Welcome, Full Moon, Seasonal Timing

Speaker 0:06

Hello,T friends, and welcome to Episode Ten of Darkness and Light. I'm your host, Wendy Rule, and this is a podcast about myth, Magic, and Nature. As this episode lands, we are one day after the Aquarius Full Moon, and that energy of the Full Moon really lasts for three days. We can feel that peak energy, and although it's at its height at the moment of the Full Moon, the day before and the day after really hold that energy of the Full Moon very strongly. But of course, a reminder that no matter when you're listening to this, the whole energy of this podcast is about Nature's cycles. So we'll be coming around to this phase again in a month's time. We'll be coming around to this season again in a year's time. So just trust that you're hearing this at exactly the moment that you are meant to. This time of year corresponds to two festivals in the eight-pronged Wheel Of The Year. It is Lammas or Lughnassadh in the Northern Hemisphere, and opposite that is Imbolc in the Southern Hemisphere. And these two festivals always six months opposite each other in the Wheel. One will be in one hemisphere, the other in the other hemisphere. These two are known as Cross-Quarter days because they are in between a solstice and an equinox. The cross-quarter days, they don't correspond with an exact moment like the solstices and the equinoxes do. They're more seasonal markers. So traditionally, these are celebrated on August 1st or August 2nd, and again on February 1st or 2nd, the opposite festival. But we can be a bit flexible with this. It's more about what Earth is revealing at this time of year, wherever you are on Earth. What's happening at this point that's midway between a solstice and an equinox? For Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere, this is midway between Midsummer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. For Imbolc in the Southern Hemisphere, this is midway between Midwinter Solstice and Spring Equinox. I did a deep dive into the whole energy of the Wheel Of The Year, the turning of the seasons in episode three. So if you missed that episode or you'd just like a refresher, jump back in and have a listen to episode three where we celebrate the energies of the Sun and that solar cycle throughout the year. This Wheel Of The Year, this system for ritualizing and celebrating the cycle of the seasons really comes from a Celtic background. And even those words, Lammas, or more traditionally, Lughnassadh and Imbolc, they are associated with the gods Lugh for Lughnassadh, who is a Solar God, and the goddess Bridget for Imbolc. And I have the greatest respect for those traditions, but at the moment, at least, that's not really where I'm aligned with. My own practice is deeply rooted in Greek mythology. For me, that cycle of the seasons of the turning of the wheel, I relate that to the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. So in this episode, with the greatest respect for Lugh and Brigid, I'm going to be exploring the energies of Lammas and Imbolc through the lens of the myth of Demeter and Persephone.

Lammas And Imbolc On The Wheel

Speaker 4:42

The festival of Lammas is a celebration of the First Harvest, the first hint of Autumn after the height of Summer. Summer is still here, but Lammas says you might be noticing a change. Days are getting shorter, things are starting to ripen. So it's a sense of the First Harvest, the first of three. This will be followed by Autumn Equinox and then Samhain. And Imbolc is a celebration of the first stirring of life after the depths of Winter. Things haven't necessarily started appearing - symbolically or literally - but they're going to. It says have hope. Life is returning after Winter. This feels very relevant for me here in the Northern Hemisphere, at the moment at least. I'll be in Australia in September. But in the Northern Hemisphere, this sense of First Harvest, this feels like a wonderful correspondence with this episode 10 of my podcast. It feels like the energy that I planted, starting this in March this year, but conceiving of it, way before that, this seed that was planted is starting to bear fruit. 10 feels pretty magical. It feels like an achievement. It feels like some kind of marker on the road. And I want to give a big shout out here to my husband Timothy Van Diest because I don't do this podcast completely by myself. I do all the research and recording and editing. But I've been guided through all the tech by Tim's expertise. Once everything's edited and I've slotted in the music that I want, etc., I hand each episode over to Tim and he works his magic with mixing and mastering and making it sound lovely. So yeah, he's been a really major part of this. So at this point, episode 10, this marker on the road of this podcast, I just want to send a great big shout out and thank you to Timothy Van Diest for walking this path with me. It's a big one. So yeah, for me, that's my sense of first harvest.

Speaker 7:18

So let's explore the energy of these festivals just a little more deeply. They're opposite points of the wheel, and I feel that those polar opposites always have a uniting story to share. If we think of the cross-quarter days of Beltaine and Samhain, that's the energy of life and death. If we think of the solstices, and the equinoxes, it's that polarity of darkness and light. They're always connected. So Lammas and Imbolc, they both speak of a point in a plant's life cycle, of planting and of harvesting. But neither of them represent the completion of that stage. They talk of transition. So that first harvest that the northern hemisphere is experiencing right now, Lammas, which is Old English for loaf mass, as in a loaf of bread. Lammas is an acknowledgement of gratitude for the initial hint of that harvest with a recognition that the bulk of the harvesting is yet to come. This is right at the gateway, hinting toward Autumn. But the full harvest isn't here. A lot can happen that can endanger that crop, drought or flood or locusts or whatever it is.

Speaker 8:55

And of course, this first harvest isn't just about literally what's growing from Earth that we're ready to begin gathering. It's about what is growing within us, just like I mentioned my episode 10 as hinting toward that sense of achievement that comes with having planted something and then seeing, beginning to see the fruits of our labor. But it doesn't mean I can just sit back and chill now. Attention needs to be paid to this process of harvesting. Otherwise, all that effort will go to waste. And then think about Imbolc. The image for me of Imbolci is a seed below the soil that has lain dormant over Winter, but is beginning to swell, maybe send up its first shoot, and maybe even that first shoot is symbolically reaching through the crust of the soil. Maybe it's beginning to push bravely up, tenaciously up above the surface. But that doesn't mean that we can just sit back and chill out. It requires tending. We need to be gentle and attentive of this new growth. Last episode I was talking about our creative cycles, and I used the metaphor of building a little fire and tending that fire until it can sustain itself. That each of our creative acts is like that very initial spark. But that spark can go out easily if it's not attended to. On America's East Coast and cold climates like that, Imbolc is still very much Winter. Here too, in New Mexico, first or second of February, that's deep Winter. But if you look really closely, there's little signs of life. A little hint of a swelling bud on a tree. And then the seasonal markers for Lammas are those first offerings of the harvest, maybe your first few tomatoes or anything else you might be growing. But everything isn't ripe yet. There's still work to be done. And as always, I'd really like to remind you that the whole reason for tuning in and following the cycles of the seasons for tuning into this podcast is to align ourselves with Nature, to remember that we're part of that, and we see these expressions in the world around us, but to also remember that they're happening within us. The flower called the snowdrop is traditionally associated with Imbolc. But what I'd really like to remind you is that we don't need to necessarily be seeing snowdrops appear to know that it's Imboc, or we don't necessarily need to be seeing ripening grain to know that it's Lammas. Wherever you are in the world, you are midway, if you're listening to this when it lands, you're midway between a solstice and an equinox. Notice what's happening for you. What are your seasonal markers for these festivals? How do these seasonal markers align with what's going on for you personally at this time of the year.

The Seed As Bridge Symbol

Speaker 12:59

Speaker 12:59

Speaker 13:23

To me, the connecting symbol of Lammas and Imbolc is the seed. This tiny little miracle that appears lifeless and yet holds a miracle within it. A seed is latent potential. It holds possibility and will only activate when the conditions are right. It's a symbol of both life and death and the connection between them. When a plant is at its height of ripeness, of maturity, it drops its seed, maybe held within a fruit, maybe it's a grain, but it releases that seed, it releases it back to earth, and then that seed sinks into the soil, and earth holds it. So it appears to be an ending to this releasing of the old. Then this miracle happens. It lies dormant, and then when the conditions are right, it begins to activate. Life emerges out of seeming death. A beginning emerges out of an ending. So at this point in the year, this First Harvest in the Northern Hemisphere, the first seeds are ready to fall to the Earth. So this seed is released with a sense of trust for the future that it holds. It lies dormant and then six months later, at Imbolc time, that seed begins to activate. The seed that is activating at Imbolc becomes the seed that is harvested at Lammas So this polarity unites a sense of beginning with a sense of culmination. Within every seed is the mature plant. Every acorn holds an oak tree. Every tiny grain of wheat holds a full wheat stalk. A seed is both memory of the plant that it came from and also possibility of the plant that it will become. This latent intelligence within every seed that holds within it the great mystery of life and death and life again. This is the symbol that to me is both Imbolc and Lammas

My Veggie Garden

Speaker 16:20

This year I planted a garden from seed, for the first timein years and years. Because I'm a touring musician, I'm often away during the time that I'd need to be either planting, seed raising, watering, harvesting. Well, this year I had carved out this long stretch of time to be home to work on this podcast. I returned from Australia in January and yeah, won't be touring internationally back to Australia again until September. That's a huge stretch of time for me. Not to be doing a long tour, not to tour internationally. But that decision offered a lot of bonuses. I was able to put the necessary time into creating this podcast and getting it off the ground. And last episode I also spoke about needing to protect and nurture our creative visions and to make decisions so that we can put the necessary energy and focus into our creative projects. So it means recognizing that we can't do everything. So I did recognize that and realized if I'm to get this podcast up and happening, I can't be touring. I need to be home, at least to get it started. So I made that decision. But there was this wonderful boon that I was home. And so yeah, I decided to create this garden. And Winter here, as I've mentioned, we're at nearly 7,000 feet elevation. So Winters are long and very, very cold. So I needed to be raising seeds inside, which I started in about February. And throughout March, I had, you know, some tables set up in warm areas of the house and these seed raising trays, and I'd have to tend to them every single day. And I know I'm probably there's loads of you who are expert gardeners who are probably listening now, but for me, it was a learning curve. And I went and sorted through a drawer of seeds that I had, and I'd kept them for years. Some had been offered from expert gardening friends, others I'd bought and had just never activated. So these seeds had sat in this drawer as latent potential for at least a few years. So I grabbed them all out and started activating them, planting them in soil, watering them every day, making sure that they were warm and witnessing them push through the soil and become life. That possibility was always there. They'd sat there in that drawer holding this possibility. There was a sense of patience held within every seed. And then I presented the right conditions for them, and lo and behold, up they came. I planted a whole heap of um various kinds of squash, and I didn't label them. So I have no idea. They're growing now in my garden, and I have no idea yet what they are. They've begun flowering but not fruiting. So maybe zucchinis, maybe button squash, maybe cantaloupe. I don't know. I don't know what's going to come. That's kind of part of the excitement. Yeah, and then tomatoes from seed and some capsicum. And so I was really, really thrilled when these started coming up. There were losses as well, when maybe I'd missed a day or two of watering and come out to go, oh my goodness, look at this. There's been a culling unwittingly, and some have died. And now they're out in the garden and witnessing this growth. I'll be looking at these tomato plants that have begun to bear tomatoes right now. And to me, it really is a freaking miracle that this whole plant came from this one tiny seed, and it was one of those seeds that managed to survive my inexperienced process of activating them. So now the ones that have survived, they're out there and they're growing, and a whole series of other risks arise as squirrels. Oh my god, the squirrels here, they're so cute, but they're so naughty. I have all the plants covered in bird netting, and the squirrels will still find ways to get in and then just eat a whole little seedling down. As I'm recording this, the harvest definitely isn't in. There's a great sense of risk. I need to keep tending it. I can't just go, well, that work is done. And then the other thing that I really learnt during this process, I had sown a whole heap of parsley seeds, and they all came up, hundreds of them. And I'm like, yes, I'm gonna have so much parsley. It's gonna be tabouli all summer. This is gonna be awesome. And I think because I was so excited about the amount, I didn't thin them out. I wasn't choosing the strongest of the seedlings. I felt bad about thinning them out, and so you know what? None of them survived. Not one out of hundreds of them. That was a big lesson about trying to keep everything. There's a necessity of discernment. In both the planting and the harvesting stage, if all those seeds are stirring underground and in bulk, we need to decide which ones will receive our full energy. Which ones now of the things and the ideas and the projects that you've planted require your immediate attention. It can't be all of them. But mostly what I learnt from planting, literally planting at Imbulk, and now it's Lamus, and I am starting to see the fruits of my labor, even just as beautiful green growing things out here in the desert. That in itself feels just wonderful. But yeah, I can't drop my guard now. You know, Nature just has so much to teach us. Everything can become a metaphor for our inner journey, the journey of our own lives. What we plant, what we harvest, what we need to thin out, what we need to protect ourselves from, you know, what squirrels are going to come and eat our lovely little seedlings. So yeah, it was and continues to be a really great way of dealing with the fact that I wasn't touring because I miss that too. I'm excited about this upcoming tour to Australia in September. Not only because I'll see all my loved ones, friends, and family, but because I I really love connecting with all my Australian fans and performing and doing workshops there. I'm going to be doing a workshop on the goddess Artemis in Melbourne and Adelaide and Cairns as well. Oh, and Tassie as well. So anyway, all that info's up on my website. But yeah, I'm excited about that. And this gardening thing kept me kind of sane when I'm used to traveling around. It was really, really worthwhile. The miracle of the seed isn't just that it holds like and death within it. But

How Agriculture Changed Humanity

Speaker 24:16

seeds are a major part of the human diet. We eat seeds as grain, as wheat and rye and barley, as beans and peas and legumes, and we eat the containers of seed as fruit and vegetables. So seeds are deeply important in our human story. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans were nomadic. They needed to move around in order to have enough sustenance. They followed nature in order to harvest what was growing, and also followed the paths of animals as they moved across the earth. And then around 10,000 years ago, something extraordinary happened, and that was the development of agriculture. That changed everything. So it's thought that agriculture began in the Fertile Crescent and in Mesopotamia, so sort of Middle East now, the first cultivation of grain. And as humans began to have this deeper relationship with grain, to plant it and harvest it and refine it so that the wild grains and grasses, because grains are a grass, so that they would yield more, more food, a sense of stability was created, that a community could stay put by planting and harvesting and storing the grain for lean times, and keeping part of it aside to plant again the following year. And this meant that towns and cities could emerge because people were able to stay put, that rather than having to move with the seasons, humans were able to weather the seasons because the storage of grain meant that life could be sustained over winter. A sense of security arose. And so the agricultural cycle of planting and tending and harvesting and waiting of times of growth, of fallow times, became a symbol for life itself, became a symbol for the human lifespan, that we emerge, that we live, that we die, but that life continues, even though there is the death of the individual, life continues just like a seed creates more seeds that become more plants, and those plants might die, but life will go on. And that's essentially what this template of the wheel of the year reminds us. It's an endless cycle of life and growth and death and rebirth over and over again. The wheel of the year is essentially mapping out an agricultural cycle and reminding us that we're connected to this. We're connected to this because humankind is connected now to agriculture, but we're connected to this cycle because it becomes a metaphor for all life, for the continual cycles of life, death, and rebirth that we see on Earth. But we also see in the wider cosmos the birth and life and death of stars, of everything. So that symbol of the seed and of the grain becomes the symbol of all life.

Demeter, Goddess of Grain

Speaker 28:46

To the ancient Greeks, the sacredness of the grain and of the harvest was celebrated through the goddess Demeter. Demeter is the personification of humanity's relationship with agriculture. To the Romans, Demeta, who is the goddess of all things that grow on earth. To the Romans Demeda was Ceres, and that's where we get the word serial from. In Greek myth, Demeter taught humanity agriculture. She taught humanity how to collaborate consciously with Nature in order to provide food. I've mentioned the goddess Demeter before in relation to the myth of Persephone. Demeter is the goddess Persephone's mother. So she becomes the archetypal mother in Greek mythology, the mother of her daughter, but also the mother of the grain. She is the mother of the corn. We often think of the word corn these days as meaning maize, the cob of corn. But in fact, in older British English, corn meant grain in general. Corn was the principal cereal crop in a region, so that might have been wheat or barley or oats or rye, etc. And that was referred to as corn. In North America, that principal crop was maize, what we now know as corn. But when older texts say a cornfield or a corn harvest, they're meaning most likely wheat or rye or barley, not maize, which wasn't brought over to Europe until after the European invasion of North America and South America too. And my album Persephone, one of the songs that I sing in honor of, or in the voice actually, of the goddess Demeter. I speak of her as having generous fields of corn, but I know there was no maize in ancient Greece. I'm speaking of wheat and rye and barley. And barley was actually a very important grain in ancient Greece and strongly related to the goddess Demeter, just as wheat is.

Speaker 31:18

The Eleusinian Mysteries.

Speaker 31:50

One of the most important agrucultural traditions or festivals of the Ancient Greek world was known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, and they were presided over by the goddess Demeter. When Demeter's daughter, Persephone, was abducted into the Underworld by her uncle Hades, and when Demeter didn't know what had happened to her, she wandered for nine days and nine nights full of grief, and all the green things of earth dried up as Winter spread its icy fingers across the land, reflecting Demeter's grief at losing her daughter. And she searched and searched and searched, and eventually she came to a town called Eleusis. And this is an actual place. It is about 20 kilometers west of Athens. It's called Elephsina now, and you can go to the ruins and you can see this place where the goddess Demeter was searching for her daughter. I've been to these ruins a few times, and it's extraordinary because this was the location of the most important mystery tradition in the ancient Greek world. But unlike places like the Acropolis in central Athens, there's very, very few tourists there, and you get to explore this ancient site with reverence and depth that's, to me at least, near impossible when places are crowded with tourists. And I noted that there's little signs put up at points within this whole temple complex, and it will say things like, This is the well where Demeter sat down and she was searching for Persephone, where the women of the town of Eleusis gathered round her and were kind to her in a way that brought her back into herself and reminded her that she's Goddess and she needs to keep searching for her daughter. Or this is the opening of the Earth where Hades emerged to abduct Persephone. There's a sense of living mythology at Eleusis. There's one part that's called the Telesterion, and it was a big hall, and it could hold something like 3,000 people, and they would do these sacred rituals, these initiatory rituals every year, every Autumn, that somehow honored the energies of life and death through the myth of Demeter and Persephone, honored these mysteries. But no one knows exactly what happened here because the initiates were sworn to secrecy and would forfeit their lives if they broke that secret. So no one really knows what happened within this great ceremony that happened every single year. And there would be a sacred procession from Athens to Eleusis along what became known as the Sacred Way, so this long walk, 20 kilometers, and people from all over the Greek-speaking world and later the Roman world would come to this sacred site to be initiated into these mysteries. This happened for nearly 2,000 years. It was still happening in Christian times up until about the late fourth century of the Christian era. These deeply important Mysteries and initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries was open to all people, free people and enslaved people, women and men, poor people, rich people, and through a series of rituals, they would enter into a deeper understanding and relationship with the cycles of life and death. And despite this sworn secrecy, one little bit of information has slipped through, and it is that at the height of the ritual, or maybe the depths of the ritual, when the initiates, it is thought, were in darkness or near darkness in that big central hall, the telesterion, maybe they might have been a little high because they would be drinking a ritual drink that was made of fermented barley and penny royal. It was called Kykion. And there's some speculation that it might have been psychoactive. But walking 20 kilometers and preparing for months to do this ritual is going to put you into an altered state no matter what. And also a bit of fear of not knowing what was actually going to happen when you went into this ritual that was taken extremely seriously. So within that potent darkness, it is thought that the presiding priest, who was known as the Heirophant, it's where we get the word Heirophant, that's the name of one of the tarot cards, the chief priest would simply hold up a stalk of wheat. Just that. That this climax of the ritual included holding up a stalk of grain. The great mystery. The mystery held within the seed, life and death and life again. And ancient writers describe a profound transformation that comes from this ritual experience. There was less fear of death, and there was a hope for what lay beyond death. The seed, the grain, as miracle, as sacred.

Persephone as the Wisdom of the Seed

Speaker 38:16

It's not only Demeter who is associated with the potent , sacred energy of the seed. It's also her daughter, Persephone. So Persephone is originally known as Kore, which just means daughter or maiden, and is a flower maiden, a flower goddess. She's picking flowers out in the field, and then unbeknownst to her, her uncle Hades has fallen in love with her and has decided to take her as his wife without her consent, and he comes up to the surface of the Earth and he grabs her and drags her down into the Underworld, into the darkness. But the part of the myth that is really relevant to this episode, to this Imbolc, Lammas, gardening episode, is the pomegranate. I've spoken about this before. It was probably in my Beltaine Samhain episode, and I'll speak of it again. It's a central myth for me personally, and I believe that it has so much wisdom to offer us that I'm sure I'm going to be referring to this myth many, many times on this podcast. So even if I'm explaining or sharing a particular part of the story again, trust that it's illuminating a particular aspect of where we are now in relation to the Sun or the Moon. And in this instance, the reason I'm sharing Persephone's descent into the Underworld is the miracle of the seed. The pomegranate is filled with hundreds of seeds, each one holding the potential of an entirely new pomegranate tree. Every seed, full of life, but it also reflects the energies of death because of its blood-red juice. So when Persephone is down in the Underworld, Hades offers her the seeds of the pomegranate. So she hasn't eaten anything in the Underworld up until this point when Hades offers her six seeds. And some versions of the myth say that he tricked her into eating these. But I don't align with that. I feel that this is myth. And Persephone is the wisdom of that seed, is the wisdom that is held within the descent, within the release of the beautiful flower who becomes the seed into the underworld. So Persephone eats these pomegranate seeds and gains the wisdom of life and death and life and death and life and death. Demeter is the wisdom of the seed as grain, and Persephone parallels that wisdom, the knowledge of the seed underground. Demeter is dealing with the seed above ground, with what it offers humanity as food. Persephone is the embodiment of the seed as miracle, as rebirth, as death, because she descends, disappears into darkness, vanishes, but emerges again with the spring, just like a seed does. So she is the flower that becomes the fruit, the pomegranate, that becomes the seed, and then emerges again as the springtime flower. She's the ruby seed that is both life and death. I remember once I was in Athens and I went to, I'm pretty sure it was the main museum, Athens archaeological museum. And there is an incredible base relief sculpture, and it has an image of Demeter and Persephone, the mother and the daughter, but they look pretty much identical as they usually do when they're depicted in ancient Greek art. It's not like Demeter looks older or anything like that. They stand as equals and they are passing a stalk of grain between them. And that's it. This miracle of life, death, life, Imbolc and Lammas, planting and harvesting held within the symbol of the seed.

Honouring Lammas and Imbolc

Speaker 43:14

Let's take another look at Lammas and Imbolc, and at how we can honour them in our own lives. So for those of you who are in the Southern Hemisphere at this time, you might like to question what is stirring below the soil? What is coming to life that is not yet fully visible? How can I trust what is emerging? How can I trust this sense of movement, this quickening? That's a word often associated with Imbolc, a quickening. What is this quickening that I'm feeling that I don't yet see proof of? Or maybe you are seeing those first brave green shoots, the equivalent of those springtime bulbs pushing bravely. Through the surface, what is ready to emerge now after the dormancy of winter? If we lay the lunar cycle over the top of the solar cycle, then Imbolc really aligns with the phase of the Moon that is the New Crescent. We've got the Dark Moon, which is that seed dormant within the ground symbolically, and then it starts to emerge, and the first green shoots push above the surface. That's like the New Crescent. This is like that Artemis energy, that Maiden energy, determined, focused, full of energy, full of feisty life force. So questions you might like to ask yourself now, what stirs below the soil? And where am I going to focus my energy now? Remembering my little parsley seed lesson, we need to be discerning about where our energy will focus. And for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, in Lammas or Lughnasadh season, consider what is ready to be harvested. Where is our previous work starting to actually bear fruit? It's a time to be tuning in to the energy of gratitude, of noticing even the smallest offering that is starting to present itself. I love to bake bread at Lammas, and traditionally the first loaf, or part of it, was traditionally given back to Earth, essentially saying, Thank you, Mother Earth, for this gift of food. May there be more to come. And it's important to remember too that not everything has an annual cycle. We don't need to be literal with this. Some seeds can take years to develop into a full-grown plant, like an acorn or an apple seed. Might be years before we see the fruits of our labor. We need to be patient, and some things really do seem to just take a season. Some cycles are slow and some cycles are fast, and we need to trust in that. We need to offer our attention and devotion to the things that were growing in our lives, and also our patience.

A Gentle Meditation

Speaker 47:00

As we prepare for this episode's tarot reading, let's take a moment to settle into the right here and right now, breathing into our bodies and feeling that connection between our hemispheres. The seed that is stirring in the embolk soil of the southern hemisphere is ripening in the lamus sun of the northern hemisphere. Feeling this connection, this shared story. Let's imagine ourselves that seed underground. Feel the cool, dark earth holding us, and feel all that potential within us. The magic of the seed that knows how to become itself, held within this tiny miracle. Within each of us is the wisdom of our own becoming, of our own potential, and with dedication, nurturing, and patience, we can begin to see that seed swelling and sprouting. We can bravely push ourselves up through soil, growing into what we know we have the potential to become. Growing up and up and up, imagining ourselves as a stalk of grain, pushing up, up, up, breaking through the soil, through the surface, drinking in the energy of sun growing and growing and growing. Taller and taller, ripening, green, becoming gold. This stalk of sacred grain, full of the potential of our own individual selves, ripening, ripening, ripening until you are ready to let some of that grain fall back down to the ground and to harvest and collect the bounty that you have created through your own growth, through your own focus and application, knowing that this requires dedication and sometimes sacrifice of those seeds that will return to the soil, trusting that seeming loss is but a temporary stage, and that in time those seeds that you have released will also stir and grow and push through soil to become yet another aspect of yourself.

Tarot Time

Speaker 50:30

Alright, let's shuffle these tarot cards, hey. Let's see what the universe would like to show us at this particular point in the Wheel of the Year and the cycles of our own lives. Okay, at the top of the deck is this card. Well, I have to admit that I first of all bucked against seeing this because to me it's kind of like the nastiest card in the deck. It's the Five of Swords. It looks really vicious in this Smith Rideawake deck. There is a guy at the forefront of the card in the foreground, and he's kind of looking over his shoulder. He is holding two swords in his left hand, one sword in his right hand, and he has a malicious kind of grin on his face. There's some sharp angular clouds in the sky, and it looks like his hair is being blown by this quite cruel, feels quite cold wind. And then there's two people walking away from this scene, and they both have their backs towards us. And the one that's furthest away has their head bent into their hands, so it looks really sad, like they have suffered. And there's two swords dropped at the feet of the guy in the foreground, the winner in a sense. But what has he won? There's this nastiness to this. This card talks of winning and losing, of a battle, because it's a sword, it's aligned with the energy of air, and often that is to do with our thoughts, with our internal world. And our thoughts are what create the world. I don't mean that just esoterically, I mean what goes on in our mind will affect how we are feeling about the present moment. So this sense of victory on the one hand and defeat on the other, neither feel good in this card. Because

Speaker 52:55

victory is coming at the expense of loss and cruelty and pain for the other people. You know, I'm never too happy when this card comes up in a reading, and I was so tempted just to pull a second card with this, but I don't do that. I really do trust the card that comes through. Why could this be coming through at this point of in bulk and lamus at this point of the Aquarius full moon too? And Aquarius is uh an air sign. Yeah, and full moons are always heightened. Maybe it's this opposition of the seed, the beginning of things and the end of things, remembering that they're not in battle. This polarity of embulk and lamus, of the first stirrings of spring and the first hint of autumn, but still being within the grip of winter and summer. So what might seem like they are in conflict, and this is a card of conflict that has come up, our lesson is to see beyond that seeming conflict and find the connecting story, which for us in this episode was the seed. It's the same seed. The reason that we can have a lamus harvest is because that seed began to emerge in bulk. It's the same seed. I guess we can consider for this card what is the connecting story that can move us beyond winners and losers at any points, current points of conflict in our own lives, maybe conflict between different people, self and other, or maybe conflicts within ourselves as well, that you're feeling, or I'm feeling, that I'm pulled in maybe two different directions, and that one of those directions will win and the other one will lose. How can we avoid this nasty, vicious energy of this card? Where can we find the similarities? Where can we look with compassion and notice, oh, that person is also feeling what I'm feeling? So softening the whole story and finding those points where we connect, because this level of conflict that's displayed in this card can only come about when we see the other as completely separate from us. But when we recognize a shared humanity or shared aspects within ourselves too, threads of connection between the disparate parts of ourselves, when we recognize that connection, then conflict or disagreement can become constructive rather than destructive as it's displayed in this card. I'm gonna talk more about this card in the upcoming episode of Magic Monday on my Patreon page. And yeah, I'll be doing some deep thinking about this. And really, my current battle at the moment is with those freaking squirrels. Honestly, they've just murdered so many of those blessed plants. That's my current battle. My squirrel battle. Where can I find my shared story with them? That we're both just trying to survive, that we're just animals here on earth doing our best, and I can't berate them for being who they are. I just need to protect those aspects of self that I don't want them to get at my little tomato plants. Anyway, think about what areas of your life you might be feeling a bit of conflict or crunchy energy in, and maybe thinking about that symbol of the seed. What's the connecting thread between these different conflicting energies that you're feeling or trying to reconcile? I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks.

Australian Tour and Patreon Reminder

Speaker 57:05

Oh, a reminder to for those of you in Australia, in Melbourne, in Tasmania, Hobart and Devonport, in Adelaide, in Perth, and in Cairns, check out my website, wendyrule.com, and you will find info and ticket links for all those shows. I'm really very excited about coming back. And if you would like to do a deeper dive with this card and share your insights as well, consider joining my Patreon community. If you're not yet a patron, you can join for uh about the cost of a cup of coffee every month and not only get access to my Magic Monday videos, but also be part of a lovely, supportive and thriving community of like-minded folks. Thanks for tuning in. I really appreciate it. Episode ten, yay, I will back with episode eleven in a couple of weeks. Until then, Blessed Be.