The close of the year

I awoke this morning to an ease of no schedule and a quiet, still house. Since this is the last day of the secular year, my mind float outward on the white sunlight of the morning and into the future of what the upcoming year might have in store for me. As always, without an accounting of the year before, I cannot look forward. Tears well in my eyes as I still awe at the vastness of life. I will never know anything even as small as a speck of dust, the world is so great. And yet, all specks are as One.

The past few years, especially the last one can only be described, as Joseph Campbell would, as the hero's journey. It feels like the more time I experience the less I know of it. This past year feels like it has been full enough to have been five years. So much has changed that it feels like the world has changed, when really I understand that it is how I react with the world that has changed. Magick grows, my relationships are deeper, time is becoming a solid thing (and I'm not even sure what that fully means yet). I jumped from the Tower and found myself rewarded for my faith, and was caught into the hand of Helios who opened the door to the next opportunity.

I told my Love yesterday that we are very wealthy. We have love, magick, friends, family, joy, tears, and we dance, as if we were still dancing that first dance on that sacred dance floor 3 years ago. We have a deep well and amber washes up shoreline and glows in the sun. Such things are Treasure, and we are blessed.

I look back, seeing that for many years I searched for where might be a suitable place to build a life. Now I look forward at the daunting task of building from the ground up. For the past year I have known that I cannot only plan for the next few moments or months but now must learn to look in terms of decades to see the blueprints turn into finished structures.

I found it interesting the other day when I was searching for a good statue of Saturn, the majority of the google images that came up were of the Grim Reaper. It was curious that in my mind, who I saw as Father Time, Padre Tempo, Saturn, and Chronos, to the general world was the skeletal figure, the Angel of Death. To a worldview where everything is change and flux--one form shifting to another, the finality of the Grim Reaper just doesn't seem justified. I look at the death card and see the Tudor Rose and the sun rising (or setting?) between the pillars in the background. It isn't sinister.

This year, lessons have not helped me to rise above the process of the rest of the world, but to immerse myself deeper in the breadth and depth of vast area of experience that life has to offer. So, could it be said that my cup is tempered this year? That it can now hold both hotter and colder fluids without cracking? The forge was not pleasant, but the strengthening process was worth it. In fact, a few months ago my chalice, that I had bought within my first year of practice of the Craft, broke. I mourned its departure, then had an opportunity to glaze a new one. The new vessel speaks to more specifically of who I am. The new vessel is more suitable to the changing of tides.

Out of the harbor, I sing into the sails of my little boat. I dream of the place where the sky meets the sea and Mananan's stars guide us above and below. I search for the place where Asland's country begins, a place where the water grows sweet and lillies float. For in the Spring, the Tudor rose will bloom again and we will dance forever on the sea amongst the stars.