Exploring the Element of Earth
Here we are. Together. Early Winter. At the start of a new cycle, a new season, a new year.
In Celtic pagan tradition, the Winter season is associated with the element of Earth.
Over my years of study, I've found that building relationship with the elements of nature is one of the foundational and primary ways in which we can understand energy, form relationship with the Earth, and know ourselves at a deeper level. The elements provide a framework and a lens through which we can view the world, and see more deeply into the energy patterns of our world.
We have just left the domain of Water, which guided us through Autumn, and we are now beginning to find our footing upon the solid ground, as the light very slowly begins to make its return.
Earth is tangible. Earth provides us structure, foundation, and stability. Earth is what creates a container that can then be filled.
As I mentioned last newsletter, January and the early winter months are sensitive, slow, and contemplative. They are a time for slowly building. Moving at the pace of Earth. They are a time of dreaming our lives into being, creating foundations that we can receive inside of.
In the Sacred Season Winter Guidebook we explore the element of Earth:
“The element of earth represents safety, security, and meeting our basic needs. Earth asks us to look at what we need in our lives to feel safe and secure, and if those needs are being met.
Does your work environment, home environment, community, partnership, etc. feel safe? Do you feel supported in these realms? This is the foundation. If our basic needs are not met, the cascade may be felt in many other areas of our lives. Our basic infrastructure is paramount.
Take note if something doesn’t feel safe or supportive in these areas of your life. Use these winter months to contemplate potential solutions.
How can you structure your life to care for yourself and honor your true needs?
What do you need for support?
Earth creates the container for everything else to move in and through. During the winter days we are building. We are building our stores, building and nourishing our bodies, compiling and gathering our energy within. In doing so, we can have enough stores to take action in the spring. This is not unlike the act of building a container, building the bones of something, so that when the time is ready, it can be filled.”
Living seasonally and rhythmically with the Earth as our guide is ancestral, deeply nourishing, and heals us on so many levels.
This primary relationship, between us and Earth, has been sought to be destroyed. But alas, this is impossible.
Because we are earth, because we are nature. Many of us are finding our way back to this innate, and deeply mending, embodied way of being.
So as we progress through this season, notice your body. Notice how your energy shifts through this part of the cycle. Notice the element of Earth in your daily life, and invite the wisdom of Winter and Earth in to your spiritual practices.
Begin to erect a framework for your life that can house your values.
Dream into structures in the collective that honor both the sanctity of all life, and also the voices of the dead, so we can eject ourselves from the looping roads of destruction and terror that have plagued us for far too long.
Offer your money to structures and systems that are supportive to the Earth-you-know-is-possible.
Plant your roots into the fecundity of rich soil, knowing that as you claim your own self and values, you help solidify the dream of the collective, and the manifestation of a world where our more-than-human friends are honored as well.
