Greetings friends and family,

    Sitting in the East, the springtime and the Beltane fires, I am filled with awe as to the true nature of the elements and how they teach and show the way of arriving into a fuller understanding of the miraculous nature of life.

    In the spring retreat, we do a night fire and burn an effigy that in the early beginnings in the 1990’s I called “The Burning Man“ as a tribute to Patriarchy and moving into a new vision of ourselves as humanitas. The following morning we practice an old ritual of reading the ashes. Over the years, messages left behind have included the 911 unburnt airplane flying into the twin towers, scraps of Arabic language left intact, and movements of ash into certain quarters of the wheel in deep emphasis, with one year showing up as large volcanic clumping in 2010 with light ash heading east outside of the fire ring (the year of the Iceland volcanic eruption).

    This year, there was a scrap left with “Feel the burn” that came from an article on the Burning Man Event. The night of our East fire the founder of the Burning Man event, Larry Harvey, died. There was also a piece that I felt was speaking, and didn’t understand. I looked back to the drawing I had made of the ashes and there was a triangular piece in volcanic shape with a plume and a central orange unburnt circle. I now realize the aerial photos of Kilauea, from the crater and the fissures to the east, match the mapping we had in the fire. The enormity of the bigger hand behind us is like the lava that we are pushed aside for. Our Mother is birthing and it is sacred.

    With love,
    Sarah

    Copyright 2024 Sarah MacLean Bicknell | Photography by Jenn Whitney | Illustration by Nikki Jacoby