The scent of balsam wafts through the room as I cut the boughs to make my annual wreath to honor all trees, those that still stand, those who are slaughtered. My intention each year is twofold – acknowledge my love for these sentient beings and to participate in the unfolding of the Great Round. Other intentions vary from year to year until recently when a prayer for protection from the dark forces that permeate the psyches of so many peoples of this earth becomes a yearly part of this winter ceremony, even as a multitude of others suffer intolerable losses.
Today’s American culture creates endless non-religious festivals to celebrate the entrance into this winter season that are totally devoid of meaning beyond consumerism – buy more ‘stuff’ – chop down more trees. These devourers can never be satiated because the chasm is too wide and deep.
The Christians celebrate Jesus’s birth although he was born in the spring, revealing the ‘religious’ obsession of turning dark into light to rid those folks of the true meaning of this season. Sorrowfully, I note new agers follow suit with winter solstice ‘celebrations’, and their ‘cosmic coming of the light’. Once I did this too, but nature intervened making it clear that I was on the wrong track (the return of the light comes in February)
Jung once said that ‘fairy tales are pure products of nature’. What we now know from painstaking scholarship that Jung was right. Some of the original fairy tales are thousands of years old and were passed down by the oral tradition by preliterate peoples in Europe. They are an important part of our European heritage some stretching back to the bronze age or beyond. Like most oral traditions no one knows for sure. To complicate matters in today’s world more recent Greek and Celtic myths (among others) are often re-written by feminists to suit the needs of the writer. Of course, this approach has merit but the problem with this reconfiguring is that the original messages are buried or lost.
One fairy tale comes to mind to demonstrate the importance of having adequate protection from the ‘cold’. Rose Red/Rose White befriend a bear who comes into the house and sleeps by the fire every night to protect the family from the dangerous forces that come to life during the darkest months of the year. In the spring when he leaves, much to the sorrow of the children, the bear, a powerful animal (instinctual?) protector, becomes a man who has a brother. Both marry the girls. There are several versions of this story, but the core message is the same. Befriending the bear provides the girls and their mother with the protection they need from ‘winter’ and eventually the bear is integrated into the instinctual female psyche as a positive male force. What interests me is that Indigenous peoples throughout the northern hemisphere also acknowledge the bear as a powerful root healer and protector in all their stories.
This entrance into the darkest months of the year brings us to the edge of what we think we know. In the northern hemisphere three months of deep cold are ahead. Acknowledged or not, our own deaths, and the deaths of those non – human beings around us are uppermost in our minds. Nature is mirroring human chaos by demonstrating that the next seasonal round will be darker still with unpredictable weather. Political insanity looms and yet we continue to deny… we cling to false hope with grizzled claws refusing to let go.
Our earliest Indigenous stories inform us that this is the season to acknowledge the element of fire – that which warms us, that which destroys. Indigenous and country people in some cultures still wear masks to help protect them from dark forces, and at the same time acknowledge the reality that individual and collective shadow elements are on the move. The powers of fire burn too hot even as earth’s temperature drops. When will we acknowledge that our mechanistic cultural shadow has become demonic? Do we even notice that the images we see of ourselves have become cartoons?
These thoughts and questions swirl around me as I weave my wreath returning my thoughts to The Great Round – those of abundance and attrition. Beginning with gratitude for my beloved dogs, bird, Animal Healer and close friends I weave my personal prayers into this Circle. I ask to stay awake, provide support for those like me who live unpalatable truths. And yes, I give thanks for Life even as I acknowledge my fears.
I follow the Seasons of the Great Round (Winter solstice, February’s First Light, Spring Equinox, May Day, Summer solstice, August’s Feast of the New Grain, Fall Equinox, All Hallows). I have learned over half a lifetime that the eight turnings of the year are fluid, exact days don’t matter, timing does, so I pay attention to Nature’s nudges and let natural forces determine just when and how I need to highlight these turnings. This year, as is my custom, I tipped my greens the day before the first snow/ice in November but only last week wove my Wreath for Life.
My Medicine Wheel is tucked away in the darkest corner of the room. The four elements, four directions, the cranes that create the circle with bodies and beaks, red feet rooted into rich dark earth seem to be crying out for further attention. Feeling that nudge sends me out to gather more greens which I then wove in between starry lights. I placed spiral shells on the shelf just below the wheel wondering about the call from the sea, built a fire in the stove and watched Winter Moon rise high in the sky circled by stars…The dogs and I curled up on the couch in front of the warm fire grateful for the heat. Balsam continued to sweeten the night. The music of the Gounod Sanctus permeated still air. Gordon Bok strummed poignant sea shanties having spent a life – time learning these songs of the sea. I am feeling deep peace. Ah, I think suddenly. The antidote to fear, denial, hatred, despair is of course Sanctity, the return of the sacred, and we had just become part of that last story. I had answered the Call.
Winter Moon waxed into fullness before sunrise as the temperatures dropped a degree or two below zero. The coldest day of the year so far. Today pearled fur coats hugged the trees as I stood transfixed at the window watching bare branches turn silver and gold. When the sun cleared bare branches and spires a thousand frozen snow crystals drifted earthward, the ethereal beauty of those precious moments – timeless. Wild turkeys finally stirred from their protected evergreen bowers to feast on the seed I scattered only moments before their arrival.
My beloved turkeys stand on one foot as they peck their food, their legs are bare. My Animal Healer tells me that concurrent circulation allows all birds to survive cold temperatures. While arteries pump blood to the feet, veins are warming the feet too, so none grow too cold* (see footnote)
Will I have another winter solstice moment? I have no ways of knowing but my guess is that I just passed this Turning under a star cracked sky lit by a numinous moon.
My intentions are clear:
(1) Prayers for Protection
(2) Choose Sanctity ( the sanctity of life – mystics don’t need religions; but they must be grounded)
(3) Redress imbalances – Temper despair.
(4) RELEASE: WOES OF THE WORLD…… ( it is not up to me to carry the blindness and stupidity of other people’s behavior – especially their denial, though my heart breaks for the continued escalating destruction of Nature as I have known it – that is enough)
(5) Invite in the Bear!
The Circle is Closed.
*** birds use a countercurrent heat exchange system—cool blood coming back from the foot travels through veins grouped around arteries that are sending warm blood from the body to the foot. Heat is transferred from the warm arteries to the cool veins.This countercurrent heat exchange system is very efficient at maintaining heat in the core. Periodic increases in blood flow allow a little heat to reach the foot and prevent it from freezing.