Spiraling Inward

We have officially arrived into the season of darkness here in the Pacific Northwest, the sun rising just after 7:00 AM and setting at 4:30 PM. The nights are long, and the days are mostly wet. I hear people grumble about the weather, talk about how the damp and cold are a bone chilling combination. And yes, all of this is true. But I relish the descent into the darkness. Historically winter was a time for communities to gather, to create light inside themselves. There is a continual string of Saints days and feast days and celebrations of all sorts, from so many cultures. This is a time of less outdoor work and more handcraft. Less pushing and doing and more conviviality and kinship.

Each year that I am on this path of weaving my life closer to the old ways, and closer to the ceremonial hoop of the year I feel more tenderly held by the seasons themselves, and by my community. I see the seasons in my own body, the rise and fall of my energy levels, the different foods I want to eat, the way bed calls me earlier and my body wants more hours of sleep. This is wintering, and it is beautiful.

There is also a call for inner work, the type of deep looking within oneself that I truly love. In our most recent Women’s Circle -  Sacred Circle Women’s Gathering, We dropped deeply into this territory of looking within, to some of what has been hidden inside us. The places where we have exiled parts of ourselves. I think that this is something we all do. Whether we are aware of it or not. We carry around, hidden inside us versions of ourselves that we don't want others to see, or that we don't want to see ourselves. Sometimes we don't even know they're there.

I've been deep in the pages of a fantastic book, Descent and Rising by Carly Mountain. She opens up the story of Innana, the ancient queen goddess of Sumeria, and her exiled sister Erishkagel. There are so many layers of inner looking available through this myth. Inana claiming her truth that she must go to the underworld to find her exiled sister. The stripping away of all Innana holds herself to be as she enters the underworld. Her death at the hands of her sister, and her eventual resurrection. The acts of sacrifice that must take place for her to be whole and alive again. This is true for all of us. To become whole, we must die to the old version, the one we held so tightly, determined to make true.

These old stories are sharp-edged, filled with the scent of smoke and bear fur. They are not for the faint of heart. They require us to soften our own ideas and allow constructs to fall away. Inside the old myths lie shimmering truths that are just as relevant today as they were 4000 years ago.

Innana’s descent was in essence a self-guided ceremony. She heard the call in her heart to descend into the underworld, she prepared herself in all her finery, and she began the journey. This is what we do too. When the call of soul is heard a process of inner descent must commence. We must find the path with our own feet. We have to find the ceremonies that call to us, that speak our wild and holy truth and nestle it into the life-giving breast of mother earth. Self-guided ceremony does not mean that we have to be alone in the process. Inanna was not alone. She had to begin the journey alone, but she was supported by the guardians of the underworld, by her inner exile, in the form of her sister Ereshkigal. By her companion - maid servant who was waiting for her return, and willing to lay her own life down to see Innana rise back up into the land of the living.

In intact cultures where rites of passage are still held there is an understanding that this is territory that one would never enter into alone. You need a companion on the path. Someone to mirror the process, to create a container of safety and holding, an anchor of sorts to stabilize you as you descend into this territory of soul. It can be easy to get lost along the path, to find yourself in a forest so dark that you can no longer see where your feet need to land. But this does not mean that you should not go on the journey. It means that you should prepare yourself, gather your crown of self-knowing, your lapis beads of your voice of truth, your breastplate of a strong and noble heart, and begin.

I am in the creation process of a new offering, an 8 week deep dive – The Spiral Path – A Journey to Self and Soul. This offering is for women, who hear the call to deepen into their relationship with their Soul knowing and truth. Most women come to this work through suffering. The truth is that if we are coasting along in the eternal summer of life, and have not had our share of appropriate heartbreak, the call of soul will usually not be heard. This is because it demands everything of us, it is the greatest sacrifice, and also the greatest gift and beauty we could open to in our lives.

This Program will offer a container where you can spiral deeper into yourself, your relationship with the natural world, the voice of your soul, your inherent intuitive power, and truly the meaning of life. It is a structured ceremonial container, individualized support from me including eight hours of soul guidance, a ritual support care package, various handouts and prompts to help you on the journey. It is in depth and super juicy.

I am currently looking for a few women to go through this spiral with me completely free of charge. You will receive the entire package, including the ritual support gift box, in exchange for your honest feedback and a review. If this is of interest to you, please reach out to me through e-mail, I would love to have a conversation with you and see if it feels like a good fit. You can also book a discovery call directly through my website on my Soul Guidance page.

My prayer for all of us is that we bow in completely to what is being asked of us right now. Wherever you are, however life and the land are moving in you right now, that you take this opportunity to turn and look deeply within. These are hard times, filled with political unrest and catastrophe upon catastrophe in the world around us. There is no better time than this to do the work of deeply knowing your own truth and capacity to be with the trouble. Perhaps we could stop pushing it all away. And instead turn to face what is true, and to gather all of the layers of support possible. Ceremonial support. Spiritual support. Deep connectedness to the earth and the ever present loving support she pours into us. The support of our networks of kinship and community. When times are dark, it is even more important to celebrate the strength, tenacity, and beauty of the human spirit.

From my little home in the woods I am sending tender blessings to you. May you feel held in this time of wintering. And may you know the beauty and power of your human-ness and your connection to the more than human world.

Broken Open to Belonging

Altar at my recent Broken Open - Tending the Gifts in our Wounds Workshop - August 2024

I'm home now, in my little nest in the tall trees. Settling in and resting after an eventful and beauty-soaked week, learning and facilitating at the Temple of Belonging Women's gathering here in Oregon. Imagine this, 230 women, acres and acres of pristine forest, Douglas fir, cedar, big leaf maple, a diverse and beautiful forest. Bubbling brooks, clear streaming water, and even a waterfall. Delicious meals, new friends and old friends, ceremony, prayer and song. To say my heart is full would be a vast understatement. I feel satiated in a bone-deep way.

We humans really are tribal creatures, even in this time of great forgetting, this time of isolation, and the poverty of terminal aloneness, we still need each other. Women need each other. To be gathered in with company such as this, able to freely express our beauty and uniqueness, our longing and our hunger for life, our tender truths, is such an incredible gift. And that doesn't mean that it's all easy, or fun and games.  For me, learning to belong, allowing myself to belong, and showing up as my full self is a work in progress. My prayer before leaving for the gathering was that I would allow myself to belong, that I would be able to remove all of the barriers to love inside of my heart, and be open and willing to the possibility of what this gathering could bring into my life. My prayer was answered.

I was honored to be able to offer a workshop during the gathering, a council circle with an element of time on the land. I called my offering Broken Open – Tending the Gifts in our Wounds. 20 beautiful women joined me in the sanctuary space, a gorgeous old Chapel with wooden floors, a wooden roof, and those old glass paned windows that almost look like they're ice, patterns swirling in the light. We came together with a collective prayer to share our hearts, our wounding, and the beauty that arises when we are able to turn and face ourselves, in our truth. Suffering truly is the doorway into the soul. Each one of these women came with  tender truth and with courage that was stunning to witness.

As a circle facilitator and ceremonialist, it is always a privilege to be able to hold women in this way. As I step deeper into this path it's such a joy to realize that there is honestly nothing that I would rather do. Being able to create space for women to feel safe enough to bring themselves fully forward fills my soul with a sense of purpose. Ceremony is the place where my gifts are most alive, and what a precious treasure it is to be able to share these gifts with the world.

In each circle there is a magic that happens, the right women show up. It has never failed. We gather and the stories that are shared have synchronicity, one woman needs so much to hear what another shares. We find a thread of connection and we know we are meant to be there. There is a palpable hum of aliveness in the space. What is this wonder? I can’t know, but I can guess that it has something to do with our spirit kin, our ancestors, and the spirit of the depths that calls us at the right time to say yes to our soul’s longing. Our showing up brings the magic, it is our creation and it is also a gift.

I spent some time in my preparation for this workshop sorting through my collections of poetry and finding poems that felt resonant with the work that we were going to be doing. You can see them in the image above, rolled into scrolls and tied with a lovely green silk thread. As our circle came to a close I asked each woman to go to the altar and take a scroll, open it , and then tie the silk thread onto the wrist of their neighbor, as a symbol of our togetherness, of what we had created together.

I rub the silk thread on my wrist as I write this. I feel these women with me. I hold their sorrows, and the earth holds their sorrows. We grew stronger together, and the wonder of that beauty is enough. We are enough. Ceremony is enough. We were born for these wild and turbulent times and together we find our way. We belong to each other.

Many Blessings,

Marianna