"I think we all need more gloom, more twilight, more softness and uncertainty."
-Nimue Brown
Many cultures used to practice (what historians and anthropologists call) "sun worship". In reality they were connecting to a larger deity or divinity, perceived as expressing itself through the Sun, granting us light, heat and the gift of Life here on Earth.
For me noon has never been a very special time of day but I feel most vibrantly alive when twilight arrives. When I am at our Forest House in Sweden I often go for long walks as daylight starts fading. Many animals come out of hiding and portals open up in the landscape.
The word "shaman" has become controversial (see BLOG) and often wonder whether we, natives of Western culture, can coin another word. Walker Between Worlds is already taken but the words Priestess of Twilight came to me, and I liked them... I am a Between Person. Twilight can also refer to Age: Priestess of My Own Twilight Years!
WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?!
This painting is based on a hypnagogic vision I had during the intense Lockdown period of early 2021. A beautiful older woman was floating on a rock around outer space. She said that she was from a much earlier time. She had returned to Earth to communicate with flowers and animals. She could not believe how much extinction had occurred and how few flowers were left.
She said that once plant or animal species disappear forever, even the most powerful elders or shamans cannot bring them back.
Currently languages are also going extinct and an alarming rate and within living languages many words (related to nature) are becoming obsolete. They are dropped from dictionaries in favour of words related to the World Wide Web and computers.
I had the uncanny feeling that this woman was really myself, returning to Earth in a few centuries time...
Needless to say: it was not a comfortable thought.