A note, to those of you unfamiliar with the ‘Solar-Lunar’ year.  This calendar divides the year into eight seasons rather than four.  Following the eight phases of the Moon (New–Crescent–First Quarter—Gibbous—Full—Disseminating—Last Quarter—Balsamic), each 6.5 week season carries the signature meaning of its moon phase association.  There’s an illustration below this post.

Of all the Crossroads we might encounter, perhaps the most unfathomable is the one that lies at the threshold of the Balsamic season.  The Balsamic is the final season of the Solar-Lunar calendar.  It begins (in the Northern hemisphere) around November 7th at the ‘Cross-Quarter’ day of Samhain, and it concludes with Winter Solstice, when the new year is born.  At this Crossroad, we may witness the borderless nature of Life and Death.  These natural forces merge here, now, every year, under the Scorpio Sun.  Some feel enlivened by this profound experience, some deeply unsettled. But every one of us will one day step into this Crossroad for the final time.  We might as well become familiar with its essence.  Which is, ultimately, Love.

Love is the connective force of all eight seasons in our annual Solar-Lunar calendar—every day and hour.  Love is the matrix that connects all beings in every mode of expression.   As our lives scroll through the monthly moons, through the solar-lunar seasons and through the many other cycles that inscribe our lives, we eventually come to terms with the Unseen power of Balsamic Love.

The Unseen, but felt sense of Balsamic Love… It fills us with the amber scent of November’s Balsam fir trees.  Walking among them, our breath’s stolen by the silhouette of a dark forest backlit by its first delicate snowfall.  Sweet earthy resin and a piney tang distill the air–the balm of deep, silent woods.  Soft duff of evergreen needles and decomposing soil greet our footfalls.  Voices hush to honor the transforming of life/death into Rebirth.

In the Balsam forest, we’re accompanied by spirits of the past, the ghosts of our memories, the long shade of our ancestors.  Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, All Hallows Eve, Pitru Paksha, Hungry Ghost Festival … a thousand generations have set times of the year to bless the ones who walked before us.  They are the faces of Balsamic Love.

In this season, we hear echoes of the Descent of the Goddess and the Hero’s Journey—Sacred acts of Conscious Surrender.  Beyond reckoning, these mythic heroines have kindled the songs of our wisdom-keepers and storytellers.  These are the tales told ‘round the fire during the longest nights.  Inanna, Eurydice, Persephone, Sedna, others who are familiar to you—theirs are the ancient stories of Balsamic Love.  Our personal tales of loss, grief, and dark nights of the soul mark our own Underworld Descent.  It is time now to make a fierce offering to the Vault of the Dead.

Let go your stories           Give up your ownership           Yield

Give way until your heart is as light as Ma’at’s White Ostrich feather.  Until you float down through darkness like the last wisp of waning moon, with only gratitude for the Emptiness.

Does that sound a bit crazy to you?  Because this is our consumer culture’s peak noise-making season!  It’s all outer-focused on parties, festivals and holiday travels—a frenzied engagement with bright-lit energy.  We’re most certainly not about the old traditions of drawing the curtains, extinguishing candles, draping the mirrors and rending our clothes.

So in our own attuned, ‘modern’ lives, how do we account for ourselves during this powerful, edgy time?  What is left for us to do as daylight ebbs away toward the Winter Solstice?  The seasons of growth, harvest, community-building and sharing, these have all passed.   Now the black glass portal of Samhain stands before us.  If we choose to end the year by stepping over this threshold, we enter the rich silence of the Soul’s domain.  There we may retrieve the gift of true inner Solitude, the calming of our daily travail, an exquisite Balm of rare oils and resins.

These gifts are all embedded in the long, slow, out-breath of Surrender.  Try it, just now.  Our body yearns for Mystery.  She yearns to become the ground perfectly composted for receiving next year’s seeds.  Here’s a little Practice for our transition time.

Samhain Ceremony:   Anoint your Brow, Heart, and Belly as you release the long Out-Breath of  Surrender twice each day—when you wake and when you turn out your light at night.  Hold fast to this practice, morning & evening  for 21 days, from the November 30 New Moon through December 20.    The true seeds of your New Year will present themselves to you during those weeks (take notes!) and by the Winter Solstice you’ll be well-prepared to plant them, deep in your heart.

This is the work of Balsamic Love, to release the journey we’ve been about. To clear our way with the Balm of Unknowing.  And oh don’t we need this purifying release now, more than ever.

At the still point of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered.

Neither movement from not towards, Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance,

and there is only the dance.  I can only say, there we have been:

but I cannot say where.  And I cannot say, how long,

for that is to place it in time.

The Still Point     T.S. Eliot