High Priestess Archetypal Magic
Here we are with Halloween right around the corner and autumn finally beginning to settle in. It’s during this time of year that we start scrambling to set our holiday plans, get all the gifts, and end the year on a high note. We often end up stretching ourselves thin. But there is a shift happening- a shift away from the hustle and the breakneck speed of capitalism. Many of us are learning how to embrace slowness and rest in a way that we haven’t before- in a way that isn’t just about resting so you can produce more later.
We are seeking deep rest. The kind that allows us to dream and nourish ourselves. The kind of rest that allows us to stop thinking of time as a linear thing- even if just for a little bit. And this is challenging. Not only is this not possible for all of us all of the time (there’s rent to pay) but it’s also a challenge to even understand the deep benefits of rest when we’ve grown up in this particular phase of late stage capitalism. Do we even know what it feels like? Could we even recognize it if it invited us to stay a while? Does resting mean just stopping everything entirely?
So many of us are stuck on “on” because we don’t know how not to be. We’ve learned to push ourselves and endure. Or we’re in a state of constant hypervigilance because we’ve learned that’s a way to recognize danger at the outset- it’s kept us safe. It’s also helped us find some success under capitalism. So the idea of resting and slowing down feels like a trick at first. Like something you reeeeaaalllly like the sound of but there must be some catch. It’s hard to settle into.
In my practice, rest comes up a lot. And often the inquiry that arises with clients is “what does rest look like?”. The first image that comes up is usually sleep- and that’s followed by a worry about ceasing everything and stopping entirely. Which is very telling! We get caught in this false binary between “hustle til ya burnout” and “don’t do anything at all ever”.
And yes! Sleep is part of it! When we sleep we get to dream which is something we literally can’t do while we’re awake. And yeah! Sometimes stopping everything entirely can be a part of this practice but/and we don’t need to stay there (just like we don’t need to stay active- we need fluctuation and rhythm). We can begin to break out of this false binary by learning to participate in restful activities that don’t necessarily have an end goal.
I’m not gonna get into like “tips for deep rest” in this piece (though I do advise working with your nervous system with the understanding that things change gradually and with practice, not in one transformational moment like we like to think). But I AM going to offer some frameworks around resting related to where we are in the year.
As we move into the dark part of the year and look back to folk ways and cyclical living- we see this half of the year we’re entering into (in the Northern Hemisphere) asking us to slow down and rest. We’re transitioning into winter. And this transition takes a while- it isn’t one day. It’s a season. We can begin to make our descent into slowness, tend to our beloved dead, connect with the otherworld, and orient towards the coming darkness.
So what do we do in this darkness?
The High Priestess offers us suggestions.
The High Priestess is a figure that thrives in the inbetween. She speaks in symbols and images and doesn’t use the technology of linear thought. She is steeped in her own inner wisdom and depth while being able to connect with the Otherworld. She knows herself and makes a choice to live in the dark like this. Where time doesn’t move in the same way and messages aren’t obvious, but shadowy and ephemeral.
I’m reminded of the myth of Persephone whenever this card and archetype comes up- there are many versions of this myth and the one most classically told is that Hades, god of the Underworld, tricks Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds. Thus binding her to the Underworld and making her Queen for six months out of the year. It’s pretty debated whether or not this was a trick or treat (lol- low hanging fruit) for her but I’m of the mind that she chose to tend to the dead and live in the dark half the time.
This is what the High Priestess chooses and we can too.
It looks like weeding out any unnecessary activities. Allowing time for negative space and passivity. Understanding that dark does not equal bad and recognizing that’s another false binary we’ve been fed. Allowing the parts of our psyche and soma that don’t usually get to have a lot of space to expand. How do we do this?
You could practice:
mindfully sitting with eyes closed for ten minutes and seeing what comes up for you without expectation.
sitting at your altar and sharing a pomegranate with your ancestors.
keeping a dream journal.
automatic writing
divining
reading fairytales before bed
watching the Moon
mending clothing or making a quilt
creating something with your hands while being rooted and mindful and noticing what it feels like to make something without the expectation of sharing it.
making a soup while singing to it.
Choosing to infuse a little bit of magic into the mundane, simple parts of life. Ritualizing your somatic practice, your spiritual practices, your daily practices. It’s these subtle shifts that allow a practice to grow and that’s what changes us over time.
When we make this kind of space and allow ourselves to journey without an expectation or desired outcome, we leave room for our intuition to grow. For our connection with the season, the land we’re on, and our ancestors to grow. We have more of a sense of what actually feels nourishing to participate in. There’s some space for our subconscious, our bodies, our ecosystem and our spirits to speak to us. The whole web of what it means to be human becomes more available to us. The High Priestess knows this. Spending time in the dark allows us to know ourselves more deeply and steeps us in a sense of belonging- knowing the strands of the web will be tended to even if we aren’t actively focusing on them.
Asking ourselves how we’re making space for rest and the practice of resting opens up a pathway- we can use the High Priestess as a guide.
We can also look to folk ways to give us ideas. I’m working with my Finnish ancestry this year and they practiced a sort of liminal Divide Time after the harvest was complete and the season was changing. During this in-between realm when one season has ended but another has yet to begin, the ancestors, the faeries, the house spirits all came to visit and made themselves known. So the days must be spent in quietude, mending clothes for the winter, making protective charms, baking bread to encourage abundance throughout the cold season. And throughout that, divining. Communing with the spirits and the otherworld.
This is common across many Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic cultures (which is where a large part of my ancestry is rooted therefore these are the lineages I work with) and many other cultures as well. This concept of deliberate rest days or idle time.
Plus we have modern day thought leaders and culture makers like Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry who does incredible work around Rest as Resistance (she also takes a yearly sabbatical in November). And social psychologist Devon Price who wrote Laziness Does Not Exist and regularly advocates for anti-productivity. Those of us in the field of somatic psychology are working with rest practices, slowing down, and resetting our nervous systems.
We can look to the past and weave it into what we have here in the present to create our own practices around rest and divesting from the cult of white supremacy and capitalism.
There are so many angles for us to approach this from- and personally I think using whatever feels like an “in” for you and growing that works. And is in keeping with the less extractive, slower-paced, enriching world we’re trying to create.
So this Samhain (pronounced “sow-en” denoting “summer’s end” in Old Irish) I invite you to find time for periods of deep rest. And if you’re still finding what that feels like for you, maybe evoke the High Priestess and see if she has anything to offer about how to sink into the dark and give yourself idle time to dwell in.