The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford ~”

For the past year or so, I have been avidly following our moon as she moves through the sky and around us in space. I follow her as she moves through the zodiac, noticing what energies and influences she brings. I follow her as she moves through her own cycle, noticing my own rhythms, experiences, and feelings as she waxes and wanes, shining brightly overhead or dimming in the night sky.

I have found much comfort in her presence, a type of reassurance. But since the opening of this new time that we are in, I have been feeling something different, her role as witness.

She watches us. She was there when the Black Plague was upon the world. She was there when all the humans of the Earth were connected to the Earth and lived in harmony with her gifts. And she will be there, whatever this next moment, next day, next year, next decade brings for all of us, watching.

She is known by different names all over the world. In Celtic she is Arianrhod, which reminds me of Ariadne, the granddaughter of Helios, God of the Sun, the maiden witch who helped Theseus escape the Cretan labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur. There is an idea in the world that the Celts and the ancient people of Greece are connected by some mysterious thread.

Ariadne grew up in the palace of Minos, daughter of King Minos. She danced on a dance floor designed by Daedalus, who also designed the labyrinth that kept her half-brother, the Minotaur, from devouring all. She helped Theseus, then left Crete with him, thinking he would save her, love her, lead her into a new life and away from death.

But it was not to be. Perhaps he was sorrowful, and that is why he forgot to set the white sails. Because he betrayed his love and left her, sleeping on a beach, to head home to Athens.

Dionysus came and made her his bride, she is known in some legends as the mother of wine. Makes sense, the granddaughter of the God of the Sun becoming Goddess of the Moon and inebriation.

The moon sees us at night when we see her. She is inebriating. She watches and dances. She reminds us of seeing and being seen when our sight is limited. She guides the tides of our Earth, our bodies, the waters that move towards fullness and away, again and again and again.

What do we see when we witness ourselves? The moon, Ariadne, Selene, Arianrhod, La Luna, she encourages us to look, to gaze, to not be afraid of the dark. She offers the thread to each of us, a way to remember back into being a life that is cyclical and eternal, a dance of death and rebirth, ebbing and flowing. Like Ariadne’s small feet, lightly touching the dance floor made for her by the great inventor Daedalus, the father of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the Sun.