Musings From The Trail
I am the seed of
The Great Mother.
An Ancient Being
birthed from
Her Cosmic Womb.
A sacred symbol
of the stars,
I AM The Virgin Huntress.
A Woman unto Herself.
~Arlene Bailey
‘The Virgin Huntress’
🌙
Image: Artemis / Diana,
Goddess of wild Nature
Expansive full moon in airy Aquarius. We are in the midst of global change and chaos. Expect the unexpected.
Many people are feeling overwhelmed, tense, contracted and exhausted right now. Shallow, rapid breathing fans the flames of your inner chaos. Take deep, long breaths instead. Make your exhale longer than your inhale. If you are a student of yoga or pranayama, use Ujjayi breathing. Slow down, unwind and expand your energy with yin yoga.
Aquarian consciousness encourages us to expand our perspective. Change is always messy and chaotic. It is impossible to control, so stop trying. This is what is happening right now. Surrender to it.
Take a break from the news. Seek out the beauty and magic of life instead; the colors of sunrise, clouds dancing on the wind, cicadas buzzing in the trees, flowers quietly blooming, the feel of soft pet fur on your fingertips, the sound of a child’s laughter, an ice cold drink on a hot afternoon, the smell of dinner cooking, the full moon lighting up a dark sky tonight…
Life is still full of magic. Look for it.
And remember that you can be part of the healing medicine we all need right now by simply speaking and acting with kindness.
☾☽
Image: Big Sky and Prairie
by Nancy Lankston
The moon does not fight.
It attacks no one.
It does not worry.
It does not try to crush others.
It keeps to its course,
but by its very nature, it gently influences.
What other body could pull
an entire ocean from shore to shore?
The moon is faithful to its nature,
and its power is never diminished.
~Deng Ming-Dao
#PowerofYin
🌙
To the North within you,
may you express the wisdom of your true self.
To the West within you,
may you be reborn with every season.
To the South within you,
may you hear the counsel of your heart.
To the East within you,
may you be blessed with illumination.
To all Above that is within you,
may you be guided be angels and divinity.
To all Below that is within you,
may you discover the blessing of your shadow.
To the Spirit within you,
may you find your way home.
~ Tanya Markul, Thug Unicorn ~
This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar…
~Margaret Atwood
☀️
The Spaniards came to our village in 1524, but they couldn’t get anybody to go to their church, so they demolished our old temple and used the stones to build a new church on the same site. (This was a common practice.) But the Tzutujil people are crafty. They watched as the old temple stones were used to build the new church, and they memorized where each one went. As far as the Tzutujil were concerned, this strange, square European church was just a reconfiguration of the old. (When I was learning to be a shaman, I had to memorize where all those damn stones were, because they were all holy. It was like being a novice taxi driver in London.)
The Catholic priests abandoned the village in the 1600s because of earthquakes and cholera, then came back fifty years later and found a big hole in the middle of the church. “What is that?” they said. By then, the Indians knew the priests destroyed everything relating to the native religion, so the Indians said, “When we reenact the crucifixion of Jesus, this is the hole where we put the cross.”
In truth, that hole was a hollow place that was never to be filled, because it led to another hollow place left over from the temple that had been there originally, and that place was connected to all the other layers of existence.
For four and a half centuries, the Indians kept their traditions intact in a way that the Europeans couldn’t see or understand. If the Spaniards asked, “Where is your God?” the Indians would point to this empty hole. But when the American clergy came in the 1950s, they weren’t fooled. They said, “This is paganism.” And so, eventually, they filled the empty place with concrete.
I was there when that happened, in 1976. I was livid. I went to the village council and ranted and raved about how terrible it was. The old men calmly smoked their cigars and agreed. After an hour or so, when I was out of breath, they started talking about something totally unrelated. I asked, “Doesn’t anybody care about this?”
“Oh, yeah,” they said. “We care. But these Christians are idiots if they think they can just eradicate the conduit from this world to the next with a little mud. That’s as ridiculous as you worrying about it. But if you must do something, here’s a pick, shovel, and chisel. Dig it out.”
So some old men and I dug out the hole. Then the Catholics filled the hole back up, and two weeks later we dug it out again. We went back and forth this way five times until, finally, somebody made a stone cover for the hole, so the Catholics could pretend it wasn’t there, and we could pull the cover off whenever we wanted to use it.
That’s how the spirit is now in this country. The hole, the hollow place that must be fed, is still there, but it’s covered over with spiritual amnesia. We try to fill up that beautiful hollow place with drugs, television, potato chips — anything. But it can’t be filled. It needs to be kept hollow.
~Martin Prechtel
