Happy Year of the Witch Lunar New Year: Welcome Water Snake!

I'm pleased to join the bandwagon of creative cultural workers who are lauding 2013 as the Year of the Witch. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the lunar new year with the dark new moon in Aquarius. I can't imagine a better way to celebrate that eccentric, world shifting sign that by acknowledging the deeply transformative power of the craft. According to some eastern astrologies, this brings us into the year of the black water snake. I sit here now with my wise healing companion and snake friend, Plutoes. She's going for the places that she finds warmth. She's also not afraid of the dark, in fact, it's where she feels safest (a big part of what makes moonlight ritual so potent). She goes for places that are soft and inviting. She knows that when it comes time to shed the outgrown ways of being, it's a time of retreat. Growing too big for your old skin takes effort and shedding that skin takes safety and trust. She only sheds at home (sometimes waiting weeks for my return from the road) and finally just slithering out as soon as we arrive back in our sanctuary. Before we shed, our coloring muddles, but when we shed, we're at our most colorful and sparkle with vibrancy of new, big life. Spending years with a snake has also taught me how good it can feel to sit and do nothing. I often notice her pausing at the spots where I have pain, helping that pain to pass with breath and intention like the healing animal ally she is. Tomorrow, take some time to focus on what you want to slither into over the next year and next 28 days. What feels soft? warm? welcoming? safe? As this mercury retrograde in Pisces approaches (2/23-3/16ish), let yourself carve out some time for respite and retreat, reflection and rendezvous with spirit. Let yourself linger in what you've outgrown if that's what's called for and trust that you'll be letting go at just the right time. Grieve if you need to. The oceanic Pisces unfolding encourages you to ride the waves of feeling, perhaps on the sparkling skin of a recently shed water snake. Happy New Year! 

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So for 2013, I wish you more witching.  More opportunities to claim your power, to slough off old skin, to ritualize your life.  May your year have you feeling more attuned to the rhythms of nature, more connected to one another, and more plugged into planet and purpose.  The apocalypse has happened, my friends, and it’s still happening.   Our task at hand is to bring about the end of the old world, but then to create something vital and shining and new.  Instead of four horses, we’re riding in on brooms.

-Pam Grossman, http://www.phantasmaphile.com/2013/02/year-of-the-witch-explained.html

Another year of the witch link celebrating deep music in a way that sounds like the parade of planets through Pisces: http://www.disinfo.com/2013/01/2013-year-of-the-witch-midday-veil-edition/