Samhain calls us to let go, deeply, before the days dip into winter, of anything that we are carrying that no longer serves us and can be composted back to the Earth. We can do this with gratitude for whatever harvests this year has brought us, whatever gifts of food or medicine or lessons learnt.

Here at EarthHeart the crows are calling from their roosts, and the trees now are changing into their last colours of the year, a final display of splendour before the beauty of their bare winter silhouettes is revealed. 

As we come to the end of the current year-long Initiation training, with the last module beginning today, we honour all that has moved within this sacred circle of beautiful women, held in the heart of the forest. You can hear from them in a series of interviews here. And we look to new beginnings, beyond the dreaming-time of winter, to a new circle of women already building for next year’s training. 

Samhain Blessings! 

Jewels

In this beautiful interview, Francis Weller speaks to the value of grief as a threshold emotion, in its ability to soften the heart, to bring us alive and allow us to fully express our joy and exuberance, as well as compassion and gratitude.

To allow grief to move through us safely and powerfully, we need the circle. We need community to provide both a safe container to witness and hold our sorrow, and to provide the energy and collective field of grief so that our own personal process finds its place in the web of life once more.

Places are fast booking up on next year’s Initiation journey. Hear what the women who have travelled the wheel of this year in Initiation have to say about why you should do it..

In this longer interview with Jewels, find out more about the space offered by the Thresholds circles at EarthHeart, to those in transition in their lives, seeking a new balance in relationships with loved ones, home life and work life that is connected to the wider healing needed on our planet at this time.

In this new video, I talk about the need to plug ourselves into the web of life, to connect with each other so we can truly feel our fear, our grief and despair as we feel the world ‘out there’ fall apart.

The groundwork we need to do, to bring about any positive change ‘out there’ is in the deeply personal journey, in allowing ourselves to both be received by others and to witness them in our turn, in sacred circle.

Join us in the circle for the next Thresholds weekend here at EarthHeart. 

Bee harvesting sweet clover nectar at Earthheart

Lammas is upon us and in native traditions across the northern hemisphere of planet Earth it is a time for harvesting.

This is the actual harvesting of the crops tended from a tender seed at Imbolc right through to their fully given self at this time. The sun and the rain have brought them to their ripeness and readiness, and if we attend to our inner world, there may be a ripe harvest waiting within at the time. 

Traditionally, Lammas would have been a time to feast on abundance and be in gratitude for the fullness of life, as well as that whisper on the wind of another turning in the seasonal wheel and a consideration of the autumn and winter ahead; we need to make sure we have enough to keep us well until the return of of the growing sun next spring.

This time offers us a mirror for reflection on what we are harvesting in ourselves at this time. What have we been tending over this year that has now come to fruition? Have we remembered to give thanks for this life, this creativity, this abundance?  Nature shows us the way, simply through being with what is happening in the outer seasons and letting that be a doorway to inner reflection.

It is a good time to consider the months ahead and what we can put in place that will help sustain our inner journey. In nature this has always meant pickling, drying and preserving the abundance of summer crops for the months ahead.

How can we take care of our bodies, our hearts and the health of our soul’s evolution through the changing seasons of our world and our lives?

The daylight hours are long and bright, and I have been waking each morning opened by the explosion of life in the forest and all around the land here at EarthHeart. Everything seems to be reaching up to the ultimate expression of its life force.

The birds are an orchestra and even coming into the house on occasion and sitting on the birch branch curtain pole with their song!!! Any moment I am expecting Bambi to hop along and the squirrels to start doing a dance! It is so magical and every summer it’s the same, I just cannot get over how nature just gives her all with no holding back.

This past year or so I’ve been gestating a seed, taking time out for my ‘Conscious Menopause’ to nurture the glimmering of a new way to bring my work in the world, and to compost an old way of being that really no longer served me. And I could only do that composting process by having a whole year to be deeply in my own winter, letting the old break down and the new seed break open.

Hearing the call to step through this second rite of passage as a woman and become an elder, I met my own resistance as still I feel that I know nothing, and the part of me that does not want responsibility pushed against this call to step up to a new role. But sitting with this over the year I really got that being an elder is not about knowing, but about the ability to sit and BE and be WITH. . .just that.

This I can do and I now feel ready to take steps onto this new path.

I feel so blessed to live and work surrounded by this incredible forest and what came through as I composted my old self was the energy that this land itself brings. No longer a need to do it all myself, I learnt to let go and surrender to receiving, both on a practical and spiritual level. To allow my body to be a conduit for the life that is around, allowing its expression to speak through my body. I am learning to find the words to wrap around what is coming through and bring it to those who come.

Creating empty space through grief and honouring of what had been my old way of working allowed the bubbling-up of new growth.

I am so grateful for the creation of the EarthLodge – a place and space for deep ritual dreaming and a place in which I spend much time, with the sacred hearth of my work in the world.