I do a lot of Lilith Readings, listening for how this archetype of the wild sovereign yin/feminine is being sung up in people’s lives. We muse on three ‘faces’ of her, as symbolised in one’s natal chart.
The second face, the ‘Exiled Lilith,’ speaks in part to our survival strats and coping mechanisms, in the face of feeling deeply disillusioned. It also points towards powerful gifts and precious ‘medicine’ we gather out there on the ‘edge.’
My Exiled Lilith point is in Pisces, so it’s getting a workout, symbolically speaking, by all these planets and points moving through this watery sign at the moment. Not only that, but she’s in my 12th house, representing a personal unconscious ‘underworld.’
So let’s just say she does (I do) the grinding and gnashing of teeth pretty well!
Feeling abandoned, outraged and resentful? Check, check and check!
(But hey, she also hangs out with Venus, exalted here in Pisces, within one degree! Not only is this pain incredibly fertile, in my experience, but the surrender, when we get there, is positively multi-orgasmic, haha!)
Puzzling Dream
I had a dream two days ago about some of this ‘exile’ energy.
I dreamt my husband had gifted me with a tattoo schematic, akin to architectural drawings: a digital file that contained plans and information for a whole bunch of tattoos I could get done, all over my body.
In a step-away from my daytime nature, my night self had gone and implemented the process without any assessment of my husband’s choices!
Predictably, I then found myself eyeing two large, dark, boxy shapes etched on my calves, one on my inner right leg and one on my outer left leg. In particular, the visibility ugliness of the image on my left leg was troubling me.
It was of one of those optical illusion puzzles, a magickal trident, like this, but much darker, all greys and blacks:
(And no, this is not me getting it tattooed on my arm to commemorate things!)
In the dream, I was attempting to resign myself to it, or care less about it. “It doesn’t really matter.”
In essence, I was trying to minimise my disillusionment and my discomfort, to somehow make myself at home there. “It’s not so bad.”
When I woke, I felt relieved. Nothing so permanent to deal with, in my small, simple day!
I had fun looking up the meaning of shins: anger, weakness, feelings of betrayal, victimhood, disloyalty, carrying guilt, self-punishment, self-sacrifice, wanting revenge, justice, fairness…
It was a litany of my Exiled Lilith, haha! I could hear her shrieking yes!
Honing in on the left leg was also illuminating: feeling hurt, angry, oversensitive, self-critical, pressured, worried. Being held back by unresolved issues from your past. Fear of moving forward and taking responsibility for your actions. Overly concerned about what other people will think of your choices. Doing things you dislike because you seek approval or need money to survive.
Or in my case, having a perceived need for social currency…?
(This information came from Inna Segal‘s The Secret Language of Your Body.)
Again, these themes are a helpful mirror for aspects of my current experience.
.
(Channelling a wee bit of Lilith at Yonifest, a gathering of birthkeeper edge-dwellers, in Quebec in 2017)
Let it all go
How ironic to end up with a ‘puzzle’ on my leg! The Yoniverse having a laugh! There is no answer here, just a looping round and round while my brain tries to make sense of the image!
I can try to resign myself to the difficult aspects of this murky Piscean underworld. This seems the only sensible thing to do when others around me appear to not want to talk about any of it.
Or I can try to resolve it with an emotional demand that others meet me in this place. (Hey, why should I shoulder the emotional content from our shared interactions alone? Get down here! she screeches!)
My default coping mechanism is to loop between these two emotional imperatives.
It doesn’t really matter. It’s not so bad…
Hang on, it IS fucking bad, I can’t believe I’m here doing it alone! This is unfair!
But I take all this soul-grist (in the form of my dream, my daily morning journalling, my awareness of us all ‘Pisces Pilgrimaging’ for the next few months, and a few helpful conversations) as an invitation to surrender (Pisces) both the need to resign myself AND the need to resolve this.
Let it all go.
There is nothing to DO right now.
Sounds so radical!
But what a fucking relief…
In the spaciousness that’s left… ahhh, now we’re in multiple orgasm terrain, don’t you think?! Immersed in a kind of liberated soulful ecstasy that emerges out of an unflinching, compassionate acknowledgment of our pain, when we finally show up humble enough to accept it rather than wanting it to disappear.
What’s left is simply to Be…
If I like, I can (alright, let’s be honest, already have!), under this Full Moon, put the significant Virgo workhorse part of myself (Captain Mars, Jupiter, Urania, third/integrated Lilith and Saturn!) to work creating a list of themes arising, and pat myself on the back for being diligent with my soul work.
But that’s about it for now. And even that might be busy-work.
The main thing is to let go…
.
(Ash-marked in another mountaintop basecamp, 2017)
Wilderness Solo
Amazing that, under the last New Moon in Virgo, I Returned from an incredible edge-dwelling Wilderness Solo experience, back to a disorienting world of vaccine passports. Two extremes of embodiment, you could say!
Now, under this Full Moon in Virgo, six months later, we are navigating the dissolution of those physical control measures, and my husband and I sent out the invite today for another deep nature immersion set to unfold under a New Moon in Virgo in August later this year!
That’s another puzzle I could keep looping around! The magick and bewilderment of the timing of all this…
This year Gord is heading out on solo, three days and nights alone and yet not alone in the bush, and I will be in basecamp, singing, drumming, sitting, reflecting, tending, stilling down, tuning in, holding space within and without…
The rough brushstrokes of this collaborative embodied poem:
(details)
If you would like to know more or would like us to send you the invite too, or if you know someone who might be nourished by this wild, raw, earth medicine, please get in touch!
.
Equinox
Finally, many blessings on this threshold moment of the Equinox, coming up on March 20/21.
We turn a ‘corner,’ we face a new direction, more firmly towards the dark, or more firmly towards the light.
We embrace a new set of opportunities which only roll around once a year ~ do make the most of this season, eh!
It’s felt like a long winter, and this week, the thaw is FINALLY here! The streets begin to run with water, the light brightens as the sun reaches higher latitudes, and the ditches are full of transformation. The world is Wonder-Full!
.
(eco-printed oracle card by Grace Funk)
Apprentice to Mystery
Was musing today that the strongest place to be, as an apprentice, is to know that you don’t know.
It humbles you, living there at the edge of Mystery, being unflinchingly honest with yourself.
And this is a most reliable posture, one in which the knowing, if and when it comes, can flow in, and through you, most easefully.
I’ll sit with this today, a huge gift of packaging up these thoughts here, and your loving attention:
this invitation to be devoted to my discomfort, apprentice to it, in the same way a poet is devoted to birthing her poem.
Choosing to be with it, to surrender to it, rather than resign myself or resolve it too soon.
Trusting in the power of time, as unstoppable as any torrent.
Resting in the knowledge that this painful place is deeply fertile.
Knowing my future self is already transformed.
And so, relaxing for now into the not-knowing…
.
Thankyou for Musing here with me… deeply grateful…