The Golden Season:
What the Ancients Knew About Letting Go
We have reached the midway point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. Traditionally in Ireland, on August 1st, Lúnasa was celebrated as the beginning of the harvest season. Lúnasa is the Irish word for August. No matter where in Europe your ancestors are from, they too would have recognized and celebrated this transition from Summer growing to Autumn harvesting with rituals of thanksgiving for the bounty that would ensure survival for another winter, followed by feasting and merrymaking.
Our ancestors understood themselves to be part of the Natural world and recognized that as Nature’s energies shifts from making blooms to making seed they were shifting too. The human expression of this shift is from planting and growing to harvesting and storing. Somewhere along the line, in our modern way of life, we forgot this basic fact. It’s a blindness that has proven to be catastrophic for all of life on this planet.
Human beings are Nature in human form, just as the maple tree is Nature in maple tree form. we are all subject to the same universal forces.
The Autumn/Metal phase governs breath, elimination, spiritual connection, the ability to let go and to value what is most precious. Balanced Metal energy nourishes inner worth, clear discernment, reverence for life, and alignment with our higher purpose. This is why every spiritual tradition has some breath component. Be it mindful breathing, chanting, singing, or recitation, there is an instinctual or intuitive knowing that the breath connects us to the cosmos.
We can say that the energy behind manifesting Creation is Primordial Love (The Mystery, God, the Universe, Creator, the Absolute…), the mysterious and unfathomable energy that gives rise to Life on Earth. (Remember, it goes Spirit>Mind/Emotion>Body/Form). When we break it into 5 aspects as the Taoists have taught us, just to make it more manageable in our human minds, then this declining in the sun energy part of the cycle is called Grief. But it is primordial, capital “G” Grief. On a human scale when we lose something or someone we loved, our vacation is coming to an end, the flowers in the garden are fading, our small “g” human grief has the resonance of Nature’s Grief. We generally struggle with loss because our attachments and complex emotions do not always work smoothly to make compost of our lives. This is not pathology in human beings… it is part of the design! This is just to say that Nature has no such attachments. The energy of the primordial Grief of the Metal is crystalline, clear, pure, discerning, sacred, precious, and brings in Nature’s Golden harvest-seeds and compost for the next cycle.
We must remember that this Grief is a way of describing the declining energy of Autumn – the season of the decline. It is simply the vibrational energy that we experience as the northern hemisphere moves further from the sun after the Summer Solstice. There is literally a decline in the amount of the sun’s energy we receive each day. It is the signal to Nature to let go of her summer party dress and get down to the serious business of making seed–the Harvest, the legacy package, the inheritance, the mystical, magical basis of all of life. Seeds are where the blueprint for all of life is stored and without them, there would be no Life. They are precious, sacred, mystical, magical beauties. This Grief energy is the magic of compost. It’s the breaking down of all the manifest plant forms of summer into their most basic essences to become the basis of the next generation’s growth. The human emotion that resonates with the decline is grief (small “g,” human scale).
That said, as we resonate to Nature’s Grief that comes with Autumn, we tend to feel melancholy. Maybe we remember and review past losses, what we loved most about the people/things lost and store that “gold” away in our Hearts again. For having experienced a love deep enough to grieve its loss is what we all want to have known when we get to the end of our journey. It is helpful to know that the melancholy you may feel in August is your heart resonating with and aligning to Nature.
Once we pass the first of August, you will feel Nature take her foot off the gas. I hope you all can do the same because without the go-go energy of summer to ride and carry you, continuing at the summer pace will feel stressful and exhausting.
Note: The four cross-quarter days (Feb 1, May 1, Aug 1, Nov 1) are deeply sacred in many ancestral traditions across Europe. They mark the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes and are considered times when the veil between worlds is thinner, making them especially potent for ritual, reflection, and realignment. I invite you to take a moment to reflect on the rich harvest of your life this year and also to acknowledge what has been lost. You might find it helpful to make a little altar to help you work with the incoming Autumn energy as it moves through your body/mind/spirit. You can use small objects or photos to represent your harvests and your losses, maybe a candle or a flower…let it be simple, let it come from the Heart.
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@resilience.and.joy