Grief Spells for Leo Season & the Month of Av: Expression, Praise, & Joining the Galactic Mess

Rain drenched Mimosa (photo by me!)

Dear Shapeshifters,

In the northern hemisphere, we are in the depths of summer. In the Appalachian mountains, we are greeted by the bold and expressive flower faces: Mimosa, Sunflower, Passionflower, Hydrangea—each of whom express themselves in lion-like manes.

And we are sweating through the hottest days of the summer, disrupted occasionally by some of the biggest downpours of rain and thunder and some of the softest, gentlest showers. 

Welcome Leo Season and the Month of Av

I like to think it is a time of welcoming creative expression and our own peculiar ways of being, as a way of showering praise for this being alive.

A season of allowing ourselves to embrace the messy, uncertain, risky process of dialoguing with the world, being changed by it, and defying even our own ideas of who we are.

The shape of the Leo constellation itself has been said to resemble “a backward question mark” or “a sickle.” And it is made up of many galaxies of various shapes and messy irregularities, believed to be formed from the contact zones between galaxies–“where intertwining gravity disrupts a galaxy's original structure” (Harrington).  

So welcome the risky and disruptive, collaborative gravity of leo season, leo placements, and leo energy. Welcome artists, performers, and those who remind us that all of life is meant to be lived as art, that there need be no separation between the two. Welcome those juicy friendships who invite us back into aliveness again and again. Welcome this hot and fiery, glittering, galactic mess of life and death, tears and sweat. 

And welcome Leo, the lion.

A being who has captivated the human imagination for some time, symbolizing everything from the king of kings to a wild beast to be tamed or slain for human entertainment. The lion has been portrayed as a frightening, uncivilized, sensual, and prideful predator – as well as a strong, courageous, inspiring, and beautiful Sun god, symbolizing spiritual strength and purity of heart (think Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia). 

I do wonder if we traced the ways human and lion relations have shifted over time and space, how these changes might map onto changes in human relations with grief and death. I wonder how colonial stories and moralities have sought to flatten and disrupt our capacity to relate with animals like the lion and grief as dignified, complex beings with their own desires, outside of our stories of “goodness” and “badness”.  And I wonder how lions and grief might disrupt human centrality in a grand narrative, and simultaneously be teachers of savoring pleasure, laying our bodies on the dusty earth in the sun, and moving through the world like our belonging has never even been a question.

In the Jewish calendar, we’ve moved into the month of Av, which contains within it the most heartbreaking and the most joyful days of the year.  

Passionflower, Passiflora incarnata

Expression, Praise, and Joining this Galactic Mess

What can help us hold joy and grief, duality and complexity, in the same month? The same body? 

I am thinking about the medicine of enchantment and awe–which Queer Nature describes as “nourishment for our nervous systems” and "a non-binary emotion that can be felt when we are ecstatic or when we are terrified", making "us feel small but at the same time fills us with the very ‘big’ emotions of wonder and amazement.” 

I’m thinking about the way grief as praise can bring us to life.

Martín Prechtel shares:

“Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses…If we do not grieve what we miss, we are not praising what we love. We are not praising the life we have been given in order to love. If we do not praise whom we miss, we are ourselves in some way dead. So grief and praise make us alive.” 

Dori Midnight shares about this coming alive through grief: 

“Like Inanna, we emerge from the charred depths of destruction, of grief season, beckoned by the bees and invited by our friends and lovers at the ancestral rave at the edge of the woods, as part of a call and response that is life calling to life. And we answer! We say yes! We put on borrowed clothes because maybe it’s like how grief dissolves us and makes us forget who we are and maybe sometimes it’s a relief to be nothing, be nobody, be someone else entirely, let go of who we are always trying to be. Swollen and tender from sobbing, the warm summer sun licks our face and we dissolve even further in the erotic embrace of others, losing ourselves in sensual pleasures, but also remembering our very specific selves. We remember ourselves and each other by bumping up against other living bodies. Bodies of earth, familiar and strange.”

I’m thinking about the sensory practices of Jewish rituals that bring in taste and smell and color and pleasure. I’m thinking about all the bitter and sour and sweet, juicy and messy fruits, like blackberry and grapefruit, who we might add to our plates, whose juice we might let run down our faces as stories and spells for holding grief and joy in the same mouthful and letting ourselves be seen in the mess of it. 

I’m also thinking about the duality of Motherwort’s bitter and nervous system and heart nourishing medicine.

Motherwort, Leonorus cardiaca

Motherwort Medicine for Leo Season & the Month of Av

Motherwort (who I like to call queer auntie wort!) also goes by the name Lion heart, or Lion’s tale.  Their latin name is Leonurus cardiaca. Lion-hearted. Their soft tufted petals are protected by fierce, prickly protective calyxes. Often used to support the heart and those in grief, Motherwort offers both a plant hug and a chin lift, asserting the dignity, courageousness, and power of our grief, and can calm and steady racing hearts. Motherwort and Leo assert our need to be witnessed, held, and celebrated.  

A student in our herbalism for grief support course recently shared that the tiny, fuzzy flowers look like many small mouths, open in song. I was reminded of the vulnerability of creating and singing and expressing, how Motherwort, traditionally used to support new mothers and caregivers, has also supported the pouring out of songs sung to new life. 

For those whose hearts beat out of their chests at the thought of being witnessed in expression, Motherwort offers a supportive balm of love and praise.

Inspiration for Expression as Praise for being Alive: Decolonizing the Strength Card

Much of the imagery in the strength card has been focused  “on the relationship connecting a human and a fierce, impulsive animal” or a human holding up a large or broken column, or both (Laeticia Barbier).

Sometimes the relationship between the human and the fierce animal in the card, the human is portrayed as a man slaying the beast or violently engaged with them in some way. In the Rider-Waite depiction, a woman is gently interacting with a docile lion, her hands placed softly on his head and mouth. 

While I much prefer this softer image, which implies that strength is also about softness, I wonder what might it be like to relate to the wildness of the lion, grief, and expression without trying to conquer, use, or tame them however softly. 

I want a strength card that looks like lovers in a field, or bees humming and dancing in the open mouths of motherwort flowers, or the galaxies in the Leo constellation colliding and changing shape. 

May this season of bold expression invite us to take the risk of loving, of delighting in our “bad” art and our strangeness and our many, always changing, shapes. May this season invite us to take the risk of being misunderstood. To express ourselves in ways that really honor the multitudes of ourselves while opening up the possibility for others to do the same. To remember that creative expression is the birthright of every being on this planet. To follow our pleasure and joy. To come alive.

Yours,

Mara

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