This Is the Way the World Ends

To tell the truth, this title presented itself to me as a thought and expects me to write something to go with it. 

I feel like a captive writer this evening.

Stepping into the unknown

Death and Rebirth

The Balsamic Moon rises

Just before dawn

I dwell in nether lands

Neither here nor there

It is the moment between

The final exhale before

The first in-breath of rebirth

The balsamic moon rose this morning and will rise again tomorrow morning. New moon arrives tomorrow at 11:47 pm, eastern time, just before midnight and the shifting into a new day. She is square Pluto in the solar system. A hard aspect. Conflict. The symbol for death and rebirth, transformation, and power, the Lord of the Underworld from ancient myth has something to say for the next month as he collides with a tender new moon, the Libra moon and the beginning of a new season. A season that takes us into the darkest time of the year. 

Libra is balancing, delicate, and relational. The scales of justice may have met their match.

It's uncanny how such ancient symbolism finds a mirror in the world today. 

Never mind the world "out there." Ultimately, it's an invitation to peel back the layers of what may have remained hidden in our own lives around all these themes. 

Death. Rebirth. Transformation. Power. 

An invitation to dance with the Lord of the Underworld. For a time. A month. Or a season.

And we're suspended for about a day between the invitation and the initiation. 

This is the way the world ends. With an invitation. With an ending and a beginning.  

Into the Beams is an approximately 40-day wilderness writing journey during the period of the 2018 Venus retrograde. There is no agenda other than to show up and discover the riches buried there.

The excerpt from No Matter What Else Has Been (c) 2012, Katherine Cartwright, appears in the body of this blog post. The complete poem will appear in the collection Claws of Uthurunku, currently in production.