Kerridwen and the Love in the Darkness

This is my second year working really closely with the Avalonian Tradition, and the wheel is back around to Samhain and the Goddess Kerridwen again.

Last year Kerridwen taught me about Hopelessness and Dark Nights of the Soul. As in, I had a lot of them. Terrors about how I was going to survive financially, about how I wasn’t good enough, about how there was no point trying because I’d never get there.

And she taught me the power of prayer. She showed me that when you pray, miraculously, she listens, and stuff freaking happens. She helps you. You just have to open up and let her. She told me that she believed in me, and I felt the truth of it, and she gave me a real hard smack up the bum to tell me to get to work and get myself out of my mess.

And I did. This year, I am such a different person.

We are back around to Samhain again, and this year, the Crone is quiter, and I am busier. Swept away on a million and one things to do for my self employed business, feeling disconnected from Goddess and not having any time. Not really been feeling the priestessy vibe, if I am being honest.

This year Kerridwen is teaching me about the healing power of the dark.

In the black cave of the Goddess temple in Glastonbury, I snuggled down to meditate to meet the Crone. I walked the skeleton woodlands and moved through the great drifts of leaves in my imagination to meet the Crone Kerridwen at her cauldron, hundreds of crows in the trees above watching. She gave me a black cloak. And she said:

Rest.

There is nothing you need to do at this moment.

Rest here in the darkness.

I lay snuggled up in the darkness of the temple, under a blanket (which one of the temple Melissa’s (peeps who look after the temple) had kindly tucked me into as I’d started my meditation) and lay there, resting. Letting my mind wander, knowing that whatever it was thinking about was fine. Feeling the love and care of the Dark Goddess about me as I had half an hour where there was nothing else I was supposed to be doing, no work, no painting, no emails, just sitting in the temple doing nothing in the dark.

And I don’t like using the word Healing as it’s so vague and seems to apply to everything and is so hippy-new-age-spacey it makes me vom up a little. But it was like being shown the healing power of the dark, snuggling up into the night knowing you are safe and loved and that there is nothing else to do right now except be there.

The loving side of the darkness.