Knowing Thyself

Posted: 1 August 2024

Tags: Personal

Happy Midsummer, or Lammas, or Lughnasadh, or whatever else today is called in your tradition. If today isn't particularly significant to your practice, then happy August 1st.

My practice is currently reaching the starting/ending point of many cycles. September 3rd is a significant day for me and a particular goddess, whose life-death cycle then begins anew on the Autumn Equinox. Then, we're only a couple of months out from the beginning of the Dark Season--both spiritually and literally, as we'll be turning the clocks back an hour in early November.

To make a long story short, I am approaching a period which will entail many symbolic deaths. Death of a goddess, death of the Light Season, and potentially the death of much of what I've been working on for the last several months. So I am dedicating the next month or so to preparing for what I've got coming.

The past year or so has been extremely tumultuous for me. I've had to restructure my entire way of life several times over, and for a couple months I was at probably the lowest point I've ever experienced. Above all, it's been a period of transitions, some of them more extreme than others. Nearly my entire spiritual practice was shattered, and I've had to rebuild essentially from square one (though thankfully I wasn't alone in building everything up this time). On top of that, I've had to completely reprioritize my methods of caring for myself, both physically and mentally. I could barely haul my ass out of bed in January, let alone keep up with routines and appointments or even my own sanity. So as the Dark Season looms once again, I've had to reckon with the real possibility that I'll have to start all over again. I guess, in a sense, all that makes this post the sort of spiritual successor to this article I wrote a few months ago while still very solidly in the throes of everything being a mess.

I've had strong habits and systems to lean back on before, but this past winter knocked all of them out of whack. I need to make sure that doesn't happen again. That's sort of what I've been doing all spring and summer--forming better, more sustainable habits with built-in flexibility that will help me get through rough patches, and hopefully even another extremely dark period if it comes to that. Hopefully it won't, since I'm packing more heat than I was last year, but you know, never hurts to be extra wary.

Here's a (non-exhaustive) overview of what I've been working on:

I'm not entirely sure what's driving me to post this all publicly online, aside from maybe as a record of how much work I've put into this shit, if I ever find myself wanting to fall back into my old ways. It's not all immediately spiritually-related, though a lot of it is, and honestly at this point it's pretty tough to make a real differentiation between the mundane and the spiritual in my day to day life. I guess the start of the month served as a reminder that we're nearly two-thirds of the way through this year already, and that the Dark Season and the wonderful world of seasonal depression are both just right around the corner.

I think I'll be more prepared this time. At least, I sure hope I will.