For me, celebrating the seasonal turning points - equinoxes and solstices - is a vital part of my magical practice. The more I “show up” for magic at these moments in the year, the more magic I experience.
Just like the lunar cycle helps us understand (and work with!) the cycling flow of time and energy, so too do the seasonal markers that divide the wheel of the year into four parts.
Whether we are in the southern or northern hemisphere, equinoxes and solstices are such accessible portals for magic I always want to encourage us to celebrate them in meaningful ways.
Even the most Muggle among us can agree that the thresholds of seasons are physically and energetically significant - we know when a season has changed. The light changes, the temperature changes, the visual changes in the natural world are all “signs” we can all see and feel.
I don’t believe there is “one right way” or a “best way” to celebrate these micro-eras within each year, but I do believe it is important that we do arrive (i.e. become present) for the occasion both internally (i.e. prayer, meditation or spiritual experience) and externally (i.e. making an altar or offering or party).
So, while I often shy away from saying we “should” do this or that as magical people, I do really recommend doing SOMETHING this week to mark the equinox.
If you are in L.A. we would LOVE TO SEE you this Friday at ROAM - I’ve got a great Spring kick-off experience for us and it has been so LIFE AFFIRMING to be together in the room again with so many magical people.
Wherever you are on this beautiful blue-green planet, you can download your appropriate equinox meditation for $5 OR get all 4 “Thresholds of the Year” for a sale price of $15 (this week only) OR join the Streamers library and get 135+ meditations (including equinoxes and solstices) for $11/month.
Now, get ready to have your mind blown a little bit.
I am going to put on an even wider lens and alert us to the fact that it’s not just ONE wheel of ONE year, over and over. Actually, it is a series of overlapping “wheels of years”, a cosmically, intricate system of wheels that reveal a beautiful growth spiral if we attend to it. And, with repetition, the magic gets bigger because these layers of “wheels of years” are magically interconnected and affecting one another in quantum ways.
This means that when we repeat these seasonal practices year over year we are deepening our magic AND, perhaps even more importantly, we are accessing elevated levels of wisdom and expanded awareness.
All in all, things become quite extraordinary when we aren’t just celebrating THIS equinox, but rather all the equinoxes and solstices year over year.
We can take in the long view - the uber-story - of how far we’ve come and become able to access longer range, future-forward visions of where we are headed.
THIS. IS. MAGIC.
Since the last four years have been so otherworldly (or so unlike the world as it seemed before) it is especially important to create our own magical anchors within.
Being present as the season changes from one to another is one such magical anchor.
Being awake to the wheels upon wheels of the years we’ve lived is an even greater anchor.
Being willing to stretch our awareness out into the wheels upon wheels of years we may get to live is an even greater anchor.
They say that humans overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in five years.
Tuning in at the solstices and equinoxes year over year is one way we can access that five year magic.
Happy almost Equinox, may you find your best ways to mark the occasion.
Until next time,
Jess
”Magic isn't the fuzzy, fragile, abstract and ephemeral quality you think it is. In face, magic is distinguished from mysticism by its very concreteness and practicality. Whereas mysticism is manifest only in spiritual essence, in the transcendental state, magic demands a steady naturalistic base. Mysticism reveals the ethereal in the tangible. Magic makes something permanent out of the transitory, coaxes drama from the colloquial.
…
Mysticism is self-contained and beyond external control. Something either has a mystic emanation or it doesn’t. It is present in a single entity, animate or inanimate, where it is know to those who have faith that it is there. Mysticism implies belief in forces, influences and actions, which, though imperceptible to ordinary sense, are nevertheless real.
Magic, on the other hand, can be controlled - by a magician. A magician is a transmitter just as a mystic is rather strictly a receiver.
…
Magic does not seep from within of its own volition (or appear unannounced to someone in a state of heightened awareness); it is a matter of cause and effect. The seemingly unrealistic or supernatural (magic) act occurs through the acting of one thing upon another through a secret link.”
- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"There's always a lot of magic, but our way of seeing it is very small and we mostly just call it Nature. Why, we are not at all surprised that we can pick up an apple in autumn that was a pink flower in the spring. That's natural magic and we don't really notice it."
- Pat O'Shea
INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.
- Ada Limón
“Picture yourself in a giant labyrinth. Billions of other people are also in the labyrinth, but it is so large and wild that you only see a minuscule fraction of them. At the end of the labyrinth is a nebulous It, a prize with no concrete existence, that means something slightly different to each of the maze’s travelers. You sometimes worry as you wander through the maze if you’ll ever reach It, or if there even is an It. You see some people running through the maze, knocking others over in the process, thirsty to finally discover It. Some people aren’t even moving at all, just hanging out, sitting against one of the tall hedges within the maze.
You can choose to judge the people who are unlike you in how they approach the maze’s challenge. Or you can talk to them, show them respect and try to learn something from them as you work your way through the maze. You may find yourself in a standstill at times, or in a sprint.
What must be remembered over all else is that you’re in a maze. You’re part of the game, and it’s not just your game– it’s everyone’s. And you know you are intelligent enough to realize that most people could not possibly play it like you do. So, enjoy it.”
- Charlie Ambler
I’ve come to the house of the Immortals:
In every corner, wildflowers bloom.
In the front garden, trees
Offer their branches for drying clothes;
Where I eat, a wine glass can float
In the springwater’s chill.
From the portico, a hidden path
Leads to the bamboo’s darkened groves.
Cool in a summer dress, I choose
From among the heaped piles of books.
Reciting poems in the moonlight, riding a painted boat…
Every place the wind carries me is home.
—Yu Xuanji
ON MEDITATING, SORT OF
Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer to just lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?
Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place - half-asleep - where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter -
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and uncompromising descent.
So I just like like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.
Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints -
all that glorious, temporary stuff.
- Mary Oliver
A WHITE TURTLE UNDER A WATERFALL
The waterfall on South Mountain hits the rocks,
tosses back its foam with terrifying thunder,
blotting out even face-to-face talk.
Collapsing water and bouncing foam soak blue moss.
old moss so thick
it drowns the spring grass.
Animals are hushed.
Birds fly but don't sing
yet a white turtle plays on the pool's sand floor
under riotous spray,
sliding about with the torrents.
The people of the land are benevolent.
No angling or net fishing.
The white turtle lives out its life, naturally.
- Wang Wei
I have a question for Jessica. Do I post it here or does she have a messenger account?
Great! I will yes!
Thank you Jessica ~