Birth-giving dark

“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” ~Joseph Campbell

Crow Mother, Her Eyes, Her Eggs by Meinrad Craighead

Sitting on my couch this week, a story I’m writing continues to unfold. I type on my laptop late into the day until darkness floods the space around me, covering my body like a thick, black cloak. I resist turning on the lights, hardly aware of the passing of time until my husband comes home from work.

I want this darkness. I invite it in like a sister I never knew. Unfamiliar. Comforting. She stays with me as my story continues, as it opens, deepens, and moves me into unknown corridors.

Within those corridors, the Dark Mother is ahead of me. Crone Woman, Wise Woman, Mother Night, Mother Winter, Black Widow – weaver of words and time. I follow her, retrieving words from obscurity, revealing a story that wants to be born. Unearthing the story itself is a process of bringing thought into matter, dreams into consciousness. It is a process of restoring balance.

This dark journey began last January, when a complete lack of work-life balance brought an illness I could not ignore. I left my job to begin the process of healing and establishing balance somehow – of redefining what work means.

Between careers, between identities, between worlds, between death and re-birth, between emotions that threaten to overwhelm me. Ignoring the messages from within is not an option. If I don’t hear them the first time, they return in visions and dreams.

Change is coming. You can step into fear and know your limits at the same time. Look to the ones who went before you. The pieces are coming together. Union, unity, balance. 

My dreams are telling me that spirit cannot exist without matter, that my plans need grounding, that just as some things have ended there is new life-blood within me to begin again. As tentative and indecisive as this in-between space can be, new life is coming.

My story continues unfolding on the written page, as larger plans are being made. Even in these darkest days, I feel the change. The dilemma of choosing the right way, the right path, is beginning to dissolve. It is no longer a matter of one way of life over the other: spiritual growth or career; feminine or masculine; inner authority or outward leadership. It is both. It must be both.

Starkhawk calls this need for balancing the inner work of the dark feminine with action and change “Hecate’s birth-giving dark,” where seeds are planted in the womb of the goddess, and new life is formed in hidden, unknown places. She writes:

“How do we face the dark on the edge of annihilation? How do we find the dark within and transform it, own it as our own power? How do we dream it into a new image, dream it into actions that will change the world into a place where no more horror stories happen, where there are no more victims? Where the dark is kind and charged with a friendly power: the power of the unseen, the power that comes from within, the power of the immanent Goddess who lies coiled in the heart of every cell of every living thing, who is the spark of every nerve and the life of every breath.”

This Solstice marks a turning point. Just as the darkness advances fully, I feel anticipation for a new reality, a new awareness, a new consciousness. My own undoing and deep descent runs alongside the change we are all feeling, the dark path we have all been walking, now coming to a head.

The Mayans predicted today as the birthdate of true consciousness, ending the battle of extremes and dichotomies. They believe it to be the midpoint between earth and sky, matter and spirit, life and death. It marks a time of balance, where fierce dualities can resolve and begin to find new ground. It is time to lead from the heart, where our deepest wisdom will emerge.

This Solstice, I bring to my altar the wholeness of a yearlong series of deaths to honour the path I have travelled since my illness began.

As I sense the last dregs of ego-leading consciousness lose their grip, I realize how far away I am from the woman I was a year ago, and yet, I am still the same. I am still imperfect, still have unanswered questions, still have fears and anxieties, still capable of getting hurt along the way.

But other things have changed. A new balance - a union of opposites - is coming, and I am getting ready. A heart-centred life waiting to be born.