State of the Savage: Winter 2020

With winter we lose the landscape beneath the white of snow and fog. We lose the sky to the lengthening night and the orange and purple cast-light of modernity. We are urged to reduce our eyesight to black and white by the turning of the season, and, by extension, to turn inward and gaze into the iridescent, infinite sea we each harbor within ourselves.

Because the Earth sails around the sun each year does not mean we must forever sail around the treacherous shoals we fear lie in wait. Do we know ourselves at all? How long must we wander through habit and ritual before we spy our true shapes, before we’ve charted a map of the obstacles that make us who we are? Instead, we may challenge reality to be as large as the fear of it. Rarely does it ever measure up.

I have always wandered into esotericism. Over the years I’ve gotten lost in channeled writings, esoteric yoga, meditation, shamanism, druidcraft, and self-observation among others.

Why?

I think I knew something was hidden beneath the ice, but like an archaic map part of me was so far off limits I didn’t even remember it existed. Here be dragons.

At so many points in my life I have lamented that there’s nothing left to explore in the world, that there’s no room for heroism anymore. It’s like staring at a pomegranate for decades and decrying its banality without ever opening the rind, without ever finding the cache of tangy rubies inside.

I want to laugh because when I look inward I find infinity unexplored. But I’m not there yet. I’m still recovering from the wound of my blindness, forgiving myself, and gathering my strength and party for the journey ahead. The words of a wise man ring in my mind: We don’t climb the mountain for the world to see us. We climb the mountain so we can see the world.

Each of us has a sea inside, safe harbor and home with its own unique miracles, revelations, shipwrecks, and sirens. It is always accessible, always ready for you. I wish I had known this when I felt so lost, so homesick, so stuck on the rind revolving through the years.

The future is not linear. It is not discrete. The future is simply what happens next, all possibilities existing concurrently in the shifting iridescent sea, coalescing as the path is chosen.

We need not be swallowed by the snow or become lost in the mid-winter night. The sun will come, when you will it, and frozen fetters will turn to air. You’ve been free all along. You’ve been your warden all along.

I wish I had known this. So I’m telling you.

Sláinte,

Aelyth