In the Arms of Winter

Aos Sidhe Finding Form

We find ourselves in the silent arms of winter…literally.  All the energy is happening below the surface where roots and seeds rest and rejuvenate, readying for the next season where the energy moves to the crust to blossom and shine.  

Every winter, starting in my birthday month, December, I slow down and take some time to go deep, sweep through the cobweb corners of my heart and mind.  I am feeling my way to my deeper truth and answering the endless question, “Am I living fully a life that feeds my soul, am I fully present, am I listening with my channels open to the mystery of life?

Always I use the Tarot as a tool to help me with questions that take me deeper.  I love the story and the beauty of the cards and I like to use them as a good counselor, one who doesn’t give us answers, but asks the questions that will help us find our own answers. I take my questions on my walks, I sit with them by the fire, I meditate on them in the morning before the days fills up all the spaces.

This is my winter rhythm.  I cherish the time to rest and rejuvenate like the roots and seeds. 

As winter unfolds, I have been thinking about the life below the surface, the Otherworld.  I have been thinking about the visceral spark of energy I get when I walk in the garden or the woods, when I walk into a room or encounter another person, a spark that tells me a story about what I am experiencing. It’s what I think of as, not only my guiding voice, but messages from the mystery of the Otherworld, the unseen but deeply felt energy of things.  

Lately I’ve been moved to create an artistic expression of these energy beings in my work as a jeweler.  They are spirit beings from my rich Otherworldly mind wanting to find form.   It makes me happy to bring them to life and to feel their energy focused and solidified. They are my own Aos Sidhe, not from Scotland where their name originates, but from the West Coast of America where I have lived my life.  My ancestral story bridged to this New World, brought to life by my own unfolding story and the tending of my lived landscape and it’s mysteries.  

Maybe the work of all artists comes from this place, the Otherworld yearning for visible form.  That’s what I’m thinking in the silent arms of winter.