What is fire illuminating in you?

Moira Scullion
2 days ago
3 min read

What is fire illuminating in you?

We are still in the Chinese year of the fire horse. Not that you could really forget, with all the literal and figurative fires happening around the world.

Fire can be scary and damaging when the ground has been unkempt, ignored, and littered with debris. But when the ground has been tended to, cleared of excess debris, and given access to the right amount of water, fire can be kept in balance and enjoyed. Summer campfires illuminating the wild night, flames of passion sparking between lovers, the fire of creation pulling the artist toward unbridled expression.

In my own life, the fire horse has been illuminating and helping me burn away old patterns and beliefs about how I have walked through my life in relationship to others. It has shown me the ways I abandoned myself for another, the ways I kept myself small, and the ways the old "don't bother people" trained me to stay alone and to myself. While I have improved on all of these over the years, they have still followed me in ways that prevent me from knowing myself - my wants, my desires, my needs - and from claiming my inner intelligence.

This is not just my own story, though; I have heard many iterations of it from clients and friends alike. There are palpable collective fires happening, both within ourselves and out in the world. Instinctively, we can feel the places where the fires are tended versus where the ground is ignored and littered with debris, and we are collectively waiting for the power of fire to transform. While we may feel helpless about this larger fire, what we can tend to is our own deeper fire within, and that tending is rarely a solitary act.

If you've ever been to a sweat lodge, the sacred fire ceremony of our First Nations people, you know it is not a one-person operation. Everything about it is done in community: clearing the ground where the lodge will sit, gathering and bending the willow branches to make the frame, covering the frame with heavy, darkening cloths, gathering the stones and firewood, and building and igniting the fire. This preparation is done with deep prayer to the earth, which provides, and to the elements that support the container of the ceremony. With the right balance of earth, fire, water, air, and prayer, a beautiful ceremony of purification and celebration unfolds.

I bring this up not just as a memory, but because it points to something I've come to believe deeply: the fire within us wants tending, but it isn't meant to be tended alone. My own burning away of old patterns has happened in the presence of witnesses: teachers, clients, and friends, who could see me tend my ground when I couldn't yet see it myself. That's the container I want to help build for other women.

This October, my co-host Jean Tindle and I are hosting Sacred Fire, Sovereign Woman: The Goddess Evolving, a weekend retreat for women ready to do this kind of sacred inner work - together. We'll pray around the fire, move our bodies, breathe ourselves into altered states, and play in ceremony with each other. It's a weekend to tend your own ground: to take care of yourself, to affect the collective field of the great feminine, and to step through the fire into your own sovereign beingness.

If this is speaking to something in you, we'd love for you to join us around the fire.