Coming off our trip to Alaska at the Autumn Equinox, even as we’re collectively living through an absurd psycho clown-car year of incredible chaotic destruction, I find my spiritual antenna activated at this Solstice season. I am ablaze.

The increasing seasonal darkness occurring at the Autumn Equinox terminates in full expression at the Winter Solstice. This dark moment always promises the return of renewed light. During this transitionary cycle, a portal opens allowing deeper access to ancestral realms. At this time we have an opportunity to initiate more personal communion with our earthy and celestial relations with whom we share our sacred environment.

I see them as waves, and as bright pointed stars pressing against a dark winter sky blasting knowledge and clarity. In fact, they won’t leave me alone. I am constantly dreaming them, and hearing their laughter and guidance ringing through my skull as they move their massive lucid bodies in the otherworldly planetary dimensions in which they dwell.

Funny that during our excursion to Saxman I had an art crisis. We were asked to paint wooden ornaments in a place surrounded by native paintings and artifacts. We were invited to share a small taste of the their village life by making communal art together as they served us libations. I panicked, suddenly paralyzed remembering how smashed I felt when my second-grade teacher shamed me for my art project. Too bad she said looking at my creation. I learned early that apparently, I sucked at making art.

I had forgotten that stabbing little wound that succeeded in limiting my understanding of what I am capable of creating into adulthood. After Saxman, I didn’t want to carry this nonsense of some phantom idea of perfection of what art is supposed to look like. So during this holiday break I broke out my pastels, poured myself a libation and drew images of the transmissions of the ancestors I have been receiving in dreams and visions. I just let myself draw freely while invoking the oceanic warmth of familial love I feel when they are close to me. Here are my offerings. Not perfect, but authentically born from my heart and soul as I gratefully transform.

This is the seasonal gift – a renewed opportunity to tune into the ancestral presence available to us and accept with awed gratitude their wisdom to aid us in transforming in our selves and our communities to who we truly are at soul and heart levels. The acceptance of this gift makes us better at being human and creating new stories as we create our future.

Blessings and love from our witchy family and the Blue Dog Temple. May all sentient beings be held by the ancestors as we rise together to create a resurgent, abundant and peaceful year. Namaste!