SCROLL FROM THE EDITOR
Welcome to the September 2023 edition of The Midnight Sun!
Summer is coming to an end!
Honestly? I’m looking forward to it. It has been a wonderful season full of reconnection, shared memories, and new experiences… but I am over being sweaty!
Do you have any plans for how to close out summer? Final barbeques? Labor Day plans? Let us know in the comments how you intend to bid summer farewell!
This month’s newsletter brings us new ideas and perspectives, with some brain candy and food for thought. Suz talks about harnessing the power of the Autumnal Equinox, and Izlude shares a personal Contemplation. Yours truly busts out the Soap Box on Objectivity, and Hex brings the Tea for some insights on how to get what you want without sabotaging your goals.
Wherever your Summer ends, I hope it is pleasant, and that as Autumn descends you find a renewed drive into the future!
~Miranda (Frick)
Curator and Editor of TMS
Harnessing the Superpower of the Autumn Equinox!
by Suz
We live busy lives! We do more in one day than our ancestors could do in a month! Think about the sheer amount of information we process or number of things we do in a day, compared to what people did just 20 years ago. The increase in speed and quantity has risen exponentially, and it’s not slowing down.
How do we do what we love, take care of what we love, achieve success, and have an impact in the world in a way that includes, instead of sacrifices, our personal health and happiness? I think one of the main reasons we feel so out of balance is because we are out of sync with the natural rhythms of the earth. To have balance we must be in harmony with both the physical and spiritual worlds. It just makes sense.
We live on Earth. We are physical matter just like the Earth, but we are not in tune with the Earth. We are more apt to be attuned to the speed of the Internet than the steadiness of the trees. We count time passing and set goals on calendars constructed by man, rather than instructed by nature. It’s as if the earth is moving one direction, changing speeds in a well-patterned synchronicity, while we keep running harder and faster at a pace we call “normal”.
As we consciously link our awareness to the cycles of nature, our understanding of our own cycles begin to deepen. When we are in sync with the Natural Universe- body, mind, and spirit moving with the natural cycles of the earth, we harmonize automatically and work, health, wealth, relationships, and life become more sustainable, supportive, and successful. Marie Kondo swears if our dresser drawers are neat our lives will run more smoothly and I have to say, it does make things easier. Maybe there is superpower here!
Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn are times of the year that mark a shift in the earth’s energy, each with its own rhythm. Winter solstice in December, the natural world slows down. Spring equinox in March, new things are born. Summer Solstice in June brings intense creative energy. Autumn Equinox, in mid- to late September is a time to reap what you’ve been putting your energy toward these past nine months. It’s a time when day and night are roughly equal in length, so it’s a powerful time to rebalance, restore, and refocus your energy. Before we all had the Internet and before the Industrial Revolution, when we were more agriculturally based, we tended and harvested our fields based on these powerful turns of the seasons.
While most of us are no longer farmers, we each have “fields” that we tend; they just happen to be the fields of our work, relationships and families, home and wealth, and personal health and happiness. Spiritually speaking, fall represents the harvest time of year, a time to acknowledge growth and expansion as a natural evolution of our organic being. Our lives go through cycles of growth, harvest, death, and rebirth just as we see in nature. During the Auutum Equinox, I invite you to pause and tap into the specific energy that is available to you. Restore and Rebalance- Become conscious about what your body is telling you it needs, so you don’t run yourself ragged and fall over in a heap on December 31.
This balance will help you stay devoted to your well-being as you move into the fall and the holidays, so you can complete the year with a full tank. Reflect and receive- Look back over the year and see all you have done and become. Recognize and give yourself credit for all you've achieved, and accept that there may be some things we carry over to the new year.
One of the biggest reasons we feel overwhelmed, and stay stuck in the patterns of overworking, overdoing, and burning out, is because we don’t pause long enough to really acknowledge what has happened and all we've accomplished. Refocus- Choose to move forward consciously and energetically from a place of less stress. Get clear focus on what matters and where to apply your energy more efficiently for the remainder of the year. Yes, there are many things you could do during the last three months of the year, and many you want to do, but what really matters most? What will yield the highest returns, and the most nourishing life harvest?
Honor all that you have in your life and shift your consciousness from one of lack to one of prosperity and gratitude. The Autumn Equinox is a meaningful time of year to honor the harvest. Whether that be a "real" harvest of the things planted in your garden or the harvest of efforts and intentions for your life path that you set earlier in the year. Activate your new cycle of growth.
As our world stands upon a precipice of enormous change and transformation, each one of us has a choice to make. How will we participate in the great turning of our times moving forward? May this season bring you and yours all that your heart desires and I hope the changing of the season inspire you!
Hello, readers. Welcome back~ I just had a look at the monthly weather forecast and I am pleasantly surprised to see that the temps will not be climbing above 90f for the rest of the year in my region. That’s exciting! Now, we’re all very different and have our own preferences, but this particular body doesn’t handle the heat so well. One can always put on more layers to handle the cold, but one can only get so nude!
September is one of those transitional months in House Kheperu’s spiritual system, as the number 9 represents the completion of cycles, transformation, and enlightenment within it. Within this month is seen the winding down of summer energies and we begin to settle into patterns of introspection and self-reflection. It’s Libra season, and with the Autumn Equinox occurring during the month this is a fantastic time to start finding balance between our inner and outer worlds before we slip into the Dark Side of the year.
I wanted to share with you folks a powerful experience I’ve had this week. Summer is abuzz with activity, forging new relationships, working with new people, and seeking new threads of connection as business ensues. Many of these working relationships and budding connections draw upon personal reserves of energy and attention, and as summer begins to close it is found that many of those new buds need to be pruned. This is a personal process in which I decide which relationships I am going to continue to invest in versus which no longer serve me. During this time of introspection, it is also time to look into the past and find those old buds which never blossomed as well. Too many buds that never blossom weigh down the plant and take up space and energy that are needed for the future.
This is not an angry process, nor a selfish one, for even healthy adversarial relationships (yes, that is a thing!) provide much-needed experience, as strife brings strength. If you do not include people in your experience who disagree with you, you will find yourself in an echo chamber of YES as you surround yourself with people who only agree with your opinions. That will not bring growth to the plant in the long run, as nature is wild and multitude; the plant will need to learn to assert herself in her environment in order to flourish. This does not give space for toxic people, (there are plants whose roots are toxic, and there is an entire underground war happening for resources under our feet in the dark!) but does give permission for healthy-minded folks with differing opinions to challenge you. That leads to understanding and growth for both.
During a particular night of contemplation on such things, I realized that I needed to take action. I had forged relationships that weren’t nourishing me but were rather draining and one-sided. There were people in my past haunting me, resurfacing to remind me that they were still existing and had no change in their opinions or experienced any sort of growth, and as far as I could see, for no real purpose other than to cling on like a drowning man, using me as a buoy for their sanity. I could feel the hesitance within my very Self to even converse with them, so using my intuition as a guide I sent them a final farewell and began preparations.
In my pretty little Magick box I have some red thread, a special pair of scissors, some candles, and an orb of obsidian. I sat in the dimly lit room, turned on some meditative music, and mustered my Will and focus. Before me I gathered the tools for the rite on a small decorative altar-table, and seated in my comfy chair I placed the orb beneath on its pedestal, pulled some red threads and cut them carefully each representing a connection I felt no longer served me, and lit a final candle before the orb. As I twined the thread between my fingers, one by one, I held it taut above the candle and focused on the persons, situations, places, events, any sort of energy that was on my mind that I wanted to sever. I imagined the cord of connection, sinking into the physical thread between my fingers, and lowered it slowly towards the flame. As it touched the flame, in that millisecond before the break, I felt the severance of energy as the threads snapped. One by one. Until all was clear, and I could think of nothing else that needed to be pruned.
I slept deeply and awoke the next day energized! It was as if I had been carrying these burdens that my tired aching muscles had finally got relief. I now go into the Dark Side of the Year carrying only myself, and the connections that I truly want to carry, and I feel far better for it.
So, I ask you reader, what are you carrying for others that you no longer wish to bear? If you carry other’s burdens needlessly, you are only weakening yourself AND them, as they will no longer have the strength to carry themselves. It’s just fine to lean on friends and family, no person is an island, but we each must bear the weight of our own souls. That’s what it means, to live, and to bear lively, nourishing fruit. Let it go~
Objectivity
Pulls out Soap Box
You are not as objective as you think you are.
I don’t care how objective you believe yourself to be, reality is subjective. I’m not either, to be fair. I’m not casting stones without acknowledging I am also throwing them at myself. We all experience reality through the filters of experience, trauma, interpretation and personal lexicon. We can all work to be as objective as possible, and you might be far more objective than the person sitting next to you over all. They may also have an experience or subject that they are actually more objective then you are, despite being far more buried in personal experience and filters than you function from in everything else.
The best we can do is try.
Sometimes, your best isn’t very good. But you can always get better, and as long as you’re trying and working to get better, you are bound to make progress - on anything. Everything. Objectivity included. Sometimes, you’re trying so hard to be objective, you can lose compassion. For others, and for yourself. That’s also not good. We’re not robots. We are a weird kind of organic machine that is falliable and subject to emotion, which defies logic. True objectivity is not only lack of favoritism towards a side, bit a true freedom from bias.
And there’s the rub.
It is impossible to have a human experience without bias. Even if you are able to process to a more objective space, your initial experience, impression, and therefore the processing itself, will have that flavor of bias. Bias is how we learn, and shape our reality. That individual, unique convergence of personal experience, intuition, impression, recall and perspective is what makes us all exceptional. How I percieve and engage with reality, is not how literally anyone else who will ever read this engages with reality. We can have similar experiences, similar traumas, similar ways in which those things manifest within us, but they are only ever similar. They are not, cannot be, and honestly are lucky to not be identical. Even indentical twins have two different experiences of the exact same event or occurrence.
It’s part of what makes the embodied ordeal so fascinating and beautiful.
So you cannot be without bias, because you live in your head. It is impossible to be completely, purely objective… about anything.
What you can do, is work to be as objective as possible. To remember that just like you, everyone else is also incapable of pure objectivity, and while frustrating, heart-breaking at times, painful and infuriating as that can be from moment to moment… it’s actually quite beautiful. Thumbing one’s nose at the idea of “everyone wanting to be a beautiful and unique little snowflake” is a popular thing amongst certain demographics, because while we all live in a society where we need to be able to agree on certain fundamentals and coexist peacefully where we don’t agree.
I also acknowledge that we are all, in fact, as individual in our interface with physical reality as the snowflakes that fall from the sky - even those who don’t think they are. We also are the same in that we are all human, biased, and alive on a round rock hurtling around a yellow star in the void of space. And those are both as true as they are good. Because diversity and overcoming the conflicts inside of these truths from our lack of objectivity, freedom from bias, and inability to become beings of pure logic and reason, is something that makes this world interesting, and beautiful.
So. You are not as objective as you think you are. Neither am I. But as long as we keep trying to be reasonably objective with an eye to compassion, then we’re headed in the right direction.
Puts away Soap Box
Keep it honest, my friends
~Frick
Thursday, September 14, 2023
7:54 PM
Hello friends, and welcome back to Tea with Hex! This month, we're going to talk about how to get what you want without sabotaging your intentions. Oooooh, spicy, right? Yeah, let's get into it.
"A watched pot never boils." We've all heard this adage. There's actually even more wisdom in this than you might think. You stand there, staring, going "This damn pot of water needs to boil. This water isn't boiling." And it's going to take way longer for it to boil than it should. Do you know why? Your will is focused on the water not boiling, that's why.
Drink something.
See, the Universe responds to the energy of your Will. It bends potential based on the frequency that you're resonating on, because like attracts like. This is one of the foundational principles of all systems of magic. When you focus your Will on something *not* happening, you're telling the Universe that it should not happen. You have moved yourself and that situation into a place of lack, and so the Universe will respond accordingly and ensure that lack persists, because that is your energetic wavelength. Suddenly you'll find things stop working, things start breaking, things evaporate right out of your grasp. Everything is going wrong. Why? You're (probably) not hexed or cursed. You're just fixated on what you don't have, what isn't happening, not enough of this or that, and now all the things that are meant for you can't get to you. You have sabotaged your own energetic wavelength by sheer force of Will. How's that pot of water doing, eh?
I would like to instead propose a different philosophy.
Suppose you adjust your energetic wavelength to one of expectation. Everything that is meant for you is already on its way to you, it just isn't here *yet*. Those things are already written to come, in the season that you are meant to receive them. Notice, I said season, not time. We have an inclination, an imperative imposed on us by the world around us, to measure every minute, hour, day, in exacting detail. Time is extremely unforgiving. The moment passes, and it's gone, and still you lack. Ponder, instead, that there is a *season* for all things. I think that's one of the reasons some people are so annoyed by astrology, because if you study it long enough, it's impossible to ignore that we are actually ruled by seasons, not seconds, and this whole construct of time becomes meaningless. If you're not wired a certain way that's probably a maddening thought. Our existence is predicated upon cycles and seasons. Situations present themselves as they have before, and as they will again, and as they will again, on and on. When your intention and your work are aligned with the season of those things, and you expect that their fruition is already on its way to you, you are in synch with the Universe. You are in a place of resonance and alignment with the energies of abundance.
"Time flies when you're having fun." That's another adage. By this point, you'll likely have sensed a theme. We have far more control over the quality of our experience than you might think. Watching that pot of water and fixating on how it's not doing what we need it to do, is a form of time dilation. Whereas if we were to leave the pot of water, and go find something to enjoy, we have adjusted our frequency to one of pleasure, of fulfillment, a place of "the pot of water *will* boil", if we bother to think of it at all! If we don't, and just focus on our present situation of being fulfilled, time will fly, and what is meant to happen in its season will find us faster.
The Will is a powerful tool. It can work against us if we're not careful. But if we recognize and understand our own power, and its relationship to the gears of reality, we can truly be the architects of our own happiness. I hope this helps you, dear friends, unlock the pathways for your abundance to find you, and may you always receive what is meant for you.