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It also makes me think of Inanna, a Mesopotamian goddess of fertility who once bore her way down to hell to try to retrieve her lost lover. On the journey into the underworld, she had to remove something with each of the seven veils she passed through: her crown, her shoes, her dress, any symbol of her status in the upper world, until she was completely naked. She goes ahead and dies down there, and with her all the life and joy of the world above, essentially initiating winter. But three days later, she is rescued, she comes back to life, and she returns to the world above, heralding the fertile season of Spring. When Inanna returns, she is a new kind of Queen. She’s learned some hard lessons and integrated parts of herself she was previously unable to see. The shape of the world changes after this adventure, but in a new way: we now have the richness of the cycling seasons. Though the drooping head and lost color of a flower might look like death, there is wisdom in its wilt. There is wisdom in pausing when we are going through something hard. Slowing down, as if our internal energies are hibernating. Just because we’re not “doing” something doesn’t always mean nothing is happening. That flower was able to come back to life again when the sun returned not despite but because it had the wisdom to wilt. This is true for us, too. As we come into the Spring equinox, many of us are feeling the energy shifting. For me, it feels like we are still in a healing mode, but we are also beginning to move out of the wilt and toward the bloom. The other day, I pulled the World card from the Tarot deck, and sure enough, it signals the end of a certain chapter of our lives. A wrapping up of the natural cycle of things, and inevitably a new cycle to begin again. This is where we are going. But we may not be able to get there unless we allow ourselves to wilt a little first.
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