Another year draws to a close and as we embark on a new year, the challenges do not seem to be abating. However, it is vital that we stay aware of our relationship to the world we live in and how tough our journey may seem. The archetypal wisdom we are invited to consider this month offers an interesting perspective.
Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, begins at the Winter Solstice when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky. 3 days later the sun appears to turn around and begin its journey northwards; the coming of the light. This is celebrated as the saviour’s birth, as a reflection of the coming of the light within us all, and we are invited to climb the mountain to save our own souls.
Spending time with such long winter nights, we are encouraged to view the night sky. We see the Pole Star, approximately the centre of our galaxy, as it holds its position in the sky, while the rest of the galaxy spins around it. We mirror this in our Third Eye chakra. At the centre of our brain sits our Pineal gland, that offers us a sense of stillness, while our busy minds spin around this point.
If we are willing to stay with this stillness we can access our own inner wisdom and the wisdom of the universe.
This is, of course, not easy. The journey to achieving this state of stillness, especially in these challenging times, is a hard one. However, we have Saturn as our teacher and guide. He encourages us to take each step one at a time, learn each lesson without rushing ahead before we are ready, and most important of all, finding joy in each moment, This is the art of saving our soul, making the journey the thing, not the goal of reaching the top of the mountain.
I have spoken of this every year as it comes around and although it feels like I’m simply repeating myself, I find that each year the same truth holds a deeper resonance, a new way to process and learn from this wisdom. It’s like when we take the same walk each morning, some might find it boring and repetitive, while others can see that each time it is different. The subtleties, the changing weather and flora and fauna, make each visit seem like new. This, to me, is all part of the joy, all part of understanding how life is so much more nuanced than we imagine, and how we relate to it can change with each rustle of the wind, and flow of the tide.
I have come to realise how I have blustered my way through my life, complaining how I cannot feel the subtleties of the aliveness of nature or of the higher vibrations and yet here is the answer right in front of me.
Over the last 2 years, since Lockdown, I have been incredibly privileged to have been able to turn my focus online, joining summits and communities where the wisdom of Somatics has been brought to my awareness. Somatics is about connecting to our body wisdom, which emphasises internal physical perception and experience. For me, it was time to learn how to tread gently, develop a new relationship with myself, how to feel what was going on in my internal world and how to be still enough to start this beautiful journey.
Looking at the archetypal wisdom, Capricorn and Aquarius both deal with the structures that our build our community. I have always struggled with the institutions and social structures we have created in our modern society, and always believed that there must be a better way. I feel that part of my reasoning behind becoming a musician was in some sense a desire to ‘drop out’ from what I saw in the world.
Now this sense is being brought to the fore as our institutions, whether it is the NHS, our schools, care homes, prisons, the list goes on, are all in crisis. Of course the main crisis is an ecological one, as climate crisis is at last being recognised.
As we are being asked to deal with this at the eleventh hour, my feeling is that we are too late to turn this around on a physical level. We simply don’t have the resources or the will anymore as the society we have created has lost its way to such extent, fear is leading us forward rather than any sense of wisdom.
The more I delve into this somatic world, the more I believe we can find hope by going within and finding a whole new way of moving forward. It involves a completely new language, new senses and a change in the way we experience and see the world. I have loved every moment of this new journey and it fills me with hope to know that more and more people are coming aboard and that so many are way ahead having been working this way for years, decades and of course millennia.
Join us, it’s not always easy, but the best journeys are always worth it because they are challenging. When we climb the mountain, reaching for the best we can be, and finding fellow travellers on the same path, together we can move mountains, not just climb them.
