Several events that occurred in my life in late 2009 and early 2010 left me with a sinking feeling at the time that the 2010s would be a decade of difficulty and stagnation, and that foreboding ended up coming true both for myself and for the collective. But I've felt a new, fresh energy brewing since last May, and ever since October, a succession of positive developments in my life have deepened my conviction that we are heading into a better period. Thanks to @vestralux, we also now know that a very rare sequence of astrological events are coming up this month beginning on the 19th. I've also been reading several comments @asian made a few years back in the technology predictions thread, and it turns out 2020 is a "great chronocrator" when the Kali Yuga (Hindu dark age) ends and we experience our first tentative initiation into the Satya Yuga/Aquarian age.
I've been thinking I need to perform some sort of ceremony to observe and honor this shift of energy, so here's my plan. I will be at my parents' place in Connecticut between Christmas and the New Year, and I'm going to make a miniature bonfire using their patio fire pit in which I'm going to burn several documents and binders of medical records that I feel like are weighing me down and holding me back from the future of healing I desperately want. But here's the most important part. My twin brother and my older brother will be around as well for the holidays, so I'm going to get them to join me while also inviting them to burn things they feel like they need to let go of as well. There's nothing toxic in our relationships, but I feel like I've distanced myself from them over the years, especially my twin brother, and that needs to change. They've never seen his spiritual side of me, so holding a ceremony like this and very openly telling them "these are the types of things I think about" seems like a good way to start closing the gap. I've written on this forum about my past troubles making friends and connecting with people in the past. Now that I'm living independently in a new area, I really want to find a circle of close friends and eventually romantic love, but I feel like I won't accomplish any of that unless I start being closer with my brothers.
Perhaps we should all try to perform some sort of ceremony in the days around Christmas/New Year in whatever way is appropriate to our particular stations in life. There's been so much talk on this forum about how dark these weeks have been. I feel it too. But I've been thinking about something I read in a Charles Eisenstein book, and I'm going to paraphrase it here: In Native American cosmology, sun ceremonies don't simply honor the sun. Rather, by showing gratitude for the abundance provided by the creator, sun ceremonies ensure that the sun will continue to bless earth.
The way I see it, by holding our own ceremonies in the coming weeks with the aim of fostering human connection and our inner lights, we can ensure that we will in fact see cultural transformation in the coming years. I stressed the need for these ceremonies to incorporate human connection, whether that be through involving friends or family members, since I don't think we can transform the world unless we transform some aspect of our relationships with the people already in our lives.
If you're reading this sentence, thank you for taking in my novel of a post.
You are such a gift to this community. Thank you for sharing these ideas about having a ceremony to mark our moving forward into a new age. You are an inspiration to me. ❤️
@coyote, I wish I could hug your neck. And participate in your beautiful ceremony of release (from past hindrances) and relational renewal. What lovely lovely insights!
I'll be with you in spirit, longitudinally due south, celebrating my own little family's tradition on Solstice. My daughter and I prepare a delicious meal together, and when it's ready, we put the house in complete darkness. Then, we sit facing each other in front of a circle of unlit candles while I tell the story of The Longest Night. How going back countless millennia, our human ancestors tracked the turning of the moon and stars. They followed the celestial cycles like a map—to know in what direction to travel when they migrated, or later, when to plant and when to harvest. To them, the Earth and the Sun and Moon were conscious and divine, and the stars were laden with signs or important warnings and reminders.
On the Darkest Night of the year, when the world was terrible and cold and food was scarce, tribes and communities would gather and feast, in show of their gratitude for the constancy and regularity of the Great Mother's rhythms and the Sun god's inevitable return. The winter was fearsome but it was also a time of gestation, visioning, and wisdom. It represented sleep and death, which were both natural, beautiful, and necessary, and was a time when the community was bound more closely together.
My daughter and I have a tradition of offering up gratitudes for all the big and little things that sustain us or just make us comfortable and happy. And then we light the candles, as a symbol of the sun's return. (Axial tilt is a fine thing.) Then we drink wine, fill our bellies, and exchange presents!
This year, we'll also offer up prayerful intentions for the healing of our planet and our country.
In my maternal ancestry, I'm descended from a line of Muscogee (Creek and Chickasaw) grandmothers. Many of the Muscogee tribes considered themselves "children of the sun." (Their word for "sun" is hvse.) I love this, because we are children of the sun. Not only do the elemental particles of our bodies—and everything we see around us—come from former stars just like our sun, but without its billion years of life-giving radiance, absolutely nothing could exist on our world. The planet itself (much less its precious atmosphere or the fundamentals needed for the rise of life) would never have emerged!
I believe that stars, like planets, like people and animals are sentient. They possess consciousness. How we honor them is dictated by the level of our own. So, I love your reference to Native sun ceremonies (and Eisenstein). And I love your screen name, for similar reasons (best trickster god I know). ;)
My own Dark Night of the Soul began in 2009 (first signs of it were probably 2006, but I wasn't paying adequate attention yet). And like you, it's only really let up in the past year. I still have a little further to go, I'm sure, but I'm an optimist at heart. And a mystic. Even a tour through hell is useful for growing a soul. I'm going to follow your lead and burn all the medical paperwork. It never told an accurate story anyhow.
P.S. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend Calleman's book, The Nine Waves of Creation. And anything by Joanna Macy.
And @BlueBelle, maybe you'll feel inspired to light a candle in the Northwest on or around Solstice night? It would link us in a triangle of light. ❤️
That sounds like a beautiful way of celebrating the Solstice. My ceremony will be taking place on one of the days after Christmas, but I'll light a candle on the solstice night as well. Hmmm, I'll be in the east, you'll be in the south, and @bluebelle will be in the west. If we can get one of our more northern friends to join in (@bright-opal?), we can complete the Four Directions.
And yes, isn't coyote just an amazing spirit? I don't know if you saw my post about my NDE, where I also wrote about discovering that coyote is my totem animal. But long story short, last fall, while I was still a student in upstate New York, I went to a shaman who lived down the road for a soul capture ceremony. It turns out all of the soul parts that had left my body over the previous years of trauma and disappointment were hanging out in the spirit world with a coyote companion.
One of the things I've learned since then about coyote's role in indigenous storytelling is that he features prominently in lots of "stealing fire" stories: like Prometheus, he steals sunlight and fire from the gods so that the creatures of earth can live in comfort (you probably know more about this than me, so correct me if I've gotten anything wrong). When I burn my medical records in the bonfire, I will be stealing my story and agency back from the biomedical establishment; I'll be snuffing out the story of relative helplessness and linear neurological decline all of those whitecoats have been trying to foist on me for 16 years. If you decide tp burn your medical baggage as well, you may be externalizing the same transformation.
I just looked up the Calleman book, and it looks like something I can pair up with another title on a similar topic I have on my to-read list. And it's funny you brought up Joanna Macy, since two days ago I started reading Active Hope.
@coyote, I've just read your beautiful (and beautifully told) NDE. The dozens of synchronicities sprinkled through it were like terma, "hidden treasures" of esoteric teachings that are revealed little-by-little throughout time.
And it delights me that you brought up the Promethean quality of Coyote, that mystical trickster. In the Muscogee stories, it is Rabbit who stole fire, but they're twins. Shapeshifters. (Seems significant, no?)
"Fire," I think, is more than the warmth of the hearthstone or a tool for food preparation; it's the essential element of soul activation. It's the wisdom of the ancestors and the evolutionary impulse of the universe. To harness soulfire is to tap into the wisdom of the Collective across all time and space. It's to touch the heart of God.
To possess a trickster totem (which I share with you), is inherently difficult. It's the archetype of the outsider. The liminal creature. The one on the margins. It is someone who appears dispossessed, ill, fragmented, avoidant, or otherwise lost, but who is secretly a teacher. Someone who can "steal fire."
[Aside: People with trickster totems tend to have a lot of paranormal experiences and encounters with near death or the dead.]
Not all tricksters are provocateurs, but all are misunderstood. Until they remember and activate their mission.
In October of 2016, when you were falling into the abyss, I had a dream about Coyote. I wrote it down (like I do all important dreams) and I've actually been looking for it for the last several days, unrelated to reading your experience (which I only just saw tonight). When I find it, I'll share it with you, but I knew at the time that it was profound and that it had multiple layers of meaning. Perhaps, one is meant for you. I remember the date because I'd finally been diagnosed with an autoimmune illness, a disease that had already been running my life for years. And that fall, I was on the brink of a black and total depression myself. Until a sudden and unexpected spiritual experience turned everything around: I was picked up out of myself and shown a vision of what is happening in the collective field and to the Earth now, and what it will be by 2030.
Yep. *smiling furiously*
The caveat, I believe, is that enough of us must get out of bed and remember (and align with) our purpose in order to assist this critical transition in time. (We have a lot of integration work to do together.) It feels like only a small number is needed, just 1% of us maybe, and that this number is significant enough to shift the field and open a door to the newer energies that are available.
And ...well, here we are.
@jeanne-mayell, I love this group activation ritual! To stand at the Four Corners with light and purpose is a gift—and it is a powerful magical working. Please say hello to Bright Opal for us.
I am here in the southwestern most corner of the US. I can help make the triangle into a rhomboid (?), let me know, I'll be lighting a candle or two anyway, just let me know the synched time and for pete's sake, please make it after sundown (5pm PST), otherwise I won't be able to :-)
Also, in my ancestral traditions, people would clear out their houses on New Years' Day - getting rid of any old junk they no longer had use for. I'm sure at different points in history, bonfires of said objects ensued. Sometimes unwanted things included people... I still organize and clean on NYD...
Well, after reading all of this, it looks like I'll be burning a candle as well! Thank you Coyote for sharing this with us. As I was reading I was wondering of what cleansing I needed to do, or I should say how to prioritize my cleansing because God knows I got a lot of that to do!
So, the winter solstice hapens on December 21st at 11:19 pm eastern. A little precise! My niece was born during the winter solstice of 2014. Please tell me what to do as I've never done anything like this before, when to do it. I'll be sure to participate. I think it is a wonderful idea and I look forward to this experience this in front of my fireplace (electric) with real candles around my Christmas display which brings me joy.