Dear Community,

Nadelik Lowen! (Cornish for Happy Christmas.) Here in the cottage, fragrant butter bean stew is bubbling on the stove and the stockings are hung. Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year approaches. Bursts of Christmas shopping give way to long hours of sinking into sweet winter darkness. The sky is pink with night by 4:30 pm here in Cornwall and the evenings are long and luscious. I have been listening to Rosemary Whatola's TEACH ME IN THE DARK. Poetry is still the only language that seems to speak the truth.

Hasn't it been an epic year? My husband and I dissolved our vows and I began a beautiful new relationship. I returned to the country of my birth steeped in a long heartfelt reunion with my roots. I started wild swimming. I practiced trusting myself, the Mystery and a higher power of my own understanding with abandon.

As we transition from one year to the next the archetype of the Psychopomp is on my mind. She's the one who ferries us from one world to the next. Based on the greek psychopompos, the term quite literally means " the guide of souls". We are referring to beings such as the Egyptian Anubis, the Greek Charon, the Norse Valkyries and the Greek God Hermes. These archetypal beings help souls transition and "cross over." In Jungian psychology, we think of the psychopomp archetype symbolically, as the one who mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and the one who helps us change.

How do you feel about change? We may think we want to change but a closer look often reveals all the ways we resist life's dynamic and constantly shifting currents. Change requires loss. Loss means grief, disillusionment and facing fear. It requires us to grow up and realize a simple truth - life is hard, or as the Buddha said, life is suffering. Accepting this means we might learn to live lovingly with the sufferings and losses and to find meaning in the unfolding adventure of life. More than ever I believe life to be an adventure and not something to be endured or mastered.

In the struggle to change, the psychopomp comes to the rescue. She supplies the necessary energy that change requires. It takes great faith, strength and spiritedness to break the status quo and say "death to the deadwood and green to the growth." She manifests in manifold, mysterious ways. Perhaps she will appear as a wise old woman in a dream or as a new teacher in our life. Sounds nice! Most often in my experience though, she cloaks herself in Shadow. She shows up as a trickster, a shapeshifter, an unruly desire or major challenge. The psychopomp must break the status quo and help us take the leap.

She appears in a situation that simply won't allow us to save our ass and our face at the same time. Meaning, we can't rely on or preserve our facade and make the necessary change. These situations are deeply humbling. They are experiences in which we have to let go such as a divorce, an illness, a layoff, a passionate love affair, an unplanned upheaval.

The psychopomp is the one that despite our terror and doubt, somehow finds the willingness to things differently. She acts out of the ordinary and "out of character." She does things that might elicit intense disapproval from self or other, real or imagined. Her behavior forces issues intro the light and moves transitions along. As she takes the reins parts of Self, perhaps dormant for years, once again come to life. Her movements are the antidote to structural limitations we have outgrown. She moves us towards new life and new balance as she swings our life pendulum.

“The psychopompos is this second figure; you can call it the daimon, or the shadow, or a god, or an ancestor spirit; it does not matter what name you give it, it is simply a figure; it might even be an animal. For in such a predicament we are dépossèdés [dispossessed], we lose the power of our ego, we lose our self-confidence. Until that moment, we were willful or arbitrary, we had made our own choice, we had found out a way, we had proceeded as far as this particular place. Then suddenly we are in an impasse, we lose faith in ourselves, and it is just as if all of our energy became regressive. And then our psyche reacts by constellating that double, which has the effect of leading us out of the situation.”

- C.G. Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934

Doing things differently moves us towards the new and can be extremely painful at times. It helps to know that there is method in the madness. Change can help us grow, expand and become more fully ourselves. Change has been an exciting theme of 2023. I have watched clients, friends and family made radical shifts. I have made changes this year that have been deeply rewarding and have required a flexibility and humility I didn't think myself capable of.

I went on retreat with James Benzing in Spain this summer. Many of the participants happened to be midwives. Like a therapist, a midwife is a kind of psychopomp, one supports the literal birth of a baby and the other the birth of the Self. I learned about the "transition phase." This phase is the most intense and it heralds baby's imminent arrival. It is often during transition that the mother experiences the most resistance. She might scream something like "I'm done, No, I changed my mind. I'm not doing it!" An experienced midwife knows this is an essential part of the process and that it actually means the birth is progressing. We might also think of the psychopomp as "the one" who shows up at this critical moment. This "one" may appear as an unknown strength welling up from within, a deep sense of being guided and taken care of, or a bold move at a critical juncture. In a sense it is what we do or who we call on when shit gets truly real.

The wonderful thing about change, even with it's losses and pains is that it develops our capacity to keep birthing our Selves. Essentially life is change. Embracing this means softening and opening to all the emotions change elicits. Someone dear said recently, "to love someone is to attend 1,000 births of who they are becoming." I would add, it also means to attend many funerals.

The psychopomp will appear when we must symbolically die to the old in order to be born anew, again and again and again.

I wish each of you a smooth transition to 2024, unless of course you are in need of a big shakeup or are experiencing an epic shift or transition. If that is the case, come and see me and I will do my best to be a good midwife.

A few classic psychopomp images to follow...Valkyries, Hermes Azreal and Charon...

With love and best wishes for the new year,

Hannah