The winds of spring
When you let your thoughts be cleared away, what creativity springs forth?
We’ve been having some blustery weather this spring and looking back through my journals and posts, it seems like these last couple years have been generally windier than I’ve been accustomed to in my nearly 20 years in South Florida. Is this part of the signs and symptoms of a changing planet or normal cycles of weather patterns? I’m inclined to think that it’s the latter being exacerbated by the former. My hope for storm season, which is right around the corner is that all this bluster now will mean less over the summer. Magickal thinking? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t be a witch were it not for believing that my thoughts and actions had an effect on the world, and when you put it that way, who doesn’t believe that their thoughts and actions effect the world in some way?
Speaking of windy weather, in a few weeks I’ll share a charm and ritual that I developed with my close friend to protect yourself during storms. It was created specifically for hurricane protection but it’s applicable for other storms as well and can even be modified for personal protection. Voila! Magickal thinking becomes magickal doing.
For now, I’m preoccupied with birds. As my wife says, living in a suburban setting, so many of the aspects of what we’d normally associate with nature and animals are hidden away but birds are always very present. While our seasons may not look quite the same here, a lot of the themes remain. For many native species, birds included, it’s still spring and the mating drive has meant that I’ve seen them in great abundance. In fact, I’ve been seeing so many that I decided to write them all down after one of my morning walks because I was kind of amazed at the variety I noted over the course of an hour. Of course I see herons of every variety, wood storks, egrets, ibis, black bellied whistling ducks — which have a call like a dog toy which I used to think was my neighbor playing with her dog — as well as muscovy and mottled ducks, Egyptian geese, crows, grackles, pigeons, morning doves, starlings, mockingbirds, blue jays, cormorants, anhinga, limpkin, coots, moorhen, an osprey and a roseate spoonbill. And this was just the list from Thursday morning! These little Mercurial messengers got me thinking about what the wind and air have to share with us.
Among the classical elements (earth, air, water, fire, aether) air is seen as connected with the intellect — all the more appropriate then that I’ve started year four in the Temple of Witchcraft Mystery School, studying the Qabalah, which is seen as a more rational and intellectual approach to the study of magick. In an animistic sense, the winds feel among the most ethereal of spirits, only seen by their impact on other things, unpredictable, capable of gentleness and destruction, much the same as our own thoughts. Winds can also be haunting, creating a sense of creeping dread, or maddening — people who have lived in the plains know the oppressive force that a strong wind that blows for endless days on end has on the psyche.
But also, winds clear things away. They help clear the slate and prepare us for new experiences. They open us up to the expansiveness of a blue sky, allowing creative thoughts the room to drift across our consciousness. Having the space and time to sit with your thoughts is a valuable resource that few of us have adequate access to (along with sleep and time with friends and family). But even if you only have a few minutes, sit and listen to the wind. Hear it rushing through the freshly-budded branches of the trees. Which direction do they move? How do they move you? When you have a moment to clear away the detritus of your normal patterns of thought ask yourself, where will the winds take you?
And now reframe the question into a statement: When you let your thoughts be cleared away, what creativity springs forth.
Wind in the mountains can be pretty wild, especially when you live in heavily forested areas. High winds are not unusual up here. They whistle and roar through narrow spaces, making the trees dance to a frenzied tune.
In some other places, the wind is often a precursor to storms. Maybe that is why it makes folks new to the area anxious. Frequently, the first thing people do when they buy a house up here is cut down every tree that could even remotely fall and hit their house. Never mind that the trees are healthy and have stood solidly for decades more than the folks rending judgment on them.
It's easier to understand the ways of trees than the thinking of humans, I think.
I have always loved the wildness of the winds. They are like a beast that cannot be controlled or tamed. They blow (or not) as they please and roam wherever and whenever they choose. For some folks, it is likely that the wind's unpredictability and their inability to control it is what they find so disquieting.
In contrast, the very things most people fear are the things I enjoy--but I've always been a weirdo, as you know. The recent winds coming on the heels of the eclipse certainly created space for reflection, and spurred a lot of ideas. Whether any of those ideas are good ones remains to be seen!