Don't Look Back

May 05, 2020 by Erin Moline

Trust is a simple word, familiar to us all, yet it is a magical energy that connects us to others and makes life feel safe and many things possible. When trust is lacking, we find discord, disharmony, oppression, and tyranny. We can see this play out in all group situations in life, whether they be the family, a classroom, a corporation, or a government. Trust plays a vital, essential role in the path we all take as we move through life together.

A business that trusts its employees empowers them to make decisions and take actions. It trusts that they are doing their best and have good intentions. Trust also forgives foibles and the struggle of being human; it recognizes vulnerability and imperfection and is not afraid of them, but realizes that all feelings and experiences are vital to creativity and the movement of life. Where there is trust, there is an emphasis on personal responsibility and away from blame, on solutions rather than absolutions. Trust allows love to flow into the world.

As I’ve been thinking about Trust, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice came to my mind. Orpheus, son of a King and a Muse, was, at one time, a long time ago, known to be the greatest musician that had ever lived. He married his love, Eurydice, a nymph, and daughter of Apollo. They were very much in love, and spent their days wandering the idyllic Arcadian countryside.

During one of these wandering days, Eurydice was pursued by Aristaeus, founder of bee-keeping and cheese-making, who had long loved her and wanted to be with her. She fled his overtures and in her flight stepped on a snake, was bitten, died, and had to make her journey into the Underworld.

No grief was as great as that of Orpheus for his beloved Eurydice; the land was filled with the music of his mourning. So great was his sorrow, and so sorrowful the music that emanated from it, that the Gods themselves encouraged him to go to Hades to see if he could bring her home from the Underworld, so that they themselves could be spared the sound of his suffering.

So down Orpheus went, out of the sunlit land of Greece and into the Underworld, where he pleaded with Hades and his queen, Persephone, for the release of his beloved back into the land of the living. The story goes that they were so taken with his story, his sorrow, and his beautiful music that they took pity on him and decided to allow her come back with him. They allowed this great concession on one condition: that she would walk behind him, and that he would not turn around to make sure she was there. He could only turn to see her after he reemerged into the land of the living.

Overjoyed, Orpheus began his walk back up the path from the Underworld. At first he was elated. His mission had been successful and his love was returning with him. He could hear her light footsteps ascending the path behind him as he walked, and his heart was filled with joy. It was so hard not to turn to her, to embrace her, but he held to his resolve and kept moving. Soon, they would be together again. Soon he would be singing to her again. Soon… soon…

But, as I’m sure you can imagine, trusting in this was very difficult. Losing her had been such an ordeal. What would he do if he lost her again? What if that wasn’t her but some kind of trick? He tried to keep his focus on his steps, just keep going, he told himself, just keep going. But then, just as he was almost there, he had a moment of panic. He couldn’t hear her! She wasn’t there! He had to turn and see.

So just as he could see sunlight, Orpheus turned and as he did he could feel the mistake of it, but then he couldn’t resist, he couldn’t stop himself. He had to know, his pain was too great to take such a risk! He could not stand feeling both the hope and the fear that that hope would not be realized. Thus he turned, and as he did, he was able to glimpse her just briefly before watching her fade out of his sight, sinking back to the land of shadows. She was gone, and Orpheus lost his beloved for a second time. We hear his sorrow in music to this day.

Some people dislike Hades or Pluto, and I used to fear him, but I now experience him as a great witnessing presence. The King of the Underworld and his Queen bear witness to our individual and collective suffering, to the consequences of our actions, to the truth of what is. They rule over the Shadowlands, the place we must go to find rebirth and healing when we have had loss, hurt or been hurt.

They gave Orpheus this chance, but he had to be able to trust them, trust a process, and most of all tolerate the discomfort of the possibility of having his heart broken again. For many of us, it is more than we can bear, and we would rather be in control of our loss, than potentially be devastated again by what we don’t know.

Healing is never simple, and it requires of us deep trust, trust in ourselves, trust in life itself, trust in our feelings, trust to stay with the task at hand and not get caught up with what if, maybe, but why and all the rest of it.

On the other side of trust lie new beginnings, fresh moments, new discoveries, and our Soul alive, catching the winds of life like a leaf in a May breeze, ready for what is next.

Flower Child

April 24, 2020 by Erin Moline

We are officially in Taurus season, the time of the wild Spring energy of the Bull.

One of the myths connected to Taurus gives the the bull the name Cerus. Cerus roamed the countryside, doing whatever he liked, trampling villages with abandon. He did not seem to care what he did and the local villagers were powerless to stop him. He was not a God but had become Godlike in his rampaging.

It was only Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the princess of Springtime and Queen of the Underworld who was able to tame him. She helped him find how to use his strength and vigor as a force of life rather than destruction.

Persephone, the girl who was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld, sometimes known as the Queen of Shadows, was able to meet this Bull, this great force, where he was, and help him find a new place in himself, away from just venting his power and making displays of force.

Taurus season is all about pleasure, passion, fertility and fecundity and tremendous creative energy. Inside there may be stomping, running and wildness. What we can bring to ourselves is attention to our own inner Persephone, wisdom, grace, a pacifying, loving, and guiding presence. What a beautiful dance to embrace in Spring.

The overculture of the West teaches us to distrust our passion, and with that distrust we do not learn how to work with it creatively and expressively in the world. Passion without love, support, presence, and expression becomes destructive, to others or to our own psyche. In this way the overculture proves itself right as those who trust their passion do not have support and often flail, suffer, and fall into addiction and illness.

When we listen to the ancients and the beautiful teachings that come to us through myth and story, we find clues about how to trust the great gift of our passion and embrace it; how to enjoy our fire, dancing our lives into being by deeply choosing ourselves and our own particular expression of the great mystery of which we are all an integral part.

The Witness

April 07, 2020 by Erin Moline

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.