Friday, August 18, 2017





The Eight of Cups
From Science Tarot
Original Writing by Kathryn Ravenwood

During a  recent gathering of our Circle, we went into a meditation on  transformation. I had a very clear vision of myself completely encased in a thick mud cocoon. I was grateful for this vision as I had been feeling totally out of sorts with myself. Tired – no – exhausted.  No desire to “do” anything creative or even beneficial. I felt exactly as that vision showed me – stuck in the mud and wondering why I could not shake it off. 

Part of it is that my house was robbed. That alone is enough to make me want to crawl into a mud cocoon and hide out, but I had been feeling this way for some time before the burglary.  I had a sense of not belonging; of not being able to cope with the intensity of current events, a sense of things happening outside of my scope of reality yet having full effect on me.  I think the upcoming eclipse is part of it. I have a brilliant astrologer friend who told me the “*eclipse pattern for the United States is defensive and ominous..tense and threatening like a growing thunderstorm…due to transits of Saturn to Pluto..”  While I do not want to go into the eclipse any more in this article, (I am not an astrologer) the current planetary line up plays a big part in my cocoon mode.  My personal horoscope has its own ominous aspects, especially on the very day my house was burgled.  Suffice it to say I am feeling the great simmering stew of heavy energies.

It is all about transformation. In order for anything new to emerge something has to change or die to make room for that newness. The eclipse is opening a new cosmic gateway onto a path yet unknown to us. We are all pretty sure things will not be the same, and we hope for better and brighter, but we jut won’t know until we get there. 

The metamorphosis of a moth gives us the perfect image of transformation. The moth lays eggs which hatch into larvae and eat the leaves of the plant they were laid on. Part of the plant dies because of their feeding. If it is strong enough it will survive but damage is inflicted. Then the larvae respond to some ancient urging and begin to spin themselves inside a cocoon. There they sleep, dreaming of velvety wings and silent flights into the night, seeking out the alluring passion of unashamed and exotic flowers and the sweet nectar that lies deep within their soft bodied forms.  It is amazing they ever wake up and leave such wondrous dreams! 

But wake they do through some deep biological and genetic timing. The soft cocoon which has held them in sweet dreamtime becomes hard and too small forcing them to fight their way out of what is now a prison.  Death is the only way to survive. Slowly they emerge, transformed into a totally new creature with wet wings unable yet to fly and antennae tuned in to gather the news of this unknown world.  Innately, they know who they are - their DNA has done its work through the long nights of dreaming, spinning into them all that it takes to be a moth. Yet, they have to wait until their new form can fully transition to living in the exposed world. Vulnerable, they gradually reach that magical moment when, with a slight flutter, they lift their wings and fly off into their new world as the ancient cycle repeats itself.

Like the moth we are all in the process of transformation, going through the various stages of life, suspension, death and emergence. Sometimes these transitions are graceful and easy and other times they are difficult and challenging. It is all part of our life cycle, our soul cycle of continually becoming the greater version of who we are. To be able to recognize the form we currently occupy helps us, like velvety mothy antennae, to process our world and its environs. We need to be able to find the nectar that sustains us; to avoid the predators who would eat us, and to leave something of ourselves behind through our creative passage of this sometimes very crazy world. 

Whatever transformation is upon you, may you emerge in beauty.  Sweet dreams, my friends.

…Kathryn Ravenwood  8-18-17