Season of Grief, Season of Awe
Cultures around the world and from the beginning of time have set apart the autumn season to honor death and dying. There is a deep sense that autumn is when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. In the Northern Hemisphere right now, the symbols of death are all around us. The lengthening of night. The goodbye song of the geese as they fly in formation. The letting go dance of the leaves as they spin from Sky to Earth. The smell of bacteria and mycelia performing their alchemical duties of decomposition. Formerly brilliant flower heads turned black and gone to seed. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, fall is the season correlated with the metal element. The predominant emotion is Grief. Metal is a pure substance derived from the earth by a process of reduction. In the same way, in autumn the living world is reduced, returning back to its source in the Earth. The main organs of fall are the lungs, whose branches and alveoli mirror the branching of plant life both above and bel...