Week 43--in which we explore the relationship of mourning and morning

Beautiful Ones,

On Thursday, October 16, we gathered for our final journey in ART 6 on Reverence and Devotion. During that intense mystical journey, Jennifer DeVille Catalano played the Song of the Labyrinth on her Crystal Tones Alchemy Bowls.

The song comes from a book about the seven-circuit labyrinth by Sig Lonegren. In it, Sig lays out a musical phrase with eight notes, one for each circuit, plus a mysterious eighth note for the center.

But—this is important—the song doesn’t play the circuits in the order we walk them, If it did, it would sound like a scale.

Instead, the song plays the notes as if we were entering the labyrinth from the side. So, the first thing you hear is the note of the third circuit. Because your brain can’t “know” what’s next, it has to let go and let the music wash over you.

Well, that’s exactly what happens when you walk the turns and twists and oddly different circuit lengths of a labyrinth, whether on your feet or with your finger.

At first, your well-trained left brain, which thinks it is oh so smart, tries to figure out what’s next and how to get to the center. But at some point, when nothing it expects turns out to be true, it stops trying.

That’s the moment you slip out of conscious controlling mind and into magical theta.

Now theta is our magic spot. Our creative juice. I have been talking and writing about the wonders of the mystical theta brain wave state for sixteen years.

If you haven’t read Writing Down Your Soul or The Lotus and the Lily, or been in any of my intensives, here’s the heart of it all:

Theta is the only brain wave state in which you have access to the infinite, to the morphic field, to the vibrant presence of the holy, to brand new ideas, to radical truth, to mystery, to connection, to freedom, to…well, everything that awakens joy in life.

So to be in the sacred space of BOTH making and walking a labyrinth AND listening to the labyrinth’s sacred music was double magic. Everyone in that global zoom room dropped into mystical theta almost from the first note and hovered there for fifteen minutes or so.

When the music ended, anyone who wished to share what they experienced in that magical vortex of labyrinth and music was invited to speak. I often stay silent after Jennifer plays because it all feels too magical and precious for words. But on that day, I felt called to say aloud what happened to me.

Because it was so unusual and beautiful and I didn’t quite understand it.

As Jennifer began to play the 8 notes of the Song of the Labyrinth, I felt the words of my Lunar Vow from April 1, 2022 surfacing from the ethers wanting to be heard once more. I recognized the prayer immediately and held it in my heart throughout the song.

If you don’t know what a Lunar Vow is, it’s a short prayer I write on the day of a new Lunar Year. It is inspired by the Chandra for the degree of Aries which marks the beginning of the Lunar Year.

I then say that prayer every day as part of my deep soul writing practice, until the dawn of the next Lunar Year. I’ve been doing this since 2017 and I’ve noticed that that short prayer has deep mystical meaning and magic.

On April 1, 2022, the Moon entered Aries at 11° 31’ which meant we read the Chandra for Aries 12. The symbol for Aries 12 was: An old woman hears the stars talking to her at night. I sure loved the sound of that. It felt like a mirror of me hearing my divine voice in the night.

But I don’t stop at the symbol. I read and reread and deep soul write about the entire Chandra, which is a bit like sitting with a Tarot card and allowing the deep meaning of the card to work its magic.

And then, somehow, a few phrases or words in the Chandra will pop off the page to form my new prayer. Here are the phrases that grabbed me that day four lunar years ago:

• soul gifts from the morning of the world
• wonder and awe
• discovery and an odd echo of fate

From those evocative phrases emerged the prayer I said every day from April 1, 2022 to March 21, 2023:

I hear echoes of the song of the morning of the world. And I listen in wonder and awe.

I loved that prayer every day I said it. And when it asked to be remembered while Jennifer played the bowls, I thought perhaps it had something to say to others. So I shared it with everyone.

When I did, Jennifer began to cry and said she had felt the power of “mourning” the whole time she was playing. I didn’t understand why a prayer as beautiful as “echoes of the song of the morning of the world” felt sad to her and then I realized OH! She hears it as MOURNING.

I checked with the others and over half heard the prayer as “echoes of the song of the MOURNING OF THE WORLD.”

That night, the image of the Tarot card Cathy Stevens Pratt pulled to offer insight into the meaning of The Lotus and the Lily for this year popped into mind. And I saw it in a much deeper way than either of us did when we recorded the landing page video for this year's The Lotus and the Lily. Just in case we missed it, when Cathy posted the video on our landing page, YouTube froze the video at that card.

Have a look. What does this evoke in you?

What is it telling you about the experience of completing a nine-year cycle and birthing a new one? What is it saying about what we will explore in The Lotus and the Lily?

I called Cathy the next morning and told her what I saw:

• The wolf on the left is howling at the sliver of moon in the dark night. He’s mourning. He feels the horror, the pain, the suffering throughout the land. Not just in this moment, but through the last nine years.
• The wolf on the right is listening. Listening intently to the song of the morning of the world. The new dawn, the new day, the possibility of what we could create in a new year, a whole new nine years.

And I realized that that card from Phyllis Curott’s The Witches’ Wisdom Tarot truly is the PERFECT oracle for what we are about to experience in The Lotus and Lily.

And to add another layer to the power of that card to speak to us of this moment, it had somehow gone through the washing machine and come out tattered but intact!

In Lotus and Lily this year, we will harvest not just 2025, but the entire nine years that started in 2017. We will keep what wants to be kept, but we will not shy away from naming and mourning the sorrows in our lives and in the land and in the whole world. And then release them.

We’ll do that not in a long drawn-out therapeutic way, but in the powerful but simple way we explore in depth in Lotus: we will untie the knots.

And, because there’s so much to untie after nine years, Emma Kupu Mitchell is giving us a full-length Yoga Nida session to open our bodies and let everything that needs to be released flow directly into the ground. If you have not yet experienced Yoga Nidra, you’re in for a powerful experience that will leave you open, clean, and ready to welcome the life that wants to be lived.

And then we will listen, gently and intently, to the song of the morning of the world in 2026.

Lotus and Lily gathers on 5 Tuesdays at 6pm from mid-November to mid-December with a Thursday watch party at 2p for friends in Europe.

After 3 weeks off to celebrate the Solstice and other holidays, we gather on the 2nd Sunday in January at 2p to bless and share and celebrate our mandalas. Mandalas that welcome the life that wants to be lived in 2026 and throughout the next 9 years.

Follow the link to the Registration page with all the details, schedule, and registration options.

The Lotus and the Lily Harvest 2025 Seed 2026

Life is Fragile. Handle with Reverence, honoring the relationship of mourning and morning

Janet

PS Lotus is NOT offered OnDemand after it ends. But everyone registered will have access to the Resource Page until next October. So register, even if you won't be going through the process now.

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