The Portal : Day 6

Daily reveals in epiphanic days: offering, opening, reception

We are half way through the epiphanic days.

If you remember a few days ago I said I like to visualize these 12 days as a 3 part movement/action/initiation. And if that is the case — we have crossed over the threshold and are now in the cave, the middle part of initiation.

What happens in the cave? Well it’s a process of listening even more fully, but this time with the whole body, with all the sense, and not just allowing the brain to process what comes through but to trust that the body will receive and imprint. The kind of stuff that comes through these days is embodied wisdom to ‘own’ and pass on. It’s not just information ‘to know’ — it’s subtle energy to become. And if our bodies receive it — we are all good to go. But that takes a lot of softening.

It also takes offering. Like what you know about yourself and how you have been walking/living up until this moment. And how you can name it and offer it up as nourishment to the cave. We offer to give but also to get clear.

So many moments from my time doing threshold “work” and ritual in Sicily comes back to me in tiny slices of time like this morning. When I am there doing the work with my teacher, I am not sure exactly what is happening, or if I am retaining the true teachings of the Ninfe (who were healing deities of the island) as I learn their rhythms and ways of being and spend time at the places they did their magic (thresholds of caves and water sources). But here I am and somehow I can feel those teaching integrate within me as I show up here. I cannot force them to come out, but I can play with them, feel into them, and consider how to bring them here, now. I think about the Old One in Palermo who I wrote about back on day 3 — the ninfe /oracle elder— and how she comes out of the cave during these times — the legend says to “judge” the people — which is very Santa-like and also sky*god-like — but I think she wasn’t judging, I think she was grieving with them all, and luring them to go into their caves to do their own healing work. And essentially, what is a cave? A womb. And what is initiatory work? A pathways you enter in, and also then enter back out. What can we know more about it?

I chose three cards this morning because my brain had nothing — I was blank and I kept quiet and looked out the window and the river, ice melted today, water flowing. But the visual of us walking over the threshold of the cave, and siting down in the middle of it, and getting really comfortable — came to me.

I asked the cards these three inquiries:

What can we offer?

What can we receive?

How can we soften to receive it?