The Threshold Between Worlds
It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since our last blog post.
Just as we in the midst of working on The High Priestess, who tells us to turn around and look within, circumstances conspired to make us do exactly that. We turned inwards toward family, toward the mystery of the slow passing of my mother to the other side of the veil and back to the source.
The High Priestess is the guardian of the threshold between worlds; the Conscious and Unconscious Minds, Dreams and Reality, Night and Day, and, as it turns out, at this point in our lives, she was also a guide in processing the transition between Life and Death.
My mother’s death was not a sudden one. It was a journey. A slow process of leaving this world. Her first step was turning inward. She became very introspective, spending long stretches of time, eyes wide open but focused inward in memories and reveries. She stopped talking, eating and drinking, and slept and dreamed for much of the day, until she was asleep more than she was awake, and then always asleep, and then a quiet passing. We went as far as we could with her journey, holding her hand and letting her know we loved her, but she crossed that final threshold by herself.
I had a dream once about dying. I was a drop of water hanging from the tip of a stalactite in a deep subterranean cavern. I hung there for a moment and then dropped. For the time it took me to fall, I was me, the individual me, alone. Then, when I hit the pool of water below I was absorbed, still mostly me, but also part of everything else, not alone. I had the realization that this cycle would continue; evaporation, condensation, drip, repeat.
The High Priestess is about cycles. She is is linked to the moon, with its endless cycles of birth, death and rebirth, the rhythm of time. She is linked to water, the great ocean of the unconscious, the true ocean where life began and the womb where human life begins. The river returns to its source and the cycle begins again.
“All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” - Ecclesiastes 1:7
I’ve posted this song before, but it’s never been more appropriate than now for me:
Let me inside you
Into your room
I've heard it's lined
With the things you don't show
Lay me beside you
Down on the floor
I've been your lover
From the womb to the tomb
I dress as your daughter
When the moon becomes round
You be my mother
When everything's gone
And she will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Somethings change
Some stay the same
Keep beckoning to me
From behind that closed door
The maid and the mother
And the crone that's grown old
I hear your voice
Coming out of that hole
I listen to you
And I want some more
I listen to you
And I want some more
She will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Some things change
Some stay the same
She will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Some things change
Some stay the same
Let me inside you
Into your room
I've heard it's lined
With the things you don't show
Lay me beside you
Down on the floor
I've been your lover
From the womb to the tomb
I dress as your daughter
When the moon becomes round
You be my mother
When everything's gone
And she will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Some things change
Some stay the same
She will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Some things change
Some stay the same
And she will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
They will keep on speaking her name
Some things change
Some stay the same
Love You Mom:
