Circling in the Season of Light

Summer has come to our homeland in Virginia, and in this green empire there is so much yearning for connection.

During our event last Saturday, we welcomed more than 20 people into the room to practice with us. And the phrase I played with all night was: an embarrassment of riches.

With so many people and so much thrumming energy, there seemed so many potential strands at any time. This opened up to spaces where the focus crackled across the field. This would slow down for deep processing only occasionally. You could sense that the circle wanted activity and light and play.

Or was that me?

Getting a Hold of the Circle

It can be a tricky game, claiming an understanding of the circle qua circle. All too often, we are naming our own desires, our own complaints, our own perspectives. This is a good yoga, in general. If you suspect a circle is wanting to play (and everyone is being much too polite to simply open up to the truth of the moment), ask yourself what you want.

Chances are, you are the one who wants to play, just as you are the one being “too polite” to simply let yourself do it. It’s a simple projection discovery game, one that almost always grants us a good return to ourselves.

But still. We can make claims, can’t we?

Yes, of course. And who’s business is it if we throw in a little projection?

Luckily, though, there are a lot of ways to make meaning out of the experiences of a circle. Many of us are familiar with some kind of debrief style where multiple perspectives can be brought together. This democratic approach feels reliable, trustworthy, and “sensible.”

But there are other ways, ways that rarely get fair mention in circling and authentic relating spaces.

I am talking about those arcane arts of tarot and astrology.

Our Other Tools

So magical are the relational arts that it seems like the stars and other omens are the best methods we have at getting good information. This conforms to something the great Richard Tarnas discovered while researching psychedelics in the mid-20th century. He found that the single best way to predict if someone was going to have a “good” trip or a “bad” trip was astrology.

And circling, for my money, works quite the same way.

That leads us to the question of how can we do a simple analysis of a circle through our more esoteric paths? Let’s give it a shot.

In the language of Western occultism, the energy of our last circle could be summarized as “water, water everywhere.”

The Tarot gives us a beautiful image to contemplate here. But first, let me tell you how you can easily match a Tarot card to a date. Each of the minor cards (except the aces and courts) is assigned a decan of the Zodiac. A decan is a 10-degree slice of the Zodiacal pizza, with each sign being composed of three decans.

Appropriately, during our last circle, the Sun was in the second decan of Cancer (a water sign, of course). And the card for that particular decan? The 3 of Cups: Lord of Abundance.

Now that looks like how the night felt!

Water is the fluid element that always instinctively reaches for the depths, always rushes downward. It is water we need to live and thrive, and it is in water that we drown. Water is the main ingredient of our blood and semen. It is what the womb fills with to hold the precious child.

Water describes many parts of circling on any night of the year. It’s why we use lots of watery language to describe how people move in a circle, with words causing ripples and emotions splashing around or coming in like a tidal wave. Often, the field of the circle has a watery quality—as if suspending us in a hot tub. This fluid quality can also be frustrating. You cannot grasp it. You cannot have it. It envelopes you, but you can never keep the droplets you want.

This resonates so strongly with the night and its energy, but it also speaks to a persistent truth about circling and, oh yes, all of life.

Sometimes, when we want to dive in, we are cast about at the surface. Other times, when we are wanting to surf, we are pulled down into the depths. This is why surrender is such a key skill of any circling practice. It’s a long education in letting go and being with wherever the water takes you.

In other words, Welcome Everything. Rather than holding firm to our ideas of how a night of circling should unfold, witness the way things are unfolding right now. It is there, in all those waves and eddies and gentle lapping that things happen, really happen.

Come join us at our next event. The water’s lovely! Here is a link to the MeetUp. And here are the details:

Our Latest Episode: Learn How to Believe in God

On the podcast, we’ve been taking this journey through religious territory. In our latest episode, we teach you a simple method to begin the long walk back to believing that “God is alive, magic is afoot” (to quote a certain Leonard Cohen).

If you struggle to believe that these things really could be so, it’s worth a listen.