This Fall Equinox, I'm reflecting on the balance of fire & water — the Masculine & Feminine — that has been disrupted by way of our patriarchal history over the last 4,000 years. While the West Coast has literally been burning from an excess of heat, an excess of masculine energy, we can recognize these unbridled fires as one of the long-term consequences of settler colonial culture. Our collective rite of passage at this time then, asks for a radical re-balancing of Masculine & Feminine energies — of fire & water — within us and on our planet.
The effects of climate change are the earth's efforts to re-balance extremes that are the result of the man-ipulation of fire & water through fossil-fuel based industry, petro-chemical production, and damming & irrigation that maintains land-degrading mono-agriculture. Now, we are being asked to honor and restore water, the Feminine, as a vital source of healing and knowledge that has been devalued, reduced to mere commodity in our era of "progress". We are asked to tame fire which has been hyper-monetized and harnessed for its destructive power through reactors, bombs, and industrial capitalism.
As humans, we are water beings, composed mostly of water. Indigenous cultures on the landmass we now call America — or Turtle Island — revere water as Feminine or female; a teacher who shows us the ways of dissolution, forgiveness, and surrender. She also guides us in the ways of power through persistence, patience, resilience and trust in the possibilities of renewal.
If we see fire & water as metaphors of our human experience, as the forces that fuel Life on planet earth, how then might we reframe our living? How would we reshape the foundational principles of our society? Can we recognize women + femme leaders who are rooted in the Feminine, as key to re-orienting society toward a paradigm of power-with & for all people. So it is that month we celebrate one of our Greats, as well as some of the core women at the helm of Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision.
This Equinox, with so much at stake now than ever before, let us remember that water is our lifeline, the connector between all things —past, present and future. May we have clear sight to see and honor the mysteries of water & fire, to choose another way forward that is not our colonial history of power-over, but power-with, a path guided by the wisdom of the Feminine. Without water, we cannot live. May the waters come where they are most needed. May the fires within us and this world be quelled by the remembrance of balance— our true nature.