Lesson Four
Lesson 4: Good Grief and the Swelling Shadow
Autumn is the season of letting go, of meeting our monsters, and of grieving well. We grieve only for what we will miss, and, therefore, we must befriend the intimacy between gratitude and grief. Under the Autumn moons, we welcome the paradox, the confusion, and the mystery. We trust in the fertile and wild unseen, and we look to the darkest corners for our lessons.
Ask yourself these questions: How might your life be different if every ending was framed as initiation, if every new incarnation of yourself and your way of being in the world warranted a grief ritual for who you once were but now are no longer? How would it feel to write a eulogy for those wild-hearted creatures who looked like you, who wore your clothes and bore your name but were outgrown, left behind by a single choice or a discarded belief? Who are you not?
For Reflection:
1. Can you track any of your autumn patterns? Have you always moved house in Autumn, left relationships, experienced a creative drought, or became spiritually curious? Look to the life areas of home, money, physical health, sexuality, art-making, sacred work, love and relationship, truth-speaking and story, psychic exploration and intuition, and spirituality and divine connection. What changes have affected these areas, if any, in Autumn?
2. If the next new moon were an initiation, a new birth, how might you eulogize what is falling away and dying to make room for the new?
3. Of the three stories told by the Sea Hag in Seasons of Moon and Flame- The Selkie-Hag’s Pelt, Goldie’s Shadow, and The Soul Cages- which speaks to you most right now and why?
“Shadow work is an infinite task, with no clear ending, no great reward
once some well-defined goal has been reached. No hooded and bejeweled
authority grants us a certificate or blesses us with an exquisite initiation
once we have finished, and yet shadow integration is some of our most
weighted soul work. Our power lies there, in the deep, murky pool, but so
do the most gruesome monsters we will ever meet. To be sure, it is easier
to not look, to turn our backs on that terrible place and live in the light,
but should we wish to be Witches, mystics, healers, artists, storytellers, or
dream weavers, we must — we absolutely must — learn to hold hands
with the dark.”