The Dark Goddess moves within me;
to me she brings the fruit of the hidden.
- Segovia Amil
In essence (our soul) we are IN light. It’s within this human form on Earth that we get to experience duality, light & dark. Yin and Yang, Feminine and Masculine, Night and Day, Death and Birth, Winter and Summer, etc..
In august 2017, I had a soul awakening in the mountains of Northern Spain.
I got very much focussed on the higher realms after that, my soul craved to be explored and discovered. After a long period of soul searching, I learned to descend and root down to find a healthy balance between the heavens and the Earth.
In my experience, this is what my soul came here to learn, to be fully present in this human form and experience, Earth embodied. And it's my connection with the plants that remind me of the balance between heaven and Earth. For my soul to feel fully at home within this human body.
When we look at the beauty of the Earth and her cycles, we see that she goes through her own death cycle every winter. Only to be reborn in Springtime. The life, death, rebirth cycle is a journey through the underworld, an initiation, where we learn to transform pain into (self)love, where we learn to integrate deep lessons from unpleasant experiences from childhood, where we learn to let the dead ends go and to hold both light & shadow within us, to come back to our wholeness.
Our human bodies are like the Earth and my desire isn't to transcend this human experience.
For my soul already is - In light -.
I desire authenticity, true authentic self expression. And to me, that can only happen when I hold and own both the light and shadow aspects within me. To be in our true athentic self expression is a desire we all deeply hold. It asks for a recognition of the parts of us that are inauthentic, the masks we wear in order to be seen as a certain way or to be liked or accepted within a certain group. It asks for a recognition of the parts of ourselves that are hidden in the shadows.
The essence and frequencies of the (shadow) plants are an incredible medicine in integrating those shadow parts.
2 dark Winter portals ago, I connected with the wild rose when goddess Hela appeared to me. I heard her name whispering through the wild, blood red fruits.
Hela is a nordic dark goddess: “Death is not seen as evil, it is simply a part of the cycle of Nature. Hela is usually shown as one part beautiful woman and one part skeleton or rotting corpse, because she is not interested in hiding or euphemizing the true nature of Death. To Hela, decay is just as sacred as any other part of the cycle of Life. She is a Goddess of great transpersonal compassion and truth.“
Truth = authenticity.
As the (wild) rose is known to have deep roots, it represent both her connection with the higher realms as the underworld with her beautiful flower, which represents, for me, the centre of the heart.
Her flowers in Springtime reflect my young maiden energy and her dark, red fruits in Winter mirror my inner hag.
Sometimes in life, during our journeys here on earth, we are being initiated into something new. For me, my connection with the wild rose and her fruits during winter guided me through a death portal. A journey through the underworld. Where old layers of grief and pain where buried, both from myself in this life as from my ancestors. A journey of grieving the parts of my young maiden energy right before I turned 40. A deep initiation into womanhood. In order for new versions of ourselves to be born, we have to allow the old parts of us die, a beautiful, yet often challenging cycle of rebirth.
Life on Earth in these great times of change asks us to be fully present and embrace all cycles and the life, death, rebirth cycle within.
A lot of plants teach me about embracing duality here on Earth. The shadow plants aka poisonous plants in particular, like foxgloves, (I like to call them the ghosts of the forest) hold so much powerful medicine to explore the mysteries of our subconscious, our shadow material and the shadow aspect of life.
In the mystery of the dark lies great potential for deep change, alchemy, transformation and rebirth.
A little information about foxglove folklore:
Ghosts Of The Forest
In the early days foxglove was used for working magic, for protection, and communicating with fairies, elves, and woodland spirits and it was used by midwives and healers as a strong medicine for the heart.
I call them ghosts of the forest because their energy feels a bit gloomy and mischievous (maybe due to the presense of *pixies) and it reminds me for their strong poiseness nature, something we should not take lightly and with caution.
Pixies are notorious pranksters. One of their favourite ways of messing with people is leading them off into the woods and leaving them lost for hours before literally dropping; thus the term 'pixy-led'. They may be pranksters, but not malevolent, they are known to help out a worthy human in need. They are also known to shape shift, a common form taken is the hedgehog.
Whenever I am in the forest I am aware of the magic and energy surrounding me, I often approuch it with an open heart, mind and spirit. Yet I also learned to be cautious and have a healthy sense of discernment when connecting to certain spirits in nature. Some of them can be really tricky as I experienced a moment a few years ago where I got completely lost in a small part of the forest for a while and had to really ground myself back to Earth after this experience. The pixies really got me there. I might share the whole story in another blog :).
Thank you for reading and may my human experience inspire yours.
In light, love and shadows,
Sharon
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