Becoming the Stability of the Earth: Part 1
Introducing the Invitations of Middle Spring
Image via Wonder Portals by Marika Moffitt
Key Aspects of the Middle Spring:
Approximate Dates: April 19 - May 20
Zodiac Sign: Taurus
Element of Spring: Nature
Tarot Correspondence: The Hierophant
Symbols: the bull/cow, the stalk of a flowering plant, silence punctuated by birdsong
Wheel of the Year Holiday: Beltane on May 1st, approximately halfway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice
As the Sun shifts into the sign of Taurus near the end of April, we’re led into the heart of the Spring season. What was once only a sprout has more than a leaf or two now, and we may receive glimpses of the juicy possibilities ahead as we observe Strawberry, Cherry, and even Raspberry coming closer to their particular versions of fruition. The days are getting longer, the temperatures are warming, and while there are still periods of cold and rain, we’re out of the sometimes-manic thrust of the early Spring and can settle into what we see now: that the Earth’s rebirth has truly occurred, is occurring, and is inviting us into its sweet and slow unfolding. You might feel steadier, less entranced by unknown potential and more interested in how to make your ideas and desires real, felt, and tangible in your life. If the cycle of the year was placed into a single day, then we’re shifting out of the Dawn of early Spring, when the day is brimming with potential, and moving into mid morning, when we begin to see the day taking shape before us and can make choices about how we’d like to respond to what’s here.
In this middle Spring season, the Earth is blooming. What is required to bloom? Resources. Sunlight, soil, air, food, water: measurable inputs that are necessary for life to exist. All of the beings who are newly planted or born into this place have needs that must be met if they are to grow, yourself included. You and every plant you see around you share a need for sunlight. The mushrooms that pop up in your bark chip pile share your appetite for food. The Chickadee I see taking grass to his nest may not meet his need for closeness in the same ways that I do, but we have a shared desire for connection. And for each of us, these increased appetites can be fed by a land that is coming back to life after its Winter hiatus.
We may not be in the abundant fruit basket of the Summer quite yet, but there is growing sunlight available to our hungry plant kin, softer ground in which Squirrel can find their hidden acorns, and more offspring available to predators in search of a fresh kill. Middle Spring is a safe time in which to have increased hunger. If we’re savvy enough and know where to find the ripening nutrition in the landscape around us, we can access what we need in order to become sturdy and capable of bearing fruit ourselves. Early flowering plants such as Lilac and Iris, with their intoxicatingly sensuous blossoms, assure us that there are enough resources to bloom and feed others in that blooming. Our bodies can delight in the rain and sunlight all cascading down to feed Life at this point in the cycle of the seasons. If we will listen, we can actually be led–by our senses–into a way of living that is as sturdy as the Earth, solid and porous at once. The Earth’s stability lies in the way that she is ever-changing, cycling, and capable of giving Life because of her capacity to give Death as well.
In civilized, capitalist culture, we’ve come to believe that stability means “never-changing.” There is a strong thread of thought that says that to transform, to change, to migrate, to be born and die over and over again is to be mad. We feel the (often explicit) pressure to stay the same throughout our lives, to hold on to the one job or industry or skill we’ve got, and to hold steady in our most active years so that we can put away enough money to retire and come alive, finally, at the age of 65. Many of us move through life mechanically, where most days are the same, no longer having to adjust to the seasons or shifting weather in our climate-controlled homes, hardly changing our diets because the produce section at the grocery store is stocked with options from around the globe.
As the Earth bucks and groans under the weight of our linear and unrelenting extraction, more and more of us are realizing that this conception of stability is a scam. While a part of you may hear your parents’ admonition to find a good job and hold onto it forever, there is a part of you that understands that if you don’t change, the Life within you will wither and your inner wilderness will become barren. In the middle Spring, we can rest at the foot of The Hierophant and unlearn the dominant culture’s notion of what it means to be stable (or successful, or powerful, or healthy–any cultural construct will do) and relearn the Earth’s version of stability. The word hierophant comes from the Greek hieros, meaning sacred, and phainein, meaning to reveal, so the work of a hierophant is to reveal what is sacred. As the Sun’s strength grows, the Hierophant within each of us can reveal the sacred truths about what stability means to us at this time and how our conception of it needs to be updated in order for us to be able to grow.
This is a profound shift that’s available to us, and it comes around every year as the Sun transits through Taurus, the sign of the heavy Cow, who lives her life in close contact to the ground as she grazes, ruminates slowly amongst birdsong, and–when given the respect she deserves–enjoys the qualities of friendship with others in her herd and frolics when joy can’t help but flow through her. And so we’re reminded to stay close to the ground in this work, with our eyes on the horizon scanning for gremlins in the psyche who will tell us that it’s unsafe to change, to bloom, to eventually become fruit. We will chew on things slowly, digesting them through many stomachs, and we will not forget that the Earth’s stability is inherently beautiful–her cycles deliver the resources and pleasure that can meet every need we have.