As the Moons Change

And the tides turn and the moons change.  The Moon fades, the Moon grows.  The Summer warms and the Summer cools.  Summer gives way to Autumn.  As the moons change.

In July, I talked of the Flower Moon, of the Summer Solstice, of the Fire Moon.  The Fire Moon faded and another moon came.  That faded, and yet another came.  As the always do.  As the moons change.

After the Solstice, the Year marched on.  The Sun began its slow movement Southward, the days shortened.  Lugh's Day Came and went.  As the moons change.

Fires seemed to grow until the Full moon of Fire, getting worse, bur as the Moon faded, so did the fires.  Fires continue in areas, and the ones that were here are not all out, buy with the passing of the Fire Moon, they no longer touched our lives.  They became forgotten, ignored.  New fires did not come, at least here.  With the moon, the fires withdrew for consciousness, from importance.  As the moons change.

So, we moved on in late July, from the Fire Moon to a new moon.  In the dark it was born.  With it, my allergies started acting up, an oddity, since usually this doesn't come until the second week of so of September.  My allergies here in the valley have always been strange to me, as they never occurring in other places I have lived across the West.  Only once did I react to pollen, only one type.  As a kid, I sniffed a bundle of white yarrow flowers, and immediately sneezed.  Tried it again to test with the same results.  I had no reaction in general, only when I sniffed it directly.  So why allergies for a month here every year?  As the moons change.

Close to the middle of the unnamed Moon, just after the Full Moon, I traveled up into the mountains first to the East near Happy Jack, then the Southwest near Lake Owen.  I found plants in seed that I had expected to still see blooming.  I saw plants blooming that usually don't until later.  I saw a world changing to Autumn when it should be the heart of Summer.  But Spring and Summer both came early, so no surprise there.  I thought to call it the Seed Moon because of all that had gone to seed, but it didn't seem right.  I thought to call it the Moss Moon, for the moss I caught blooming.  But that didn't fit either.  But I did find something that both fit the Moon and explained a mystery.  Everywhere I went, I saw yarrow blooming.  In small patches, it was scattered everywhere in the hills.  And I realized, the other signs I had seen all pointed to the time period of my normal allergies.  Like the other signs, yarrow was blooming early.  Though early, it was the time for yarrow to bloom, the Yarrow Moon.  As the moons change.

Earlier in the Yarrow Moon, just before the Full Moon of Yarrow, many calendars mark Lugh's Day, also called Lammas (Hlaf-Mass, Loaf Mass) or Lughnasadh/Lunasa/Lunastal/Luanistyn (Lugh's Feast) or Calan Awst (the Calends of August).  The myth goes that Lugh's foster mother Tailtiu died of exhaustion after clearing the plans of Ireland for agriculture.  In memory of her sacrifice and to honour her death and memory, Lugh held a huge feast and sporting contest, the prototype for later jousts and similar events.  In another account, it marks Lugh defeating Balor (or Bel or Baal), the king of the giants, Fomorians.  Often, this was Lugh's grandfather, and Lugh proclaimed a day of mourning for his death.  In later legends, it becomes Lugh who died and is mourned.  Lammas comes from the Saxon name, and was a Saxon feast around the same time.  Both are harvest festivals, the beginning of grain harvest, typically the first of three harvest festivals in the British Isles.  The clearing of the plans is obvious, the killing of Balor, not so much.  There are a couple hints in the details.  The death of the old giving rise to the new.  The mourning ceremony that continued almost to present day.  Bres, who had recruited Balor to fight that battle, being found alive and begging for mercy, first by offering to insure the cows of Ireland always give milk, then offering four harvests, then offering and having it accepted to teach the Dé how and when to plough, sow, and reap.  The last is obvious, it was on that day they learner the steps to get to harvest, which begins that time of year.  But what of death and mourning?  The harvest marks the death of the grain.  They grow until harvest, then are cut down, their heads cut off like people killed in battle, like Balor, cut down by Lugh's spear through the back of his head or neck or through his one killing eye depending on the myth, his head falling and splitting and being impaled on a hazel tree, tree of wisdom and prophecy.  Many symbols there, but I won't go into them now.  For our purposes here, Lugh cutting down Balor is the reapers cutting down grain in harvest, the mourning of that death.  As the moons change.

But that's the origins and practices of tradition in the British Isles, among Celts and Saxons.  Wyoming is a different time and place, I am a different person, and Grimr is a different stream.  Lugh's Day does not mark harvest here most years, where hay is the only crop.  No, I must look elsewhere, for the blooms and seeds, the harvest and births are here lunar, not solar, but the solar, and stellar, year hold mysteries beyond planting and harvest.  The secret lies not in the harvest per se, but in the day's Twin across the year.  As Beltane and Samhain are linked, the Wedding and the Sacrifice, and Summer and Winter Solstices, the Child in the Womb and the Waking Serpent, so Bride's Day and Lugh's Day reflect.  The first thing to note is that Irish folk belief said animals didn't give much milk in winter, but started producing after Brigid's Day, Bride's Day, when birthing began.  With milk comes butter, golden, like Lugh's wheat at harvest.  Lugh's from plants, Bride's from animals.  There are also stories describing St. Brenden as father at Lugh's. Feast and St. Brigid as mother.  Brenden can be shown as a sit in for Lugh, who could no longer be present in a Christian society.  Brigid/Bride became St. Brigid.  St. Brenden's father was named Fionnlugh, Fionn Lugh.  Fionn was a great Irish hero, and we know Lugh.  Many rituals ones done in Lugh's name are now done in St. Brenden's name.  St. Brennan is of course the patron saint of navigation because of his voyage and roughly mirror's the voyage of Bran mac Febal.  Bran the Blessed in Welsh tales, the giant who was King of all Britain, the possessor of the Cauldron of Rejuvenation and brother of Branwen, who was a sea god by all appearances, is often seen as the same as the Irish Bran mac Febal.  Bran the Blessed's brother, Manawydan fab Llŷr in Welsh tales is Manannán mac Lir in Irishmyth and is the foster father of Lugh in Irish myth.  Like Bran in Welsh myth, Manannán in Irish myth is a sea god.  Curiously, it's Manannán who prophecies to Bran mac Febal.  Both Llŷr and Lir are also sea gods, though little is said of them except who they are fathers to.  There is indication that they are the personification of the sea itself.  The similarities between the voyage of Bran mac Febal and that or St. Brenden, and the familial connections of Bran mac Febal, through Bran the Blessed and Manawydan, to Manannán, combined with his part in the voyage of Bran mac Febal, plus the abundance of sea gods and sea voyages in this confusing web, and Manannán being both the foster father of Lugh and the prophet directing Bran mac Febal seem to place St. Brenden in a role similar to that of Lugh, in a convoluted way.  (And it should not be ignored the Bran the Blessed became the Fisher King in Graal legend, and the connection between the Fisher King, the Land and Wasteland, and the Graal, with Lugh's Day's connection to fertility and harvest.)  So, in St. Brenden and St. Brigid overseeing Lugh's Feast, we have Lugh and Brigid, father and mother of the feast, of the food, of the grain and butter, of the bread.  Fertility begins with Brigid, with the beginning of new life in February, ending with Lugh, with the harvest of August.  As the moons change.

It's important, of course, to take the Zodiac into consideration. Lugh's Day lands in the middle of Leo, the Lion.  The characteristic normally associated with people born in Leo relate well to both Bran the Blessed and to Lugh.  Generous, creative, enthusiastic.  Bran the Blessed was well known for his hospitality, his generosity.  Lugh was the master of all skills, he could do anything, create anything (among other things, like Brigid, we was a smith).  Creativity definitely applies.  And both were definitely enthusiastic, giving everything to anything they did.  The sun moves into Leo around July 23rd, reaches the middle around Lugh's Day, then moves out around August 23rd.  As the moons change.

So we have a framework, but where does Lugh's Day play into our cycle, the myth cycle I have described in previous posts?  The serpent killed in the Tide of Samhain, Awakened in the Tide of Widwinter, Called in the Tide of Candlemas (Bride's Day), Reborn in the Tide of the Equinox, Wed in the Tide of Beltane, and Father of the Child in the Womb in the Tide of Midsummer.  Where does Lugh's Feast find our Winged Serpent and our May Queen?  If impregnation was with the wedding at Beltane, and Midsummer had the focus of her pregnancy, Lugh's Day must be the birth.  This is appropriate across from Bride's Day, the Calling.  As the Winged Serpent crawls up the Well of Worlds, so the Horned Child is born through the Well of the Womb.  Twin and Twin.  Just as the Winged Serpent stirred in the Womb of Death as Midwinter, so the Horned Child stirred in the Womb of Life at Midsummer.  Twin and Twin.  Fitting parallels across the circle of the Year.  So, Lugh's Day is the birth of the Horned Child.  Now, looking at Lugh and Brigid again, at the Golden Wheat and the Golden Butter, at Plant and Animal, looking at our cycle, the Winged Serpent becomes the Lord of Animals, and the Horned Child the Lord of Plants.  The Red God and the Green God.  The Hunter and the Gatherer.  The Herdsman and the Ploughman.  Abel and Cain.  Twins.  And Nexus and Catalyst as we will see as the year moves on.  As the moons change.

On the 17th of August, the Yarrow Moon drew to a close and a new Moon was born in the Dark of the Moon, as a new Moon is always born.  With the fading of the Yarrow Moon, my allergies faded and vanished as the new Moon began to grow.  This was a hard time for me, as my grandma died the day before the New Moon.  I distracted myself that evening by spending it in the high mountains below Medicine Bow Peak in the Snowies, started near the Lake of Tears and Skye's Cairn.  I stopped many places on my way up, and spend several hours in the country around the mountain.  I realized that high country was very much what Jutenheim would be like, a place of giants and ancient power and wisdom.  On my way up, I discovered the sagebrush had begun to bloom in places.  On the Dark of the Moon itself, I went up to my working site and had an encounter with Deneb among other things, though I won't go into detail in this public place.  Deneb was once the Pole Star, before it shifted to Polaris.  It sits in an open Well of Darkness in the sky, right by the Milky Way.  This is a timely experience, as the Chinese Feast of Qixi, the Night of Sevens, falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.  The Moon following the Yarrow Moon is that month this year, placing Qixi on the day beginning at sundown on the 23rd of August this year the Thursday following my experience.  Qixi celebrates Zhinu and Niulang, the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd.  The Weaver Girl was princess of Heaven, and the Cowherd, a lowly human herdsman.  They fell in love and the Jade Emperor, the Weaver Girl's father, got upset and placed a river between them.  Each year on Qixi, the magpies (it is also called the Magpie Feast) gather and form a bridge over the river so they can be together for one night.  Vega is the Weaver Girl.  Altair is the Cowherd.  The Milky Way is the River.  And Deneb is the Magpie Bridge, the Bridge across the River that separates Heaven and Earth.  Deneb is a Bridge between the Human and the Divine.  I've talked of Bridges before.  Sunday following the Dark of the Moon, I traveled down to Colorado to pick up my love from the airport.  On the way, I stopped and observed, and the sagebrush was blooming more and more.  This continued.  Some bloom sage green, but some bloom bright yellow.  sagebrush is important in Wyoming.  It the main native plant of the High Plains.  Some sagebrush in Wyoming is over 200 years old and seven or eight feet tall.  I call this old growth sagebrush.  Like those who settled in Wyoming, sagebrush is hard to kill. It survives the extremes of weather, from hard winters to hot summers.  It does fine in the short growing seasons.  It can survive on very little water but isn't killed by flooding.  But it spreads very slowly and is virtually impossible to transplant, so once it's cleared, it will take a generation for it to reclaim the fields.  sagebrush was used as a medicinal plant by natives to Wyoming.  It was used to treat infection, treat headaches and colds, and to stop internal bleeding.  Infection was treated with a poultice.  It was inhaled for colds and head aches, sometimes just breathed in, sometimes burned and the smoke inhaled, depending on the tribe.  For internal bleeding, it was drank as a tea.  On the Full Moon of this Moon (which was the Blue Moon, as I discussed in a previous post), I once again spent time outside in meditation.  I encountered the Twins in a dark mirror, but can't give any more details here.  As this Moon draws to a close, I look back on the month, at the death of my grandmother on the 16th before the Moon changed, to Deneb on the 17th, to the return of my love on the 19th, to the lose of my job on the 24th, to my grandma's memorial service on the 26th, to the Twins on the 31st.  I look at the darkness of the first half of the Moon, but growing light in the second half.  I look at the steadily increasing signs of Autumn as the days grow shorter and the temperatures drop, as the leaves slowly change and the sagebrush blooms.  The second Moon of Autumn, early but firm, draws to a close.  Looking back, this month of death and endings, of darkness and light, seems to be a month for the sagebrush of the plains, not the trees or plants of the mountains.  It's a month of ranchers not mountain men, of cattle and antelope, not the animals of the mountains.  Life fades in the mountains, but the prairies bloom.  So here we draw to the end of the Sagebrush Moon, wondering what the Dark of the Moon tomorrow night will bring, what the third Moon of Autumn has in store for us, what the coming Equinox will reveal.  As the moons change.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

Traps, Barbed Wire, and Rails: Iron in Wyoming and the Craft

I've discussed iron a lot on lists and with friends about iron, both in folklore and in practice. I've always looked at it from a theoretical and scientific viewpoint, looking at the physical properties and what they can tell us about the use of iron in folk practice and folk tales. Most of my emphases has been on the magnetic properties and the conductive properties, and what these might have meant to ancient peoples and what they might mean now. This is, of course, a legitimate line of reasoning, and has direct practical application.

However, recently I've been looking more at my current Landscape and how various elements of folklore and practice relate to where I'm at. I began thinking of iron in that context, and got a much different picture. I think this picture is very important to my practice, and might help others investigate their own Landscape and practice.

Today in the US, in a lot of ways, steel workers are the masons of our world. Steel and iron form the bones of the great cities, and cities are more steel and concrete than anything. In more rural areas like Wyoming, though, you don't find many iron structures. But iron is no less important.

I will start with a brief history of iron in Wyoming, for without iron, there would be no present day Wyoming. Throughout this post, keep in mind that when I use the term "iron", I am including steel as well. In some cases, one would be more appropriate than the other, but I will use "iron" everywhere, unless the distinction is important.

Iron use was first introduced into what is now Wyoming by fur trappers. Beavers were very plentiful in many areas of Wyoming. To begin with, French fur trappers worked various areas of Wyoming, which was mostly in land claimed by France. Soon after, with the Louisiana Purchase, United States fur trappers moved in. Though there are other uses, during the fur trade period, the main uses of iron were for guns, knives, and traps. All three are significant, both to history, and to our purposes. A gun, of course, served two purposes, both connected to death. The killing of animals, for food and for self defense, and the killing of people, both offensively and defensively. The knife was also used for these, but more for skinning and cutting meat. Skinning is of course important when you're livelihood is the pelts of animals, and it also allows you access to meat underneath on game animals. And traps, of course, are for catching the beaver for its fur. This was not humane live traps, this was the type that closed on a leg, usually breaking it, and doing enough damage that the leg was lost even if the animal got free. The goal wasn't capture, the goal was obtaining a pelt. A trap, too, is an agent of death, like the gun. The fur trade led to settlement and military present to protect the trade routes and settlers from attacks by "Indians". Iron tack and iron horse shoes on the military horses is important, but the military presence mostly meant more guns and knives, from an iron perspective. Iron smiths were present both to cater to the trappers and traders, and for the military. The fur trade in Wyoming lasted about fifty years, until beaver hats went out of fashion in Europe.

The next major event was the gold rush, starting at South Pass. Gold was discovered in 1842, but the rush didn't pick up for another twenty years because of the Civil War. About the same time as gold was discovered, migration on the Oregon Trail trough Wyoming picked up. This meant iron rims on wagons and more iron shoes on horses, and meant more iron smiths. Some of the settlers didn't make it across Wyoming before winter and were stuck here. Those that survived the first winter often stayed and settled. Settlers of course brought iron axes, knifes, and guns. It's important to note that while South Pass City and the other gold towns nearby are now ghost towns, that South Pass City was larger than Cheyenne at one point, and there was a push to move the capital there. The gold rush had a huge impact on Wyoming, economically, politically, socially, culturally, and on deeper levels. The rush itself didn't last long, only a few years, but it resulted in a large increase in population, and made way for later mining and mineral related ventures. To this day, minerals are the state's largest source of income, including oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, natrona, and other substances. Iron in gold mining took several forms. True mining meant iron picks and shovels. Gold panning meant iron pans. With settlement and mining, iron moved from an instrument of death and preparation of the dead to tools to shape the land and gather from it. Iron rims meant long distance travel. Shovels and picks and axes meant the gathering of mineral and wood.

In the 1860s, iron took on a new role.  This began with the Pony Express in 1860.  While iron was used in tack and other things relating to the Express, the important role was iron horseshoes.  While not new in that time, the speed and constant movement of the Express would have been impossible without horseshoes, and horseshoes without iron.  Iron made the fast communication of the Express possible.  Eighteen months later, the Express was made obsolete by the second part of this new role.  The first transcontinental telegraph lines were iron and ran through Wyoming.  Iron became the the instrument for communication.  When telegraphs were later made mostly obsolete by the telephone, however, copper lines were used instead of iron.  Iron telegraph lines are still used along the railroads of Wyoming.

The first recorded cattle drive in Wyoming was in 1866. From then, the ranch industry grew exponentially. Even today, agriculture is the third largest industry after minerals and tourism. In the early days of ranching, Wyoming was completely open range. Cattle barons and sheepherders vied for the same areas, resulting in armed conflicts and slaughtering of the animals of the Other by both sides. In addition, when homesteaders began to settle in Wyoming, cattle barons took this as the settlers taking their land, and it wasn't unknown for drummed up charges of cattle rustling to result in hangings of those settlers. The problem grew until a raid in 1909 resulted in seven convictions and five imprisonments of cattlemen. In addition, the Taylor Grazing Act helped to define where grazing was allowed and create regulations to control grazing land to avoid conflict. One of the main issues in Wyoming besides water and mineral rights has always been open range and at large animals and how that interacts with private land. There are two main parts to Wyoming law involving this, branding and fencing. Brands were originally controlled by county but was taken over by the state in 1909. A brand is a symbol burnt into an animal using a hot iron brand, basically iron in the shape of the brand symbol that is heated and placed on flesh to leave the pattern burned into the animal. A brand is designed to prove ownership and is very hard to conceal with your own brand. The laws have since been expanded to include several other types of marks and electronical devices. Brands are essential on shared open range to make sure each rancher retrieves their animals and only their animals when bringing them back to their own ranch. Also, no livestock can cross Wyoming state or county borders without a brand inspection to verify ownership. This prevents cattle and sheep theft by taking them out of the area their brand is identifiable in. Obviously iron is very import to this process. Brand design and registration is very important, and I am working on an article about symbols that will discuss them along with other types of crafted symbols. The other issue is fencing. When Wyoming drafted our state constitution, it included a provision that said unless overridden by state, county, or local law, British Common Law should be followed. Open range is one of the few places that Common Law is specifically overrode at the state level. British Common Law dictates fence in. The owner of a domestic animal isresponsiblefor any damage done by that animal if it is at large, and the property owner whose property the animal is on is not responsible for any harm done to the animal. "Where my beasts, of their own wrong, without my will and knowledge, break another's close, I shall be punished, for I am the trespasser with my beasts," 12 Hen. VII, Keilway 36. Wyoming, however, is fence out unless local law overrides that. A land owner is responsible for fencing out any at large animals, and if they don't, they are responsible for any damages done by or to the animal. This also means that if you kill a domestic animal in open range land (for instance, hitting a cow with your car), you have to pay for the animal plus any damages you suffer. So, fencing your land is very important. The original law in 1869 (21 years before statehood) dictated it must be constructed with rock or wood. In 1882 and 1888, legal fences were redefined to include barbed wire, and specified how barbed wire fences had to be constructed. There's a lot more details to all this, and the laws, rulings, and practices the laws and rulings imply are far more complicated, but for our purposes here, the point is that iron is used for most branding and most fencing in private rural areas of Wyoming. And very little of the private land in Wyoming is not rural.

The fifth major event that changed Wyoming was the railroad.  The first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, like the first telegraph, was built across Wyoming.  Iron tracks, iron spikes, iron engines, iron cars.  There is no railroad without iron.  The railroad effected Wyoming in many ways.  First of all, the building of it brought many many people.  For the first time, Wyoming's population swelled above five hundred thousand people.  It would only do twice more, once around 1890 when Wyoming became a state, and currently, due to the current coal boom.  The railroad also brought trade, brought money, brought goods that were impossible before, brought jobs.  Towns grew up along the tracks, Laramie, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Green River, Evanston.  And it brought the Irish and Chinese.

The sixth and final major event and its children occurred in 1913.  The Lincoln Highway, named for President Lincoln who had the first transcontinental railroad possible, was the first transcontinental improved "auto trail", the first transcontinental highway.  It roughly followed the railroad except on the western edge of the state where it diverted north.  With the highway came automobiles from the East.  Cars of steel, of iron.  Later, the first transcontinental Interstate Highway, I-80, followed it, diverting from the route of the Lincoln Highway and railroad in three sections, then following the railroad into Utah where the Lincoln Highway headed more northerly into Idaho.  These highways and the other national, state, and county highways that formed off of them in a web made automobiles, with their steel or iron frames and engines, the primary mode of transportation.

So, we have:

• Trappers with traps, guns, and knives.
• Miners with picks and shovels.
• Settlers with axes, knives, and guns.
• Military with horseshoes, swords, knives, and guns.
• Pony Express riders with horseshoes.
• Telegraph with telegraph lines.
• Ranchers with brands, fences, horseshoes, knives, and guns.
• Railroads with tracks, engines, and cars.
• Highways with automobiles.

A few themes run strongly through these.  Death (traps, guns, swords, knives), breaking apart or tearing down (knives, picks, shovels, axes), communication (horseshoes, telegragh lines), marking (brands), boundaries (fences), trade (horse shoes, tracks, train engines, train cars, automobiles), food (guns, knives, horseshoes, brands, fences, tracks, train engines, train cars, automobiles), and transportation (horseshoes, tracks, train engines, train cars, automobiles).  These seven uses of iron built the Wyoming that's here today.

These seven things are also what are important with iron in the craft in Wyoming, because iron will resonate with these seven usages, death, separation/loosing, communication/binding, marking/naming, boundaries, trade/finances, food/sustenance/nourishment, and transportation/movement.  Though in the work, there is convergence.  Boundaries becomes separation, so loosing.  Loosing/separation/boundaries becomes banishing as well, especially with the fence out aspect.  transportation/movement, trade/finance, and communication/binding come together as binding/invoking.  Food/sustenance/nourishment becomes life.  So we end with two pairs, two Divine Twins.  Life and Death.  Loosing/banishing and binding/invoking.  Though really the second pair can be written simply loosing and binding.  But ultimately life is the binding of our Wyrd, our Fate, to this world, and Death is the loosing of the same.  So, in Wyoming, iron is either that which binds (especially brands and barbed wire) and that which looses (especially guns and axes and picks).  Binding and loosing.  Understanding why, and how to use that knowledge is the mystery and the secret.

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss

June: The Time of Water, of Rain, of Flooding

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. ~Lao Tzu

The sun setting over the Laramie River

If there's anything to define June in Laramie, it's water.  This is the season of rain and melt off, green and flooding.  May is the last snow fall most years and usually buds and the beginning of green, but June in Wyoming is gorgeous.  The temperatures finally stay in the high 60s during the day and seldom drop below 50 at night.  Snow is replaced by rain.  No more frozen narrow rivers, the banks are flooded.

The mountains, and hence my working site, are still off limits right now, because the snow is still too deep and all the roads are closed.  The pass through the Snowys from Centennial to Saratoga is usually open by Memorial Day (May 30 this year), but this year they say it might not open at all.  There's still ten feet of snow up there, and every night what they plowed, from both sides, the day before is filled back in.  It was quite a winter.

Across the Laramie River from
the bridge, normally 10 feet across,
now about 50.

And boy is the water running off that snow melt.  At the point near the bridge by the park (see picture), it is currently about 50 feet across.  Normal in August is about 10.  No fear of forest fires for a while in this area.  It's just too wet.  It rains most afternoons, and sometimes all day.  The hills and plains are bright green, and the florescent purple glow of lupin is gorgeous.  And the willows, the aspen, and the cottonwoods are loving it.

Down by the riverside.

Yes, this is the time of water, the wettest part of the year, if you don't count snow fall.  And I guess it's not surprising, since we've moved into Cancer now, which is a water sign.  We just moved out of Gemini, and air sign, but the end of Gemini was definitely already water here in Wyoming.

Laramie River at dusk.

Water is fluid (obviously).  It's ever moving, liminal.  It is never the same.  Water is often associated with the feminine.  As is earth.  Earth is stable, though still dynamic, though we often see it as static.  But the plates move, soil and rock erode, the ground up-heaves in winter.  Earth moves and changes, but slowly, and usually we don't notice the change.  Water moves faster, changes faster.  Water can work it's way through granite, and maybe even diamond just through single drops, one at a time, persistent, patient.  Or it can take out a hillside or carve a huge valley in minutes given enough water and enough pressure and gravity.  Water is an agent of change.  Water is emotion, both the calm peaceful joy of a gentle stream or a light rain, and the anger and passion of the rapids in flood season or the deluge of a monsoon or hurricane.  Water is the subconscious and intuition, Fetch, Nefesh.  It is the World of Forms, Yetzurah, the Great Sea of Mem, which is the Womb.  It is Binah, Understanding, the Upper Sea, the Mother.  Water is life.  The surface of the earth is about 70% water, and the human body is 50% to 80% water.  Without water, there would be no life as we know it on Earth.  And there certainly would not be mammals or humans.  The human body can go about forty days without food, but only about three without water.

So, here I am in Laramie, in the Time of Water.  And it is glorious and gorgeous here.


FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss