Descent: To dive, drop, fall or nosedive. Also: ancestors, parentage, origin, blood, roots, stock.
Autumn Equinox was met with little public fanfare for me this year, unlike past high-holidays. Instead, I opted to do what is difficult for me to do, which is to shut the hell up. My mate traveled to the PacNW Thursday to attend a gypsy jazz workshop and I've been vacationing with the little ones and enjoying the gig of full time parenting again, which is helping me draw down, and in. It's also been a week of organizing, not in my usual utlilitarian, Virgo-ish manner, but with a little more care, beauty, and reflection of my heart into my environment.
Like Persephone, Inanna, and the woodland creatures, I feel myself descending slowly into the Underworld. I'm digging my den, nesting, and also asking myself how I would like my Autumn to look and feel. From now until the end of the year is the true dark time. I was recently asked to create something for a yummy magazine to get folks through the darkest time of the year. I chose to tell the story of being one with the woods, feeling at my edge in the inky recesses of Winter during my first months in the national forest.
I'd like to know, how do you prepare?
There is a beautiful ignorance that can occur when we head down into ourselves during these months of the year-a mystery awaits on the feminine side of the Wheel that is innately of the Earth. Burrowed seeds; we don't know what will become of us. Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds that would find her returning to Hades every Autumn and Winter- away from her treasured mother, Demeter, who's grief would cause the Earth to fall into a state of non-growth, of hibernation, of death. Often grief, loss, or some form of despair causes us to emotionally mature to a state where we can accept the fallow, dark times. Embracing this aspect of the lifecycle outside in the world, and within ourselves, is what Autumn SouLodge is all about.
My intention for myself this season is to stay grounded. To take in the roots and plants that nourish me and keep me well. To fast/cleanse again. To read. And read. And read. To learn. To cozy down, and fill up.
Visiting the ancestors and descending into the Underworld is a time I very much look forward to. Dancing with the dead, feeling the blood, the bones, and the Earth rise up to meet me, I'm happy to claw at the soil for the good truffles, and be shown what to do next. Getting through the darker parts of the year is no different than going to bed at night and letting my dreams do the work.
