Welcome to Autumn. Everything in the ground is slowing down. More dark than light in the skies now, every day until we greet the Winter Solstice in late December.
The zinnia and nasturtium blossoms in my garden are still growing and blooming in response to sporadic solar appearances - still doing their thing, but at a slower rate. And the leaves on my marshmallow plant are actively yielding their chlorophyll. Those broad and once bright green, velvety soft solar receptors now yellowing and curling inwards, as the juiciest solar information from the summer months is sent downwards as currents of sugar toward the roots. The most exciting events are now taking place beneath the soil.
This is the time to celebrate the root medicine, and make a journey with the darkness. Fall is the season in the Northern Hemisphere to harvest everything sweet that was nourished during the Spring and Summer months, and savor it all at a resting heart rate beat. It’s time to look beneath the surface of what was yielded. Scrape and dig beyond the crust. What has been waiting there for you to uncover, gather, and tend to? I’m uncovering a different way to listen as I tend to the parts of me that move…very…slowly…
Listen: the pulse of the solar party has slowed and become no more than a muffled bass beat resounding in a distant, neighboring chamber. What subtle, pleasing sounds greet you now? If the increasing dark of Fall were a vast cave, what sparks would you bring along to light the way for the journey deep within?
The Hermit is the archetype in the tarot which plays companion to the astrological sign of Virgo. So while we have progressed beyond the Virgo passage in our 2023 solar journey, I find comfort in picturing myself as The Hermit during this season, hard at work, studying away in my mountain top cave. To paraphrase a visualization of this archetype that my friend Jess Funaro intimated to me last week: The Hermit is illuminating the journey through the dark one footstep at a time, casting light only as far as their lantern’s flame will allow. We can’t see everything, but we can see as far ahead as we need to to guide us toward the next step.
Step by step. One foot in front of the other. There is no easier way to make the human journey.
Artemis Divine
October 5, 2023