Cycles

13 February 2021

My grandpa’s funeral was on Thursday, on the Aquarius new moon. In Lockdown Britain, we were lucky enough to have 18 family members join the ceremony in person, with those geographically distant joining the online webcast. It was a brief moment but a beautiful ritual nonetheless. Over the past few weeks I’ve helped my mum select photographs and finalise the eulogy depicting GP's 89 and 3/4 years on Planet Earth. It was a fitting tribute for one who gave much to his family and to his chosen community, even though he was, as the eulogy stated so succinctly, something of a curmudgeon.

12 years ago my grandma died. I’m feeling her these days. She was losing her battle with pancreatic cancer, but something in her held on to this life until she got to embrace her great-grandchildren - the twins - who came over from New York to meet her when they were just a few months old. Fast forward 12 years - I’m expecting the next new addition to our family and we find out GP has myeloma to accompany his other various life-limiting conditions. I had a hunch I knew what was coming. Because, cycles. Surreal in its obviousness.

When Eden joined us earthside and my 4th trimester began (the 12 week period immediately after giving birth), we were in a transitory phase of the Highden Earth Mandala temple training. Then with temple training over, and the first 40 days of Eden’s life in our birth nest in Wales coming to a close, I knew visiting my grandpa in Sussex had to be on the horizon. In December and January we formed a support bubble which meant Eden and his great-grandpa got to hang out for a wee while. This felt important. Their first & last 3 months. 4 generations and 9 decades connecting them in the physical.

Cycles. GP's passing was one lunar month before the funeral - the day after the Capricorn new moon, and the day after the end of my 4th trimester. These past weeks our household has felt somewhat depressed - loss of a loved one, January blues, winter colds, lockdown oppression. This week the Highden Dark Community experiment began, and on Wednesday my dark group of 5 (or 6 including Eden!) sat together-apart for some moments with the dark. I asked the dark to resource me, my family, our household. For any ongoing stagnation or heaviness to leave our vessels. Since this dark ritual and the funeral I am already feeling a layer has been shed and things are flowing again.

It’s my way to find the spiritual in the material. To get to the heart of matter. Seeing, constantly, that we are nature. Spirals. Initiation. Birth, death and rebirth. Reflections of the macrocosm in the microcosm. As within, so without.

With love and gratitude. Fare-thee-well, old friend. Welcome to the new age.



Doreen and Tony, aged 20 - London, 1951 (when street photographers provided the selfies of the era)