Happy Beltane!! I Celebrate the Wheel of the Year

Cycles absolutely are one of my favorite parts of life. This intrinsic quality of my nature is and always has been a calling towards the Wise Women Way. Regardless of whether or not one’s seed continues to drop every month, our tides are compelled not just by the moon, but by all the cosmos in all Its perpetual spinning. As women, we are deeply, intrinsically connected. We each, should we so be beckoned, are tied to the She that binds. As the spiral journey of the year turns and grows and flowers, seeds and dies, so too are our own specific deep callings unturned. To be one with the energies of the Earth and the Cosmos is to understand the way these energies move in us each a truly sacred Harvest of the Soul.

Samsara and “Un”-programming
I am a Reiki Practitioner experienced in healing and release by the phases of the moon. As well, my own form of trance work and deep meditation is influenced by a Buddhist technique known as Vipassana. The Buddhists and Hindis teach of a phenomenon called samsara. Using my own terms, my own mystic/esoteric application, I’ll describe samsara as such: energy bands, or frequencies. A friend, and also a fine yoga teacher, says samsaras are “like long-made water-marks in stone.” Responsible for our unconscious behavior patterns, for our old reactions or stuck thoughts, samsaras manifest as our personal chemical blueprints that can and do drive us in life. They keep us trapped in all forms of unconscious dance, products of our own fears or unchecked motives and behaviors. It is our samsaras that are responsible, in Eastern thought, for unabated cycles of reincarnation. Unchecked “programming” plants the energetic seeds of our next incarnations to come and to come. Perhaps most importantly, samsaras are capable of reprogramming, or maybe better put, being “unraveled” from our core.

Blessed Be the Way!
Here is one of my favorite symbols of She: veiled in cloak, broom in hand. Housecleaning. A willingness to do one’s own work. To get in their, in the dirt, and inspect. Self-wisdom is an ability to clear away the past and to surrender deeply and willingly to one’s own spiral rhythms as they turn. Personal responsibility is truly honoring one’s unique powerful ebbing and flowing presence of She. I am not sure when I truly began this understanding, when I took the responsibility of taking a better look at me. What I do know is that when I began to recognize my own unique energies, I could slowly start to see the larger patterns or vibrations that capable of harmoniously moving me.

As physicists have long proved, our bodies our Self are nothing more than mass conglomerates of little atoms, vibrating at will. And consciousness? A Buddhist will tell you consciousness is ALL and NOTHING at once, and once perceived, is misery, for only the ego may perceive itself. So in this three-dimension form we are trapped, merciless, to our ego’s wiley way’s. Ahh, to be a Wise Woman, though! To understand that it is this very blessed dance of divine chaos, of duality, which is creation, which brings Oneness to all things.

Our etheric body vibrates and moves at its own rhythms, manifesting in form from the most powerful tool we have: our thoughts. So samsaras exist in form: how one holds her body as armor against emotional pain or in response to stress, how disease or good health manifests itself, chronic aches, or an accident or even the lucky arrival of a check on time. And as samsaras, too, are connected to the vibration, to that ONE ENERGY incapable of being destroyed, so too are they affected by the grand cosmos, by our blessed earth and the celestial heavens, by the axis on which She turns.

Thoughtforms imitate the rest of the natural world, manifesting, going through the format of full growth, and then in to death and dying. The energy is never destroyed, only changed to different forms. In fact, thoughtforms actually initiate the natural world, whether one is magically inclined or not. Those vibrating atoms, simply put, are at our command. In our conscious realm of third dimension, all matter appears to exist in form, and forms are interpreted, consciously or in our subconscious, as symbol. Symbology is messagry for us whether in words, pictures, ideas or a concrete item such as a chair. All life is creative messagery meant to help aid us, to continue us on in our dance of creative discourse and milieu interspersed equally with creative grace and harmony. Archetypes, for example, are symbology, existent in our energy bands and making up our karma and life patterning. The Wheel of the Year spins as twelve houses, four elements, seven directions, 13 moons and the ever-constant variances of the perfect union of light and dark. Each of these influences are full, too, of symbols or energy swirls, and pull us forward or draw us back according to our own personal vibrations. Every individual is different in this, yet so too are we each connected and affecting the Great One.

My Own Spiral Wheel
My own “patterning” over the years, I have learned, looks something like this: It is Beltane this week. My preference is to honor the Earth Way by marking both the calendar holiday and the traditional lunar or “energy” holiday. For Beltane this energy is most present around the time when the moon is full during a Taurus sun. After years of commitment to my own spiral journey, I recognize that the energies of the lunar holidays always seem to move me most naturally, and often in deep, unexpected ways. Often I receive soul gifts of clarity, of well-felt sacred awareness of the deep Within in sacred harmony with that which is outside of me, and of how truly I am fully connected.

At full moon of Taurus I was busy, did not recognize that Lunar Beltane was not only fast approaching but was about to pass me by! My romantic relationship was going through some painful changes, and at work some heavy personality conflicts were continuing to arise between my boss and I. I was numbing out, just trying to march dutifully through my days. What do you know, Saturday of the full moon, despite the fact that I had not adequately given myself the quiet time I require on an almost daily basis, I was graced.

We know that Beltane traditionally is a fertility celebration. Well, fertility in the natural world is simply a seeding process, a time for creative union, for the fire of life to merge and burst forth, a time to celebrate the fecundity of the Life process. It was indeed that day that Union struck me: I was hit, almost broad sided in fact, going about my business at work when suddenly not one but two deep and clear insights struck me. Two precious seeds of light. Each involved my side in what seemed to be the ongoing conflicts in my romantic and professional relationships. Of course neither of the problems were suddenly or spontaneously “fixed” as result of this information. But a new line, a new vibration of thought had entered me. I can happily report that in silence and trance I witnessed my currents, and took responsibility for the attitudes and behaviors in me in need of change. And peace and connection have begun to return to me. In my romantic relationship I am working on letting go of some old shame and trusting more; in my professional relationship it is about balance (a regular lesson for me as one born on the Spring Equinox), a need to be at once more assertive while learning too to not always take things so personally.

Most amazing about this recent experience is the beauty of my soul’s alignment: at Samhain my clear intentions for the coming Harvest Year of My Soul were to commit myself fully to my Art (that of sharing my voice through healing, writing and empowering community.) At Yule I saw clearly in my darkest darkness what, of my Self, I would be up against. My specific fears of standing in my Truth, which would have to be confronted in order to access my next level of Self and Power. My Voice must be aligned with my Will and be True if it is to Matter. Indeed, on some level both the conflicts I am currently working through in my relationships are power struggles that my soul’s samsaras are attempting to work out in order that I have better boundaries when it comes to my own Personal Will and Power. I can track this forward to Brigid’s Day, when my inner fire illuminated for me a “seed” of specific action I needed to take to confront my fears, which I did, though because of my fears I did in a dishonest way. So of course by Equinox, when the results of this action had begun to “flower”, it was clear that I was in for some emotional turmoil and quite a lot of pain and confusion to sort through. Indeed, both conflicts with my partner and at work were resultant of this action. I have found Blessings to always be the benefit of discord, however; and I firmly believe that in the alchemy of soul process and growth, we unravel in order to come back together as a more authentic version of who we truly are. I am thankful that I did not, as far as I know, interfere in any other’s Will as result of this, and am equally thankful that my own soul growth seems to be right on chart!

As for my Intentions in the physical form, here I am, day before Calendar Beltane, sharing my voice: at once healing and helping my Self be healed. What more could I ask for, indeed—what better Harvest fruit could there be? And so for me it is true: As much as my Love exists and is grown by the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the trees, as much as I must be under moon regularly with my bare feet planted in the ground, I continue to find it best to honor Her in all her forms by starting within, with me. As Within, so Without. The Wheel of the Year, as I honor it, never fails to honor me. I love the earth, the moon, the sun, the cosmos as they spin. I love too the world within and unto my Self. Knowing the intimate experience of such great union of All is truly a gift that continues to give.

© 2008, Kelly McMullen