The Magic in New Beginnings

" I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” ―J.B. Priestley

New Beginnings Abound

This week is the beginning of a new month, a new year and a new lunar cycle. A trifecta of newness!

"The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all." -Josiyah Martin

As the new moon cycle begins, I feel ready to put my full energy into paying close attention. How will the lunar cycle affect my creativity? Each year there are 366 dawns and dusks and 13 moon cycles. The lunar cycles today are very similar to ones that ancient civilizations viewed in the sky; how powerful it is to recognize we are connected to all of the cultures who have come before us.

As I pay more attention each day to being present, I'm equally aware of my connection to my ancestral lineage. Part of my 13 Moons practice will be to strengthen my appreciation and stewardship to all the living, sentient and other-than human beings I share this world with; we are all interconnected.

Winter Solstice Celebration

As I considered how to celebrate the Winter Solstice, I thought about what it meant to pre-industrial civilizations who faced the cold and dark of winter and the very real prospects of starvation, illness or death. For several days around the longest night, communities banded together to feast and share food and drink. Often they stayed awake all through the Solstice night, keeping the fires lit to ward off evil and gathering to tell stories against the darkness, a time when fears were strongest and the fires and the presence of others offered comfort.

I decided to take bits and pieces from what I had read about Winter Solstice practices, to take time to honor my ancestors, the land and beings I share it with and to celebrate the shift from the longest night to the promise of the light returning.

Among other things, I brought in live evergreen boughs, which symbolize eternal life, since evergreens never turn brown or lose their foliage. We decorated a live tree. We kept the bird feeders filled with seeds and I strung garlands of cranberries, apple and orange chunks in the spruces for them. I filled the kitchen with fragrant spices as I baked gingerbread to honor my German heritage. We gathered together as a family and feasted, laughed and forged stronger bonds.

As Winter Solstice neared, a new friend sent me a link to the live stream Winter Solstice ceremony that is held at Newgrange in Ireland. Newgrange is a massive passage-grave about 26 miles outside of Dublin, Ireland. It was built as a burial crypt about 3,200 BC, which makes it at least 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.

I woke up around 3:30 AM and started watching the event unfold online, listening to the narrators talk about the site's history while waiting for the sun to rise. Shortly before the sunrise was anticipated, a group of people selected by a lottery were quietly led through the narrow corridor to the chambers that once held the cremated remains of important people (possibly the tribe’s leaders), who lived in those lands.

The opening to the burial site directly aligns with the Winter Solstice sunrise and at that particular time sends a ray of sunlight through an opening above the doorway. The light, over a period about 17 minutes, reaches down the long, narrow corridor into the burial chambers. It was a masterpiece of construction accomplished by a stone-age civilization, using only stones and stone age tools to build with.

I loved the experience of projecting myself into another time, another part of the world and a place where artifacts of ancient civilizations still coexist with the new.

I finally went back to bed around 5 AM. When I woke, I felt a deeper connection to the ancestors.

Year End Ceremony of Honoring, Releasing and Beckoning

I attended a powerful session led by poet Holly Wren Spaulding and ceremonialist Georgia Wall where we wrote about what we wished to release at the year's ending, to honor what we might imagine into being, and desire to beckon into our lives and creative practices in the New Year. The writing exercises and quiet contemplation filled me with gratitude as I recognized how much has shifted in my life and art practice this past year, and I now look forward to 2025 without fear or hesitation.

Here are a few of the questions we wrote about:

What will you honor as the year end? What have you imagined into being?

What will you release as the year ends? What no longer has a place in your life?

What would you like to beckon as you approach another year? What do you yearn for?

The Prospect of a New Day, A Fresh Try, One More Start

Here is a link to a lovely story and poem on YouTube as you enter 2025. May it be a year filled with kindness and compassion for all beings.

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper and Carson Ellis

https://youtu.be/xGlIDHAebNE?si=MWvkbjFIRtiBEa-d

To Know the Dark: New Drawing Exploration

The Night of the December 15th Full Moon Was Magical

I woke up at 3:30 AM and then again at 5:30 AM and got some interesting photos of the moon surrounded by clouds as I stood outside in 24 degrees and total stillness. Peaceful and other-worldly to experience. I loved how the moonlight refracted into so many colors as the light passed through the clouds.

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

 and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings

by Wendell Berry

Settling In to a New Practice Takes Time

Once December was underway, I began to feel unsettled. The days grew shorter and colder and darker. There are only 14-15 days between the new and full moons and I wondered if I had made a mistake to write posts at each junction when I didn't know how this adventure would turn out. I had to remind myself this process is based on exploring, not producing. I am heading into this unknown in the darkest months of the year, the most challenging time for me personally and I am, as Berry writes, going without sight. I don't know where this will lead and while I love the not knowing, I can't help but be aware some readers may not.

Eventually I reassured myself that new ideas take time to unfold. I am committed to listening to my intuition and wisdom and trust that everything is moving along just as it should. I felt like I was gathering lots of wonderful information, but questioned how I could connect it all into some sort of cohesive form. I did a lot of research when the month started into lunar cycles (I soon discovered how little I know about the moon!) and every bit of information I discovered seemed to lead to more. The learning curve is exciting, but I was eager to begin trying out my new ideas.

Happily, between the new and full moon this month, I started settling into my intention to connect my art practice with my love of the natural world. I have continued to take photographs in the early morning or late at night when possible to capture some of the beauty of the moon, the landscape and to provide me with reference photos to translate into drawings.

Taking that First Leap of Faith

I took a deep breath, having never worked from reference photos before, and started.

I chose this photo of the hedgerow beyond the back field after a recent snow, and began to draw some samples from the reference image, above. I picked this image because it was easy to see the shapes and values. I knew staying simple was important to what I hope to create, inspired by the region where I live.

I began with a simple line drawing at the upper left of the top row and then started abstracting the reference photo more with each successive one. That's when it started to get really fun, when I stopped trying to make it look real.

While I kept trying variations, I had to continue to remind myself to relax, loosen up, enjoy, play - all those things we tell ourselves to do when we realize we are tense and barely breathing. But over the three or four days I worked on these, I started to see I could keep playing and improvising more and more. The reference photo was just an entry point! I played with: value, shape, warm and cool, intensity, edges, texture and line. I'm quite pleased with these even though at the same time I feel I am just scratching the surface of what it will be possible to imagine and create.

One of the next ideas that popped into my head is how I might do a daily warm up that could be a chronicle of each day of each lunar cycle, so next I divided a large piece of paper into 2" squares with some irregular ones along a few edges and started to fill each square with a simplified suggestion of a landscape. These too had tape around them, although some we media seeped under the tape - but hey, I liked that effect as well!

Again, I noticed when I felt relaxed and when I started tensing up. Doing samples worked best when I was fresh and felt receptive and just followed my instincts. I even began to add more color and that was definitely fun, working with water-based colored crayons, ArtGraf, graphite and sumi ink. There's thin washi tape between the squares that I'll remove when the whole piece is done and those will become white borders. If I want to, I can go back in and change anything I don't like before I take off the tape.

As I moved from being very organized and linear at the top of the piece to just responding and working in squares that spoke to me, I also shifted to ideas of rock and cliff formations using more color. That was definitely enjoyable as well. The marks on the background are Art Graf on wet paper and I find it easier to work in the squares that already have some marks in them - another type of entry point.

The piece in the middle was an unfinished 5 x 7 from my Full Circle Around the Sun appreciation project that I had the best time revisiting today. I suggested rocks and cliffs with a moon overhead and a petroglyph drawn in the rock shapes at the bottom.

It is more than reassuring to have fulfilled my intention for this Full Moon to actually start getting ideas on paper. I have a nice structure starting to develop so I can step into my studio each morning, grab a reference photo (or just use my imagination) and do a warm up. We'll see where that takes me between now and when the next New Moon arrives on December 30th. I definitely want to eventually make the pieces larger.

In the interim, while working on these I will also be: planning a Winter Solstice celebration for December 21st, celebrating Christmas Eve lunch with our children and grandchildren, learning more about Yule celebrations in Central and Eastern Europe, (where my German and Russian ancestors lived), writing a year end review of all the gifts this year has brought and seeding intentions for what I hope to see grow in the New Year!

Metta Prayer

May I be peaceful. May all beings be peaceful.

May I be happy. May all beings be happy.

May I be safe. May all beings be safe.

May I awaken to the light of my true nature.

May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.

May I be free from suffering. May all beings be free from suffering.

I say this prayer daily to support and uphold all the goodness we are capable of creating in this world, if we just choose each day to express loving kindness to all beings.

Peace to all,

Jeanne

I

Light the Hearth Fires: The Cold Moon is Here

One of the ways I connect with nature during the winter months is to take photos. This past month I also woke up at night and took photos of the moon as well as this sunrise.

The Cold Moon is the moon of the Winter Solstice, which will happen this year on Saturday, December 21st, the longest night of the year. The winter solstice moon takes the highest path in the sky and is above the horizon longer than any other moon. This is known to be a time for reflecting with gratitude for the past year, to sit in silence and stillness and let go of anything that no longer serves you.

When the cold moon arrived, my ancestors in Germany and Eastern Europe must have been in final preparations for the long winter ahead. I know so little of my ancestors, but learning more is woven into this 13 moons cycle project as well, delving into the old knowing of both my European ancestors and the first peoples of this nation.

Previous Lunar Cycle Reflections

The first of the 13 moon cycles, November 1 - 30, I focused on research and gathering. I suspect all 13 lunar cycles will, to some extent, since I have a broad range of interests and love to learn. I did several mind maps and decided to focus on abstract depictions of rock formations and moon sightings using drawing, painting and collage. I love keeping a log book, so much happens each day, so many insights and observations and resources that it helps when I remember to write them down in the log. I wholeheartedly recommend one for any project or studio practice.

My daily log shows some different stages of mind-mapping as I narrowed my focus for 13 moons, and also records some marks and lines I might use in my work. These are works in progress, as well, and I'll continue to revise and refine the maps over time, removing some items and adding others.

Other Interesting Resources

I am drawn to myths and fairy tales, which led me to a series of publications that help me learn about my own personal mythology through a journaling process. What story do I tell about my life? I am reading and working on identifying what personal myths have guided my own life and whether those stories are ready for revisioning for a new mythology. I'll be taking a course in January through Pacifica Lifelong Learning called Mythic Mapping, a study of internal archetypes and the myth of self.

I listened to Clarissa Pinkola Estes' audiobook, "The Creative Fire". In it, she describes creativity as a vital, life-sustaining force that is an intrinsic energy within each of us. That force needs to be nurtured, however, as it is a transformative process that helps reconnect us to our true selves. That's where I am now, feeding that process with the wonderful resources that setting out with intention on a new path attracts. I love her quote on honoring the creative spirit:

"To create is to worship life itself, to say yes to the sacred forces that drive us." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A Stream of New Ideas and Resources

Each day I'm uncovering many new and fascinating resources to help me with connecting my creative practices to the natural world. I've tried to record as many ideas, resources and connections as I can and find a new tidbit of insights or discovery every day that helps to add flesh to the bones of the original idea.

It all feels a bit overwhelming on the days where wonderful ideas seem to pile up on top of one another so rapidly I wonder how I will ever get to explore all of them. Do I really need so much , I wonder, but the sifting and sorting will happen organically. Some fascinating new insights will not seem as wonderful or exciting on revisiting and others that started off slow will gain momentum. (I am counting on that sorting happening)

"But creativity can't be "scheduled, it evolves on its own timetable, and I am happy to let it lead."

I have learned already that although I follow the lunar cycle, I live in human time. It is, for example, not the new moon today at all that I'm sitting down to finally write and share what I've been doing with you, although I've been sorting and journaling ideas about what I've learned this month it since before Thanksgiving Day.

Today I did my studio practice and now can sit down quietly and sort through all the entries I've logged in my log book over the past few weeks. Some are valuable, others less so, but they've given me insights on how I want to follow-up on what has the most value to me now. Were I committed to a schedule, I would feel "behind." But creativity can't be "scheduled", it evolves on its own timetable, and I am happy to let it lead.

I woke up three or four nights before and after the November Full Beaver Moon and tried to photograph the feeling of the night sky with the full moon to inspire my paintings. The moon, I have discovered, now that I'm paying such close attention to it, has a different pattern of rising and setting from the sun that changes by about 55 minutes a day. The reason I sometimes don't see it (other than dense lake effect clouds often obliterate all signs of it), is because it can rise just as often in the morning or afternoon as evening or night. Its orbit is closest to the sun's around new moon, so it is less likely to be visible in the daylight when the sun is also out.

While I appreciate what scientists have learned and theorized about the moon, I think my love of the moon has little to do with the factual information I've gathered. I like the idea that both today and millions of years past, my ancestors and I both looked up at the night sky and watched the moon wax and wane, bringing calming light into the total darkness and allowing those who look at it to feel wonder. I like the idea of keeping some sense of magic and mystery in our world.

One thought I have as this new moon cycle begins is to make lots and lots of of samples of moons in a sky filled with rapidly drifting cloud formations - drawings, paintings, collages - small, medium or large, any or all media - then respond to those, choose the ones I like best as a jumping off place for new works. I admire the work of Arthur Dove and downloaded a number of his moon images to use as a starting point for my own explorations. Here are a few of them:

I will write again around the time of the December Full Moon, and hope to have some interesting new samples in motion plus more things I've discovered and am excited to share with you.

Metta Prayer

May I be peaceful. May all beings be peaceful.

May I be happy. May all beings be happy.

May I be safe. May all beings be safe.

May I awaken to the light of my true nature.

May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.

May I be free. May all beings be free.

Peace to all,

Jeanne

Thank you for reading and for your interest in my new projects. If you feel so inclined, please share this post with friends you think may be interested and subscribe to receive future posts in your email inbox.