Dear friends,

 

Welcome to the second edition of The Muse. We are thrilled to send this into the world on the day that Pluto enters Aquarius, a signature that has so much to do with time speeding up, the new paradigm birthing itself, and global community + communication. The Golden Thread Directory continues to grow and morph - please look here if you are in search of a new space-holder; refer a friend for the same purpose; and invite your healer + new paradigm weaver friends to join us here. We are honored to have you as a part of this growing community dedicated to weaving a better world. 

 

In honor of the content overwhelm that is the current state of the world, I have decided to try my hand at recording the newsletter. So, if you'd like, listen here and / or read what you would like to read; leave the rest. Rest your eyes and rest your brain. 

 

With love,

Olivia, founder of The Golden Thread

Who are we when we let go of time? Who are we when we drop our stories?

 

again, you are welcome to listen to this part here

 

Imagine for a moment that you exist in a time before time. You wake up to the first of the sun’s rays and stretch your body to begin your day. You light a candle. Maybe you light a fire, if it’s cold. You ease your body into the day. Your sense of the moment you are in in the cycle of the year is determined by your body’s senses – the feeling of the air on your skin, the smell of the moisture and the plants, the colors of the plants (orange leaves, or green moss, or kaleidoscopic flowers in bloom, or gray deathly branches). This information tells you nothing more than the exact relationship you are meant to have with the world, in this moment – the way you interact with the plants and the beings around you. Maybe, you are harvesting fresh herbs to make medicine for the year. Maybe, you are harvesting fruit to make preserves from. Maybe you are just spending a day blissfully eating berries in the sun. Maybe you are planting bulbs in the soil, or harvesting roots, letting your hands did deep into the earth. And then, there is the void time of winter – the time when the plants are not in their giving phase, when it is time to focus on staying warm and nourished, caring for family and community, being still.

 

Breathe into this way of being for a moment. Imagine inhabiting the bodies of your ancestors. Move through the day with them.

 

I have decided to record the newsletter because I imagine that you, like me, are incredibly oversaturated with emails, texts, things to read in this moment in our collective growth. This, I think, is only about to become more forceful as Pluto moves into Aquarius this week – an astrological signature we will be in until 2044, and that has to do with information moving at the speed of light. In many ways, the technology we have developed since the 1990s is unbelievably magical – the way we can connect with each other in an instant, across oceans, and have instant access to any information we could possibly want. However, undeniably, this is also overstimulating, oversaturating, and overwhelming to our earthly bodies that remember what it is like to wake up in the morning, step quietly into the day, and not look at a screen for at least a few hours, if not the full day. I think it is so important for us to consider, at this moment in time, what our boundaries with technology and information are – how are we taking things in? Are we letting ourselves get taken for an anxiety ride by the news and information we are consuming? Even if what we are reading is supposedly “good” or even healing information, is it just too much? Are we full? It is our RIGHT to protect our energy, to live lives that feel nourishing and slow and magical like honey. So much of what surrounds us right now is constantly pulling us out of our bodies – how can we develop boundaries so that we can live in our bodies as much as possible? How are our bodies actually feeling when we land in them? I hope you will consider journaling this out, when you’re done listening.

 

There was once a time when calendars aligned with the moon. Months consisted of 28 days, synched with the lunar cycle. As women, we know what it feels like to be synched with the moon, to honor the crescendo and the descent that the tides respond to each month. Men can feel this too, of course, if they pay attention. This rhythm we live by is sacred, and, more importantly, real. I invite you to consider what it looks like to structure your time, your energy, around the moon instead of according to the calendar we have been told to follow. What would it look like to move away from the matrix we have been handed and to respond to the flow of nature instead?

 

This time of the year we are entering into is representative of the archetypal Void. The Void is the Universal womb that we all come from, that all creation comes from. It is the embryonic darkness that we birth from and through. Close your eyes and place yourself there for a second – imagine a nourishing blanket of darkness enveloping you. Imagine being surrounded by warm nourishment, absorbing it through your cells. Let yourself take this in. Breathe in. Breathe out. And know you can come back here anytime.

 

In this month’s podcast episode, I speak with Ariella Daly about the Void – what this concept means and how it relates to time. I hope that you will have a listen. We also have a beautiful shamanic journey led by Drew, who is an integral part of the Golden Thread team. Lastly, a gorgeous essay about time written by Eloise Allan. I hope these words, recordings, moments in time serve as nourishment. If you are oversaturated, remember that you can ALWAYS bookmark this and come back to it later. 

 

Title: On Time: Bound and Unbound

Subtitle: an ekphrastic, with thanks to “The Circle Game,” by Joni Mitchell 

By Eloise Allan Crittenden

 

 

I have a time obsession. Or maybe, time has an obsession with me. 

 

It seems to follow me everywhere I go, telling me what to do—and when. It tells me when to wake up, since I don’t have the privilege of waking with my body. It tells me when I have to be, where I need to be. It suggests when I should eat dinner. It nudges me to sleep. Time has bound me to it. It has held me captive. Or maybe, I have let it. 

 

 

Not linear, a carousel. Not simply forwards, a carousel. But somehow, somewhere in-between. The question is, how to get on this carousel? The circles must slow and a portal must open. And, the circles are everywhere. They are the omnipresent beings of time. 

 

They are, they make, the seconds, the minutes, the hours. The days, the months, the years. These are the circles that hold me captive. These are the prescribed carousels of time. 

 

But, they are, they make, the air we breath, the phases of the moon and the seasons. 

 

 

The natural carousels of time. And, it is on these carousels that prescribed time dissolves. These carousels don’t simply go round and round, but they go up and down.

 

This November day, this prescribed circle, whimpered under the beings of the seasons. Orange ombre ornaments, subjected to the whispers of the wind's secrets, jingled. Some secrets were so heavy, gravity took hold. But the ornaments took swirling paths, committed to keeping the wind’s secrets of air there. Suspended.  

 

The rising heat from charcoaled streets held them partially in limbo. And the circle slowed under the will of the mind of the imaginative.  Our minds seek these moments of limbo and hold us in them, even just for the time it takes a leaf to fall from a tree. Our minds slow the circles. But to use this power wisely is ever so important. And not to abuse it. For everything is in a constant state of precarious flux, and that is not something that can be controlled in its entirety. So accept the moments of slowness when they come, for they will find you and you them. These are meditative moments of gratitude, of sadness, of wherever you are–unbound by time.  

 

 

 

 

In this episode, Ariella Daly joins me to talk about time, the void, and how we can live in harmony with the natural cycles that surround us. It is a delectable conversation - one to close your eyes and listen to. Though I do apologize for the volume discrepancy in ur two voices. Listen here.

 

by Drew Souders

 

If these walls could talk
they would tell you:
I was not made for this place.

I was not made for the endless doing,
the endless striving.
For the products that yell from shelves
or the people who hate
indiscriminately.

I was not made
for the time that comes after.
For the violence,
the looting.
Every man for himself,
protect the family at all costs,
build walls,
close borders.

I come to you from the distant future,
living alongside our children’s children.
They whisper to me
and give me strength
even now, when they know what is to come.

There, we live together in a place of plenty.
Not of wealth, or goods, or even food,
but of spirit, of brotherhood,
of love.

I walk here with you now
to show you this new way is possible
because it already exists, living beside us today.
In this place.

 

 

 

 

We hope that you've enjoy reading (and listening!). 

 

If you have any favorite healing resources (books, podcast episodes, ecological projects) we should have in our resource library, send them in here! And please consider submitting your writing here for future editions, if you write anything having to do with spirituality, ecology, magic, or weaving a better world. Our theme for December is ritual in the magic dark - where our holiday traditions come from in the west, and if/whether/how they nourish us spiritually and relationally.

 

We have been hosting beautiful collective prayer + dreaming circles (calendar link here) as well as monthly council circles for our directory members. These are nourishing spaces to ground, to connect, and to attune ourselves to what we are hoping to birth in the world. We would love to have you. 

 

We have a growing group of members in the directory, so if you are looking for a healer or therapist, we invite you to look there! If you are a healer yourself, please apply to join us.