A Forest

You are the moving epitome of all this. Of you, by you, for you. God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?

-Sylvia Plath

January is a fascinating month in the calendar year. Especially here in New England. Everything slows down and seems to hibernate in New Hampshire, even as many people are trying to keep New Year’s resolutions and make fresh starts.

Here there is less work for the locals; less to do in general, as everything closes early because it’s dark before 5pm. You can easily find yourself beginning to go stir crazy, knowing that there are at least two more months of dark and cold.

This type of energy reminds me of the 5 of Knives in the Tarot of Vampyres by Ian Daniels, or the song A Forest by the Cure.

There is such power in our perspective. In how we choose to view our situation, the weather, the month, the people in our lives. When we feel stuck each moment can feel interminable. We can begin to want to try and control to the nth degree, to lash out and force things to happen, or to close in upon ourselves and hide, to get lost, “in a forest, all alone”.

With the 5 of Knives appearance in our lives, we are encouraged to flip our own narrative on its head. How can we get unstuck? If we can’t flip the perspective completely, is there a way that we can move our current view even just a little? Just an inch or two, a millimeter even? If we can do this for ourselves, alchemy can then begin to work it’s magick. We can reclaim our power.

We may choose to do this through the experience of deity in specific myth, through a card like the 5 of Knives, where we can begin to name the phantom crouched above us, or through the cascading waves of our favorite song, or the movement and shapes of the sea, the trees. Or the emotions of a painting or drawing that speaks to us of a different truth. There is a way, and we can find it, even while we endure whatever comprises our current pain or drama; there is a way.

When we can begin to see ourselves, not as a victim, but as the heroine, the hero, of our own story, learning, growing as a soul through each experience, then even being stuck can become the hibernation that leads to transformation.

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