In Gratitude for Hestia Magic.
In February 2021, I arrived to Hestia Magic with the intention of staying for only one month as a visitor during the inception of the first Incubator. I came to Mama Yurt in the midnight, just before a snowfall blanketed the landscape and tucked us in for a few days. Fire crackled in the wood stove and wind howled around the abode. I fell to my knees and cried. I had cried such tears before, another life-spiral ago, when sacred land had called me home through darkness to re-member Soul.
These tears were my body saying yes, my mind letting go, my heart opening to the unknown while knowing at least, that in falling in love with land-that-calls-me-home, it would have to break. Such is the way of true intimacy with Earth under feet - to become beloved with this particular tree and that specific rock, and the exact turn of creek just here, heart must break.
How many times in a lifetime do we miss the opportunity to become beloved with land?
We may live in many geographies and visit many places and never actually realize intimacy with any land. It is not that it has to take so much time. But it does take the willingness to imagine into land as animate beyond what our eyes see and what science decrees, and then inhabit our bodies so as to relate with the animate nature of a given place both humbly and in our power. This is reverence. And this is no small feat in our contemporary, non-indigenous over-culture considering the human-centric design imposed upon land, physically and by mental construct, that blinds us to the animate, sacred life in all things - causing both a narcissism of human-being and a distortion of our actual power in relationship with Earth’s dream. Causing separation and so much suffering.
When land calls us home, it is by grace. It is by grace that we hear through the human noise and it is by grace that the land still cares to welcome us, to teach us and to help us remember. That night of my arrival to Mamma Yurt, I heard the call and I stayed. February through May, anchored by the cycles of the moon, by grace I experienced the welcoming, teaching and helping of the land of and around Hestia Magic. I came to know this land as Omp’Hikono Siu’s domain. Omp’Hikono Siu is the name shown me to speak the mountain known as Mt. Shasta. It means Mountain of High Water in my Soul tongue, Shambora.
The land welcomed me to be present, to find stillness, to ache in my longing until the aching moved me to reach in, deeper, and pull the true desire of my Soul into the light of heart fire. The land taught me to forget my plans and to dream, to be elemental and invoke the power of miracle that is Earth’s Dreaming. The land helped me to claim my path and take responsibility to embody the purpose of my choice to be here now, in reverence of the purpose of all bodies to realize their destinies and together, our shared destiny. Becoming beloved, my heart cracked, like a sliver of shine through new moon darkness, and grew and grew to be full again, bright and bold as the Snow moon, as the Worm moon, as the Pink moon, as the Flower moon, rising over Omp’Hikono Siu.
There are no words to say my gratitude now. What words might have been have already flown into soil, flame, water and wind as I prayed, danced, sang and laid offering with the land, beloved. So now, I say “I remember.” And the land knows my thanks and my hope is you do too, and my hope is you as well, remember by grace.
Blessings to the lands who call us home.
Blessings to Hestia Magic.
Blessings to Omp’Hikono Siu.
Blessings to your life.
BlEssing
We say Spirit Works in mysterious ways. I’ve come to understand that Spirit works in very precise and deliberate ways. The weaving of threads is yet so intricate and seemingly complex that to behold Spirit’s tapestry is as to behold a great mystery. This is our good fortune, for the awe of it all delights our hearts and keeps us wondering and willing to wander as we learn to co-create the weaving of our part into the great dream of Great Mystery. Indeed there are patterns to the process and when we pay exquisite attention, we can follow, catch the threads, work them with our attentiveness to manifest a unique imprint of our Soul through the reality of form being born into divine wholeness. The mystery resides in what will be when we choose to see, and through our sight take responsibility as powerful weavers with Spirit. There are a million potentialities and each of us holds keys to the design of the crafting of this particular project that True Love endeavors of Earth.
Our Ancestors (those who lived well-long before the Story of Separation came fumbling our fingers like arthritis upon the master’s hands) knew what it was to weave with Spirit. Our Ancestors (those more-than-human, who have been with the Loom well-long before any human) still know what it is to weave with Spirit. These Ancestors, human and more-than-human, attune to a rhythm of the Loom set in motion well-long before our Star planet Earth materialized. Spirit is the rhythm. Spirit isn’t random. Spirit is precise and deliberate.
How do we remember our capable Soul hands, both see the threads and be the threads, both surrender to the unknown of the rhythm of the Loom and catch hold, be bold, make ourselves known, make beautiful and wise our part in the tapestry of the whole?
Go to where the more-than-human Ancestors still preside in pristine glory. Call the good, true and beautiful human Ancestors to meet you there. Leave mind behind in a pickling jar, on the laptop with the smartphone and the heap of dirty laundry inherited by the overculture.
Go naked, and lay upon the frozen ground until your body shakes out all the tears of fears and grief as offering to Grandmother Ice. Die the bitter, overworked, disenchanted one in Her embrace. Be as an ice sculpture, still and glistening under the full Snow moon.
Somewhere out there, slumbering deep, Bear breathes steam heat and dreams of you. Let Bear take you up against their wild, wooly throat. Feel the air passing in and out, carrying every story ever whispered by the dreamers of yore and those to come. Give over to the shivering so your Soul can be light, as Bear opens the door of their heart - yes, pass through. Here is the vastness of your dark night. Here you are without eyes. Here be desperate without self-pity. Your guides arrive on the current of your longing-to-find-fire, ever enduring, that will birth you back unto dawn.
Learn a new way to see. Precise and deliberate. In this way, awaken your extra-ordinary senses. Touch every thread upon the loom. The Loom - there is a rhythm. Your guides will teach you - by curl of water around a stone, by smell of conifer and screech of owl, by spider bite and starry sky, by bone of deer and melting ice.
Learn well and dress yourself in true story.
Now, go in your regalia of sticks and dried moss, feathers and mud, fox fur and bear claw. Go with your entourage of Ancestors and Spirit guides. Go with your no-eyes seeing body to the edge of your dark night, following the song of melting ice to the spark of fire that never dies.
Grandfather Fire, under the Flower Moon the buds bloom. I taste them on my lips.
Grandfather Fire, my hands are free. I hold a seed of pure Soul dream.
Grandfather Fire, I plant this seed, here where Loom conceives the warp.
Grandfather Fire, take this old heart, torn to shreds by shears of false story would cut a Soul down.
I am enchanted again.
I choose a heart like Bear, that can open to the vast unknown while beating steady, weaving weft, to the rhythm of Great Mystery.
Precise and deliberate, like Earth, like Spirit.
Grandfather Fire, co-create with me into the tapestry, the most beautiful dream of this lifetime.
“cha-” burst into flame, the old heart.
Now breathe with Bear into the spark.
See with new eyes suddenly open, a heart whole and holy knowing, glowing in the spark as spark becomes your fire - Yes, pass through.
Here is the vastness of your bright day. Here you are remembered and remembering. Here be teaching, by your weaving, the way back to giving and receiving, the way back to True Love’s crafting being, the rhythm of Earth’s Loom-luminous dreaming - ever enduring.
When time touches your threads and death takes you under again, may you join the Ancestors, human and more-than-human, who tend the fire of True Story so by the light, all may weave beautifully the harmonious tapestry of True Love by Great Mystery.
May it be so for you.
May it be so for me.
May it be so for all who dream.
Um Cala Om
In loving service,
Nijlan
