Nature – Adam Sartwell

I took time out from my Thanksgiving preparations to go on what I call fairy time. When I had gone outside to attend to one of my turkey day preparations the wind felt like it was calling me. Tugging at my senses and making me feel a call to the wild. In response I went about gathering what I would need for some fairy time. I put my trusty bottle of corn meal for offerings. Corn meal is a good offering to the land and with the wind it puffs from my hand spreading the blessing of it. I pulled my hunter orange hat that I use for hiking during hunting season and went off to the local town forest.

The night before I started Silver Ravenwolf’s new book The Witching Hour. She goes over what she calls a “spirit walk” where you go out to connect to nature and the spirits to gain knowledge and some of the special gifts of nature. I call this faery time. I learned about faery time from my Friend Matooka. Faery time is when someone who is fey in essential nature goes out into nature to rebalance themselves after having too much busy human time. It is a time to reconnect and let go of the mundane.

I started my faery time like I usually do with an offering of corn meal at the beginning of the trail to the spirits of the land and fey of this place. I asked that in return they give me there guidance and protection on my journey. Moving through the woods with the November winds rattling the trees and shaking the leaves instantly calmed me. As I walked I mused about my year reading with Matooka Moonbear last night. How my focus was on connecting to the innocent childlike way I connect to the world. As I walked I tried to catch a leaf falling from a tree. Since I was little I knew that if you could catch one in the fall you would enjoy a illness free winter. Whether this is empirically true I have never investigated fully but it has always been something I try to do in the fall. I leaped and reached but the three times I tried I caught no leaf.

Disappointed I turned my eyes to the beauty of nature around me. I picked up a fallen pine bough bringing it to my nose to smell it’s scent. This brought me to think about Silver’s book since one of the things you would get from a spirit walk was things you could add to your herbal formularies and powders. Thinking of the book I asked spirit what it had to teach me right now. I reached again to smell the pine bough and a small oak leaf fell and stuck to my jacket. I laughed picking it off my jacket and knowing this was my message from spirit. The leaf meant to me that you don’t have to try so hard or push yourself so much, sometimes it is just about connecting, asking and letting yourself receive.

This year we had a lunar eclipse during Yule. I heard that this was the first one to fall on yule in four hundred years. So I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do for a circle or working. I chose to do a journey. The lunar eclipse is when the moon in the north node of the moon, which means that the energy of the time is about your karma. Any working should be to either understand or heal karma. I chose to do my meditation on what I need to know.

The journey took me to my inner temple, where my guide and totem met me. They directed me to a silvery translucent staircase. I climbed up and up until I got to the moon and through it to a dark garden filled with strange plants. There the goddess came to me in a very artistic representation. Instead of being like a human she looked as if she had been drawn on scratchboard with white outlines detailing her shape. I reiterated my purpose to know that which I needed to know. She showed me and image of a seed growing into a plant. She spoke of the fact that whether or not the plant grew or died it was still the plant it was born as. Factors from the outside may shape it, effect it, nourish it, wither it, or kill it but they would never change it’s nature or virtue.

I asked whether it could be breed it to make its offspring better. She said “Yes but The new plant would be in the same boat. The seed will always be the plant it was born. “ She advised that I embrace my nature and strength, to work through my weaknesses from a place of my own nature. Don’t worry about that which one can’t control because it cant change the internal nature of whom one is.

She gave me some more advice about some personal things and told me to hone my focus and not waste energy.

I thanked her for these messages and returned to my inner temple. Where my guide showed me someone from my past. This old friend, and sometimes enemy and I spoke of forgiveness. How forgiveness does not mean that I will forget what was done or stop it from repeating. Then I sent forgiveness to this person. It came out watermelon colored. Both a deep pink and a green. I heard a message about a crystal that would help me with forgiveness that had watermelon in its name. I asked christopher after the meditation and he said it was perhaps watermelon tourmaline.

During the holidays after this meditation, my mother and I were talking about how it is still hard for me to talk to our other relatives about the way that my life has come out. I joked how explaining my self and who I am seem to be my lot in life. She replied” but didn’t you choose all of it?” I thought for a moment and was reminded of this meditation. I replied:”No some of it was just my nature and to choose otherwise would have been detrimental. One has to embrace there nature.” Though it definitely brought up more thoughts on the nature of self, choice, and the things we can’t control. I recognize my mom was right in a way. I didn’t choose to be gay but I do choose to embrace that side of my life. Much like I choose to breath and live as my nature as a human. To do otherwise would be to choose to wither.

Tag: Nature

A fallen leaf

yule lunar eclipse