to guide our return. Alongside the magic potion of ruthless compassion and self-honesty.

We are enchanted (sung into and across) the portals of Life and Death. So are we sung into our soul-depths during Scorpio and Samhain season and Pluto transits, or if we are Plutonic by nature. How we relate with and dance with this energy carries an element of choice.

It is a worthy journeying.  In the darkness we become still. We open to senses beyond our physical knowings, just as a seed buried in the dark awaits its time to swell and open. Our pulse slows, and we begin to perceive murmurings within the silence, connecting us to deeper strata of truth.

Resting and residing within this darkness strengthens and nourishes our root system. It hones our instinctive bone deep knowings.

And within this deep Underworld, we may discover our deepest strength, courage, wisdom and beauty.

Endarkenment is a challenge to our ego. It deconstructs and undoes. Courage is needed to let-go and dive within, to face our fear of the unknown and the dark; the monsters and dragons and ghosts of nightmares. And culture can offer seductive escape hatches to avoid facing threat…drawing us towards external doing and visible worldly achievements and interpretations of success and addictions…as if suspending ourselves on an eternal out-breath, forever in Summertime.

Yet within this descent and undoing…mossy terrain of spiral staircases going down, down… of cauldrons and wells and shadows…of snakeskins shedding and chrysalis shrouds, here we may find our Gold. If we can find a way of sitting with our process, our fears, our wonderings, however long it takes, within the dark, damp, fertile inner caverns where we fear dismemberment and meet dragons …we may also find magical mythical beasts and hench-folk who journey alongside us, which maybe we hadn’t previously seen. Deep shining empowerment and radiance may emerge from this territory. And the capacity to become a companion and lantern in the dark.

*Endarkenment – a word which wiggled and hatched into my awareness as Scorpio time approached, maybe after hearing ‘enlightenment’ and ‘light worker’ just one too many times. I felt the imbalance, and thought of Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow back onto his foot, after it was lost and found….a re-connection and integration of Sprite and Shadow.

Scorpio Altar