The Underworld To The Ethers. The Initiation Of The Marigold Women.
Awaken to the sanctuary within yourself.
Imagine closing your eyes, the world goes dark around you, and all of a sudden you are divinely illuminated within. You’ve never seen yourself like this before. This etheric-like quality begins to glow from your very core but is dark at the same time.
Imagine as though you are inside of yourself and your eyes are seeing the house of your soul instead of the outer world we normally perceive. Feel the essence of this sanctuary that is you. Feel the silence, the stillness, and the spaciousness that is you. In the darkness see if you can hear the rhythmic thump of your heart, your life force. See if you can hear the wisps of the rivers of life moving through your veins. See if you can feel the presence of the ancient stones that are your bones and puppet strings made of deep wisdom that move you through this physical world and shape your existence. See if you can feel the sacred container of your body as a protective barrier that is a house to your spirit.
Imagine your thoughts melting as the stillness and quiet of your etheric existence washes away all the chitter-chatter of distraction. Let there be silence, let there be stillness, let there be spaciousness. Allow yourself to tuck yourself away within yourself. Allow all your to-dos, everything you hope, long, and dream to accomplish, everything that you wish to be, to wash away so you can be right here right now in awe of this sanctuary that is you.
Feel that the essence of you is no different than the cosmos. Feel at the magnitude of which you are made of stars. Feel the milky way inside your belly, your pelvic bowl, your heart, your lungs, your bones, and your veins. Feel the age-old stars that have been burning for more time than you can imagine omitting their wisdom into your essence. Feel the ancient debris that is making up your physical form. Feel the essence of immortality within you. Feel the essence that is beyond science, beyond explanation, and beyond words alive inside of you.
Breath in the idea that we are spiritual beings in a physical body, in a physical world and one day we will go back to the stars. Open to the idea that when this moment comes, there will be many things that all of sudden don’t really matter anymore. The world may seem more beautiful as your saying goodbye. The world may seem more simple as your saying goodbye. All the loops of fuss we get stuck in may reveal themselves as silly. As petty wastes of time and energy.
Don’t open your divine eyes later. Open them now. See the magic of the stars within you now. Let go of all that doesn’t really matter now.
We can do this again and again, and we will inevitably forget again and again. It’s human nature. We are human. So commune with stillness and spaciousness, honor stillness and spaciousness, and pray to stillness and spaciousness often to reset your inner eyes to this beauty. Hibernate inside of yourself often. Make space for yourself often. Close your eyes and open them within often. Allow yourself to be swallowed by yourself often.
For you are made of stars, you are made of dust and we live in a complex, multidimensional, beautiful world. We are wild animals and we are angels of divine light. I could say don’t ever forget your magic, this magic, but you will. And so I share with you the journey of the Marigold Women who dance between worlds. Above and below, between dark and light, and between the tangible and intangible.
The dance between the ethers and underworld is embracing ourselves as spiritual beings in a physical body. This is the embrace of the Marigold Women. Dancing between worlds. It’s the dance between earth and spirit. Soaking both up for all that they are.
The underworld is the place of tracking the shadows of our unconscious selves.
It’s tracking our fears, our wounds, our projections, and the violence and hate that is within us. It’s tracking the roots of why are the way we are. It’s facing death and mortality and making sure we are at peace with the reality that our time on earth is limited.
It’s tracking our illusions, delusions, and any denial that we have. It’s tracking self-sabotaging behaviors, addiction, self-harm, and the patterns in which we alienate ourselves from others or from growing. It is tracking the fears and wounds that are keeping us stuck unable to move forward from the past.
The underworld is the realm of becoming deeply self-aware. Recognizing how others perceive us - not how others judge us, but the message that we send out to the world. It’s becoming deeply aware of the personas that we take on and project outward. It’s tracking our wounds that create barriers between us and others. It’s tracking the wounds that make us hide from showing our true colors to the world.
It’s not that our wounded selves aren’t our true colors but our evolution is a process of freeing those colors to radiate more vibrantly. We are true in all our complexities. We are all wounded. We all have fears and different facets of shadows within us. Some of us berate others and some of us berate ourselves. It’s our job to wake up and see what we are doing.
The underworld is tracking our humanness. The ethers are tracking our spirit. Nurturing the threads and the weaving of the two is the magic of the Marigold Women. It’s doing the deep work, tracking and pulling the weeds that are crowding out new life and it’s being in deep joy of the life that is. It’s being committed to a spiritual path and it’s enjoying the earthly pleasures of life, soaking up our mortality for all that it’s worth.
We are all conceived a bright burst of divine light and throughout life, we experience hurts and grow resilient from them. This is part of the sacred human experience. It’s painful, it’s messy and it’s beautiful.
Our humanness is full of imperfections. The underworld is not to track our imperfections as sins, we are tracking our shadows in honor of healing our wounds to be able to embrace life for all that it has to offer. We are not seeking forgiveness outside ourselves, we are seeking self-love within ourselves.
“Sinful behavior” been painted as temptations we must be punished for instead of acknowledging them as deep pain emerging out of our subconscious we are already suffering from.
The underworld is not a place of demonizing these human experiences, it’s illuminating them as pain in manifest. They’re are symptoms calling out for us to listen and to hold space for their grief to move.
Our psyches are very wise in protecting our pain and the journey to the underworld gives us the gift to be able to come face to face with our outmoded ways of coping.
Now the last layer of the underworld is facing death.
We can’t fully celebrate life if we don’t truly understand that it’s fleeting. Diving into the underworld is clearing the way making sure if we were to face death in the blink of an eye, we’d have no regrets, no unfinished business, nothing left unsaid, dreams left unpursued or life left unexperienced.
Your heart someday will stop beating, your organs will find a holy stillness and your body will decay back into the earth. It’s the same for all of your loved ones, the plants, the animals, and the stars. None of us know when this will happen or how it will play out, but as long as we remember that there is no forever this will help us live in presence with clear eyes.
The Underworld is embracing our mortality and the Ethers are embracing our immortality. We are spiritual beings in a physical body and though our beings will shapeshift throughout time as our bodies age and die, our spirit is indestructible. It’s untouchable. Energy does not die, it transmutes.
The medicine of the ethers is to recognize ourselves as divine light. As divine consciousness.
It’s to make relationship with ourselves as spirit. It’s making relationship with ourselves as a thread of the grande web of collective consciousness and universal consciousness. It’s realizing we are made of stars. It’s realizing that you are me and I am you. We are all of it.
The ethers is the medicine of releasing our earthly fears of death, of pain- physical or emotional, and realizing NOBODY can touch our spirit. Nobody can harm our spirit. Nobody can take our spirit. When we think someone has taken our power. They can’t. It’s an illusion to think they can grasp us.
As humans we may experience deep trauma, we may endure deep wounding, and our spirits may leave our bodies because of it. Disassociation is a powerful protective mechanism of us as humans but it’s painstaking to the soul when body and spirit never fully reunite. When they live in resistance, not trusting one another forevermore.
The ethers are calling our spirit home. It’s recognizing we are divine, and awakening enough to this awareness that our ego doesn’t scare our spirit away anymore. It’s confusing to be a spiritual being in a physical body because the polarities are so contradictory. This is the medicine of the marigold women. They are gracious in their dance between the two. Their initiation it to teach us the strength to stay rooted in both.
The ethers help us coax our spirit to trust the experience of this life in our physicals bodies, on this physical plane. It helps us see that we are a great conduit for spirit to move through this earth. For spirit to spread its light on this planet. The Ethers are to awaken us to the divine nature that we are, so that the light can move through us, instead of us locking it away.
The Ethers is the medicine of realizing we are whole. That we are of perfection. All stories aside, we are the divine blueprint of all we could ever dream of being.
The underworld is the realm of clearing the wounding of human experience, working through all the layers, the stories, and the shortcomings. In the ethers, none of that matters. It’s a realm beyond words, beyond thought, beyond understanding. It’s pure spirit. It’s nirvana. It’s bliss. It’s enlightenment.
Beneath the story of our life, we are nothing and we are everything.
The ethers are here to call us home.
We are all conceived as that bright burst of divine light and throughout life, we have experiences that disconnect us from the purity of this light, but this light doesn’t ever go away. It’s always within us. Burning brightly. It’s our ability to dance between the underworld AND the ethers that allows us to weave the two and roam where the Marigold Women roam.
So may we roam. In all their glory. In the full embrace of the divine beings that we are with self-compassion and self-love on the infinite pursuit of happiness in this strange and beautiful world. Follow your heartstrings, follow love and follow the call of your wild and vibrant soul.
With love,
Abby
