Laguz; the Temple of Sorrows and the Queen of the Abyss

I open the door and step into the Temple of Sorrows.  I know this place and why I am here.  I hear the wailing the moment I cross the threshold.  The sound is everywhere, like a whirlwind moving across the waters, 

The Temple is dark and cavernous.  There is no floor, only dark water rushing continuously in a tempest of sound and yet, I stand ankle deep with nothing solid beneath my bare feet.

I see her standing in the center of the cavern.  Cloaked and hooded in black, bowed, still and silent, surrounded by the keening of sorrow and grief.  The bottom of my black dress sticks to my legs as I walk through the waters to stand before her.  She does not even lift her head to look at me as I push back the hood that hides her face.  I remove the cloak from her bowed shoulders, her dress the same as the one I wear. She bares a symbol in ashes upon her forehead.  It is a symbol tattooed upon my back. 

Finally she looks at me and her face is familiar but unknown to me.  She must have been beautiful once, but there are dark circles under her eyes and her pale skin is dull and ashen and clashes with her long dry hair, a faded shade of what might have been chestnut in the sun.   

Her eyes are the only part of her that looks truly alive. Her eyes are hazel, green and gold with hints of warm brown around the edges. I look into them and I see glimpses of our lives, of hers and of mine and of those lifetimes in between. 

Tears begin to flow down her ashen face.  My cheeks are hot and wet and as we weep together, the keening finally stills as does the water that surrounds us.  I take her into my arms as I would my sister and I feel her heartbreak echo in my own heart. 

As I hold her, I feel a crack in the ceiling of the temple, a rip in the fabric of the stone above our heads and she sighs soft as a whisper, the only sound she has made. I promise her that I will return that I will be with her through every step of this, until she is transformed and we are both free.

Uruz: Wild Strength

I stepped through the door and into the Otherworld and looked at my feet.  I was barefoot and I wore a long linen tunic, natural in color but, embroidered with patterns of leaves and spirals in shades of greens and browns, russets and gold.  There were feathers braided in my hair and multi-colored beads of wood, stone and bone hung about my neck.

I stood on a grassy hill in the warmth of an early summer day and a path stretched out before me and disappeared over the rise of the hill.  I followed the path as it wound its way around the hill and down to a wooded hollow.  When I followed the path into the shade of the trees, I came to a rushing stream with a large Willow on the bank trailing its branches in the fast moving current. 

I stepped into the stream and stood there with the cool water flowing past my legs.  I looked into the clear water and saw a brook trout, spotted and small, swimming but unmoving in the deep pool behind a rock.  And then suddenly, I was the Trout. 

I felt the water, filled with oxygen, flowing through me.  Into my open mouth and out through my gills.  I felt it moving over my scales and, with the simple flutter of my fins, the current’s flow made it effortless to swim in stillness behind the Rock.  And then, I was the Rock.

I could feel the earth holding me and the sun warming me, and the water flowing around and over me.  I could feel the delicate, supple, new branches of the Willow brushing against me as they trailed in the current and then, I was the Willow.

I could feel my branches trailing on the surface of the current and brushing against the rock.  I could feel my roots deep in the earth taking in the water and reaching out all around me.  I could feel the sun on my leaves and the energy feeding me and the breeze playing with my upper branches. I watched the sunlight play upon the water and, a Heron flying low along the path of the stream and then, I was the Heron.

I flew through the air with barely a feather moving.  I glided along and landed gently and stood on thin, elegant legs in the depth of the water, seeing into the current, watching for fish to fill my belly.  And then, I was myself again, standing in the middle of the stream, water flowing past my legs.

I stepped out of the stream and onto the bank.  I said farewell to the Willow and the Rock and the Trout and the Heron, and followed the path back to the grassy hill.

I felt stronger than I have in a very long time.  The wildness of the place fed me and filled me and freed me in a way that I have been needing for so very long now.  I returned with a knowing that I must renew my connection to all that is wild, both within me and in the world around me. 

While I am working to transform the structures of myself and my mundane life, I must never neglect to feed the wild inside me.  I cannot wait until life allows it.  I cannot allow the demands of my mundane life to be stronger, to take more from me, than the work I am truly here to do.  I must feed the fires of the wild heart until they are so strong that my mundane life is a small and pale shadow in comparison.