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.] 

Animal Allies: Owls and the Afterlife

“Humans are part of the animal kingdom, which is part of the vast living world around us. In earth-centered circles, we often adopt animal totems as a means of aligning our energies with specifics elements. The animal world is vast and varied and full of natural magic. Animals are helpful guides in ancestor and spirit work. Where we have lost our connection to the natural world, they have not.

Our animal allies are a key to help cross the threshold, something known and familiar, and cultures throughout history have often associated specific animals with this task. We take their lessons based on indigenous mythology and animal behavior. They represent some part of me and the way that part of me relates to the world around me. The energy of those animals walk with me in my life and when I need guidance I turn to the spirit of my personal allies for strength.”

[Abridged from Animal Allies: Hummingbird Messengers, March 28, 2012]

Interactions with Owls

In the late 1990s I worked two years doing summer stock theatre in Highlands, North Carolina. It was my first time in the south, fitting as in my spiritual life I was on the edge of opening up to something bigger than me. At the time I was lost in the internal philosophy of questing to find it. Highlands sits on the top of a mountain peak where the blue and smoky mountains meet. At dusk and dawn every day, the clouds would roll through town. No one drove during these intervals, but many locals laughed at the glee with which the girl from New York greeted the “fog.”

My true spiritual awakening happened on top of that mountain. It came in the form of an owl visitation. I was sitting by the creek near our house as the clouds were weeping through the woods. I could feel the drops of water walking across my skin. It never ceased to fascinate me.

Something large blurred past me, silent. An invisible curtain dropped over the natural cacophony of insect life at twilight time. Right before me, on a low tree branch sat the largest bird I have ever seen that had not been there moments before. It was the first owl I saw in person and I held my breath the whole time. Not because I thought I would spook it, but because it’s presence held me spellbound. In the gloaming it was mostly white with some grey and large dandelion-colored eyes which stared into me, without blinking.

We sat that way for a few minutes. Then the owl spun its head around, cried into the night, a call that shook me to the bone, and then it lifted, silent as an assassin, flying so swiftly over me that I fell onto my back beneath its shadow. Its wingspan was as wide as I was tall. It was a reminder of how small I am to this world, of how I was just one more animal trying to live among others. It was a gift of Other World touching me on a night when I felt most alone and unseen, when I needed it most. And something within me broke open in that meeting place of water, earth, air and owl.

I have walked with Owl watching over me ever since. Just last year I spent a delicious evening meditating in the woods when a barred owl starting calling out. I called back and, in the moment, found I was a fair mimic. Fair enough that the owl hooted back. We called back and forth at each other for twenty minutes. After the first few exchanges, it stopped feeling like mimicry. Even though I didn’t know what I was saying, it was clear that this animal creature and I were interacting. It was wonderful to lose myself in its world. In my life, owl delivers messages to and from Other World, and aids my work.

Meditations on Owl

Owl medicine is helpful with personal growth, something at the core of the Work that I do. The Owl is a silent and swift predator, taking in the woods around him, deciding on the path before him before taking flight and catching his prey. His hearing is remarkable and he knows the difference between a falling leaf and mouse rustling beneath it. Once an owl has digested its meal, it purges up what it does not need and cannot digest in the form of a small pellet. Owl knows when it’s time to remove what is unwanted and needed in order to make way for new growth. When they cough up the parts of their prey that they don’t digest, they reveal the bones and flesh of the animal in its simplest form. Where others may be deceived, those with owl medicine know the truth of what is hidden.

Owl sees that which others cannot, which often lends to its solitary nature, which also lends to its ability to see deeper within. This animal is a strong ally for soul retrieval, for seeing the healing within that needs to be attended to and know what medicine is right to heal it. When you feel lost, owl essence will help you find your way back to your path, to your wisdom. Owl’s senses see beyond shadows. They pierce through fear and darkness, through what stands in the way so that you might see the other side, where light, happiness and knowledge exist. The only way out is through and Owl knows this to be true.

Owls in Legend:

• Owl fossils have been discovered that date back 60 million years.
• They are one of the few birds found in early cave paintings.
• They are associated with prophecy, and their cries hold meaning: 1 for impending death, 2 for success in an imminent venture, 3 for a woman will marry into the family, 4 for disturbance, 5 for imminent travel, 6 for guests arriving, 7 for mental distress, 8 for sudden death, and 9 for good fortune.
• Mountain legends say the hoot of an owl at midnight means death is coming. An owl circling the sky during the day means bad news.
• Owl allies bring messages through dreams and meditation.
• Owls are associated with witchcraft, magic, wisdom, the unknown, medicine, weather, death, perception, deception, and dreams.

Greek & Roman Legend:

• The Little Owl, Athene noctua, became the companion of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom after she banished the mischievous prankster, crow.
• The owl was the favored of Athene’s feathered creatures, a symbol of her “light,” allowing her to see beyond half-truths. This owl was protected in Greek culture and lived in the Acropolis in large numbers.
• Owls accompanied Greek armies to war. Sighting them on the battlefield was a sign of impending victory.
• Owls watched over commerce and trade. Minted on one side of the Greek coin, they represented good fortune.
• Roman Mythology tells us that Ascalpus spied Proserpine eating a pomegranate in the garden and told on her. She was only allowed to leave if she didn’t eat anything. For his tattling, he was transformed into “a sluggish Screech Owl, a loathsome bird.”
• Romans believed that a dead owl nailed to the door averted all the misfortune its presence had caused to the household. Romans also believed that witches transformed into owls to suck the blood of babies.
• To the Romans, the hoot of an owl foretold death. The defeat of the Roman army at Charrhea, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, was supposedly foretold by the hooting of an owl. It is said that the deaths of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Agrippa, and Commodus Aurelius were all preceded by the cry of an owl.
• A 2nd century soothsayer, Artemidorus, claimed that dreaming of an owl meant the traveler would be shipwrecked or robbed.

Celtic Legend:

• Merlin, of Arthurian legend, had an owl as a companion.
• In Celtic mythology, the owl is a guide to the underworld, known as “corpse bird” and “night hag,” associated with wisdom and keen sight.
• Images of owls found in the Celtic Isles pre-date the Greek cults of Athene.
• The Scottish-Gaelic word for old woman is Cailleach and the word for owl is coileach-oidhche which means “night-cockerel.”
• Owls were associated with the Crone aspect of the goddess.
• The owls were guides to the Underworld.
• The myth of Bloudeuwedd, written in the Mabinogi, speaks of a woman magically created as a wife to Lleu. She tricked him into revealing the secret of his mortality and used that to take his life. He avenged his death by transforming her into an owl. The word Bloudeuwedd is still used in Wales to mean owl.
• The Welsh saw the owl as a predator whose time of power was dusk, when it was capable of defeating the falcon.
• The Welsh Goddess Arianrhod was a shapeshifter who transformed into a large owl, looking through owl eyes to see the darkness within humans, as well as the soul.
• The Welsh believed that if an owl was heard hooting among the houses, a young girl had just lost her virginity.
• A cauldron was found sunken in a bog in Bra, Jutland which dates back to the 3rd century B.C. It was broken into pieces before being deposited, most probably as an offering. The handle fittings of the cauldron were owls.

European Legend:

• In the British Isles, owls were associated with death and negative energy. Owl feathers were thought to repel those unwanted energies.
• In the Middle Ages, the owl was associated with witchcraft.
• In early English folk remedies, raw owl eggs were used to treat alcoholism. It was believed that children fed raw owl eggs would be gifted a lifetime’s protection against drunkenness.
• Owl eggs, cooked to ash, were imbibed to improve eyesight.
• Owl broth was a common remedy for children suffering from whooping cough, specifically in Yorkshire.
• In the 18th and 19th centuries, poets Robert Blair and William Wordsworth were fond of using the Barn Owl as their “bird of doom.” In other literature of this time period, barn owls were often associated with death. If an owl screeched outside the window of a sick person, it was believed they would die.
• In English folklore, a barn owl screech meant cold weather or a storm was coming. If the screech was heard during bad weather, it meant a change in storm was imminent.
• Into the 19th century, it was customary to nail a dead owl to a barn door in order to ward off evil and lightning, and protect the livestock within.
• Owls were treated with reverence in France, with several species named for dukes. The Long-Eared Owl was called Hibou Moyen-Duc and the European Eagle Owl was called Hibou Grand-Duc. In the Middle Ages, only nobles above the ranking of duke were allowed the honor of wearing a plume of feathers in their cap and it is suspected owls with ears seemed to them to be of nobler rank.
• Lore in the Lorraine region of France, tells that owls would help spinsters find husbands.
• In Romania, souls of sinners who repent, fly to heaven in the form of snowy owls.
• Poland folklore said that unmarried women became doves when they died, and married women transformed into owls.

Native Legend:

• In Native America, the owl is prevalently associated with death and spirits, though each tribe had a different relationship with the animal. Many saw owls as spirits of the recent dead. Other tribes saw them as underworld messengers who shepherded spirits to the world that comes after death. They are spirit protectors.
• Many tribes referred to owls as Night Eagles.
• Some tribes saw owls as healers and would hang feathers in the doorway of a home to keep illness out.
• The Lenni Lenape (New Jersey) said that an owl shown in a dream would become the guardian of the dreamer.
• The Hopi (Arizona) believed the Burrowing Owl was the manifestation of their god of the dead, who was guardian of fire and caretaker for all things underground, including seed germination. Their name for the owl is Ko’ko, meaning “Watcher of the Dark.”
• The Hopi believed that Great Horned Owls helped their peaches to grow.
• The Mojave (Arizona) believed that in death, everyone became an owl for a short time, then reincarnating as a beetle, until finally becoming pure air.
• The Navajo (Arizona/New Mexico/Utah) believe that the owl is the messenger guide of the other world and other earth-bound spirits.
• The Zuni (New Mexico) placed owl feathers in babies’ cribs to keep evil spirits away from the infant.
• The Newuks (California) believed that brave and virtuous men and women became Great Horned Owls after their death. Those who were wicked of heart became Barn Owls.
• Tribes living in the Sierras (California/Nevada) believed Great Horned Owls would snatch the souls of the dead and transport them to their underworld.
• The Cree (Northwest US/Canada) thought that the whistle of the Boreal Owl was a doorway to spirit world. If the person whistled back, and did not hear a response from the owl, it meant they would soon die.
• The Spedis Owl is a petroglyph found on a rock face at The Dalles, the end of the Oregon Trail along the Columbus River between Washington and Oregon. Figures of this same owl have been found in a wide area in that region, but are focally located on there. Legend says the petroglyph was placed on the rock to protect people from the “water devils” that could pull them under.
• The Dalles was the rough edge of the Northwest Coast area of native people. The Kwagiulth/ Kwakiutl (Vancouver Island, BC) believed that owls were manifestations of people’s souls. They would not harm owls, for if the owl died, so would the person who the soul belonged to.
• The Tlingit (Pacific Northwest) thought warriors that heard an owl were receiving a message of coming victory in battle.
• The Inuit (Alaska) have a story that tells of Snowy Owl and Raven making new clothes for each other. Raven made a dress of black and white feather for Owl. Owl made Raven a white dress. But Raven grew so excited when Owl was fitting the dress that she couldn’t sit still. Owl was angry and threw oil lamp at Raven, which soaked through the white dress, turning it black.

Other Legend:

• In many countries in Africa, owls are associated with sorcery and dark magic. A large owl spotted outside a house indicates a powerful shaman lives there. Many people believe owls carry messages between the shaman and the spirit world.
• The Zulu, and other West African nations, believe the bird has strong influence in spellcasting. They think using owl parts imbues the magical user with great strength.
• The Swahili believe owls bring sickness to children.
• Algerians believed that placing the right eye of an Eagle Owl in the hand of a sleeping woman was a truth spell that would make her tell you what you wanted to know.
• Owl amulets were used as protection for pregnant women in Babylon.
• Food was made from owls in India for medicinal use. Owl eye broth aided seizures in children and owl meat helped with rheumatism. Ingesting owl eyes enabled good night vision.
• In Russia, hunters carried owl claws, a tool for their souls to climb to heaven should they die.
• The Kalmuks believed an owl saved Genghis Kahn and held the animal as sacred.
• Malaysians believed that owls ate infants.
• The Ainu people of Hokkaidu, Japan trust owls to warn them of approaching evil. They believe it mediates between gods and men. They see Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Ketupa blakistoni, as their god kotan kor kamuv, which mean “god of the village.”

Mythological Deities as Doorways



Tlazolteotl, by Susan Seddon Boulet



Like many children, I learned life lessons from the storybook fairy tales I read. When venturing into an unknown wood, leave a trail of breadcrumbs so you can find your way back out. When strangers stop you on your journey, don’t tell them intimate details of your life, like where your Grandma lives. Don’t break into other people’s houses and take what isn’t yours, even if it is ‘just right’. Don’t give up who you are for a man, because trading your fins in for feet won’t make him love you. Beware your desperation in the solitude of night and what you call to your aid to save you. It would be better to learn to live with darkness and fend it off for yourself, for the small man will save you, but he will come later asking a cost you cannot yet comprehend. And still, in his lesson, we learn that the power of naming a fear can and will illuminate where you stand in that dark.

            For me, it wasn’t much of a stretch to look at the stories of mythological deities for lessons of a spiritual nature to aid in my personal growth. Now, I don’t believe that deities personified in cultural myths and religions were once living beings that walked the earth. Before the Romans came to Celtic lands, the indigenous people did not personify their deities. Danu was not a woman but the mighty river of the same name. The river was deified, for the people lived at its mercy. More than that, they could feel the energy and spirit of the river and honored it in the form it took. It intimates to me that they lived alongside the natural world around them, without putting themselves above it. When the Romans came to their lands, they were the ones who decided the Celtic gods should have human faces.

I see the compendium of deities as a multitude of archetypes that define specific energies. Through all cultures there are gods and goddesses of love, wisdom, fertility, healing, death, war, arts, etc. Each individual deity represents an aspect, a lesson, of how we define our humanity as it relates to divinity, from within the context of a specific culture, largely determined by its geography. To me, all of the female deities are facets of the core group of feminine energy, which is just half of the core of divinity, made up of both gendered energies. And this core is just a pebble in the energy well of all living things.

In opening doors towards my ancestors, I used the tools of mythological archetypes to reach a deeper understanding. There are lessons to be learned in the attributes that our forefathers gave to their deities and the associations they ascribe them with. It’s a way of fleshing out the emotional connections they had to their spirituality. In opening myself to the energy of the natural world, and seeking guidance from it, sometimes that energy finds me, shows me a path to take.

Two years into my pagan practice, at Equinox, I jumped into a dance around the fire, letting the drums speak to my bones. My body felt not entirely my own and there was a freeness to it. Instead of resisting, I opened. And as I fell into the dance, the smell of the autumn air grew thick and heavy with strange perfume. It was a jungle heat, wet and dark. I was flooded with emotions and images, flowers and birds, with songs and visual colors and I felt like someone has stretched a layer of soft light cotton over me and I relaxed deeper into the moment, letting the dancer do the dance.

I looked up at the others dancing around the fire and I knew their faces, but over each of them I saw shapes and images of other beings, dancing in tandem. Some had swords flashing, arms akimbo, masked faces, and some were crushing sea shells underfoot. I knew we were in a moment of ecstatic grace, touching that primal energy and being gifted with a direction. I later wrote down everything I experienced and researched goddesses, narrowing the list with the sensory experiences and visuals I had to South America, and out of my element, as far as pantheons I was familiar with. And then I found her, Tlazolteotl, an Aztec Goddess of Sex and Excrement.

            I believe my initial response was, “What?” It was a pantheon with such bloody connotations and I was seeking to heal the anger inside me, not give it purchase. But I kept researching. She was all things. Prostitutes given to the soldiers during training were dedicated to her (and later sacrificed for being tainted). She ruled the ninth calendar month and a festival of brooms was performed in her honor, where the city itself was ritually swept and cleansed. Once a year, men could visit her priests and be cleansed of their sins. She was the great cleanser… something else I was seeking.

I knew it was important when, in my research, I came to know that Tlazolteotl had been with me the whole time, waiting for me to stumble into her path. Fifteen years ago, I bought a print of the artist Susan Seddon Boulet at a yard sale. I wasn’t familiar with the piece but was beautiful, and I was happy to have one of hers. An image search I ran brought up a copy of that print. It was Boulet’s depiction of Tlazolteotl and the picture was hanging in my living room.

She is a balancer. You cannot enjoy the sensual pleasures of love and sex if you cannot also accept the releasing of the toxins in your body through defecation. Her medicine, her lessons are about seeing with both eyes clearly. It’s about accepting someone’s flaws as part of the whole of the person that you love. And it’s about forgiveness, but forgiveness of self. Why Aztec? Why this legendary bloody pantheon? I think the primal nature of the culture, that base energy of survival, is what I needed to realign myself with my intuitive body… the very basic questions of was magic real and was I capable of touching it? And through my meditations on taking the pain with the pleasure and the dark with the light, I found my answer was yes.

More personally than that, my work with Tlazolteotl taught me that it’s all right to love something and want something, even though the act was once tainted through violence. She teaches me constantly that more than one thing can be true and that if I believe that, I cannot hold my truth as more important than another. These lessons transformed me, and transform me still.

I have used other deities’ stories for personal growth and transformation and my inner amateur anthropologist is always eager to understand what lessons the deities held for the cultures that revered them. I also endeavor to study deities of death and dying, of gateways and crossroads, as a means of understanding the way my ancestors related to the idea of an afterlife, as a way of constantly reassessing my own beliefs.

Animal Allies: Hummingbird Messengers

Humans are part of the animal kingdom, which is part of the vast living world around us. In earth-centered circles, we often adopt animal totems as a means of aligning our energies with specifics elements; strength, courage, endurance, etc. The animal world is vast and varied and full of natural magic. It’s normal to feel drawn to different animals, each for special reasons, but most have a core group of animals they are drawn to repeatedly. I call them my animal allies, friends of nature that I feel an affinity for.

Animals are helpful guides in ancestor and spirit work. Where we have lost our connection to the natural world, they have not. They are a key to help cross the threshold, something known and familiar, and cultures throughout history have often associated specific animals with this task. I use them in visualizing exercises to help me widen my view of and understand my journeys with the spirit world.

There are different kinds of animal allies. There are ones that are mated to us, our co-walkers. Chances are you can think of one or two easily that you have been drawn to or had an unusual connection to. Our shadow allies are animals that stir great fear in us. By working with them magically, we can learn the way to work through that fear. These allies can be powerful magic.

And then there are the animal allies that serve as guides and mentors, guardians of portals that look into parts of the natural world normally hidden to us. We take their lessons based on indigenous mythology and animal behavior. They represent some part of me and the way that part of me relates to the world around me. The energy of those animals walk with me in my life and when I need guidance I turn to the spirit of my personal allies, of seal, lioness, owl and buffalo for strength.

Hummingbird Messengers

Spring has arrived and the animal world is reawakening. I await the first hummingbird sighting in the Northeast. The hummingbird is an animal only found in the Americas and the islands between them, so its mythology and folklore belongs to the New World. Hummingbirds are seen as messengers between the worlds, aiding shamans in their work to keep nature and spirit in balance.

My Grandmother was fond of hummingbirds, of both hummingbirds and owls. Feathered allies can easily cross from one world to the next, and for me, because of my emotional connection to my Grandma, hummingbirds are my close allies to the spirit world. Imagine the hummingbird, wings moving so fast that you can’t see them, can’t focus on them. Wings moving so fast that its body appears to hover in mid-air, as if still.

This is the meditation of the hummingbird. It is so simple to me, moving between worlds without moving, at once blurred in motion and sedately still. It’s about learning to walk with one foot in spirit world and one in the breathing world. It’s about learning to trance in instead of trancing out, about journeying through another world while remaining aware and present of this one. May the return of the hummingbirds this spring stir feelings of rebirth and renewal.

Hummingbirds in Legend

• When Native American culture was being lost, the Ghost Shirt religion attempted to bring back their old ways through dancing and the leader of their dance was a hummingbird.
• There is a ritual among some Pueblo Indians for stillborn babies, or those who die within days of their birth. They hold prayer sticks with hummingbird feathers during the winter solstice sunrise to quicken re-birth.
• The Cochiti Pueblos have a legend about how Hummingbird thrived during a drought because a passageway to the Underworld remained open only for him to fly through, where he gathered honey. They believed he alone didn’t lose faith in Great Mother and so the way remained open for him to flourish.
• There is a taboo against harming hummingbirds among the Chayma people of Trinidad as they believe the birds are dead ancestors.
• A Mayan legend describes a hummingbird piercing the tongues of ancient kings, whose blood would be poured on sacred scrolls and burned. In the smoke, their divine ancestors would appear.
• The Aztecs used hummingbird feathers for decoration. They adorned their ceremonial cloaks with feathers, and the priests attached them to their staves, used to suck evil out of those cursed by sorcerers. Chieftains often wore hummingbird feather earrings.
• There is a warrior in Aztec mythology named Huitzilopochtli, “hummingbird from the left,” referring to the spirit world. He was the son of Coatlicul, who conceived him from a ball of feathers that fell from the sky. Huitzil was killed in battle and a green hummingbird appeared where he had fallen. The Aztecs believed that warriors who died in battle became hummingbirds.
• One of the Nazca lines in Peru depicts a hummingbird.
• In the Andes, the hummingbird is associated with resurrection because each night, in the cold, the hummingbird appears lifeless, but as the sun returns it stirs again, taking flight.

Equinox Mythos & Mystery

Covering beds for the winter

I watch garden snakes going underground.

The sun retreats from this half of the world,

bodies hibernating through longer nights.

It’s our turn to carry the dark, autumn whispers.

What will you bring with you into dreaming?

Inanna descends into the Underworld, of her own free will. She takes up the journey to meet her sister, Ereshkigal, her shadow self. She will 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 reemerge in her strength and power. What do you see when you face your reflection? 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 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. She is betrayed as the hero slays the monster, to woo her, to protect her, to impress her. The hero with small vision who 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? Do you have the strength to expose your vulnerabilities? Can you shed those who would stand in judgment 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. She trusts that it is the right path. 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 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 love, he wins Eurydice back. But the path out of the darkness is too long and too quiet and he loses faith that she is behind him even though she told him she would be there. He turns around before they reach the sun 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 or will you sink into embarrassed despair?

Oya stands at the cemetery gate as the recent dead descend into the ground. She greets them, standing against the flood of their fresh grief. She is the beacon of light calling them to rest. Where does that strength live in you?

Papa Legba stands at the crossroads of dreaming as the ancestors rise to walk the earth again. He stands ready to ferry bargains and deals as we wander through our winter nights. What would you sacrifice to get what you most desire?

Tlazolteotl balances the act of love with the act of defecation, holding both as equally sacred. Sacred in, sacred out. She is the flow between connection and release. 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 our gratitude for the light.

The veils are thinning. The darkness is winning favor as we turn into autumn. Our mythologies provide us with stories and archetypes we can use to illuminate ways to navigate the path that lies ahead so 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. We should use our 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

I watch garden snakes going underground.

The sun retreats from this half of the world,

bodies hibernating through longer nights.

It’s our turn to carry the dark, autumn whispers.

What will you bring with you into dreaming?