My Personal Descent

My Personal Descent

shannon-md-smithI have been on the road for over two months… and as my moon blood flows in the midst of a snowstorm, as the moon draws full, and the sacred night of Winter Solstice approaches… silence is deeply meaningful to me right now.  Even a NYer’s version of silence with traffic and television. Quietude, solitude, these things are DEEPLY valued.

I am in LOVE with LIFE.

In this moment of reflection of this sacred time of year, I am in LOVE with everything around me, everything within me, everything I am seeing, learning, hearing, tasting, touching and experiencing.  While my experience of the Descent this year has been largely in holding space for others, I am in deep appreciation and gratitude for the LOVE in my life.   REALLY… if you haven’t done the work, if you’ve been putting it off… you still have time…

I remember the depths of my own descent back in 2009.  I had gone to Brazil in the summer, deeply wounded, fractured really.  Mary Magdalen had begun to come to me and was pushing me forward. All of the teachers I had come to rely upon, yet, who were stuck in old paradigm stories, none of them knew what to do with me.  Our communication was at a stand still.  An incredible woman I was lucky enough to know from years past, Denise, was the only person who looked at me and truly saw me.  She, not only knew about Mary, and was aware of Her presence with me, she knew exactly the medicine I needed.  She knew this because she had faced her own Descent, as well.

To be honest, she did not want to take me on as a student or even a patient, yet somehow I begged long and hard enough for her to agree.  She began a three-day ritual that opened a 9-month healing process for me.  She began it by making me sit in my anger and think about all the people, situations, issues I was there to get away from.  I was not happy.  It felt like hours.  But eventually, my anger towards her for making me do this exercise, turned into anger towards the people who were persecuting me, and finally into a full on altered state of awareness in which I could feel myself being beaten, could feel the whip hitting my flesh, could see the flames of the fires in which I had been burned.  As hot tears rolled down my cheeks, I sobbed not only for what I was experiencing but allowing myself to cry knowing the true reason for my anger, and being willing to go down into it.  I thought this was the deepest part of the shadow and she warned me – we were just getting started – and that was true.  The next 6 months were agonizing. Contending with my inner demons.  I was challenged publicly to speak up, not only for myself, but, for every philosophical and moral point I cared about.  I was unpopular and accused of many things.  Even accused of leading women astray spiritually for walking toward a shared heritage of Celtic history thus leading them away from the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  Dear Goddess!  How ignorant we are!

And now, I am here writing about Welcoming the Return of the ‘Sun’, the Return of the ‘Son’, the Return of the Light.   It does not matter which path you take, all over the world myth and metaphor surface.  It is one of the greatest methods of ascertaining truth is to see how it shows itself all over the world.  At Christmas time, while Christians of all kinds celebrate the birth of Jesus, a man revered as the Son of God and born of Mary, in Egypt, they will celebrate the birth of Horus, son of the Goddess Isis and the God Osiris.  In Ireland and throughout the world, people will celebrate the return of the Sun as the longest night of the year gives way to the first new day in six months that the hours of light begin to increase.  Just scratch beneath the surface of all the festivals and you will find an even deeper mystery. (This is why the 13 Moon Mysteries of the Goddess network exists.  So, that we can dig through the layers together.)

I welcome you to join us as we traverse these final steps through the dark into the season of light.  Celebrate the Oak King’s defeat over the Holly King.  Give way for the re-emergence of the Divine Masculine in its highest form from the womb of the Dark Mother.  Make space for the remembrance of who you are and where you come from.  How did your ancestors mark this time?  Go in.  And as we gaze in awe at the rising of the new Sun, make a pathway present, knowing that Imbolc, the next Lunar Sabbath is just around the corner to help us sweep our hearths clean.  And having well prepared ourselves by facing even Death herself (within and without), know that you will be prepared to open the Fire Festival of Brigid with the New Moon on January 31st and dance through the waves of Yemanja to greet your new self, in honor and reverence, as we bring our offerings to the sea.

with love,
Shannon MD Smith

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