We drift towards Lammas in the Southern Hemisphere … after the Summer Solstice, the peaking of light, the fullness of being, there comes the falling apart: the rose, the flower, peaks in beauty, then she fades, falls apart … the petals drop, and the seed is exposed. Sometimes the falling apart, the dissolution, comes abruptly to life … there may be a shattering. On such an occasion I wrote this poem:

Transformation

Completely dismantled

– all the stock taken out of the cupboards.

Strip them bare

Pull apart my knowings

– rip them open, let the connections be severed.

 

Expose all the parts, every cell

             to the sunlight

                         de-toxify

                                     throw away

                                                move it all around

               mix it, mix it

                            skim the dross

With mortar and pestle pound Her

Is She mortified sufficiently yet?

Has She seen it all yet?

 

Pound Her more, take it from Her.

 

Like panning for gold ……

is there any?

What will be left?

 

The grit, the metal, the stones

found at the bottom of the wash

This is the new composition.

Begin composing it now.

 

Write it, sing it, melt it back together,

re-Form it, re-Cognize it,

breath it, dance it.

 

Let it grow

 

Praise the Dark One who dismantled you dear

who took off your robes

exposed you

 

She took you apart

– because you lusted to know

Now She has filled your cells,

your blue print

with new possibility

– bled the poison

emptied the cup

that it may be filled.

Glenys Livingstone  December 1995 C.E.

That’s what the Darkness is for. It is the end of something, perhaps a great beauty – but it is the Place of  re-Composition, and beginning again … the Omega and the Alpha can never be separated. Lammas – the new Dark, and Imbolc – the new Light, are hand in hand across the Wheel.

With the grit found at the bottom of the wash, as one might find if panning for gold – as we are in our holy Quests … I found the new composition, the material for composing. I wrote it, sang it, danced it, re-Formed it, re-Cognized it.

In counter-balance to Imbolc’s dedication to the nurturance and Brigid-ine truth of the particular self, the Lammas dedication may be an opening to the cataclysmic truth of the larger Self.  It is a time for ”making sacred” – which is the meaning of the term “sacrifice”. 

More Lammas and Imbolc connections: Making Sacred: Space for the Not-Yet

Blissings of the Poiesis of this Seasonal Moment

(c) Glenys Livingstone 2014