UnMoored

I have been working the energies of this new year to palpate the opening in the wall, the door into the next upward spiraling of my own unfolding as part of the human species alive on this class M planet hurtling through the Milky Way galaxy.

As I patted down the the walls of last year's energy converging with this new upward and outward movement, I felt grief, regret, dissappointment, beauty, magic, gratitude. I ran my hands over my words for last year, "Right Action," and the ripples of learning and growing and unraveling that the journey with those words unveiled.

What will be my star map this year? What word or phrase will guide my way through the brambles at dark moon as I tread through the wilderness of the year ahead? I write a reflection from the year passed. Memories run like a documentary through my mind. I read tarot. This year I use Naomi Cornock's Old Ways Magick Oracle. The themes of the year emerge slowly from the images and symbolism of the mythology of the land whose song grew my people for tens of thousands of years. The Morrigan, Battle Ready. Lyr, the Deep Ocean. Myrridan, the Wild Mage. The Lovers. Badger, Ferocity. Horse, Endurance and Persistance. A story begins to knit itself together, the outline of the opening to the year shows itself.

2022 asks me to develop the Warrior within. Strong heart. Strong mind. Strong body. Battle ready. The arc of the story is the Lovers. I am a Warrior for beauty, for harmony, for Life and its sensual glory. I draw my power from Lyr, the Deep, the realm of the cosmic waters and the womb of the sea, our primordial mother. My weapon, fierce persistence. My adversary, madness.

How do I become a warrior for Life without losing myself to madness?

I write, I meditate, I walk the forest, I process these kernels with my husband whose generous container is like a rock tumbler, smoothing and shaping and polishing these treasures. Suddenly the word comes. UnMoored. 2022 asks me to become unmoored. Unfettered. To release the safety of the harbor. To draw up anchor. To strengthen my body and mind and spirit on the open sea. To try and fail and trust and leap and make a run worthy of this beautiful world and its generous birthing of my individual experience.

To be UnMoored is simultaneously freedom and madness. I must learn to trust my navigation skills, to keep my eyes up on the star maps and my skin awake to the prevailing winds. My arms must be strong and my fingers nimble to work the knots and raise the sails. My spirit must be noble enough to trust the wild blue expanses of churning and troubled sea. Though this is all metaphor, I have a sneaking suspicion I will be spending plenty of time by the sea itself to absorb these lessons.

It makes me think of the quote from John Shedd: "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for." It also makes me think of the brilliant essay written by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes that uses this quote as a seed. In her essay, which she calls a blessing letter, she calls for souls on deck. Bright, luminous, shining souls to light the way and invite others to tend their own flames. She tells us that our work is tending the small wilderness that is allotted to us, these individual lives that we are granted, to make them wild and fierce and free and filled with love and care, so the ripples of our love might create a wave of love that washes the face of the earth.

This year, 2022, whose numerolgy is 6 (The Lovers in the Major Arcana), carries the energies of Venus, love, relationship, harmony, beauty, and balance. Jupiter and Neptune will join one another in the blissful sign of Pisces in April, offering us the much needed cosmic support for healing and integration of the past few years, using art and culture as our outlet. This year is likely to get pretty weird, in a good way, and I plan to get weird right along with it.

I am slipping the knot off the piling now. I take one last look at shore, the imagined safety, the solidness, and then I turn my face toward the sea air. The cormorants tease me with their acrobatics. It is time to leave the anchors up, to trust myself to the winds and tides, to be unmoored. May 2022 bring us all healing, love, beauty, adventure, and treasures from the deep.