First light

The start of something.

Edited to add my reading of this post:

I named my Substack The House of First Light referencing an imagined place. The work I’m creating now is a weaving of three strands - a plait - of this world, the Otherworld I visit in my journeying practice, and an other world that’s a place I see in my imagination; a place where my fiction writing is based. The House of First Light is in that other world.

Recently I’ve been waking in the dark and going outside with my cat, Artemis, who gets to have a supervised roam around our secure back garden, while I drink my coffee and wake up. I realised that for this season, this house is also a House of First Light. Where I sit and listen to the jackdaws and crows in the woodland across the lane, and wait for them to fly over me in their hundreds once it’s light enough. Where I sit in the dark with Jupiter right above my head, disappearing as the sun rises. Where the air is fresh and I remember to breathe deeply.

I’m fascinated by imagined things made real. Everything we ever do starts with the thought, the idea, the vision. If we let our imaginations create beauty, maybe we can bring it into this world. Into reality. This isn’t a new concept obviously, it’s as old as time, but I’m interested in building that bridge between dream and experience. So, noticing that right now I actually live in a house of first light, without even trying...feels like a gift. Feels like,’We’ll give you this one for free, to get you started.’

I’m reading Sam MacLaren’s The Medicine of the Four Directions. I’ve followed Sam on Instagram (@pretaniwisdomtraditions) for a while and value her insight and knowledge on the animism practiced in these isles, long ago in the wayback. She describes how the four directions played a part in our early traditions, in a different way to those seen more frequently in other indigenous relationships with the world.

According to MacLaren and her study of 14th Century Irish texts, which echo far older traditions, we connected the directions (somewhat simplified) in the following ways:

West: Learning, foundation, teaching, wise counsel, histories, judgement and eloquence.

North: Battle, strife, pride, rough places, hardship, assaults, boldness, wars and conflict.

East: Prosperity, hospitality, house-holding, good customs, wealth, beehives, treasures, silks, accoutrements.

South: Music and musicianship, fertility, poetic art, wisdom, fierceness, games, and fairs.

Centre: Sovereignty, dignity, primacy, stewardship, stability and renown.

As I sit on a stool in a dark garden at dawn, surrounded by trees and waking wildlife, and the song of a stream, and planets, I take deep expanding breaths that feel liberatory after a night of shallow breathing (and probably snoring). The air is damp and green, full of life and generous with it. Four slow counts in, four slow counts held. Four slow counts out, four slow counts held.

What if I weave the directions into this? Informed by my ancestors, embodied by me. Here, today, two feet on the ground.

Inhale from the West… wisdom and stories. Hold them; remember them. Exhale.

Inhale from the North… warrior energy and discomfort. Hold them; value them. Exhale.

Inhale from the East… home, pleasure and abundance. Hold them; feel them. Exhale.

Inhale from the South… creativity, joy and Life. Hold them; delight in them. Exhale.

Centre four breath cycles - in, hold, out, hold… wholeness, groundedness, and personal authority. Know them.

As I completed this earlier this morning, two crows - one to my left, one to my right, high up in trees - traded ‘caws’ back and forth five times over me. Three from the South, two from the West. I’ll be watching for those messages in the future.

I’m not one for dwelling in the past, or attempting to recreate it - I don’t believe we can or even need to. But we can take old wisdom and weave it back into the lives we have today. I believe that doing so can stop us becoming untethered from the Earth; a state that would be entirely unnatural for an ensouled animal made of dirt and water; air, light and fire.

I hope that - as I explore and play with what it means to be ‘of the Earth’ in the 21st Century, from a personal, lived and imagined perspective - you’ll choose to come along. This feels like it should be a group effort which, for this deeply introverted woman, is an adventure in itself.