Week 12--in which we are reminded of who we are and where we are and why we are

Beautiful Ones,

You know how there are some people whose posts on social media are food, real and necessary food, for the soul? One of those for me is artist Suzette Clough. Today Suzette wrote something that is so important, such nourishing food, that I asked her for permission to feature what she wrote in this Notes from the Field.

I first learned of Suzette Clough through my creative partner in The Witch Sequence, Cathy Stevens Pratt—quite the mystic artist herself. Suzette taught Cathy Visual Medicine, a delicious experience with paint in which the paint determines the painting and the “painter” gets to read the tea leaves when the paint decides to stop moving across the paper.

Each time we gather in our ART intensives, Cathy invites us to look at a painting, be it a Visual Medicine explosion of color or a painting of an oracle peaking out from another dimension.

In Visual Medicine, you let the painting direct your attention where the painting wants it to go.

It’s a magical experience and one that is different every time.

When Suzette Clough posts her glorious paintings, I always stop and stare and read whatever she has to say. Today, Saturday, March 22, was particularly meaningful. But this time it wasn’t something Suzette wrote. This time she was quoting a man she respects, Francis Weller.

On his website Francis Weller describes himself as a “master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions.”

In other words, totally my kind of person!

I read this passage from Weller and felt compelled immediately to share it within my private groups for all the ART intensives.

I encourage you to read this slowly and let his words soothe your wounded heart.

To help you enter the soul of his words, I asked Cathy if she had a Visual Medicine painting that felt like it wanted to accompany this passage.

Here's is Cathy's "The Long Dark" visual medicine.

"We've entered a collective initiatory process. We are calling it the long dark, and I use the word long because it's going to be at least two generations, my friends.

Most of us will not see the other side of the long dark.

It's a time of descent in what the old alchemical tradition would call the nigredo—a time of dissolution, a time of collapse, a time of decay. Alchemy would tell us that this is an absolute necessity. They say soul work cannot begin without starting in the nigredo.

In the nigredo, it is the end of constructs. Old structures begin to fall apart. We need systemic racism to fall apart. We need capitalism to fall apart. We need patriarchy to fall apart. There's so many things that have to break down right now.

The truth is we don't know what's going to happen. Nobody on the planet knows what's going to happen in the coming decades, much less the next few generations. But we have to operate under the possibility that something may sustain.

This is not a time for heroism. It is a time for humility, deep listening and patience.

Our job is to find ways to participate in the long dark, in the breakdown.

To not simply feel victimized by it, or passively enduring it. To stop and to disengage from the manic productivity, the achievement focus, and spend some time in stillness is subversive.

We are being ripened during this time to become a place of shimmering darkness, a point of combustion, of incandescence.

Places of refugia are places of safety where life endures. This is a powerful metaphor for us, my friends. Places of safety where life endures.

We must become that for one another.

Part of our responsibility, our soul responsibility, is to throw as many seeds as possible into the darkness. And isn't darkness what the seeds require?

We don't do this because we're guaranteed an outcome. We do it because it's our soul responsibility. To nourish life. To feed life. That's our job."

Francis Weller

When I finished reading, I felt compelled to share it inside all my private ART intensive groups. I added my own intro to remind us that we have been preparing for this work of the long dark since The Witch Sequence began.

This is what mystics and witches and oracles have always known and always done.

Here's what I wrote:

I have felt for quite a while now that we are in a long passage. Long. I resonate with every word Weller writes. And instead of it depressing me, it soothes my questioning soul and reminds me that our work as awakened witches is THE work of the world, the world not just now, but the world of our grandchildren.

Do not despair. Stay close. Stay alive and kind. We are doing something critical to the long passage.

to planting seeds in the long dark

Janet

website: janetconner.com

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