Author: Katharine Asals

Early in the summer I was with friends at their cottage, and we’d been talking about the element of EARTH.

It’s the element I’m supposed to be engaging with this year, in the round the wheel / elements & directions / shamanic cycle work I’ve been doing, one year at a time. The first year was the basic foundation, the next year was the direction of the East / the element of Fire / and the Joy Child. This year is the year of the West / of Earth / of Stone People / and of the Nurturing Parent.

And frankly, it’s been a bit of a challenge. Like, Fire, I get it, am totally fascinated by if somewhat afraid of…

Water I love love love and could be in all day long …

But Earth? What the heck is Earth about??? How do you immerse yourself in / fall in love with / be fascinated by Earth? It seems so… kind of… inert.

One of the other shamanic teachers I used to have focused a lot on the direction of the West as the place of Dreams and the place of Death. And this year of connecting with the West and the Earth started with the death of the cat, so that felt rather on-brand.

But I figured surely there must be a whole bunch more positive stuff to pay attention to, and presumably learn from, I just don’t really get it yet…

The earth builds us, cell by cell. Earth is the ground beneath our feet and the soil into which we plunge our hands. This is our physicality and our grounding.

~ Manda Scott

Anyways, there up at the cottage early in the summer, my friend, a Virgo (an Earth sign) wanted me to see the local Mother Tree – the massive old source tree in the forest system near their place –

Mother trees are the biggest, oldest trees in the forest. They are the glue that holds the forest together. Through their huge photosynthetic capacity, they provide food for the whole soil web of life. They keep carbon in the soil and aboveground, and they keep the water flowing.

~ Suzanne Simard

Thinking about Mother Trees reminded me that the other concept bundled into our project of connecting to the West, and to Earth, is the concept of the Nurturing Parent. And I started thinking about Earth – the planet and the soil and the capacity for everything to grow, as being a place of nourishment, of nurturance.

Earth represents the gift of life. Earth refers to the body of the planet Earth, the human body and Nature herself. It refers to what we make of it: our health, wealth, security, grounding, solidity, and stability.

~ The Four Winds

Later in the summer I was out in BC where nature is just off the charts, and we were in this place called Cathedral Grove, where they helpfully point out for you things like “nurse logs”.

When a tree falls to the ground, we may see only its death, but this death is the beginning of new life and the natural cycle of a forest…”

Further West, out in Tofino, as far West as you can go, where you sit and stare at the vast power of the Pacific Ocean, one of my BC friends gave me a little Earth gift to help me along my voyage…

On the back of the card, it says:

Earth Spirit represents the all-encompassing circles of life, the end of one journey is the beginning of the next. Life is a series of many infinite circular experiences – before, during, and after your existence.

~ Roy Henry Vickers & Lizzie Snow

Bit by bit the whole thing was starting to come together for me – the sense of death as being within the cycle of life in a very organic way, and of the element of Earth as being the rich and nourishing container for the movement through these cycles.

Still later in the summer I was up near Owen Sound (yes, I did make a point of jumping on every chance that appeared to get out of town and enjoy summertime and nature and friends I don’t see often enough…) and I was staying in a little cabin by the river. Each morning I’d get up early with the sunrise and walk down to river, my bare feet delighting in the cold dewy grass of early morning and the soft tender nurturing feeling of grass and earth underneath my feet.

Where I live is all concrete with flourishes of steel, so neither earth nor grass nor even natural stones are easily found, and the more organic rhythms of growth and decay are hard to remember amongst the domineering rhythm of a city ever hungry to keep building infrastructure …

I thought of my first night of initiation into this year, and of the tree down by our rather urban beach that seemed to reach and reach down down down into the Earth to get just enough nutrition from which to eek out a life –

How vivid a contrast between the lives of all these trees in different soils, different environments, different levels / qualities of nourishment. The hard scrabble tree barely surviving versus the towering giants of BC, or even a massive Mother Tree in a proper forest in rural Québec. What a strong image of what Nurturing is and does.

Thank goodness for the friends who enabled the many summer adventures out in these variations on Canadian natural splendour, where it was a whole lot easier to really connect with Earth, and with this concept of Nurturance while being out exploring nature, and talking to my really very knowledgeable and, ahem, very very nurturing friends…

…the Earth element symbolizes the link to our collective past, our connection to the planet, and our inescapable bond with every life form. The Earth element nurtures, it protects. The Earth element is the womb from which all life comes. From plants, to plankton, to eagles, to grasshoppers, all life began in the Earth and in caves, where life was protected from the sun’s radiation and life forms began to evolve and emerge.

~ Omar Rosales

And you, Dear Reader? What nurtures you?