Of Imbolc and the Rudeness of Jonquils
23 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in Jay Bull
Imbolc means “in milk” and the term comes from the days when there were still a lot of sheep herders around who often said things like, “Hey, these sheep are lactating.” Sheep herding must have been mind-numbingly boring. There aren’t as many shepherds anymore, possibly due to the fact that it required a lot of sitting around and commenting on sheep lactation. In fact, looking out my window here, I see a lot of houses, billboards along an interstate, and some very tall buildings in the distance. No sheep at all and no shepherds.
Still, even with the conspicuous sheep shortage, Imbolc will be celebrated here as a time of celebration of the coming of the spring. We’ve survived a long December, where we finally saw darkness start to roll back and light take over. Then came the incredibly cold and snowy January, which still has a week to go and promises even more snow and cold. January can be a bit of a bastard.
Yet even with the cold and the snow still covering the ground, I’m starting to see signs of spring. The light is lasting appreciably longer. The cold doesn’t seem as harsh. Very soon, the more suicidally optimistic jonquils will be poking up out of the snow, telling the snow to bugger off because it’s jonquil time.
On February 2nd, we’ll pull the chubby rodents out of their holes and make proclamations. We’ll head outside in the cold and listen for the birds we haven’t heard in a while. We’ll look for the rude and early jonquils. We’ll see that the sun is taking longer and longer to set. We’ll wonder where the time went. We’ll laugh at how quickly things change. We’ll begin to dream the new spring. Brigid will heal us body and soul, give us the opportunity to reforge ourselves in her fire, and teach us to write the poetry of our lives.
Who needs sheep anyway? Spring is the thing. It’s jonquil time!
Coincidences?
22 Aug 2010 1 Comment
This post was originally from an email I sent in late July detailing some of the more interesting events that had recently happened.
A few weeks ago, I left work to head home. I got to the bus stop, and the bus never showed. I waited an hour for the next bus. Even though it was massively hot, instead of getting agitated, I just assumed there was a good reason, just maybe not a reason I was aware of (turns out the bus had broken down). While waiting, I read my book, Diet for a New America. A man next to me struck up a conversation about it. It turns out he’d just watched Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation and was concerned about factory farms and our food supply. I talked with him a while and found out he’s almost vegetarian and is also very much into meditation and yoga. I recommended a few books to him, and the bus came.
A week or two later, I was late getting out of work. So I took a later bus than usual. While I was waiting for that bus, listening to the Crüxshadows sing of Euridyce and Orpheus, and pondering the underworld, an older Japanese man came up and said, “Hot day isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” I said.
“How do you cool it down?”
“We don’t around here until September, generally,” I replied.
“I cool it down using the mind,” he said. “If you keep an inner calm, you stay cool.”
He went on to tell me he practices yoga. I told him I was just starting out in yoga, myself. He said that was good, and yoga would keep me healthy. He said eventually in yoga, I’d learn about the chakras. I nearly told him that I was also just learning about those, too, and from several different sources, but I decided to just listen rather than talk. Then he talked about healing energy and asked to see my hand. I gave it to him. He started flowing reiki into my hand. He told me that the energy he was using was called reiki and even spelled it for me, as if he really wanted me to remember that word. The reiki was strong, and I assume he could tell I was attuned, or maybe he couldn’t, but thought I should be. I’m not sure, really.
He told me that I had a strong aura that he could see in/around my hand and that the aura was green. He told me my life-line was long, and I’d live into my 90s. He had my left hand, which shows the traits that you are born with. It’s the right hand whose lines show what you’ve made of your life. My right hand’s life line is longer. I told him it’s probably because I’m a vegetarian that my life line is so long. He seemed pleased at that.
He told me my fate line was strong and that I had much to do, and emphasized again that it’s good that I try to take care of myself and that I should stay healthy. Then my bus came. He let my hand go, I told him, “Namaste,” and I ran off to the bus.
As I got on the bus, I thought to myself, “What are the odds that I would meet someone who knows about all the things that are coming into my life right now?” And then I realized; the odds are fairly high and rising all the time.
Adventures in Reiki
14 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
Recently, I’ve started out learning to use reiki energy, which is…well, it’s ki, or chi, or qi, or however you like to spell it. I’m sending out distance reiki to bring healing/fortune/good vibes to 11 different places/concepts for 65 hours over the next three months.
Today, I sent energy to all 11 places, which include places like Stray Rescue animal shelter and the Gulf of Mexico. All of them are places that could use healing or luck or whatnot.
Using the physical gestures shown to me in my last attunement, I first start with my hands over my heart chakra. I gather the energy from there, even though it doesn’t come from that chakra. It just passes through there. I am a channel for it; it’s not my personal energy; I don’t get drained at all doing it. Rather, I often retain too much of it and need to drain off the extra afterward.
Until this last attunement, the reiki came from sort of all over and just gathered in my hands. Now the energy seems to hang out over my heart, where I use my hands to bring it forward to start the sphere (or to begin the energy flow when I do “close up” reiki), then the energy flows down my arms like usual and into my hands for the healing or sphere-forming. This does not seem usual, but whatever works, eh?
Anyway, I gather up the energy into neat little packets (spheres), and once a nice sphere is gathered, I imagine drawing the distance symbol on it, and then I focus on where I want it to go with a vague word about what I want it to do. Reiki knows what to do once it gets there. It will flow to where the healing is needed. Some of these ki spheres were for healing. Another one or two was just made of love, because some of these places need that more than anything. Sometimes I sent two or three spheres to one place, depending on what I felt drawn to do.
Today, as I worked to send these spheres to their destinations, I noticed I was forming the spheres quicker, from practice, as well as from a sense of urgency, like the energy knew what I was doing and just wanted me to get it on its way to go do its thing. I worked quickly, but deliberately, making sure I had the intention and the symbol in each.
I released each sphere with the gesture I was shown, pushing it out from me to go on its way. I could feel each of them buzzing off to go do their thing. I feel a little buzzy myself and need to ground, which I will do in a while…for now, I’m enjoying feeling awake for the first time today.
There and Back Again
07 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Musings
The journey of Inanna to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the journey of Orpheus to bring back his lover Eurydice, and the story of Kore and Hades are all variations on a theme. Each of those myths recounts a version of the Descent to the Underworld, a journey of power and of peril for those brave enough to undertake it. It is said that no mortal who visits the Underworld comes back, but this is only broadly true. No mortal, or god, who visits the Underworld comes back unchanged. It can certainly be said that the person who returns from the Underworld is not the same person who descended into it. Those who make the Descent bring back wisdom or experiences that they would not have possessed if they had not undertaken the journey.
Have you ever heard the expression, “I’ve been to Hell and back”? It seems like hyperbole, and yet that expression may be quite accurate. Depression, anxiety, trauma, pain, confusion, and the descent into the dark places of our minds and souls is a Descent into the Underworld. These experiences can, and often do, change us forever. When we travel into our own dark places, our own shadow, we almost always emerge with some kind of wisdom. Dealing with depression, trauma, or anxiety requires a lot of self-knowledge, self-awareness and courage. Many people have, in fact, been to Hell and back. They have faced their shadow-selves, and hopefully gained strength and understanding. The challenge, then, is not to go there and come back, but to go there on one’s own terms; to walk into the Underworld intentionally, rather than being dragged down by depression, illness or pain.
The Descent is not a journey I’ve made freely. I’ve been to Hell and back, just like millions of other people, but I’ve never gone there on purpose. That will change. Perhaps, when I begin to walk down there deliberately, I won’t keep finding myself there at times when I did not particularly intend to go.
The Modern American Wheel of the Year – Part 3 Imbolc
28 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Musings Tags: Imbolc, Pagan Holidays, Wheel of the Year
After Yule is Imbolc and the first stirrings of Spring. In America, we mark the coming of Spring with Groundhog’s Day. We pull a large rodent out of a hole with great ceremony and pretend that it can predict when Spring will begin. While this, on the surface, seems a ridiculous endeavor, it reminds us that Spring is close and that Winter cannot last forever. It injects a little fun into the otherwise dull days of midwinter, and thus fulfills the purpose of the holiday. Imbolc is the celebration of the approach of spring, the time when the early greens on the tulips and daffodils begin to pop up out of the snow, and the first buds appear on the trees. We know that winter is still very present, and that snow and bitter cold could come any day, but we recognize, too, that we’ve turned a corner. Spring is very near.
The Modern American Wheel of the Year – Part 2 Yule
17 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
in Musings
The next holiday in the Wheel of the Year is Yule, which, in America, translates into the Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa / Festivus / etc. season. Whichever holiday is being celebrated at this time of year, it celebrates light and the birth of the Sun (son). Even the least religious Americans celebrate at Yule. We exchange presents, feast and play to get us through the long nights and remind us that even though the weather might be bleak, the light will return.
Winter is very cold and very dark. Seasonal Affective Disorder can affect many Americans, especially those at higher latitudes. Even those without SAD can feel sluggish and a bit melancholy during the grey days and early nights. The sun’s return is definitely an occasion to celebrate, and we get our first confirmation that the winter cannot last forever. On Imbolc, we get another sign of the impending season and the strengthening light, but that’s the topic for next week.
