The Seasonal Journey

A labyrinth not a wheel

If you think about the Five Element Theory like a rich unfolding spiral, a ladder to the stars, a celestial helix of evolutionary layers it suddenly takes on a richer dimension. It is oversimplified to think we run on a single dimensional wheel as we move between Summer and Winter, when in fact we are walking the spiralling arms of a labyrinth, stepping up, up, and up through our life experiences on our own uniquely evolving path.

The symbol of Hecate above moves and spirals much like the Taoist Yin Yang, communicating the nature of life's ongoing patterns of dissolution and creation. The three arms represent the earth, sea, and sky, and the interception of the three roads or aspects of Self - physical, ethereal, and Spiritual. Each road leads you to the centre symbolizing the soul’s journey through life in concentric rings, rotating and drawing the innermost aspects of the psyche forward and back out again. The inner circle is that of the gatekeeper, the aspect that sits between the known and unknown, the midwife principal. There is much more but for now, let’s move on. 

Just like the Yin Yang symbol, the labyrinth charts the seasonal journey of life, death, and rebirth that all sentient beings belong to. The passing of the seasons here on our planet is, and always has been, the vehicle through which we have understood the vastness of the journey over multiple lifetimes. All the deaths, large and small,  every rebirth we have ever encountered, and all the experiences that lie in between. 

Like the Moon, the centre of our sky and the architect of the tides and seasons, we are built in the image of the same pulse of empty and full. With each vast surge and retreat pressing us further along in our collective evolution, we are wise to chart its course and merge with its deeper message. Like the whole of the moon, this great gold/silver/white God is held in a drop of water, so the 5 Element Theory is crystallized in the symbol of the Yin Yang. Not as a static linear theory, but as a living, breathing, and evolving entity.

When it comes to the balance point of the seasons and the cross hairs of the Equinox energies, we enter the churning pool of change between Yin and Yang. A potent preparedness for the death of winter or the growth of Summer, a palpable switch of light, a chance to look at what grows or dies within us as an essential bi-annual ritual in our evolutionary journey.

For those on the journey of the Five Elements, called by nature or the moon to lean into the invisible tug of something deeper the symbolism and mythology of the Yin Yang or of Hecataes wheel spin and spiral deeper into the DNA with every cycle. We are inseparable from the pulse of the moon that calls all the sacred waters, pressing them through the plant kingdom like a green lung, creating the boundaries for the season, wet, dry, hot, cold, and into each sentient being through the food chain.

The same cyclic energy gave the early farmers the first means of measurement, and the first calendar as it called the waters that make up the blood, spit, seamen and dural tides that move and animate us. It governs measurement, time, menstruation, gestation, life and death itself.

There is no separation between the fragrant lunar gardens, the meditations of the seasons and the full expression of ourselves as multi-dimensional, evolving, multiple-lifetime beings revealing new facets and new faces with each revolution.


In Winter Moonlight
My bones too
Are transparent
- Yukiko Itoyama