I had an interesting conversation recently with my father-in-law, a man of science and a former professor, now retired.  He asked me how my writing was coming along with respect to this course. I mentioned that I was struggling somewhat with this month’s theme.  “Why?” he asked. I shared that in previous courses, virtually all participants were based in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, essentially already in sync with the energies of the original Celtic view of the Wheel of the Year. But now, so many sisters had joined us from the Southern Hemisphere, and from the tropical zones. We all experience the year — and the days and the seasons — so very differently: what is blooming and beginning in the Northern Hemisphere is perhaps being harvested in the Southern Hemisphere, etc. What was our commonality?

And then an off-hand remark catapulted me into a huge paradigm shift. He said, “Perhaps you are looking at this only from your own place on the Earth. If you were standing on the Moon or observing the Earth from a space station, you’d see that all those things were happening simultaneously.  You could see Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter as you looked at the Earth from the North Pole to the South Pole. In a single orbit of the Earth’s circumference, you could see sunrise, noon, sunset and midnight.” 

WOW! The Earth is all of those things simultaneously, manifesting in different ways but all manifesting together. Its full potential is always available. And for me this is a metaphor for the Women’s Wheel of Life and how it manifests in our own lives: 

Through the power of the Transformer we have the power to manifest each of the archetypes and their qualities. Their potential — all of their wisdom, strengths  and perspective— is within us at all times.

Potential tells us that all states of being are possible. An acorn has the potential of an oak. A child has the potential of being a healer, an artist, a warrior . . .  and of being a parent, grandparent, and ancestor to future generations. You have the potential of being all the archetypes in the Women’s Wheel of Life: Daughter, Amazon, Matriarch, Priestess, Crone, etc. These are already within you.

Potential can be defined as:

• an adjective:  having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future 
• a noun:  latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness

Wherever you are on our blessed Mama Earth, at this time of Bealtainne and Samhain seasons (and any other time of the year!), you have all those energies within you: the light of Bealtainne, the dark of Samhain, and everything in between.  

The Celts recognized these liminal times in a very special way, as a Time of No Time. A time to pause. To reflect. To look back at what has been and to look forward to what will be. 

They are also magical times, when the veils  between all the worlds in the Celtic cosmology were thin allowing those in each of the worlds to move and connect with those in other worlds. 

Although the energetics of Bealtainne and Samhain can seem quite different — some would consider them opposites —their energies are connected by their liminality and their complementary energies. Both represent significant beginnings and endings, each a shift in the balance of our internal duality: Yin and Yang, Day and Night, Light and Dark, Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine, composition and de-composition. . .  each a complementary reflection of the other, and the potential of other states, such as those we experience at the Equinoxes, a time of balance.

So, wherever you are in the world, a new chapter is beginning. We stand between two fires, that of the inner core of Mama Earth and that of Father Sun blazing above.  As you tap into their transformative energies at this liminal time, ask your Self:

What potential is within me? 

What new thoughts and actions now seem possible?

What energies are shifting within me, moving from potential to possibility to manifestation?

In this lunar month, I ask that you not only embrace your potential . . . but that you believe in it too!