As the grip of winter loosens, the ice thins, the snow shrinks and the wind brings more swirling snow or melting blasts, in its two-faced manner, we know that the water is starting to run. While it is under the ice and snow, as the frost releases and the land warms, it eats away at the crystal plates above it in the streams and rivers. Its quiet wetness feeds the soil and multitudes of roots...tree, shrub, grass and eventual flower. It is this wetness that is the energy of life, the elixir of all beauty. Yet, it has been this elixir that has been so reviled in human society by the patriarchal forces that have gripped us for over three thousand years. Messiness, wetness, bloodiness, stickines
February (and early March) is the Beautymaking Moon, but not only making beauty with our hands—to reconnect to the seasons, honour the gifts of the Earth, and recreate the Old Ways of life-giving societies. It is also about becoming beauty in the way we live. Wisdom, truth and beauty seem to have been casualties of our Western way of life. It takes self-discipline to learn wisdom from life, but we can be too busy to do so. In the past few centuries, Truth has been thought of as universal, science-proven theories. Now, however, we have entered the anti-truth era where truth is inconvenient to power. Beauty has given way to the ugliness of mass production, and convenience in everything from f
