Forest Trail, Stars, and Geometry
Hello and welcome dear readers to the end of the year issue, featuring a forest walk and a contemplative imaginative interplay of folklore, and geometry of stars.
Forest Walk Surprises
Discoveries of forest reverence along a Channel Ridge trail!
This amazing circle weaving is just quietly attached to a tree, with its colours blending into the natural shades of the tree bark.
Then further along, another anonymous nature offering: a wooden vase of fern fronds on an old fencepost.
And when this little leaf guy appeared at my feet, I put him in my pocket and brought him home to show you!
The play of light at year-end
Simultaneity, providential blessings, transport upward, light in darkness.
This is how I like to think in the mind-play of my imaginaire.
I start by contemplating this idea: the mythic figures from our ancient times as Northern folk somehow attached themselves to the Roman church establishment of the birth of Christ - aligned in consciousness with the appearance of light in darkness, with winter solstice as the darkest of days.
These figures of the elven-ones include the Santa saint of all-giving, and his shamanic flight around the world in a quantum instant is felt magically all at the same time. His great spirit-horses are the mighty flying reindeer, allies who also defy the laws of this petty world below, enabling him to be everywhere at once bestowing Divine Providence. We invoke these beings year after year as if it had always been so. His sleigh, like a chariot, offers magical transportation.
How these figures attached together in time to make a triangle of Solstice, Santa and Baby Jesus has been a mystery that folklorists and mythologists have studied and decoded. For me, I love to see this as a turning triangle of significance in the sky of my mind. It is like a 3-pointed guiding star.
Two such turning triangles meet and join to make the star of David. That six-pointed star turns both ways dynamically and simultaneously. In three dimensions, this star holds the cube of the merkaba, a vital dynamic transport in the further dimensions, sometimes called a chariot. My contemplation leaps over to recent Hanukkah, whose menorah of nine lights (8 +1 including their leader) also transports, blesses, and uplifts us from darkness.
In this arrangement, I go from 3 (triangle) to 6 then because of the season, to 9 points of light, and they all stand and turn with illumination. A dancing geometric prayer.
The cube of the Kaaba can be envisioned integrated as the central cube in the merkaba, the point of stillness in the circulation of all that is. It is circling around this cube whose point of stillness is symbolized or embodied by the stone of Abraham, the one that fell to earth. Some say that, like this stone, we all came to earth from the stars, and something in us reflects and turns with them.
Beyond the limits of culture, religion and belief, we can contemplate the stars of wisdom and bring them all together into our hearts as stars of love, harmony and beauty, which are innumerable. At night, the flying shaman looks down on earth and sees how the stars in our hearts form a human Milky Way to mirror the Milky Way in the darkness of deep sky.
Gifts spill out of the sleigh and cascade down, as if his great chariot were a flying cornucopia: showering earth with cubes, stars, spheres, pyramids - the forms of perfect solids to realign creation. They enter our dreams: visions of sugarplums dancing.
Then after such dark and portentious nights, we welcome the sun as it returns to fullness. Incrementally, day by day, light on earth increases as Solstice, Hanukkah and Christmas flow behind to join the past. In the strange way that time passes these days, it feels like this happened months ago. I’m peering toward the new year now, aiming toward the shapes of the days to come. They are shifting as they begin taking form.
Thank you so very much for reading and sharing my thoughts. Remember, you can also listen to it using the app. Your support means a lot to me! This issue’s photos are my own, except the Milky Way from Unsplash, Trojan archers from the web, the Xmas elf-ball I made with Canva AI.
Please click the heart if you liked this post. And watch this space, I’ll be sharing more good stuff for us in the new year!
I so love this! It mirrors and echos all that I believe,feel and know. Thank you for sharing your heart feelings and perceptions, discoveries and appreciations. In enormous gratitude
Thank you Carol. Happy New Year and Appreciation!