My Fall Transformation: Metaphysics and Motivation in a Flower Bed

My Fall Transformation

Written by Teramis on 09 November 2011

I’m a Cancer, born July 18th. The counter-point to my ‘vibe’ falls in Capricorn, mainly around January 18: a half-year span away from my birthday.¹ That time has always seemed to hold for me a fulcrum of unique events and transformative energy, for my annual cycle goes like this:

In the fall I begin to become…brilliant. I have bright ideas. Not flashes in the pan, but things I will sit on and think about and which frequently change my life in the coming months. I gestate (that’s absolutely the word) for months, and often something radically new emerges at the end of this process.

Come spring (March!) things start to burgeon, and whatever I have been hatching during the winter comes roaring forth. As life and seasons morph into summer during the course of May and June, I settle into a groove and continue on with work and patterns that reflect the decisions, commitments and energy laid down during the winter cycle just past.

See the symmetry in this? From November through January, something important or evolutionary is gestating beneath the surface, and from February through April (coincident with my rising sign in Aires), it sprouts and comes roaring forth. It is the energy from this dormant-through-blossoming cycle that sees me through all the rest of the year. July, my natal month, is nearly always a completely workhorse period, where I’m nose-to-grindstone working on All That Stuff that gathered heft during the winter.

No surprise that this coincides with my astrological “underside”, the subterranean aspects that touch on career and karma-infused Life Directions. During this time I am Inanna, on a journey to visit Ereshkigal, and when I resurface in the spring I am someone new. I am really aware of when this cycle starts. I feel the run-up to it in October, when fall begins and begins to become evident. I really love Halloween and Dia de los Muertos because those holidays mark not just a time when the veil is thin, but also signify a sea change in the energy that will see me through my Earth-energy-infused dark winter cycle of my astrological (and calendar) year.²

It is not surprising that some of my very best friends are Capricorns. We ‘get’ each other. I don’t live where they do, nor they where I do, but still. Grokking occurs, both comfortable and sometimes intense.

Tonight I was contemplating this picture I took in the garden a few days ago (the photo above). Our trees are surrendering the last of their leaves, the last of the summer flowers are shriveling in the increasingly cold nights. And yet I saw this vignette in the flower beds, and it spoke to me as a harbinger of Fall, of this wonderful Autumn when I start to become both more subterranean and more furiously creative. I am beginning to percolate. I have new projects brewing that will spring upon the world in the Spring. But for now, I’m getting ready for something that looks like Winter hibernation. But it is not.

In an odd way, it is my most fertile time of the year. On the surface, outside of business and work obligations, I am desultory. I will play video games and get totally square-eyed; I will stay up too late and sleep too much (hibernation!), and wallow in simple physical pleasures. My showers are too long; I use all the hot water. I cook, and eat, and sleep, and dream (amazing dreams). But now, for the first time in ages, I am so much more clear on my relationship with Self and Muse and Creativity. I am really anticipating my Winter phase this time around because it is not merely a fallow time, but a time when I may spring ahead by quantum leaps.

Can’t wait to see what this next phase will bring.

And all this, this remembering, and this harbinger of things to come, from a photo in our flower beds….

I am blessed.

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1. If you’re not astrologically inclined, or think things metaphysical are silly, superstitious or just plain wacko, well, ok. We’re not on the same wavelength in that regard, then. My relationship to astrology (and a slew of other esoterica) are predicated not on ‘belief’ but on certain real-world experiences I’ve had in the body, in the here/now. That stuff is so way not relevant to this blog, I’m not going to get into it here. Let it suffice to say I deal with these things not from a basis of “belief” (leap of faith; trusting in X without evidence, etc), but from some experiences that are relatively empirical in nature. At some future point I’ll probably get into this or point you to a whole ‘nother blog that deals with such things. For now, though, let’s just take it as a given that this kind of awareness and worldview is part of my reality.

2. And as to these “day of the dead” holidays, awareness of this energy is a persistent thing with me. I’ve even written about it in my fiction. You can download a recent story in this vein here: Li-Wan’s Revenge, an illustrated “Halloween” story that takes place in one of my fictional settings. The point, of course, is that even this alien culture recognizes this time near the equinox when the veil between worlds is thin.