One spring I stared at my empty firewood shed, despairing.
I heat only with a woodstove and man does an empty woodshed make me nervous, even in May.
Even if my other ones are full.
A few weeks later a big tree fell. A red oak, top tier firewood.
And because my woodshed was conveniently empty, I had somewhere to store this literal windfall.
I was able to get it cut, split, and stacked like bars of gold, ensuring about a winter and half’s worth of heat.
In my experience, “emptiness” is not for the faint of heart.
Emptiness usually requires nerves of steel and a profound faith and trust in some sort of future.
Whenever there’s emptiness, it’s tempting to just fill it.
The Priestess archetype reminds us that emptiness can be a meditation, a discipline, and a spiritual state.
It reminds us that we know what to do with “empty”.
When I had that empty woodshed, I didn’t turn into a junky storage shed, knock it down, or make it into a fort (the fort idea was tempting, I admit)
Absolutely not.
I was crystal clear that the woodshed was for one thing only.
“Spoken for”, as they say.
When we have blank space in our calendar and “nothing to do”, when we’re lonely, bored, or stuck at home in a snowstorm, it might be tempting to fill that empty space, just so it’s not-empty.
Filling empty space with empty things like mindless screen time, desperate relationships, or any proverbial “empty calories” just to avoid emptiness leaves us feeling like an absolute abyss.
But if our time is “spoken for”, reserved for specific things the way my woodshed is reserved for firewood, then we’re ready for windfalls.
Vows help us stay ready for windfalls.
Vows are a time-honored tradition at Imbolc, year-long commitments that focus our attention and budget our lifeforce so that the year doesn’t go off the rails.
No matter what.
The Priestess archetype sees a fresh year ahead, all those days rolled out like a big sheet of blank paper, and she knows what to do with it.
By committing her energy, the Priestess archetype takes the year by the reigns, feeds it a sweet apple and a carrot too, and gets ready for the ride.
I’ve written to you about my vows in the past, how they got me through things like big hurricanes, pandemics, heart breaks, and all sorts of setbacks, hardships, and discomfort.
The Priestess reminds us not to abandon ourselves to emptiness, nor to intensity and overwhelm either.
And that is the windfall.
We don’t lose ourselves; we don’t miss out.
Instead of missing a sunset to face the other direction and watch a rerun on TV, we face the sunset, the in-the-moment beauty of our lives.
Even in the parts that aren’t so beautiful.
Because if we can stick around even for those, our capacity for presence expands like crazy, positioning us for all manner of beauty.
Darkwood practices like the Year Ahead oracle spread, vows, and yearlong archetype walks (among other global rituals and traditions) become anchors, threads, touchstones, and mile markers that keep us from frittering away our precious lifeforce.
Our practices, rituals, and vows help us see that life is never “empty”, but rather a container awaiting the perfect contents.
Like a February snow, smooth and even save for the footprints of a fox gliding back to her den, our pages can stay blank until something worthwhile leaves its mark.
love and bare branches,
xo
kv
