This time of year, this year especially, feels heavy with loss and grief. Grief and strife across the seas, here at home throughout many parts of Turtle Island, and within our own hearts. January is a long month, both in duration and in feeling. As it is my birth month, I really try my best to find the sweetness in it, but this time of year is an undeniably strong, bitter medicine. I respect how the energy of this time in the Northern Hemisphere holds strong and neutral to it’s limited resources, which we may experience as austerity that is severe and unfeeling. Nature gives to encourage growth and expansion, and in flow it also limits in order to encourage rest and restoration.
Capitalism doesn’t encourage rest. The earth does. This is still very much the time for deep rest and retreat, walking in quiet abundance with the previous harvest, we need this time to reserve, reflect, and slow down. Every year for me, something about this ancient earth wisdom feels like a force to habitually resist in one way or another. Something about the forced rest feels impossible to bear, and yet with time it is borne. The potent complex beauty of the seeds we have saved from harvest begin to glow, hum, and buzz in our hands. The sun’s light continues to increase daily.
We just experienced a rough bit of enduring snow and ice conditions here in the Portland area, many trees had their roots loosened by these extreme weather conditions, ending their time above ground, sometimes slicing through homes on their way down. Animals and humans alike are displaced by these types of tree fell events.
On December 27, a few weeks before the storm, I lost a dear tree friend, the Northern Catalpa tree that you may have seen me write about previously here or on my Instagram page. I woke up in the morning to a person in a bright orange sweatshirt shimmying up the main trunk of the tree. I hoped at first that he was assessing some branches to trim for maintenance, but when I looked outside and saw how large the tree crew was, I knew that I was experiencing my last morning with this arboreal elder. I still grieve the loss of this tree. I mourn the loss of the shade and groundedness they offered me throughout a deep period of mourning in 2023, as I also mourn the loss of shelter for the squirrels, birds, and other families of wildlife imperceptible to my eye.
I worked a full day that day at Clary Sage, so I could not watch the entire take down occur, but I was able to salvage a large branch from one of the site workers for my porch garden before I left the house. When I returned home at the end of the evening, there was a large log from a trunk of the tree resting along the sidewalk near where it used to grow. The moon had just been full in Cancer the day previous, and I had done an extensive reading for myself for the year ahead. The roots and branches of that tree had held and supported the wisdom offered to me in this reading. That night, after the tree’s light had been extinguished and I had returned home from work, there was an empty space in the night sky where their branches once sprawled. I sat on their remaining trunk, and gazed at the waning full moon, clouds quickly rolling by in front of her. The opening in the sky is still bittersweet. I have more sunlight in my home now, which my houseplants are enjoying, but I no longer have one of my elders around.
The earth and the cosmos, of which we are a part, can hold our grief. This is a time to hold grief with one another. A time to mourn the retreat of many nourishing ecosystems. And a time to imagine ways to build new, flourishing ecosystems of care for one another, human and non-human alike.
In a numerological sense, 2024 (2+0+2+4) is a Strength (8) year in the Tarot. This is a year for courage. Cor (Latin) meaning “heart” —> corage (French) —> courage (Middle English). Typically, this card depicts a lion, and a femme figure with one hand reaching tenderly into the lion’s open mouth. I won’t offer a deep dive into all the wisdom of this card today. For now, I think it is worth delivering one clear reminder that this card impresses: you cannot suppress your wild animal self in perpetuity, neither can you deny yourself grace and tenderness.
Have heart. Nurture heart-focused healing modalities. Access heart-centered bravery. Operate from loving integrity. Learn new ways to offer yourself love, care, and gentle kindness. Roar. Move with wild vigor in your home, or on the land, to music that encourages your feral spirit to sing with raucous abandon. Get curious about ways to integrate the wild and the tender. The effect of doing this work diligently will help you infuse these qualities in your external relationships as well. Love with a fierce, courageous, and tender heart. We need your courage.
January 23, 2024
Artemis Divine