In this season of spring, although the earth is greening with the sun offering growing light and heat, it is the elements of air and water that have my full attention. We have had more than showers of rain, or spring breezes this year. The transitions between the seasons always have reminders for us, messages, if we pay attention. This year, such days of wind, I seldom can recall. One can not talk about the element of air, without speaking first of breath. Transitions between birth to life, and life to death depend on that first and last breath. It is breath that sustains us. We breathe. Our cells breathe. Breath is life.
When we go to the wheel of the year, we begin in the East. It is air that resides there, aligning with the energies of spring, sunrise, new life, the winged ones, awakening sound, clarity of mind. It is birdsong on an early morning. It is the air moving in our throat when we sing or speak. It blows across the mountains, and oceans, carves patterns in desert sands, rustles the old dry weeds and grasses left standing after the winter. Air brings freshness. Air brings life.
Connected to our thoughts, ideas, and learning, air is an educator. Related to our intellect, swords in tarot, or the athame in the Practice, air w/ its associated tools, supports us cutting through confusion, bringing the world into focus, and supports our discernment for truth. 2020, coming into spring, has had much on the wind. Covid- 19 has us looking closely at our personal breath, our community’s health, and the world’s viability and values. I’ve heard so many say “they were holding their breath” in the last 3 months. We have been required to literally “see” the preciousness of breath, ours and the earth’s. I can not help but know in heart and mind, it is the correlation with the degradation of our air and water on the planet (with other complex environmental factors/climate change) that has brought us to the point we are now with the global coronavirus pandemic. After decades of burying our heads into “not looking.”
If we are to use the gifts of the elements to empower us in this crisis, air tells us to begin again and to make a new start, one that shows us how to breathe with intention, in a grounded in the earth, into a place of coming back into balance. By using the gifts of our clear knowledge, we break down the old rickety structures and systems that have not served us very well for so long. There is a quote that comes to me that says something like, “Who knows where the wind blows?” The wind is blowing everywhere, and it wants to clear the way for a re-claiming of wisdom that sadly self serving humans lost along the way during our short tenure here. Re-claim, not by going backward, but forward, with power based in honorable co-creation with all living beings. Air offers insight. Air blesses us with every breath. Let us return the blessing.