For  the last several weeks, I’ve been having the urge to put the Nordic rune Algiz on my finger tips.  I’m sure it has to do with the time of year. Samhain has always been a time when I get profound messages; this is the time of my rebirth. The last 3 years have had something to do with my Nordic aspect. 2 years ago, Heimdhal came to me and informed me I would be working with him. Last year, I had several Nordic messages from the ancestors that told me to stop spinning my wheels and doing busy work. This year, it’s like I walked through a door and have a hard time remembering who I was on the other side.

And it’s not even technically Samhain yet!

But I know that we’re all going through some profound changes right now. Look around you. People are being given the choice between becoming more aware or more entrenched. There is no “business as usual” option. We’re all being asked for a greater commitment, to who we are, to our communities, to what we believe in, to the world at large.

My lizard brain is terrified, because I have no idea what it’s going to look like going forward. My Spirit, on the other hand, is excited. New possibilities! Change! Create create create! My heart is singing.

Those of us with one foot in the Not Here are probably starting to look a little crazy to the entrenched people, but what else is new? I find myself going deeper and deeper into the mysteries. New information comes. My classes are feeling deeper to me, more core-level. I yearn to start up the apprenticeship program again. But with whom? My older core students have flown the nest, moved on, and rightly so. For now, I wait, to see who comes, who wants to go deeper, not just to peer into the mysteries, but to live them.

I hear drums all the time. It’s probably the heartbeat of the Not Here and of the Earth. But there’s a rhythm to everything right now, a primal beating, a pulse. I rock back and forth in meditation, I count out the beats in the labyrinth. I want to go sit in a cave and just drum and trance and write out my visions.

Welcome to fall… Winter is coming… Maybe winter is actually here…

Winter is a commitment to yourself, to the inner realms. Winter is an extended time of crisis, whether we acknowledge it or not. Winter forces us to rely more on each other, to share and pool resources, to work together. We knew this, before technology took us away from nature; we understood the cycles of things, we knew how to weather them. It’s time we relearn that.

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*-With a nod to George RR Martin and the team of William Strauss and Neil Howe