Week 47--in which we discover the mystic field big enough to hold the story of an entire nine year cycle

Beautiful Ones,

Last Sunday, I showed you the startling mobius strip graphic of time that Cathy Stevens Pratt created for us in The Lotus and the Lily intensive. That image awakened something in you. A flood of new members arrived, many of whom are taking The Lotus and the Lily for the first time.

If you missed it, here’s last Sunday’s Notes from the Field.

When I asked people what inspired them to suddenly register, to a one, they said it was that graphic because it brought home the immensity and holiness of this moment in time. A moment in which we are standing at the threshold of a nine-year cycle that began in 2017 and will end in December. And will not come again until 2034.

In our opening gathering last Tuesday, we stared at that mobius time strip for a long time, letting the graphic penetrate our unconscious creative mind. To support us in absorbing the wisdom and potential of the moment, I opened our gathering with this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh in You Are Here:

“The present is made up of material called the past and the future, and the past and the future are here in what we call the present.”

In just one elegant, succinct, and yet vast mystical sentence, Thich Nhat Hanh, quoting the Buddha, erases any patriarchal linear thinking you might be holding. This is a very good thing.

Because linear thinking will carry you nowhere.

Linear thinking, which is tied to cause and effect, performance and judgement, reward and failure, just plops us onto the endless and exhausting treadmill of production. Right where our capitalist system wants us. It’s that kind of patriarchal performance obsession that tells us we need to create “new year resolutions.”

If there’s one thing—one thing—you absolutely positively do not want to do, it’s set new year resolutions.

I figured this out, by accident, when I created my first mandala on January 1, 2010. No goals. No resolutions. Just a little graphic of a six-petalled lily holding the six commitments I was making to myself to stay focused on how I want to live. Not what I want to receive.

I prepared to make that mandala with thirty days of intense deep soul writing. And yet, I confess, I was flabbergasted when it worked! On January 1, 2010 bankruptcy was looming. Indeed, it felt inevitable. But in mid-February the bankruptcy attorney told me I was no longer bankrupt.

How is that possible?

I didn’t know the answer to that question. I just knew it worked. And because it worked so dramatically, I decided to trust the process. From that moment 16 years ago, I have stayed focused on how I choose to live and leave what happens to the sacred. I've now taught thousands of people the process.

I can say, after 16 years of making mandalas and living my conditions that not having goals, not setting intentions, not declaring resolutions, not even asking for anything, opens some kind of cosmic floodgates.

But even after all this time, I didn’t expect what just happened in the first week of The Lotus and the Lily.

If you haven’t been in a Lotus and Lily intensive, I’ll give you a quick review.

1. In the first week, we look back at each month in the year ending on small 3-circuit labyrinths and then transfer the message or song or phrase of each month onto a lovely big 11-circuit.
2. Then in our second gathering—this coming Tuesday (or Thursday for those in Europe coming to the Watch Party), we “walk” that labyrinth listening for the song or message or harvest of the whole year.

   ​​​​​​​That may sound magical. And it is. But it’s also incredibly easy. And it works. We always come away a bit startled by what the year has really been about.

3. Now, this year, because it’s the completion of not just one year but a full nine-year cycle, we get to do something even bigger.

All next week, we get to play with a simple circle Cathy created for us, like a pie chart with 9 segments. On each segment, we’ll jot down a key moment or word or symbol of whatever happened that year.

I always go first. I have to. I can’t show anyone else how to work with these mystical fields, if I don’t play with them first. So I started filling in the 9 parts of the circle labeled 2017-2025 last week.

Now, I lived those years. I looked back at each one in Lotus and Lily. I tracked what happened each lunar cycle on April McMurtry’s The Moon is My Calendar. And I have journals, lots and lots of journals, with the details of what happened.

So I thought it might be a daunting task.

It wasn’t. Not at all. It was rich and wild. And actually quite fun. That doesn’t mean the hard things weren’t included. They have to be. They are often the impetus, the spark, the shift that drops us deeper into the purpose and possibility of our lives.

When I finished yesterday, I got on zoom with Cathy to talk about how we might help people harvest nine years. Something we’ve never done before. We know how to harvest one year on the 11-circuit labyrinth. That works really well, but I didn’t feel the 11 could help us hear the harvest and wisdom of a whole nine-year cycle. Much as I love labyrinths—the original seven-circuit is the path for all seven intensives in The Witch Sequence—still, the labyrinth didn’t feel like the right mystical tool, the perfect mystical field for this new inquiry.

So as Cathy and I were talking, I said, what if we suggest that people speak the key events of each of the nine years aloud, just like we do on the 11 for one year, and somehow, the overarching story will pop through. She seemed a tad skeptical.

I said, I’ll be the guinea pig.

So I grabbed my nine-part pie chart and began to say out loud all the things that happened in 2017. It was quite a year. Then, turning the paper a bit, I spoke the key events for 2018, and so on. By the time I was half way around the circle reading 2021, the paper was turned upside down.

And I had a massive AHA.

Cathy, I practically shouted!

There is a mystic field so big that it can hold nine years of a life. And it’s not the labyrinth.

In fact, you taught it just last night in your Dandelion Tarot class.

Try to guess.

• What Tarot image is so big, so vast, so timeless, that it can hold not just nine years, but an entire life?
• What Tarot image has no end.
• What major arcana turns and returns and turns and returns, holding everything, the deepest sorrows and the highest joys?

Do you know?

Here’s one more hint:

• What Tarot mirrors the numerology of 2026, the year that initiates the next nine year cycle?

Got it now?

The Wheel of Fortune. The ten which reduces to a 1, just like 2026.

I had to laugh at myself.

The perfect mystic field has been right in front of us the entire time.

Now we’ve never done this before, so it’s a discovery we are going to make together. But I can report from my first trial run, that as the Wheel of Fortune turned her nine spokes, I absolutely saw and heard the purpose, the meaning, the mystical song of my life from 2017-2025.

And it was a surprise. A delicious, thrilling and fulfilling surprise.

Would you like to spin that wheel and hear what it reveals about your life?

You are welcome to join The Lotus and the Lily.

• Don’t be concerned about time, about being “late” or "behind" or any of those patriarchal linear judgments.
• Our fifth gathering is on Dec 16 and then we take 26 days off to celebrate all the beautiful solstice holidays, giving you plenty of time to move through the process.
• Our mandala celebration isn’t until Sunday January 11.
• In addition, members have access to the Resource Page until we gather for The Lotus and the Lily next November.
• So join us now and experience the mystic fields of labyrinths and the mobius strip, and even the Tarot Wheel.

Follow the link to the Registration page with all the details, schedule, and registration options. When I see your registration I'll send you several emails including the original Welcome, access to the recording of our first gathering, and the zoom and agenda for Tuesday's gathering.

The Lotus and the Lily Harvest 2025 Seed 2026

Life is Fragile. Handle with Reverence. And mystical Wonder! 

Janet

PS: a fun bonus: you get a taste of Tarot from the Oracle herself, Cathy Stevens Pratt!
 

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