The path of the heart is not only one of transcendence – ascending and rising above – but also one of descent: into underworld, earth, and shadow, and into relationship with the figures who we find there. Companions on the night sea journey.
These pieces of psyche and soma – personal, collective, cosmic - have something to share with us, that longs to be incarnated, indwelled, and embodied in this time, an element of the mystery that has been forgotten in a world that has grown weary.
The lunar way isn’t as clear as its heroic or solar counterpart. It is unclothed: of fixed concept, a precise map, and knowing how it’s all going to turn out. It has a way not of confirming but of dismantling the (spiritual) persona.
Even our most profound realizations of the “ultimate” and “absolute” are taken to pieces, which are collected in a holy vase, to be placed on an altar in front of us. Perhaps they are gathered by Hermes and Sophia, and other guides of alchemical vision.
Inside the temple are the holy images of our broken dreams, disappointments, hopes, and fears – the entirety of our unlived life; the grief of the ancestors, the lamentation of the earth, and the sensitivities of the soma. Along with lost joy, wonder, beauty, and awe.
Here, in the center, the wound is weeping; it is opened and no longer covered over. This is what allows the tincture to enter. It wishes not to be mended, or even healed, but permitted to disclose its essence, which reveals a doorway into Unity and compassion.
The feast is laid out before us, sprinkled throughout the inner and outer oceans, stars, forests, and beams of moonlight; scattered throughout our cell tissue and DNA, hidden in our mirror neurons, and in the eyes of the one in front of us.
Photo by Erik Mclean
