Hey, hey everybody.
Welcome to another week in the Cycles of Time. How y’all doing?
I am feeling very relaxed right now- I just sat in the studio and recorded a breath work session for a type of breath I’ve been practicing that I call “Revolutionary Breath”. I re-listened to it after I recorded it, and I definitely feel like I took a muscle relaxant or something. So I'm hoping that it helps that way for other people who listen to it. It's going to be a free breathwork session that Jackson, the producer of this show, is creating some beautiful music for, and that'll be coming out very soon- I’ll send information about that as it's released.
The past couple weeks of Cancer season I have been leaning into my breathwork practice a lot more as I prepare to go to a “breath camp” in Colorado at a hot spring. This is a culmination of an eight month trauma-informed breathwork certification program that I did last year and wasn't able to make the final. So now I'm having another opportunity to dive back into it, and it's feeling really good.
Ah, breath is so good. This felt especially true during last week’s 4th of July Gate of Provocation and Liberation. On the 4th I ended up doing some fireworks and going out dancing, releasing some pent up energy that’s been culminating lately. I have a five year old and I thought experiencing some little backyard fountain fireworks would be a fun thing for her. Turns out it was fun for me too- setting off those fireworks felt similar the kind of energy in the air, this feeling of explosiveness. I appreciated the beauty in the release of holding patterns, the ability to safely observe and feel mirrored in some of the sparks that I’ve been feeling inside.
I thought a lot last week about the ties between Provocation and that kind of sparking stimulation, as well as the feeling of liberation when we find that we don’t have to hold it all together in the way that we often feel like we do. Sometimes shit hits the fan, with one thing after another after another, and there's a collective feeling of everyone being stimulated into a new way of thinking through this continuous provocation. That felt very, very present over the course of last week for me and many I spoke with, for better or for worse. And ultimately I guess it's not better or worse, it's just the cycle of things and we have to make do with where we're at and play it as it lies.
How did your week show up last week? The gate of Provocation, that Cancer new moon on Friday. I'd love to hear in the comments how you're all feeling at this moment in time.
This week we don't have a whole lot going on in the Cycle of Time wheel. The moon is going to be waxing from new to full, and the sun is transiting Gate 53 in Human Design and the I;Ching, which is known as the Gate of Beginnings. Towards the end of the week, we are transiting into the Gate of Details, which we'll talk about more in the next episode.
This week’s highlights:
Human Design/I’Ching:
July 6-12: the Sun is in Gate 53, the Gate of Beginnings
Fri-Sun into next week (July 12-18): the Sun is in Gate 62, the Gate of Details
This week’s themes:
New Beginnings
Attention to Details
Our Place in the Wheel of the Year
Medicine Wheel Direction: South (Fire, Youth)
Wuxing Cycle Element: Fire
Pagan Season: Litha
Zodiac Season: Cancer (June 20-July 20)
Moon Phase: Waxing
I Ching Hexagram/Human Design Gate: 53 (Sat-Fri)
53 = Wind over Mountain (Jian: “Development/Gradual Progress”) or The Gate of BEGINNINGS
Cancer Season: Try a Little Tenderness
We started Cancer season in earnest on the Summer Solstice with the Gate of Stillness, the I’Ching hexagram “Mountain over Mountain”. And through that deep stillness, at least for me, something rose to the surface, feelings of discomfort, big emotions.
Last week was the Gate of Provocation, “Water over Mountain”, with brought this sense of a flowing river carving out the hardest mountain rock and making a mark on that stillness, noticing what changes might need to be made in order to get out of a rut or a comfort zone that we’re in.
And this week we move into Gate 53, the Gate of “Wind over Mountain” (which also has a visual of “Wood over Mountain” in the I’Ching) This Gate is about gradual progress and beginning new things with a tenderness and a care to them.
It's interesting, the word tenderness continues to come up- over the years I've subscribed to dozens of astrology related newsletters (because there are so many brilliant astrologers and thinkers out there in the world!) And I was looking through my Gmail inbox on the day of the new moon last Friday, and I think the word tenderness or tender was in seven to ten of the subject lines of these emails about the Cancer New Moon. And I think that that feels really right for this season, the tender heartedness, the appreciation of the slowness of the season mixed with the intensity of all the emotions flowing.
(A little tenderness from Otis Redding- I can’t hear that word without thinking of this song.)
HD Gate 53: The Gate of Beginnings, aka ”Gradual Progress”
The New Moon in the Gate of Provocation has passed, but as it relates to this week’s Gate of Beginnings I would say that tenderness is so important when starting something. It’s deciding to plant a seed and then knowing that you're going to have to care for it as it grows. Although it's naturally going to grow and plants are naturally abundant, this visual from Gate 53’s Wind over Mountain is that if you plant a seed on a windy mountain, it will be blown away unless you are there to care for it and to tend to it with a heart-centeredness, with tenderness, with discipline.
And so this Gate of Beginnings is really about how we build relationships with other people and with the world around us through that tender feeling. This feels right on cue when we look at the hexagrams or the trigrams. Within the hexagram of hexagram 53 and the I ching, each line represents a clear advance from the position of the preceding line. And so it gives this image of gradual progress and the knowledge that things of lasting value develop gradually and at their own pace. And within this hexagram is the feeling that development has to be free to run its course. And events must be allowed to unfold in their own natural time, neither rushed nor manipulated. It represents the need for patience and perseverance and also trust in the natural order of timing and growth.
The breath practice that I just recorded is all about trusting in natural timing. It's a guided breathing meditation practice that takes you through the journey of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and the corresponding seasons of spring, summer, winter, fall, and winter. It also guides your breath along with the phases of the moon, feeling into the parallels of the phases of the moon along with inhales and exhales. And the big emphasis that I'm trying to make in recording this practice is about how you don't want to rush a breath, just like you can’t rush the moon, the earth, or time itself.
There are lots of different types of breathwork, but in this cyclical, “revolutionary” breath that I've been doing a lot in my personal practice, it's about kind of tapping into the circular nature of the ocean tides, tides that are created by the moon’s revolution around the earth. Inspired by the cycles of nature, in this practice we don't want to rush an exhale or rush an inhale too quickly. And we also don't want to hold an inhale or an exhale at the top for too long. In some breath practices, that is nice to do, some breath holds, but for this flow, this breath work, there is a natural ebb and flow that really is evocative of the tides of the ocean.
Moving Out of A Holding Pattern: Everybody’s Got Choices
I've been thinking about that natural ebb-and-flow of the tides and the seasons a lot over the past week, while the sun was transiting the gate of Provocation. I definitely had some provoking experiences with several people, not consistently in a bad or a good way, but in a way where there was a good amount of tension or friction. Last week I had to really lean into the idea that a pearl can't be created without friction from a grain of sand. And so it's. Everything grows out of some type of friction.
Last week I was having a lot of struggles with my daughter to go to summer camp every morning. She was just really not wanting to go, wanting to have a lazy summer at home. I was trying to get her to go one morning, and she wouldn't. She sat outside the door of the school and wouldn't go in, but also wouldn't come home. I gave her the option to do what she wanted; I didn't want to push it.
And so I said, “you have to go in or make a choice to come home, and either one is fine”, but because there was such a big feeling of wanting to do something and feeling like she should do something else, she stayed in a stressed-out holding pattern for a very long time. She said, “I have a feeling in my heart. I feel afraid, and I don't want to move”. And I told her that the feeling of fear or the feeling that you have in your heart will grow if you stay in a holding pattern, if you stay in one place without moving the energy through. Emotions are energy in motion, and we have to move. We were built to move. We have to move our bodies or shake or run or jump, or simply make a choice in order to move the energy, or else the feeling of stuckness will make the feeling bigger than it needs to be.
Just decide: “Okay, I'm going to go this direction.” And, even if it is not a perfect decision, the energy of the emotion will begin to move through and it won't keep growing like a balloon around your heart.
And, you know, I was trying to explain something like this to a five year old and at the same time trying to explain it to myself. It was an interesting practice of thinking about the flow that needs to happen and the tenderness and care that needs to happen as you move from a place of stillness or stuckness or comfort zone or a rut and start to initiate movement into that system. And that's the hardest part, is that catalyst to get going from a place of just like, “ah, this fear doesn't feel good, but it's comfortable. It's a place where I can just stay.”
So, yeah, that energy definitely came up in a lot of ways last week, making the transition from Provocation to Beginnings make a lot of sense. And it was a big reminder to myself to move, just to move energy, to make a choice. And then you can make another choice soon after that initial choice if you don't feel like you're going in the right direction. But making a choice to begin, to start, to not be in a holding pattern, is generally a good thing to do. This week's energy with the Gate of Beginnings really is a contemplation for that, for that type of moving out of the stuck place. Out of stillness then we might be provoked in order to move, but you don't necessarily want to move only in reaction to something that's pushing you. You want to move based on your own desire to tend to something that you care about.
Gene Key 53: Immaturity > Expansion > Superabundance
In the Gene Keys interpretation of this hexagram, Gene Key 53 has the shadow of Immaturity, the gift of Expansion, and the city of Superabundance.
In thinking about making a choice to begin something, even just a one step in a certain direction, the shadow of that is Immaturity. In that stage, people who have this gate in their charts, or when the sun is transiting this energy, there's a tendency to either get stuck and literally lay on a bench outside of the school and not go in and not come home, just stay.
Or, on the other side of the shadow, there is a tendency to make kind of rapid-fire choices, to begin new things, to take lots of steps in lots of directions without really thinking about what is going to come of those things and how we're going to tend to those things. It's the reaction to the provocation saying “I want something different.I don't feel comfortable in this moment. I've had something exposed.” But do I get stuck there, in that discomfort, or do I just go kind of frenetically spraying new beginnings all around and not know here to follow them? It’s Wind over Mountain. This hexagram is that image of, if you plant seeds on top of a mountain, the wind could easily scatter them all, and you won't see any forward movement or forward progress towards a better feeling if those are being planted willy nilly.
And so in that stage, that shadow of Immaturity, there's no concept of what it takes to truly begin something in earnest with the desire for that thing or that relationship to thrive and grow into the future. We know that helping anything new take hold in those early days, it requires care, which is the Cancerian keyword, care and tenderness, especially in beginning stages of taking new steps and new directions.
Maturity = Owning Responsibility.
& Responsibility = The ability to respond.
As we mature as individuals, from children into adults, and also as humanity evolves as a species, I feel like there is a certain leaving behind of this immaturity towards just, you know, wanting everything to just happen really quickly or for a certain sensation of wanting a change to happen. We want it to be in the later stages already, but there's this kind of difficulty when we're beginning something and know that we need to care for it, but don't necessarily want to. And the definition of maturity here would be to have responsibility. We have the ability to respond to the things that we begin, the choices that we make. And that's just been so clear in my personal life lately and also in the collective, with the amount of conversation that's happening about how we can’t give in to apathy or disappointment, about political situations, about the choices that were offered. We actually need to decide: “Okay, what is the thing that I want to plant and then how do I tend to and care for it over the long game?”
We can’t give in to apathy or disappointment…. about political situations, about the choices that were offered. We actually need to decide: “Okay, what is the thing that I want to plant and then how do I tend to and care for it over the long game? “
I think a lot of people today are becoming more mature in that way, and that maturity feels expansive. It's just that making that singular decision to take a step in one direction, to go to camp or to come home, to bond with some people, to start a movement, to join an organization, you know, taking that first step can lead to a feeling of the “gift” energy of this Gate: Expansion. Once we make that first step and we plant that seed and know in our hearts that we're going to tend to that seed and we're not just spraying a bunch of seeds around, we can feel expansive
If we plant a seed, stay with it on that mountain, then, as Richard Rudd says, “Expansion comes without effort. It emerges naturally, slowly, quietly. It brings calm rather than excitement. It brings simplicity rather than complexity. It brings perspective rather than ambition. And it all comes through slowing down”.
Gradual Beginnings lead to Abundance
So we're still in the season of fire, the season of heat, the season of the crab. And there's a slowness that is still here in the beginnings of things. Expanding into something just because of an intention or because of care at the very beginning of something to make it last, we don't feel the excitement that we might think we'd feel when something starts growing.
You plant a seed, you tend to it. It sprouts up a little sprout. And maybe there's a moment of, “oh, cool, I made that happen”. But then there's the awareness that, okay, from here on out, I still have to keep watering it, I still have to prune it, I still have to be with it through the long game. And there’s a certain calm in knowing that the plant is also growing on its own. It's not like you are having to make it grow. And so just part of this energy this week is recognizing that within our choices, within our new beginnings, the universe has it’s own plan, it’s own natural abundance.
The world, the natural world, is naturally abundant, and it's on our side. And so choosing to feed into the energy of abundance leads to the siddhi level in Gene Key 53 of Superabundance. This is about almost transcending beginnings and endings completely, and not looking at planting a seed necessarily as a new beginning, but just a part of the general process that simply allows something to flow in the way that it naturally would. And I think that that's just really fascinating. This gate is all about cycles. And you all know, I like cycles. I'm into that kind of thing. :) So this week is about thinking about initiation, beginning, but also remembering that that is just one speck of the cyclical nature of beginning and completing. Those cycles are ongoing and ever abundant. A beginning is simply a choice, bringing the consciousness to a particle within an ever-moving wave. (Lol hashtag #quantumphysics).
Ongoing and Ever-Abundant Cycles
When we’re aware of the truth of #nobeginnings, then making a choice, taking a step in one direction, doesn't have to feel as scary, because it's just one step. And I think that, as modern humans, often times we want great leaps and delineated definitions a lot more than we want to accept gradual progress.
Looking at cycles, like in this project Cycles of Time, I'm isolating each week as a distinct energy. But I also know that all of that's kind of bullshit. You know, all of these gates, hexagrams, micro-seasons, zodiacal seasons and planetary alignments, it's all like, you can isolate and zoom into one thing. Now, I could be zooming into the Mars-Uranus conjunction that's going to be happening this week and talking about that energy as the overarching energy of the week. Or I could be talking about the Gate of Beginnings, and I could be looking at a number of different things, like where the moon is in her cycle and pinpointing that and expanding that into the definition of everything. “This piece of the pie here, now THIS is what it's all about.”
But (and I think we know this) what it's really all about is recognizing that it's a flow. It's non-binary. It's a non compartmentalized way of viewing the world. It's a dynamic interaction between elements that's always happening. And so this week is like a moment to pause as we plant a new seed and pause in our tenderness, to just zoom out a bit and be like, whoa. That Lauryn Hill song, “Everything is Everything… after winter must come spring…. change will come eventually.” That's the song for this week, for sure. This is a week that's very much about situations evolving and circumstances changing around us and kind of having to let the process finish. Change comes eventually.
The Gradual Relationality of the Taoist Wu Xing Cycle
I've been thinking a lot about the Wu Xing cycle, which is one of the cycles that I have included in the diagram for Cycles of Time (that you can always look at at COT instagram or on Substack each week), It's interesting because it's combined of these elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, as opposed to the western esoteric elements of earth, air, fire, and water.
The five elements of the Wu Xing Chinese Taoist cycle are all physical elements, things that are tangible and things that we can hold and see how they're affecting each other. Whereas wind or air, for example, and earth and fire and water, are they more like building blocks, elemental building blocks of matter. But in the Wuxing Cycle, the Taoist cycle, there's more of an emphasis on the dynamic interplay between each of them and how one leads into the growth of another.
So there aren't distinct and hard lines between them. It's all about the larger picture of how everything is everything, and everything flows. In western esotericism, the elements can correspond to basic building blocks, and it's very materialistic. But in the Taoist understanding, there's a more dynamic manifestation of relationships and influences that manifest between the relationships, between the elements.
So as we think about beginnings and gradual progress, it might seem too slow or too boring to a materialist viewpoint, because we are conditioned, I think, in the West to believe that things can't change without us making them change. Like, it's impossible. We have to have full on action all the time. We have to be the boss. We have to be the decision maker. We have to be in control.
When I lived in China for a year, that was in my early twenties, so very impressionable age, but I really was able to notice the distinct difference between that fundamental way of thinking, between relational versus material and physical and distinct. And it's subtle, but it's quite a difference. And so this gradual progress gate this week is about relationships. Thinking about it like, “okay, this isn't boring, and we're not stuck, and we're not going to just stay in one place. Even if we don't make a choice to go in or stay out, something will happen gradually.” There will be something that moves us, and it's kind of like acknowledging the importance to let nature take its course and to not be hasty and to persevere.
Perseverance happens with a release of control, while still having a dedicated tenderness, providing dedicated care to the thing we're thinking about. Perseverance alone is what prevents slow progress from dwindling to a standstill or dwindling to nothing. It's like this image of a tree growing on a mountain out of that seed that we didn't let blow away. And that tree is slowly putting down roots and slowly reaching up towards the heavens, and it's happening one step at a time.
Feeling Tender Beginnings in the Body
I’ve been trying to just contemplate these energies in my body every week a little bit more. I think when I started this podcast, I was reading a little bit more, being a little bit more academic about it, but it's been really cool to see how now I just let the information flow into me as I listen to various audiobooks and pick up my resources and references around the house, and then just put them down for a while and let them sink in. What does “beginning” mean for me, in this moment? How is that showing up in my world? So, for you, something to think about this week is: What's something you're excited to begin and that you feel tender about beginning, you feel care for in its beginning stages?
I actually think excitement can actually be the wrong word here because you don't want that initial excitement and then for it to fall off.
This week is about beginning something that you're willing to persevere with into the future as slowly as it takes. There's a quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein, that says “a man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that is unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push”. Whatever direction you take- push or pull- it’s time to take a step toward your future.
Some questions to ask:
What simple step can I take to kick things off?
How can I decide to just take one step in one direction?
How can I ensure that the things I’m beginning are aligned with my deeper goals and values?
What are you beginning this week?
I'd love to hear if there's anything that you are starting or that you care about starting this week. It's a beautiful time to do so. There's so much need and so much opportunity to make this world a more beautiful place that we dream of seeing in existence. And there's no shortage of opportunity for creativity.
When you look at the current political situation in the US (that's always, ever present around my mind right now), if we look at the people who are supposedly our greatest choices of “leaders” right now and we see just how absurd and ridiculous both are in their ability to inspire beyond fear driven tactics and beyond combative competitiveness. If that's not a reminder that you can do what you want, you can be anything you want, then what is?
We can't hold other people and other systems that are outdated and archaic over our heads anymore, or keep telling ourselves that we are lesser than. Because each one of us out there has so much to offer, and it’s time to begin. I know it's vulnerable to say what you feel tenderly about, and to say which seed you're going to stand by as you watch it grow, because sometimes it doesn't seem big enough or like it's doing enough. But I will say that everything starts with the smallest step, and that's something to really take with you as you go about your week.
I'm off to my Breath Camp and going to be doing a lot of deep breathing in the mountains of Colorado. I’ll be deeply tapping into the cycles of endings and beginnings for myself, and finally completing my trauma informed breathwork certification, and with that I’m excited to begin holding more breath sessions over the coming months. I care about tending to this and nurturing this offering to help myself and others stay grounded as we make our way through collectively stressful times.
Next week I will have on the podcast my partner, Jackson Mathey, who is the producer of this show and the founder of Spirit River Sound audio engineering studio. Jackson has a Cancer stellium in his birth chart, with energies of Venus, Mercury, and the Sun lighting up a few of the gates that we've already talked about in Cancer season. So we're going to chat aobut how those show up in his life. He and I will probably record the episode in Colorado somewhere, hopefully by a nice river, and just lean into the flow of this week of Beginnings. Stay tuned next week for that conversation.
Also, if you're out there listening or reading this and would like to be on the podcast, I'm doing once-a-month interviews with someone whose birthday is in that month to show how the season and solar transit shows up in their life. So if there's any Leos or Virgos or Libras out there, hit me up for the upcoming months and beyond!
As always, thanks so much for being here. Happy Week of Beginnings! <3 <3 <3
xox,
Alison
Tender Beginnings: Weekly Forecast for July 8-14