Labyrinth Walking & Apple Magic at the Equinox

It is the start of autumn, and the time of year when my Work takes me down into the internal labyrinth, seeking to know myself better.

What do I want to work on? What do I want to explore? Where do I need to go?

We all have versions of ourselves we have been that no longer are. There are versions of ourselves we thought we might be. And there are versions of ourselves that, whatever the circumstances, we can no longer be.

I hold this at the entrance. I focus on breath. I focus on walking, feet on the earth.

Today the world is dark and hard. The way ahead is uncertain. But I am here, breathing. Walking in and out of the labyrinth within me.

Who have we been? Who are we becoming? Who will we be tomorrow?

I stand at the first turn. What do I no longer need? What no longer serves me? What do I still hold onto that hurts me? I shed them, one by one, breath by breath, step by step, going deeper down into the labyrinth.

It’s been a hard year. This winter will not be easier. I carry this knowledge into the dark with me, making it an ally not a deterrent. I use a favorite fictional passage to stoke my courage to see the truth.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” (Frank Herbert, Dune)

The Ritual

In preparation I make a rattle each year with apple seeds harvested from our local orchard and an empty medicine bottle. And for meditation purposes, and lack of yard, I use a finger labyrinth. I’ve walked enough labyrinths that I have body memory of that turning inward and outward but the visual movement is still helpful. 

The ritual I do is simple. As always, I encourage people to adapt it to what works for them. This is what works for me.

I rattle until I feel myself slipping into a calm awareness of everything but pulled by nothing. 

And then I walk the labyrinth, pausing as I make each turn. Each time I ask myself, what do I no longer need? What no longer serves me? What do I still hold onto that hurts me? I shed them, one by one, breath by breath, step by step, going deeper down into the labyrinth, deeper into myself.

What do I need to work on? Where do I need to go? Who am I becoming now?

The Labyrinth

I use a lap labyrinth made by my teacher and friend Tracy at One Path Labyrinth. The grooves are the perfect size for my finger. But you can also use a printed labyrinth of the internet or draw your own. Get creative. The more personal you make it, the better the experience it will be. And by all means, if you have access to an actual labyrinth, or have enough yard to create a temporary one, I highly recommend it.

Equinox Descent Mythologies

Covering beds for the winter

as garden snakes go underground.

The sun retreats from half of the world,

hibernating through longer nights.

“We must carry the dark,” Autumn whispers.

“What do you bring into the dreaming?”

Inanna descends into the Underworld of her own free will. She makes the journey to meet with her sister, Ereshkigal, her shadow self. She goes to face her hidden half and she will be undone in the dark. But when the dawn comes she will *know* herself wholly for the first time, and will re-emerge from the deep in her strength and power. 

What do you see when you face your reflection? What is light? What is dark? Can you breathe in all of the pieces and make a whole image? Do you have the strength to stand naked and unflinching before it?

Unwinding her thread, Ariadne gave her lover the map to the labyrinth beneath the surface of the earth, beneath the surface of her skin. He went in to meet her shadow self, her twin brother chained at the center of the labyrinth. The beast we call Minotaur is the primal darkness within her breast, the animal part of her that she hides. Her twin is made of big bang, the original star. She is betrayed as the hero slays that same monster in order to woo her, to protect her, to impress her. Ariadne’s hero cut out her very heart. 

Do you keep your ugliness hidden from the world? Are you not made more beautiful in the shadow of your flaws? Who decides what is ugly or what makes a thing flawed? Do you have the strength to expose your vulnerabilities? The things that make you different help shape the world. Can you shed those who would stand in judgment of you for those who will embrace you as you are?

Persephone leaves the child of springtime behind her as the sands trickle towards autumn. She steps on the path winding into the hillside, away from her mother’s eyes and arms. She leaves her parent’s home, known and fragrant with summer memories, towards the unknown house of her husband, in shadow, where she shall be lover, spouse and woman. She steps lightly on the path. She knows where it is going though she does not know the landscape and she cannot see its end. As she journeys she grows more sure-footed. She trusts that it is the right path. Either way, she embraces her choice.

What shades of yourself have you shed in your journey? Have you learned to let them go and accept the changes? Can you be a daughter or son to your parents without still being a child? Can you step into uncertainty? Can you keep your feet to your path, though you cannot see the ending?

Orpheus descends to the Underworld in grief, passing where no living being can pass. In his love, he wins Eurydice back. But the path out of the darkness is too long and too quiet and his grief was too deep. Orpheus loses faith that she is behind him even though she promised she would be there. He turns around before they reach the light and she is lost to him forever. 

Can you face the moments when you slip? Can you take responsibility for your mistakes? Can you rise above them rather than sink into embarrassed despair? Can you find faith in those darkest moments?

Oya stands at the cemetery gate as the recent dead descend into the ground. She is the beacon of light calling them to rest. She greets them with a candle or lantern, standing against the flood of their fresh grief. Oya knows the darkness and she guides them through.

That strength lives in you. Do you know how to find it?

The key of the labyrinth is a crossroad of souls. Papa Legba waits in the darkest shadows for a cry, a whistle, a trumpet of need, ready to ferry bargains and deals as we wander through our winter nights. And his hand will be the warmest hand, and he will greet you as an old friend. And he will take what you offer to appease your heart. But you can never have it back.

What would you sacrifice? What have you already given?

Tlazolteotl balances the act of love with the act of defecation. Sacred in, sacred out. She is the flow between connection and release. Birth and death. Life and loss. One follows the other, like night follows day and day follows night. She walks-between for us, holding the memory of light when the darkness overwhelms, and holds the dark so we don’t forget to find gratitude for the light.

What is sacred to you?

The veils are thinning. The darkness is winning favor as we turn into autumn. Our mythologies provide us with archetypes we can use to illuminate ways to navigate the path ahead, that we can move forward. 

What do we learn from these stories? 

We learn to not fear the dark, but to tread gently through it and embrace it. Use your personal dark as a space of transformation. Face your twilight reflection and prepare to challenge and test yourself against the chilled slumber of the earth and the lengthening nights.

Covering beds for the winter

as garden snakes go underground.

The sun retreats from half of the world,

hibernating through longer nights.

“We must carry the dark,” Autumn whispers.

“What do you bring into the dreaming?”

*Original poem, Equinox, by Sarah Lyn.

[First posted as Equinox Mythos & Mystery on September 28, 2011.] 

Autumn Crossroads on the Equinox

We are turning into autumn and the last of our tomatoes and beans are fruiting. The morning glories herald the dawn in vibrant hues of violet, periwinkle, and fuchsia. White moon flowers twine around the rail, their buds thick and strong. They are ready to burst open and hail the darker days of the year. Silence stills the land here, five years after the horrible flooding that made our city headlines in the news. We’ve moved on but the earth remembers. The first of the geese flying north to south in migration have trumpeted across the sky.

Smells turn crisp and quick as leaves dry, drop and decay, crunching against the bottom of our feet as we walk through the brush. Garden fruit and vegetables that missed their harvest will rot and fall. They become mulch and nourish the earth for sowing in the spring. In autumn, layers of bone, earth and leaves cover the world, dulling the sharp piquant of summertime. We bed our gardens and add bulk to our bodies against the funneling twist of leaves lifting in chillier winds. The beauty of life is migrating onward, disappearing into the earth and ether. The world outside us prepares to sleep. The world inside us softens into rest, too.

We have toiled through the languid heat of our longest days and the changing landscape heralds the lengthening dark that will descend soon upon us. This Equinox is my favorite time of year, symbolized by the crossroads. We stand at the point where the breathing world bleeds into the spirit world.

It’s a place where two conflicting truths can stand equally as firm and where balance is born. It is the place where the gateway exists. It is a gateway that lives inside you.

As the point of balance floats over our land like twilight fog, obscuring lines and blurring edges, we have the chance to touch the other side without walking through it. On Equinox, I pause to catch a breath. I stand between the long days of light and the long nights of dark. I stand at the crossroad and pay homage to those who have stood here before me, to the pause in the passage of time, and to those who will stand here long after I am gone. On this day I can see into the future as far as I can see into the past.

We stand in the tipping point, the grey space, the limbo, the in-between. Equinox is a time for feeling and reflection, a chance to catch our breath before moving forward. This is the time of year when I pause my search for more lines of my family tree. I wrap up my current work and make notes of where to look next. I will spend the winter months researching what names I have, reading old tomes and histories so that I might discover who my ancestors were and what places they inhabited.

The genealogical research is easier for me to do in sprints, following one line through till I hit a wall, then fleshing out that line, giving it form and story. In this way the act alone is a study in my own history and I am the eternal student. By using this method, the names and dates imprint on my memory with context. Every winter my living knowledge of my family grows stronger. In my dedication, the threads between me and my ancestral dead grow thicker.

We are about to enter the labyrinth, going underground like the mythological Ariadne, under and inward. I have been practicing my embroidery, in remembrance of my Great-Grandmother Minnie, and her mothers, whose scraps of sewing craft I treat as sacred objects from a line of women I never knew. In my nightly meditations I have been embroidering labyrinths, moving into the dark to come out of the dark. It takes two full lines, two lengths of needle and thread, in at one end and out at the other, to create the full labyrinth, which is made up of two roads, crossing at the key. In this ancient tool, duality and balance snake into forms that do not lose their symbolic origins.

If I unwind the labyrinth, the four arms of the equinoxes and solstices spread before me. We stand at the crossroad, facing autumn, knowing that as we step onto the road it is already turning towards winter. The crossroad lies near the heart of the labyrinth. We turn inward to find center at Solstice, and roll outward, retracing steps to find the sun again next Equinox. In walking the labyrinth, we move like the waters of our body move to the currents of the ocean, rolling in and out, each turn in moving us closer to healing and wholeness. As life continues through the shorter days and my body moves daily through the world, I carry the peace of the labyrinth inside me, as an anchor of stillness, walking it quietly within while the world moves loudly around me.

As the leaves dry and fall, I find some of this peace in the act of showing honor to those long gone. I often walk the local cemeteries, picking up trash and litter. It is such a small offering made to the memory of those gone before. They may not be my ancestors but they belong to someone. These dead shaped the town that I live in and they had lives filled with hopes and dreams, just like mine. To me the cemeteries feel most like parks, with spirits wandering here and there. They are some of the quietest spaces, full of the grace of those who lived and those still living who remember their names.

[Originally posted as Autumn Crossroads at Equinox on September 19, 2012. Some moments updated for the current time.] 

An Ancestral Labyrinth Meditation

There are a myriad of different meditations you can use to connect with your ancestral energy flow. The only limitation is in your imagination. There’s one meditation in particular that I use often that involves the use of a labyrinth. My favorite labyrinth is the Cretan, seven circuit labyrinth. It’s a visible representation for me of the Yoruban belief that if you do not know seven generations of your family line you cannot know who you are. It was that thought that prompted the start of my personal ancestor work more than a decade ago.

I like layers to magic and meditation. So when I walk the labyrinth, I am physically moving in spiraling patterns on a horizontal landscape. And at the same time as I walk, I pull my kundalini energy upward through my body on the vertical axis of the seven chakras. When I do this, I become the meeting point of these two planes. And where they meet in me, a doorway to my ancestors opens within my heart center, the mid-point of the chakras.

When I step into the labyrinth, taking my first turn into the track, my energy sits as the base of my spine, in my root chakra, the home of instinct. I think about my parents, both of whom are still living. They are the bridge between me and those who came before them. As I walk this first track, I fill my heart with gratitude for them, for breath, for body and bone.

I turn sharply onto the second track, aligning my sacral chakra of emotion, the house of intuition, with the memories of my grandparents. I acknowledge, first, those four who gave who gave me life. My next breath is for all those who married into the family after death or divorce, who were part of my life. As I walk this second longest track, I think about who they were to me, both good and bad. I accept their flaws and I leave behind what I don’t need.

On the third and longest track, riding the outer edge of the labyrinth, I open my solar plexus chakra, where energy and ego live. I open to my eight great-grandparents, one of whom I was fortunate to know in life. One step in front of another, I contemplate my mortality and the truth that my path will someday be ghost footprints across the earth. Just as most of my great-grandparents were unknown by me, someday I will be unknown to others. There is a breaking and a humbling in this track. One step in front of another, walking the edge of the labyrinth.

At the end of the track, I cross the short bridge that joins the solar and heart paths and turn, opening the compassion of my heart. I accept what it means to be alive. I accept what it means to live. I call forth to my sixteen 2x great-grandparents, who saw the effects of the Civil War and lived the turning into the 20^th century. I am grateful for how many of their stories I know. They were people like me, with families of their own, wondering what the future held. Wondering what their ancestors were like.

The shortest path rides the edge of the center. This is the track of the throat chakra, an energy center which sees a lot of action in our everyday lives. I slow my steps and open to my 32 3x great-grandparents, ones who braved wild territory to start anew. I can feel the slip stream of time as ghost steps crowd the path behind me.

Together, we turn onto the sixth track. I pull my energy and breath up into the third eye chakra, just above and behind the eyes, where empathy lives. I invite my sixty-four 4x great-grandparents to join me, and I feel my thoughts sinking deeper into my bloodstream. The fact that I only exist because those sixty-four people lived and loved is overwhelming.

I walk the final turn of the labyrinth with my one hundred and twenty-five 5x great-grandparents. One hundred and twenty-five! I think about all of those people, and the children they had who were not my direct ancestors, and the children their children had… how many cousins might their be that I will never know or meet? For a moment, I imagine I can understand what eternity means, and what it means that we are all part of the same well of energy. I open the top of my crown chakra, prepared to meet them face to face.

When I enter the center of my meditation, I am standing in the center of the labyrinth with two hundred and fifty-four spirits. They are the collective spirits of the first seven generations of my family tree. I am two hundred and fifty-five. I am a pillar of energy. I am walking in ancestral fire. I sit in the center and open to whatever visitations might occur.

When I am ready, I return the way I came. There is only one path to the labyrinth and the ways in and out are the same. As I leave, I pull my energy back down through my body, pulling my awareness back until I am me, in my body, feet on the earth. I thank each generation for journeying with me, for their part in giving me life. I return humbled, deeply connected, and surprisingly sure-footed. 

Click on this link to find a labyrinth near you!

Into the Labyrinth

In my earliest ancestor meditations, the visual image I received was the same. Flashes of faces all talking at me, talking to me, as if the sound was turned off. Then the scene opened and a woman or man stood at the edge of a body of water, whether an ocean, lake, canal or pond. The water was always grey, that deep slate blue-grey. Their faces were pleasant and happy to see me but tinged with sadness. They were pointing into the water, out to the unknown, and I knew that's where they were telling me I had to go. I dove into my ancestor work, trying to clear and sharpen the image.

For a while, everything was bigger. My support system expanded, as did my ancestral knowledge and my spiritual universe. Everything I experienced deepened, widened, and exposed its layers to me. The web split open, revealing itself, and my world blossomed, colored with dimension, like a crystal prism filling a room with light. In the shadows of that light the edge was exposed and a hidden doorway became visible. This is why I do the work I do.

It's strange to me, in that wyrd way, that my ancestors pointed to the water, the well of emotions and memory. And it felt each time like they were pointing to a specific point of going in where the emotions were deepest. I could feel the tug of it against my breastbone. I have always been afraid of jumping in the deep end, even feet first, and as a child my inner primate refused to dive head first into dark and deep water, so the visual has a double meaning for me. Go to where the fear lives and open the door.

I once jumped 70 feet into a mountain river, high in the Carolinas, after carefully watching over a dozen other people dive in, watching where they hit, being sure all dozen divers emerged unscathed. It was a moment that filled me with such fear I felt my heart might burst and I understood I was taking my life in my hands. One hand towards joy and one hand towards death. What a wonder it was to expose myself to my own mortality… then I took a breath, and I jumped.

For the last few years, my personal work had me finding my out of the labyrinth, weaving my own thread as I crawled out of darkness, winding it out behind me as I altered myself. It’s as if I were replacing the bulbs along the path from fluorescents to sunlight. If I came this way again, I would not carry fear of the unknown with me. If I know the way out, then I know the way in.

Now, in my dreams and meditations, an old woman and an old man lay naked on a stone table in the woods, a living ancestor altar. They are crying and telling me there is something I have to do. They glimmer like spirit in my dream world and I know they are faces from my family tree. They've given me a quest. I have a travelling bag and a weapon, and they are pointing out of the wood, their faces tinged with sadness. They are sending me out into the world, covering ground, seeking something unknown. This dream repeats, without alteration.

For the last year, I have been winding in, winding down, going into the recesses of this body and healing. In the twilight glow of autumn, I am both Inanna, going underground to know myself, and Ariadne, the keeper of the secrets of the labyrinth. I know the edge I'm walking towards is the scariest one for me. It's the wall that holds me back, the heavy anchor that holds me in place. So it's important to have your thread as you wind through the labyrinth doors. I know the door that lies at the center of the labyrinth.

I pull the earth energy up into my body and anchor myself to it. I pull the star energy of the ancestors down into me and anchor it in my heart. Where earth and sky meet in me, a door appears. I have only to touch it and it will open.

At the start of the labyrinth, before I step in and cross over, I honor my parents, still breathing in this world, still loving me from this plane. My sister and brother, my nieces and nephew, my great-nephew are my anchors. I carry them with me into the labyrinth.

At the first turn, moving inward, I honor my grandparents, my Beloved Dead, the four who have crossed over to other world, one of whom I never knew: Richard Riddle (factory worker) & Donna MacDonald (pediatric RN) ~ Mark Dutcher Eaton (bookkeeper) & Ruth Emma Ruston.

At the second turn, moving outward, I honor my great-grandparents, all deceased, those who lived and grew up at the turning of a century: Robert George Art (blacksmith) & Margaret Loretta Burke (glovemaker) of Lockport, NY ~ Harold Lafayette Riddle (factory worker) & Elsie Elizabeth Durant of Lockport ~ Frank William Ruston (insurance salesman) & Minnie Estelle Wicker (singer) of Lockport ~ Royal Levant Eaton (prison guard) & Hattie Eva Smith of Auburn, NY.

At the third turn, outward again, I honor my 2x great-grandparents, those who saw this country's Civil War and all the change that came after: George Art (gardener) & Katherine Pils (housekeeper) of Lockport; Frank Burke (lock tender) & Eliza Conners of Lockport ~ Lafayette Riddle (farmer and factory worker) & Frances Gillette of Royalton, NY; George Francis Durant (laborer) & Emma Louise Burnah (housekeeper) of Lockport, from VT ~ Charles Evan Ruston (laborer) & Ruth Ireland of Lockport, immigrants from England; Hiram King Wicker (grain and feed store owner and Mason) & Emma Angeline Whitcher of Lockport ~ Bennett Eaton (farmer) & Theresa Cordelia Tenney of Somerset, NY, from MI;  Silas Parker Smith (farmer) & Hattie Eva Dutcher of Wilson, NY.

At the fourth turn inward, I honor my 3x great-grandparents, the soldiers and farmers who helped villages become towns and towns become cities: Adam Art (soldier) & Katherine Maria Schmeelk of Pendleton, NY, immigrants from Germany; John F. Pils & Mary Burzee, of Pendleton, he an immigrant from Germany; David Conners (laborer) & Mary Dowd of Lockport, both Irish immigrants; Thomas Burke (hack stable owner) & wife Ellen of Lockport ~ Marquis DeLafayette Riddle (farmer) & Sarah Clickner of Royalton, NY; Levi H. Gillette (farmer) & Jane Berry of Royalton; Albert Durant (laborer) & Rosella LaValley of VT, immigrants from Quebec ~ Richard Ruston (wealthy farmer) & Anna Richardson of England; William Ireland & Phoebe Lenton of England; Thaddeus Rice Wicker (carpenter) & Cynthia Lusk of Lockport, from VT; Bailey Harrison Whitcher (shoemaker) & Ordelia DeLozier of Lockport, from VT ~ Solomon Gould Eaton (farmer) & Hannah Ann Treadwell of MI, from Lockport; Philitus Tenney & wife Malvina; Ammi Smith (farmer) & Sophia Sears of Hartland, NY; Reuben Feagles Dutcher (farmer) & Eliza Marsh Bird of Somerset.

At the fifth turn inward, just after, I honor my 4x great-grandparents, the soldiers and farmers who expanded west: Barney Dowd (farm laborer) of Lockport, immigrant from Ireland ~ Freeborn-Moulton Riddle (farmer) & Abigail Chaffee of Batavia, NY, from MA; Ezra Wheeler Gillette & Mary Ann Boots of Royalton, from VT; Francis Berry (farmer) & Elizabeth Hill of Mayfield, NY; Francois Xavier Lavalle & Rosella LaRoche of Dannemora, NY, from Quebec ~ Pliny Wicker (ferryman) & Chloe Morgan of New York, from VT; D.V. Lusk (farmer) & wife Mary of Lockport, from MA; Simeon Whittier & Dorcas Kittredge of VT, from MA; Peter DeLozier (P.O.W. and cabinet maker) & Lucy Raymond of Lockport, from CT ~ Joshua Eaton & Lucy Gould of NY, from CT; Herman Sears & Clarissa Dubois of NY, from CT; Martin Dutcher (soldier and farmer) & Cynthia Ann Feagles of Somerset; Manley Bird (broom maker) & Irene Pond Marsh of Somerset.

At the sixth turn, at the key, at the crossroads, I honor my 5x great-grandparents, the soldiers and farmers who began to move, settling into new territories: Joseph Riddle (soldier) & wife Mary of New York, from Monson, MA; Eliphal Gillette & Abigail Hannah of Royalton, from CT; Joseph Boots (farmer) & Harriet Gower of Royalton, immigrants from England; Thomas Berry & Gertrude Dixon of Mayfield, he immigrated from Ireland; Alexis Lavallee & Marie Amable Langevin of Quebec ~ William Wicker & Susannah Parker of VT, from MA; Abner Whittier, Jr. & Elizabeth Dow of VT, from MA; James Kittredge & Mary Bailey of MA; Oliver DeLozier (soldier) & Eleanor Erkells of NY ~ Benjamin Eaton & Hepsibah Skiff of NY, from CT; Willard Gould & Ann Arnold of NY, from CT; Isaac Sears & Abigail Andrews of NY, from CT; David Dutcher & Jane Palmer of NY; Edmund Bird & Mary Coleman of MA.

At the seventh turn, outwards, I honor my 6x great-grandparents, the immigrants, the children of immigrants, those whose families founded this country and those who came seeking better lives: Pierre Paquier Lavallee & Marie Agathe Charland of Quebec; Walter Dixon & Annatje Goedemoet of Mayfield; John Berry & Nancy Machet of Mayfield, immigrants from Ireland; Alexander Hannah & Mary Calhoun of CT; Wheeler Gillett & Julianna Merchant of CT; Thomas Bootes & Mary Glyde of England; Thomas Ridel & Rebekah Moulton of MA, from Ireland ~ Peter Lozier & Fytje Zabriskie of Hackensack, NJ; Isaac Dow & Martha Hanniford of MA; Jacob Wicker (soldier) & Abiah Washburn of MA; John Parker & Jane Pearson of MA; Abner Whittier & Jemima Davis of MA ~ Thomas Eaton & Elizabeth Parker of CT, from MA; Stephen Skiff & Elizabeth Hatch of CT, from MA; Jeremiah Brooks & Elizabeth Brooks of CT; Caleb Arnold & Tabitha Luther of MA; Knowles Sears & Susannah Townsend of CT, from MA; Henricus De Duyster & Helena Van Deusen of NY; Enoch Bird & Silence Lyon of MA.

At the eighth, outward, I honor my 7x great-grandparents, more who helped build this land, for good or for bad, with nothing but the hope for better lives for their children: Jean Francois Paquet dit Lavallee II & Marie Madeleine Coulon of Quebec; Baltus Goedemoet & Gertrude Michel of NY, from the Netherlands; David Calhoun & Catherine Coe of CT, he immigrated from Scotland; Hugh Hannah & wife Margaret of CT; Eliphal Gillett II & Mercy Smith of CT; Thomas Bootes & Mary Jennings of England; Solomon Glyde & Mary Hyland of England; Freeborn Moulton (captain, soldier) & Rebekah Walker of MA, from CT ~ Jacob Zabriskie & Antje Terhune of Hackensack, NJ; Nicholas Le Sueur & Tryntje Catherine Slote of NJ; William Wicker & wife Rebekah of MA, immigrated from England; Joseph Washburn & Hannah Johnson of MA; John Parker & Sarah Lillie of MA; James Pearson & Hepzibah Swain of MA; John Whittier & Mary Hoyt of MA; Joseph Davis & Jemima Eastman of MA ~ Thomas Eaton & Lydia Gay of CT, from MA; Thomas Gould & Eunice Brooks of MA; Jabez Brooks & Mary Bateman of CT, from MA; William Benedict Arnold & Ann Coggeshall of RI; Jacob Parker & Thankful Hemenway of MA; James Sears & Desire Tobey of CT, from MA; Direck De Duyster & Jannetje Hendrickse Bondt of NY; Abraham Van Deusen & Jacomyntje Van Schoonhoven; Lemuel Lyon (soldier) & Lydia Perry of MA; Samuel Bird & Anna Atherton of MA.

At the ninth turn, into center, I stop. I stand at center, at heart and home, I honor all those who stand behind the first seven generations and all those who will come after me. I honor them in my quest to be the best and strongest version of me I can be, making choices those who came before me were unable to make. I believe I am altering the larger ancestral pattern behind me and altering the one before me, to better ease the passage of those yet to come.

Autumn Crossroads at Equinox

We are turning into autumn and the last of our tomatoes and beans are fruiting. The morning glories herald the dawn in vibrant hues of violet, periwinkle, and fuchsia. The white moon flowers are twined around the rail, their buds thick and strong. They are ready to burst open and hail the darker days of the year. Silence stills the land here, one year into recovering from the horrible flooding that made headlines in the news. The first of the geese flying north to south in migration have trumpeted across the sky.

Smells turn crisp and quick as leaves dry, drop and decay, crunching against the bottom of our feet as we walk through the brush. Garden fruit and vegetables that missed their harvest will rot and fall. They become mulch and nourish the earth for sowing in the spring. In autumn, layers of bone, earth and leaves cover the world, dulling the sharp piquant of summertime. We bed our gardens and add bulk to our bodies against the funneling twist of leaves lifting in chillier winds. The beauty of life is migrating onward, disappearing into the earth and ether. The world outside us prepares to sleep. The world inside us softens into rest, too.

We have toiled through the languid heat of our longest days and the changing landscape heralds the lengthening dark that will descend soon upon us. The Equinox is my favorite time of year, symbolic of the crossroads. It is at the point where the breathing world joins with the spirit world. It’s a place where two conflicting truths can stand equally as firm and where balance is born. It is the place where the gateway exists. It is a gateway that lives inside you.

As the point of balance floats over our land like twilight fog, obscuring lines and blurring edges, we have the chance to touch the other side without walking through it. On Equinox, I pause to catch a breath. I stand between the long days of light and the long nights of dark. I stand at the crossroad and pay homage to those who have stood here before me, to the pause in the passage of time, and to those who will stand here long after I am gone. On this day I can see into the future as far as I can see into the past.

We stand in the tipping point, the grey space, the limbo, the in-between. Equinox is a time for feeling and reflection, a chance to catch our breath before moving forward. This is the time of year when I pause my search for more lines of my family tree. I wrap up my current work and make notes of where to look next. I will spend the winter months researching what names I have, reading old tomes and histories so that I might discover what I can about who my ancestors were and the places they inhabited.

The genealogical research is easier for me to do in sprints, following one line through till I hit a wall, then fleshing out that line, giving it form and story. In this way the act alone is a study in my own history and I am the eternal student. By using this method, the names and dates imprint on my memory with context. Every winter my living knowledge of my family grows stronger. In my dedication, the threads between me and my ancestral dead grow thicker.

We are about to enter the labyrinth, going underground like the mythological Ariadne, under and inward. I have been practicing my embroidery, in remembrance of my Great-Grandmother Minnie, and her mothers, whose scraps of sewing craft I treat as sacred objects from a line of women I never knew. In my nightly meditations I have been embroidering labyrinths, moving into the dark to come out of the dark. It takes two full lines, two lengths of needle and thread, in at one end and out at the other, to create the full labyrinth, which is made up of two roads, crossing at the key. In this ancient tool, duality and balance snake into forms that do not lose their symbolic origins.

If I unwind the labyrinth, the four arms of the equinoxes and solstices spread before me. We stand at the crossroad, facing autumn, knowing that as we step onto the road it is already turning towards winter. The crossroad lies near the heart of the labyrinth. We turn inward to find center at Solstice, and roll outward, retracing steps to find the sun again next Equinox. In walking the labyrinth, we move like the waters of our body move to the currents of the ocean, rolling in and out, each turn in moving us closer to healing and wholeness. As life continues through the shorter days and my body moves daily through the world, I carry the peace of the labyrinth inside me, as an anchor of stillness, walking it quietly within while the world moves loudly around me.

As the leaves dry and fall, I find some of this peace in the act of showing honor to those long gone. I walk the local cemeteries, picking up trash and litter. It is such a small offering made to the memory of those gone before. They may not be my ancestors but they belong to someone. These dead shaped the town that I live in and they had lives filled with hopes and dreams, just like mine. To me the cemeteries feel most like parks, with spirits wandering here and there. They are some of the quietest spaces, full of the grace of those who lived and those still living who remember their names.

The Spaces In-Between

At the height of summer the land around us is dense and thick with green leaves, blossoms, and ripening fruits and vegetables. Multiple scents swirl through the air vying for dominance as their pheromones call out to the animal world, which is active and in motion around us whether we choose to take notice of it or not. This season becomes a cycle of long hot days followed by brief cool nights. But even as the length of day changes, the constant remains that in-between night and day comes dawn and between day and night comes dusk.

In my spirituality I do a lot of work that some would call dark, concerning edgewalking, shadow work and shapeshifting. It involves exploring energetic boundaries and manipulating them, reshaping them as well as walking between worlds. It is dark work, in the sense that magic is both light and dark and I embrace both sides of it, not just the ones that feel safe. In order to do this kind of otherworld work you have to believe 100%- not 99.9%- that it’s possible. It requires faith and an acceptance in more than what you can see.

The labyrinth is a good metaphor for how I seem my work. You go inward, into the unknown and into the darkness to learn what lies at the center, at the core. And then you return from the darkness into the light, filled with the wisdom, illuminated. You have to go inward before you can go outward. What happens in between in and out? What happens at the center? This is where the magic lies.

In the physical labyrinth, we walk the spaces between the walls. To walk the labyrinth is to find yourself in-between. To shift edges, you find the space that lies between cells and expand or shrink it. To do healing, you find the space between the edge of the trauma and the edge of the healthy tissue/organ/thought. To reach trance you find the silence between the drum beats and you dive into it. You peer into it and you push.

My spirituality is how I worked towards changing the way I thought about myself and the world. First I had to dismember all of the reasons I felt I was not a good person and heal my core. You have to walk into the darkness to do this work. Then once I could stand firmly in my body, I looked at how the world was, how I related to it and then how it related to me.

Like Malidoma Patrice Somé, a spiritual teacher of the Dagara people of Africa, I had to unlearn the structure of my Western teachings in order to expand the way my brain was able to see the world. I would say that my work is about facing my fears as a means of healing to become a more solid version of myself, so that I may guide others on their paths of growth and evolution.

One of the tools I use to accomplish this work is a trance which can be done at dawn or dusk, at the in-between times of the day. These periods are of the transition, the shifting of light into darkness and occur during the point of grey haze of mid-time. This happens when the landscape seems to lose the intensity of color and everything begins to fuzz and blur. This is the magic time that connects the sun and moon, the day and night. As light and shadow can shift, something we can see, so can and does energy, though it is something we can’t see.

I do this gloaming trance as a means of connecting more deeply to nature, specifically the land around me. In the beginning, like with anything you don’t know how to do, it was more an exercise in sitting still and not letting the buzzing bugs pull me from meditation than it was in exploration. I could have given up when I decided it wasn’t working for me, but I thought of the Buddhist monks and the Catholic Nuns and their repetitive devotion and I pressed onward. Four years later, I can slip easily into and out of that space.

You have to practice anything you want to be good at.

I find a place at an edge of water, of woods, of fire. Somewhere visible the landscape changes. As the daylight fades (I prefer dusk trance), I let my eyes soften their focus until I can see everything, but no one thing is clear. And then I find another in-between space, like the shadow between two distant tree trunks. I find that shadow and I peer into it, deepening it. And then I follow the journey to where it takes me, not allowing anything to pull my focus from the exploration.

I came to myself from trance, this last holiday, under a dark moon in a field surrounded by woods and water. I felt myself become more part of the forest until I was no longer me, the human, visiting the trees. Rather, I became a creature of the woods. My energetic body stretched like roots and all at once I could feel the breeze brush against bark and the skitter of small critter paws scurrying across earth. Everything was glowing slightly luminescent.

When I began the trance, I was a woman sitting in a field. When I returned I was a human animal living on the earth with glowing fireflies, mosquito-eating bats, bat-evading gnats, hooting barred owls, fluttering dragonflies and damselflies, beautiful red-spotted purple butterflies, persistent hickory tussock moth caterpillars, the croaking frogs and cheeping peepers.

In that small space of land we have seen the large murder of crows that roost nearby dive-bombing hunters shooting at them, beavers building dams, scuttling skunks scavenging, baby raccoons kitten-walking into the elder bush, coy dogs hunting, catfish swimming, hummingbirds feeding and a great blue heron nesting and fishing. Every time I trance I am reminded of the surety of my humble place in this world. Each time it is a more comfortable truth.

I listened to the sounds of the crows conversing and calling and laughing as they roosted at dusk and roused their brethren at dawn. I listened to the sounds of the world waking and sleeping and waited for the moment between, as the crow cawed. I slipped in, knowing I would come out renewed.

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