Aug
1
2023

Full Moon Revelations: Letter to the Descendants

For Seekers – Moonthly Renewal – Practices for Soul & Spirit – Sanctuary

The height of this moonth’s cycle comes with the full moon arriving on Tuesday, the 1st (exact at 2:31 pm ET), and offers a revelation about how the lunar energies initiated on the July 17th new moon are developing. The new moon, guided by its association with the Chariot, 4 of Cups, and King of Wands, invited us to drink from the cup we are presented with—whether of delight or challenge—in order to keep moving forward. Out of the full moon revelation about this developing energy, we are issued an invitation to return a gift to the world in the final weeks of the lunar cycle.  

The exact moment of the moon’s fullness comes in the sign of Aquarius associated with the Tarot’s Star card. In the Shining Tribe Tarot, The Star figure we encounter is Persephone, the Greek Goddess whose mother Demeter is the Grain Goddess, the giver of Life, and whose husband Hades is the ruler of Death.

Persephone is intensely connected to both Life and Death. She drinks from both cups. She cannot choose between them, but instead spends part of the year with her mother and the rest with her husband and the dead that she serves as Queen. She is the traveler between the worlds, and as I’ve written extensively elsewhere can even serve as a messenger connecting us living with our beloved dead.

Traditionally, The Star is a card of pausing and simply being open to the grace and gifts of the universe that come freely and equally to all. In the pause, perhaps the energy of those in the Beyond will flow through us. Then their wisdom and energy become part of us and guide our action in the living world for change making. We could then be in a new kind of partnership that leads to still barely imagined possibilities.

I have most often thought of those in the Beyond as the ancestors, but lately I’ve been thinking, too, of the descendants, those whose ancestor I will be. 

My pondering of the descendants began as I prepared to teach at Omega with Mary Greer and Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. I was tasked with introducing the Court—or People or Face—Cards, and created a spread using just the Courts, The Inner and Outer Helpers Octavo.

The first four cards represent the different parts of the self to help with a challenge. The next four cards were to call to mind external helpers, people who had, do, or will exist within time. The external people could be alive, ancestors, or descendants. Depending on the deck used, I thought that animals or plants could be the external helpers as well.

When we tested out the spread at Mass Tarot, I had no idea who one of the external helpers was. I thought to myself: That is one of the descendants who can help me by motivating me to create a world for them to live in. This idea resonated at Omega as well.

In fact, following the Octavo, Ellen led us through a powerful card play and writing activity to write letters to the ancestors and the descendants. My descendant was the toad from the Shining Tribe’s 2 of Stones. Here is my letter inspired by the message cards of Death, Ace of Rivers, and 4 of Stones. All cards were drawn randomly.

Dear Toad,

I am elated to see you here as a descendant!

Your future was in doubt; I thought we might lose you entirely to the pollution or drought-or both. But here you are glowing green, a spine sheen of nearly purple. Yellow markers. You are beautiful.

Thank you for your endurance. Your survival. Your being.

We are in the midst of a Great Death. My heart grieves for what we don’t do to stop it. My heart pounds rage for the pollutants we bathe you in. For how we build over your dwelling places. We heap Death upon you, which means we bring Death, too, to the human door.

And yet I see you peering back at me from the future. A new flow is coming. Clean water and spring vernal pools dark with leaf litter and then new life.

My heart fills with gratitude for all those that must have made the shift. Those who sounded the alarm and protected the places where you live. The storytellers who helped us see the connection between your skin and ours. The children who screamed.

Maybe it was Death that taught us. There was so much that we couldn’t ignore it anymore and took Death for our Teacher. Death skimmed our faces and we opened our eyes wider. Someone remembered that the Toad was once the Goddess giving birth. The desire for Death balanced with Birth sparked again and we put our hand to the wheel to make it so.

Then your dwelling places must have been seen as sacred again. We humans learned to care beyond ourselves. Or rather we were reminded we always had this capacity.

When we cared beyond ourselves, we cared better for ourselves.

Scientists mark you as an indicator species. They study the health of toads and frogs to assess the resilience of a whole ecosystem. That thin skin of yours lets in so much of the world that if there is poison there it is flowing through you. When you thrive, other creatures thrive. We humans are creatures. Your life offers hope for our life.

So I am not just thinking of you, I’m thinking of the whole web of us, when I say thank you for being there in the future, a descendant, a beacon. A motivator for me to make your future real.

You made it!

I love you,
Carolyn

This was a surprisingly powerful encounter for me. Looking back on it now, I see it brought me into the realm of the Star where hope lives. And because hope lives there, I know it can live in me and in this world even as we burn and choke this summer. (Plus I got COVID for the first time!)

In the Shining Tribe image, Persephone is enacting a healing ritual. She invites us, too, to action. Our actions may be magical involving prayer and ritual, alone or in groups. And because my toad friend has come from the suit of Earth, we are invited to practical action, too. You might:
~ support a local conservation organization or land trust;
~ take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Acts incentives to find ways to reduce your use of fossil fuels;
~ support local youth climate activists or national groups like the Sunrise Movement; and/or
~ go to a place where toads and frogs live and reproduce to listen with the ears of your heart and soul to them and the land about what action they would like taken on their behalf.

The toads will thank you for your action, but you’ll really be saving yourself.

To encourage a revelation on these Star themes, you are invited to one, some, or all of these practices:

~ Moon bathe by sitting or lying under a window or outside on the ground. Let go of your thoughts and soak in the light.

~ Take out any reading or your reflections from the new moon and look at them in a new light. How does your understanding of the cards shift now that time has passed and light has shifted? (If you haven’t done a reading yet, no problem, just do it now under the light of the full moon. You can try the one from the new moon.)

~ Bring out your Chariot and Star cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to your new moon reading / reflections. You could place/imagine these cards on either side of your reading or above and below, and then look at how they add meaning into the story your original cards offered you.

~ Reflect on questions such as: How can I connect to my ancestors? What support will they offer me? What can I do to make the lives of the descendants possible? How can the descendants support me to take action? What kind of ancestor do I want to be? You could, of course, pull cards as responses to any of these questions. You may want to engage in Visio Divina to find the layers of wisdom within the cards.

When you are done, remember to offer gratitude for what you have received. Consider what gift you now want to return to the world. Pulling a card for guidance on the gift is always a fine thing to do. In the coming weeks and before the moon returns to dark around August 14th offer your gift to the world.

Jul
19
2023

Shining Tribe Cento

For Grievers – Poetry

Rachel Pollack Incants Her Way 

Through the Green Door of Death

A Shining Tribe Cento

 

I swim in the evening 

I rest in the sunshine

I talk with the serpents

I know all the secrets

I walk like a singer 

through the forest of souls

 

Breathe through the grass

Shout through the eyes

The screech of the owl 

In the heart of the tree

In the hum of the earth

I hear the voices of stars

 

I listen to voices, one face to another 

First slowly, then faster, stories for change

Beauty like thunder 

That breaks in my dreams

First slowly

Then faster

 

I open my arms

I shimmer with laughter

Drink rain

In the morning

We talk in the twilight

Sun splashes between us

 

Waters of memory

Waters of vision

They gather round me

To sing my way through

 

I shout from the windows

I build homes for my neighbors

Joy in their bricks 

Pearls to the wind

 

In the time before time

I shout joy in the rock

I stare at the children

I throw the old stones

 

Teeth are mountains, fingers forests

Eyes are the oceans of life

My dead mud body 

Burns with light

 

I take hold of my brothers

I give voice to my sisters

They open their mouths 

For the juice of the stars

 

I dance with lovers

I sing for the children

 

Emerge, emerge the dark hidden healers

Power from secrets, visions from stone

I travel to the world of the radiant Spirits

See this power in myself

See the film of rainwater on a child’s face

We know what we know

 

I dance with lovers

I sing for the children

 

I whistle in cellars

I call to the children

They dance in the lightning

They float on the water

They follow directions 

From the birds in their dreams

 

The roar of wings

The ice chain shattered 

I go down, I go down

Sing guidance for swimmers

I cast the great circle

I teach all the children

 

I know all the stories 

I shimmer with laughter

Shine with the morning!

Sing louder than light! 

Prayers of clear stone

Of feathers from birds

 

I talk with the serpents 

I know all the secrets 

I greet you from the edge

Of hello and goodbye

And I come dancing, dancing, dancing

beauty like thunder that breaks in my dreams

 

I open my arms 

I shimmer with laughter

Wonder of wonders, mermaids and boats

Tell stories of sleepers, travelers in hope

I give way to voices

Invite their soft beaks

 

I wear gold, I sing whispers

Lullabies to my lovers

They listen in silence

And begin once again

Their beauty like thunder

That brakes in my dreams

 

This is the gift more precious than any

The fountain of love

I sleep in its light

I drink food from the stars

Patterns of wisdom, traces of sorrow

Soft touch of the Gods in the whisper of stones

 

My soul’s vision pierces 

The past and the future

I know all the stories 

I shimmer with laughter

 

Finished Memorial Day, 5/29/23

A Temperance-Tradition Day (05+29+20+23=14/5)

 

Note –

On each of the 49 days following Rachel Pollack’s death I pulled a Shining Tribe card and wrote down two lines from that card’s section. All but 2 sets of lines came from Rachel’s poems that start the write up.  The lines “Prayers of clear stone / Of feathers from birds” are from Joy Harjo’s poem We Must Call a Meeting that Rachel uses as the poem to introduce the 8 of Birds.

On the 50th day, I wove the lines together into this cento, a poem composed entirely of lines by other poets as a way to honor them and their work. It’s an old form, dated from the third or fourth century. Cento is Italian from 100 and that is the traditional length. There are other rules but I didn’t use them to create the poem. 

To get lines 99 and 100, I consciously decided to invoke the World card and give The Shining Woman the last say. Having made that choice I decided that Rachel was speaking throughout the poem and I went through and changed almost all pronouns and possessives to I and my.  I might have dropped a few possessives or articles and I did not always use the original line breaks, but the words here are Rachel’s, not my own.

I broke the lines into stanzas in places that I thought created containers of meaning. Some of them individually and in smaller sets could be mini-centos on their own.

There were some repeating cards (noted below) but I was struck by the variety of cards and how the meaning of the lines flowed naturally into each other. No element nor Arcana predominate; they all mix together. I like to think  of this as showing us Rachel’s dynamic shapeshifting out of Life into Death and through that still speaking to us and sharing her wisdom.

Here are the cards:

  1. Death
  2. High Priestess
  3. 6 of Trees
  4. 8 of Rivers
  5. 9 of Trees
  6. 9 of Stones
  7. 2 of Stones
  8. Speaker of Birds
  9. 2 of Stones
  10. Shining Woman
  11. Temperance
  12. 2 of Trees
  13. Ace of Rivers
  14. 7 of Stones
  15. Awakening 
  16. 10 of Rivers
  17. Knower of Stones
  18. Justice
  19. Gift of Stones
  20. 5 of Birds
  21. Knower of Rivers
  22. Place of Trees
  23. Empress
  24. 5 of Stones
  25. Emperor
  26. Knower of Trees
  27. Empress
  28. Devil
  29. Lovers
  30. Place of Birds
  31. 8 of Stones
  32. 5 of Rivers
  33. Tradition
  34. Shining Woman
  35. 7 of Trees
  36. 8 of Birds
  37. High Priestess
  38. 10 of Rivers
  39. Speaker of Birds
  40. Shining Woman
  41. 7 of Rivers
  42. 6 of Birds
  43. 6 of Rivers
  44. 7 of Birds
  45. Speaker of Birds
  46. Gift of Rivers
  47. Ace of Trees
  48. 6 of Stones
  49. Ace of Birds
  50. Shining Woman

 

Here are the repeats/patterns I see (what did I miss?): 

High Priestess – 2x 

2 of Stones – 2x

Shining Woman – 3x from random draws and the last time consciously chosen for a total of 4x

Empress – 2x

Speaker of Birds – 2x

 

I love how the Lovers follows the Devil

 

The 6s from all elements appear along with the Lovers as just mentioned so there is a lot of love flowing from this cento.

Jul
14
2023

New Moon Gateway: Drink from the Cup

For Seekers – Moonthly Renewal – Poetry – Practices for Soul & Spirit – Sanctuary

This is the morning

these fields silvered in fog
the mountain gone, birds rise
early sun takes dark from wings’ tips

Follow the road as far it goes
to the edge of the flood
the bridge is gone
and beyond further fields are under water

These are the fields we would have eaten
sweet corn and peppers, potatoes and carrots
all through the summer and into the winter

Now all we can do is drink
the brown waters silted
pluck sticks and twisted bottles from the brew
find—surprise—green life still in it
broken fronds of ferns and three acorns,
this season’s first tree seeds.

There has been flooding throughout the Northeast and all along the Connecticut River which shapes the valley where I live. Farms are suffering catastrophic loss.The farm I belong to suffered catastrophic loss. Crops that were looking beautiful on Monday are drowned today.

With this, climate change has disrupted my life and my community’s life in the realest and most dramatic way.

The food we were counting on eating is gone.

My farm runs on a Community Supported Agriculture model which means that we members pay by the start of the growing season and take the risk along with the farmer. I love this model of mutuality. And for over 16 years my risk has been minimal (a couple of years we had poor tomato crops, an inconvenience) but now we at Mountain View Farm are going to be tested. We’ll have to find new ways to be together in coping with this loss—and with climate change impacting our most basic needs.

The CSA model only goes so far I am learning. Many of the crops—potatoes and carrots, my favorites!—were being put in for the winter share that hasn’t been sold yet. My valiant farmers took on all the risk by themselves.

To give us a chance to join in on the risk now, they’ve set up a gofundme campaign to get through the crisis of the flooding. As you may know, I periodically invite donations to help me keep producing these moonthly missives at no cost. This moonth I would welcome a donation to Mountain View Farm Flood Damage Fund. I’m not doing this as an act of charity for somebody else. Your donation will help ensure the farm can keep functioning to feed me! So I thank you for your help in nourishing me.

This isn’t a cup I wanted to drink from. 

Nor did the other flooded farms through the Valley. Nor the flooded homeowners and businesses along this river stretching from Vermont to the Connecticut shore. Nor those who are experiencing the opposite problem of drought and scorching heat, which is all of us really as the first days in July were the hottest in the planet’s recorded history.

This is the cup before us.


a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts.
Deck available from US Games

This iconic Rider Waite Smith Four of Cups is our passage card of this moonth that begins with the new moon on Monday, July 17 (exact at 2:32 pm ET, time zone converter).Traditional meanings for this card center around the figure not paying attention to the gift being offered through the cup held by the mysterious hand, a detail that reminds of the Ace of Cups. Aces represent the full potential of their elemental associations. Cups through the element of water invite us to connect us with emotions and intuition.

While Cups is a suit that receives an (over?) abundance of cards to which we ascribe  happy meanings, the full potential of our emotions include the difficult flows as well as the desired ones.

Position the Four of Cups between its neighbors of the dancing women of the Three and the downcast figure of the Five and you find that the Four is really the pivot point between happiness and grief.

In the Four of Cups, the figure is focused on the 3 cups in the foreground. They want to return to the fun of the Three of Cups. Who wouldn’t?!But when I turn my attention to the dancing women today, I am looking at the details in the image with new eyes. The colors are autumnal and I think I see a pumpkin so this is a harvest dance. And because harvest is on my mind and heart, I am thinking of the flooded fields that won’t fill my fall with bounty.

I can’t go back to the Three and neither can my friend in the Four of Cups.

We will have to mount our Chariots and go forward, leaving behind the world as it was and moving into the world as it is.


a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts.
Deck available from US Games

In the iconic Rider Waite Smith image, we see that a city is being left behind. Perhaps the Charioteer participated in creating this city. Perhaps it was a place of joy. Perhaps it was a place of frustration. Most likely both. The wheels appear almost as if they are floating on the water in the background. The Charioteers’ emotions are what is propelling them forward from this starting place.When we travel the path of the Chariot, we, like our Charioteer, must flow with the emotions and channel them for forward movement. We must continue our travels from the Three of Cups through the Four of Cups, and continue on from there into the challenge of the Five.

Grief will be part of our journey. We’ll feel our losses individually but the losses of climate change will be felt collectively, will connect us across the planet. I just heard a news story about Nigerian farmers impacted by climate change. I feel closer to them today.  We will not be alone in our climate grief.

The Five of Cups shows us one face of grief: the sadness. But sadness is not the whole of grief.

Our guide for how to be as we travel the Chariot’s path through the passage of the Four of Cups is the King of Wands. Wands through its elemental association with fire connects us to our passions and calls us to action. Fire dries out the excess of water. Going through grief also includes actions and the changes we make in our lives because of the new awareness that comes from the loss.

I am just about to leave to teach Tarot for a week at Omega and preparing to introduce the court cards to which this King belongs. Tarot has become complex but we can start working with the cards with the basic meaning that comes through understanding the structure. Kings are authorities in the Tarot. They step up to play a role that serves the good of the community.

Our King of Fire invites us to step up and serve our communities. This, too, can be part of our moving through grief. Perhaps our grief will even become a source of our authority. Here I am thinking of youth climate activists I know here in the Valley and across the globe who are acting even as they grieve.

The moonth opens up for us an exploration of the great passions of fire and water mixing within ourselves and throughout our planet. This is cup that is offered. If we want to take up the invitation of The Chariot of forward movement we will have to drink from this cup.

READING OF THE MOONTH – Use these questions for reflection through out the moonth with our without cards:

CUP: What is the cup I am being called to drink from?

CHARIOT: When I accept this cup where will I be able to go?

PASSION: What action will I be able to undertake to move forward into the world? 

Because I am at Omega, I’ll only be able to do e-readings for those who get readings from me each moonth. I’ll be back open for e-readings next moonth.

Jul
2
2023

Full Moon Revelations: A different kind of angel

For Seekers – Moonthly Renewal – Practices for Soul & Spirit – Sanctuary

The height of this moonth’s cycle comes with the full moon arriving on Monday, July 2nd (exact at 7:38am ET, time zone converter), and offers a revelation about how the lunar energies initiated on the June 18th new moon are developing. The new moon, guided by its association with The Lovers, invited us to renew our love. Out of the full moon revelation about this developing energy, we are issued an invitation to return a gift to the world in the final weeks of the lunar cycle.  

The exact moment of the moon’s fullness comes in the sign of Capricorn associated with the Tarot’s Major Arcana’ s Devil. Along with Death and the Tower, the Devil is a most feared  card in the Tarot pack.

But the Devil is really just a different kind of angel. 

Although the Devil has been imbued with great powers and saddled with all the evil in the Christian worldview, the Devil’s qualities vary across cultures. There is no parallel figure in the Celtic tradition, for example. Though the horned god Cernunnos may have inspired some of the Devil’s iconography, his significance as a god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld is vastly different from the Christian Devil. Neither is there a Devil figure in most traditional African religions rather, as Courtney Alexander writes in the DustIIOnyx guide book, “humans and deities alike choose whether to navigate the world from a negative or positive disposition.” The Jewish tradition offers yet another face of the Devil we can see in the Raziel Tarot created by Rachel Pollack and Robert Place. The Devil here is more akin to a trickster and can be tricked himself. In Judaism, Rachel writes, “No great Devil holds the soul of all humanity in its grip.”

So what happens when the Lovers encounter these various aspects of the Devil? They may be tricked in some way or invited to examine their motivations. They may be led more deeply into the animal part of themselves, those earthy, physical, sensual aspects of their being. Their most shadowy, hungry, broken parts of themselves may surface, perhaps even be active in addictions, compulsions, or inertia.

If the Lovers meet and move through—rather than ignore or stay stuck in— what the Devil is leading them toward, there may be difficulty along the way but a reward is waiting: the renewal of love.

The Devil is a collaborator not an opponent on the path of renewing love. Because this wisdom figure shakes up our love and tosses it back to us in a different form. Our hearts may even break during an encounter with the Devil, but the breaking has the potential to expand us, to make us even more loving.

Nature writer Gretel Ehrlich, in her meditation on how the heating up of our climate is eliminating cultures of cold, speaks to this healing possibility of the broken open heart; “We don’t look because heartbreak might imply failure.  But the opposite is true.  A broken heart is an open heart, like a flower unfolding from its calyx, the one nourishing the other.”  When we take a long, loving look at our broken hearts, we open ourselves to both what is unsettling and what is most needed.

And this is how devils can be our angels. They are not sweet beings of light, but powers of shadow and the dark of the earth, our home of limits and of breaking.

I have found that turning over an intense card can sometimes be a relief because it mirrors back what I am experiencing. I see it and think, “I am not crazy. Things are bad.” I also feel a little less alone, “Well at least the Devil is with me in this!” In this week when here in the US rights of LGBTQ+ people have been weakened; programs to advance a more equitable and multiracial society have been struck down; and when raging forest fires have made it a struggle to breathe (our most basic life need) it is right to say things are bad and let our hearts break.

Our hearts may be what breaks but this actually allows the love to flow out even more. It can flow to people we know and those that we don’t. It can flow to the trees and the air. It can flow into our hands that pick up the work of repair.

After an encounter with The Devil we don’t take love for granted. When we go all the way through the experience, we grow, and in this way the Devil guides us in tending not just our own souls but the soul of the Whole that we share with so many others.

To encourage a revelation on these themes as we continue through this moonthly cycle, you are invited to one, some, or all of these practices:

  • Moon bathe by sitting or lying under a window or outside on the ground. Let go of your thoughts and soak in the light.
  • Take out any reading or your reflections from the new moon and look at them in a new light. How does your understanding of the cards shift now that time has passed and light has shifted? (If you haven’t done a reading yet, no problem, just do it now under the light of the full moon. You can try the one from the new moon.)
  • Bring out your Lovers  and your Devil cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to your new moon reading / reflections. You could place/imagine these cards on either side of your reading or above and below, and then look at how they add meaning into the story your original cards offered you.
  • Reflect on questions such as: What aspect of the Devil is active in my life (trickery, shadow, addictive behaviour, ect.)? What is this Devil trying to teach me about love? Where in my life am I complacent about love? How can I break out of that complacency? What does my sensual self want me to know about love? How to embrace this part of myself? You could, of course, pull cards as responses to any of these questions. You may want to engage in Visio Divina to find the layers of wisdom within the cards.

When you are done, remember to offer gratitude for what you have received. Consider what gift you now want to return to the world. Pulling a card for guidance on the gift is always a fine thing to do. In the coming weeks and before the moon returns to dark around July 14th offer your gift to the world.

Jun
20
2023

Celebrating the Summer Solstice

For Seekers – Practices for Soul & Spirit – Sanctuary – Seasonal Observances

Ancient sun, eternally young,

giver of life and source of energy,

In coal and oil, in plant and wind and tide,

in spiritual light and human embrace.

You kindle the heavens, you shine within us

(for we are suns with hearts afire –

we light the world as you light the sky

and find clouds within whose shadows are dark);

We give thanks for your rays and clouds your rays draw up,

for the sky route your travel faithfully as we traverse the globe,

For your journey of earth which draws us together,

For our journey of dreams which sustains us when apart. 

Congregation of Abraxas from Earth Prayers

The Summer Solstice comes at one moment in time (Wednesday, June 21 at 10:57am ET, time zone converter) here in the Northern Hemisphere but outward from that moment ripples a whole season influenced by the abundance of light and the life that it makes possible. Across time and cultures, people have observed the Summer Solstice with festivities and observances of this height of the sun’s light, including:

  • Standing in the sunlight at noon and revealing in its energy.
  • Planting or tending to a flower, herb, or tree.
  • Eating a fabulous meal of seasonal food.
  • Attending or creating (safely) a bonfire or fireworks show.
  • Dancing, singing, and celebrating with family and community.

Here are Soul Path Sanctuary we have found our way to some special practices.

Working with a Solstice Seed Card

At the Winter Solstice we select Solstice Seeds of the New. For most of us that is a Tarot card  or two pulled that day. We work with these Seeds through the whole solar year, from Solstice to Solstice letting the Seed evolve and grow to help us learn its lessons and about ourselves.

The Summer Solstice is the perfect time to check in with the Seed using practices such as: 

  • Taking the card for a Wisdom Wander.
  • Meeting the card through meditative practices such as Visio Divina.
  • Pulling Tarot or oracle cards in response to questions like: How is this Seed growing within me?  What is the Seed calling me to? How can I tend the Seed going forward? What can I harvest if I continue to learn the lessons of the Seed? 

If you don’t yet have a Solstice Seed, go ahead and find one on the Summer Solstice. You could ponder how it has already been growing in your life since the Winter Solstice. Or it might suggest a new Seed to be planted now. You might find that your soul is best served by Seed tending that stretches between Summer Solstices.

Harvesting and Storing Up the Fruits of the Season

A few years ago I began harvesting strawberries on the Summer Solstice, freezing them, and eating them on the Winter Solstice. The practice is as simple as it sounds, but last year I did write up some tips and suggestions for connecting oracular play to the practice that you can check out.  Strawberries are a particularly sweet treat but it could be done with any plant harvested on the Solstice and then stored through freezing of drying: kale, early herbs like dill, or linden flowers come to mind for the northeast of the United States where I live. What grows in profusion near you? What qualities would you like to carry from the abundance of summer into the fallow time of winter? Make a choice that reflects the weaving together of your soul needs and what is happening in the natural world where you live.

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Offering ~ I tend the sanctuary as gift to seekers on the unmarked path. If you find this site inspiring, I welcome a gift to continue serving you sustainably.