Between Worlds

 

 

 

 

TRobinhe winter birds are gone now, and the daffodils poked their infant green into the light of the grey days sometime around the last new moon. It often happens this way — a hard freeze, a night of no moon, then sudden stiff green tips barely seen in the near frozen dirt, and a burst of excitement — a sigh of relief even — in knowing that the cold will give way to green again.

The robins have returned. They came in right before the big freeze, and I think we lost a few. More than birds perhaps, from the smell of decay that comes from between the wooden fences that are back to back behind our yard; some small creature fallen to the cold. But everywhere there is life too, and this morning I heard the robins for the first time since their return.

February sits on the cold fence between the inner work of winter and the sunny, wind-lashed exuberance of spring. Part of me longs to linger by the fire, in inward spaces of medicine spirals and planning for the year. Winter holds for me a depth that is hard to describe. It is a place of deepest knowing of self, sometimes in hard ways, and of nourishment and heady magic. In some ways it is like walking between the worlds for a whole season; a place where the heart can be healed, and seeds of transformation fall on the fertile essence of spirit, waiting….

FireplaceIt is hard to leave those deeps. But we are long into winter now, and its hold weakens as an urgent energy tugs at my heart with the longer light, two months growing now. I too, am on the fence, in a tug of war between the firelight cocoon of still dark iron-cloudy days, and the imperative of buds on the trees, where the ravens have also returned. They all risk the wrath of winter’s last word, defying the waning chill, and leaden clouds, but there is no resisting the call of new life; not for them, not for me.

For a week twelve seed packets have rested on my altar, absorbing my love and gratitude. They are this year’s medicine, all plants that grow in my state. The medicine will come from watching them grow, and delighting in each new leaf shoot. It will come from the care given, and the teas, tinctures and ointments gifted by the plants, and from the process of making all those too. Some of these additions I could easily find in fields and woods here, some not so easily — they hide. But planting seeds is a pledge to the future, and a rainbow bridge of relationship to the plants we love.

Spring wins the tug of war. My prayer plant has new shoots, telling me it is time to begin my starters. The fire fades as I take up my packets on this very cold day, trusting the voices of the daffodils and tree buds, that is it time.

Seed Packets

Honoring:

Eclipta…Self Heal…Motherwort…Lemon Balm…Saint John’s Wort…Lobelia…Gravel Root…Burdock…Bergamot…Violet…Nettle…Pleurisy Root…

And giving them welcome.

 

Imbolc 2019 Awakening

Prelude – Eclipse

Coming to Imbolc this year is a little like waking from a dream that began at Solstice. It has been a year for inner work, but then, winter has always held some of that for me. It is in the places of ebb, of darkness and softness, of sitting wrapped in a cushy blanket by the fire with a cup of tea in the dim light of the cold days, that I prepare for the busy activity of the year to come.

But this year was a little different. Interleaved with moments of quiet, there was an acceleration of sorts. It began as a building sense of pressure in the weeks before the recent lunar eclipse, when the energies of the alignment called many of us forward, to expansion. For weeks I noticed thoughts and attitudes that no longer serve bubbling up to be released, even as I gathered into my heart the threads of new magic that are sparkling their way into my life.

Park in winterNow there is a pause after this recent snap of bitter coldest winter, when seeds think of waking, and some trees are already in smallest bud. The work of the Eclipse is done, and the magic begun then will unfold amid sun, rain, and new weavings of light, as the gardens of spirit and earth grow in tandem.

Herbalism is never separate from the cycles of seasons. The more we are connected to the plants, the more we are connected to what sustains them when they grow, or sleep or die. The cycles of sun, moon, day and night are the rhythms of life that our cells are attuned to, and our cultural disconnect from that world has left us longing for what it gives us when we align with it.   Working with plants or animals makes those rhythms real to us, and we know again that our own ecologies are part of larger ones. No matter what our cultural lens, the sacred points on the Wheel of the Year are, for many herbalists, their way of keeping pace with the earth.  There is meaning at each point in the journey.

Three Fires

In the ways that I know through my ancestry, Imbolc is the feast of Brighid, Keeper of the Sacred Fires, and of the healing waters. Today I will light three candles to celebrate this time of winter’s end: One for the fire of the hearth, the place of food and community. One for the fire of the forge: this year that was the Eclipse, a not-gentle fire of transformation where so much promise was seeded. And one for the fire of inspiration, the poet’s song that calls to our creative hearts to abandon the theater of “power-over”, and manifest the new in life affirming, collaborative ways.

As our world changes and we navigate terrain that is laden with the emotional and cultural debris of the failing paradigm, we are immersed in transformation whether we will or no, and it is time. But Brighid’s other gifts are those of the hearth, of food shared, and there is compassion there for all those on the journey with us. And of inspiration — our ability to breathe life into something greater than we have today, and to create from our deepest selves something far more wholesome than what is dis-integrating around us.

I am thinking of you, my companions on this journey, as I sit by my fire, drinking a tea to nourish spirit and nervous system after the unusual intensity of this deep winter. I’ll share my tea with you. It is relaxing and rejuvenating, and holds the promise of intentional dreaming.

A Winter Tea

Hawthorn – 3 parts leaf and flower or rough equivalent of berry elixir
Scullcap – 2 parts,
Lemon Balm – 1 part
Mugwort – 1p
cinnamon – just enough to warm and gently spice

Use 1-2 tbs per cup of tea in a glass jar or teapot.
Boil water, but let it sit for a minute once it has boiled. (Scullcap’s virtue is destroyed by boiling water.)  Pour over your herbs; cover and steep for at least an hour. Rewarm if desired, and add a little honey – this one is a little bitter, but oh, so nourishing.

Hawthorn heals the heart on all levels, physical, emotional and spiritual. Scullcap is healing to nerve tissue and promotes relaxation. Lemon Balm is relaxing too, and eases sadness if we are in a struggle about letting go of old patterns. And Mugwort, ahhh. It is a tonic nervine with a bitterness that both grounds us and moves energy, making room for what we want to embrace in our lives. Cinnamon brings the formula together, and adds flow, while warming the mixture.  I hope you will enjoy it, as we enter the dance of freeze and thaw that is part of February’s pattern, and emerge from winter’s darkness into the promise of the year.