The Wheel Turns

The veil has thinned. The Wheel Turns.  One year ends, another begins.

Our summer gardens have been put to bed, winter crops sown.  Hecate waits at the crossroads, lighting the way as we enter the darkness of the year.  Which road she asks, will you take?

Some of us welcome our own beloved dead, honoring them in ritual or at silent suppers; preparing their favorite foods and telling their stories; listening for the gift of their wisdom from beyond the veil.

Some traditions acknowledge Persephone, who entered Her underground home at Equinox, waiting to welcome the souls of those who died this year.  In agriculturally based traditions, it may be the Harvest Lord who leads these souls into Her willing arms.

This year I have been called to embody the role of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, who receives the souls.  As I prepare to stand in the power of this place I notice that I am already in the Underworld, drawn there by a force that resides deeply within my own soul. 

This force resides within each of us. This is the rich, fertile place of silence and of darkness where the seeds of our lives germinate.  For Persephone is also the holder of seeds.

As Persephone welcomes each soul, the story goes, she offers them pomegranate seeds, the food of the dead. Accepting these seeds, we recognize that we are entering an internal time, a time of contemplation.  A time of waiting for the next piece of our personal and collective cycle to unfold.  Seeds, after all, imply rebirth.

Will you take the seed that is offered in the cycle of your soul? 

Even though you may not know what your seed might be?  In the fullness of time this shall be revealed.  But now, in this the moment, we rest.