The Necessity of Descent

Sometimes the psyche takes us down whether we want to go or not.

I've been thinking about this lately because I've been there - in the dark, in the descent. What kicked it off was a spiritual and deeply meaningful milestone I'd been preparing for over two years, followed immediately by family visiting. The timing was too much. I descended.

These past few weeks have been hard. Depression. Despair. The kind of darkness where you can barely see a way forward.

But here's what I'm coming to understand: we can't transform what we won't witness. We can't heal a prison we refuse to see.

Thomas Moore writes about this in Care of the Soul - how the soul needs its winters, its retreats, its going-down - emulating our dear planet. Not because suffering is good, but because something in us can only be reached in the dark.

It is important at times to reflect on what has us stuck or imprisoned in our lives. Spring can be a good season for this, or any seasonal cusp, or lunar phase. What are we enslaved to? In our minds. In our culture. In our relationships. In the stories we inherited before we could choose them.

I saw mine. A prison built in childhood, from circumstances outside my control. Ancestral patterns. The critical voice that said I wasn't enough.

The shift didn't come all at once. It came through crying, walking in the rain, meditating. Through long conversations with my partner. Through sewing - one patch at a time. Through sitting with companions who could hold the dark with me. And then one day, driving, listening to Prince (I've loved him since I was a child), dancing in my car - I felt a roar rise up in me. Like a tiger tearing out of a cocoon.

The descent isn't separate from the transformation. The descent is the transformation - if we let it be.

This is why I practice astrology the way I do. Not as fortune-telling, but as a map for all of the life-ing - the constant shifting and changing, the architecture of descent and emergence. The timing of winters. The invitation to shed what no longer fits.

You don't have to go down alone. And you don't have to understand the pattern while you're in it. Looking at difficult times through the lens of symbol and archetype can be deeply refreshing - it opens parts of the mind to change and transformation that materialistic psychology has a hard time reaching. It is an invitation to the dream realm.

That's what I'm here for - to sit beside you with the map, while you do the brave work of becoming.