Dear Reader,
After the last few posts exploring the anniversary of the start of the Plague Years, as I like to call them, I feel the tide of my energies turning.
Do you recall the story of Persephone and her return from the Underworld?
Demeter, her mother, goes into deep despair when her daughter falls in love with Hades, the God of the Underworld. Her father, Jupiter, intervenes when humans beg him to help, they are starving, it has been raining for days and the harvests have failed.
He decides that Persephone will share her time. Six months with her mother and six with her beloved.
What kind of a choice is this?
Anyway, what I am trying to say here is that BEFORE Persephone returns, bringing Spring in her steps, she has to say farewell to her lover. Can you imagine the sadness, the anguish of such a scene? She has no idea if she will even return in six months.
Yet, we humans, want to jump into Spring with both feet, without experiencing any of this.
We make spring start as early as we possibly can make it. We run from Samhain to The Winter Solstice, six weeks, no more and then we light the fires and Hurrah! The Light has returned!
Look around you, as the land finally begins to awake!
Before we can welcome the light back, we have to spend six months where we do not wish to be. Or perhaps for you it is the other way around and you love winter and it is the six months of the rest of the year that are difficult. By the way, did you know that The Celts only had two seasons? Winter and Summer.
This is a photo I took in The Burren last week. This tiny Blackthorn tree, nestled inside ancient stones, blooming.
This is for me what Persephone’s return looks like.
The ascent from Winter into Spring is always difficult and we have to bear it. As we painfully walk our way towards the light, we shed old stories, old behaviours, we have to say farewell to ideas that were helpful once but no longer serve. it is a laborious process and we have to trust that, like the little Blackthorn bush, we will bloom.
So today, as many Christians celebrate their God’s return, I celebrate this turning of the tide, I look out of my window and, miracle of all miracles, the sky is blue (for now), I can hear our little bantam cockerel, Arthur (for King Arthur), singing at the top of his voice.
The tide has turned,
What is blooming in your life?
Until we meet again.
Wishing you an easy transition, dear Debbie!
Love this acknowledgment of the transition. After spending the winter in Florida in relaxation and restoration I’m now faced with reality. I’m deciding what things in my Colorado life can remain and what no longer serves me. I feel like the blooming bush deciding who I will become in this new season.