The Arc of Fire

The Spring Equinox + Desert Medicine: Firecracker Penstemon

Spring Equinox 2024: March 19th // 7:07 pm Pacific

For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the Spring Equinox is just two days away, and the yang-rising solar energy is about to initiate us into a new Fire Cycle.

The arc of the Fire Cycle begins at the vernal equinox, peaks in deep summer, and enters its transmutation phase in the period leading up to the Winter Solstice. This is the arc of action, passion, vitally, and life-force. It carries us through the entire yang-dominant energy flow…through the seasons of rooting, blossoming, fruiting, and return.

On an inner level, this is the arc that initiates the natural expansion of our bandwidth, our sensory system, and central nervous system ability to process, sort, and integrate new perceptions, new meaning, and new realizations.

Equinoxes are fulcrum points for the entire energy system of the Earth. For a moment in time, the energetic dominance of the hemispheres meets at net zero. The next moment, each half tips in the opposite direction - the yang becomes the yin and vice versa. This cycle, born of the relationship between the Earth and Sun, is the foundation for all of Earth’s seasons. It is a primary part of the overall weather patterns we experience, and it is a cycle we are biologically and psychologically interrelated with.

With more light comes more energy, heat, warmth, movement and elemental change. While we let-go, dream, intend, and envision during the yin-half of the year - the yang-half is when we see the active, physical evolution of our time-space reality. Life-force and living intelligence fields that have been in quiescence throughout vast portions of the earth, now arise. Growth and reproduction occur, and a major part of the Earth’s carbon cycle begins again through awakening deciduous forests.

The Equinox moments initiate us into new states of mind and matter, a new state of consciousness and nature. It is spring again, yet this spring has never been before unto all the Universe. We are in a new place, a new space, a completely new sense of ourselves and the life we are living. While some consider the Spring Equinox to be a new year - in the cycles of wild nature, the new year occurs at the setting of the seed at the Fall Equinox. The threshold we are about to cross together is the halfway point in the rhythms of renewal - its fullness ready to be expressed as life emerges from the womb of the world once more. We have gestated the seed patterns, now we are readying the soils - and as the solar energy follows the Arc of Fire, the life-force we desire to infuse our creations is summoned with elemental precision and certainty.

These are the Great Cycles of Well-Being - our own spinning universes of thoughts and things, inseparable from the larger body of life that we are part of.

At the Equinox moment, I like to consider that I am entering into a space of evenness and equanimity with every other form on this planet. There is a deep sense of relaxation I gain from considering that we are all passing through this portal together. No one excluded from this event. Whether or not it is acknowledged, whether or not it is valued, no one remains separate from this passage.

I can sense the quickening of life now - the life around me, my life. There is still snow up in the alpine, but the redbud blooms further south, and the crocus appears as the vernal oracle. The hawks are mating in the valley and the frogs are singing their binaural songs.

I do not know what, in any sense of detail, this warm season will bring - but I trust the good that is burgeoning forth. Spring is very much a state of mind, as it is a season here on earth - and it is good medicine to remember our inseparability with this renewal and flowering.

Desert Medicine: Firecracker Penstemon

The first time I met Firecracker Penstemon, I was shocked into presence.

In the spring of 2022, Victor and I were hiking off-trail in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness outside of Sedona, AZ. We had picked a line running from our camp across pathless desert, to the base of towering red sandstone. It was early April, and the desert was just barely in bloom.

In the desert, shifts in the landscape can come as a surprise. The land appears unchanging until the horizon…but then you set out on foot, and untold universes appear as the seemingly flat land undulates and disappears into rocky arroyos and secret forests of juniper and prickly pear, hillsides covered in wild grasses, and long stretches of sunbaked sand with the tiniest white flowers popping up every few inches.

Our surprises came in those forms and more, when the shallow arroyos gave way to deep gullies as we neared the base of the red rock. The terrain became a maze, the ground deeply rutted by the seasonal flow of water. Islands and peninsulas with huge towering junipers overlooked the trenches, and we scampered up, down, and around as we picked our way to the very foot of the sandstone walls.

I remember how particularly a certain juniper stood out. Most junipers seem old, I think that is in their very natures regardless of their actual age - however this juniper was clearly ancient. The size of the tree itself, given the climate and conditions, meant that it was at least many hundreds of years old.

I was excited as we scrambled up the sandy slope towards the tree’s base, picking our way up step-like stones, who had tumbled down from the red rock walls ages ago. I reached the top first, and found myself blanketed in the cool dappled shade of its canopy. The whole scene had changed from rambling desert to sanctuary. There were enormous red rock boulders with which the tree had clearly found harmony, and a spot where a person could sit in privacy. In the very center of what I considered to be the “meditation” spot - a flame of red light blazed forth - the gleaming red flowers of a desert Penstemon, white stamens curling out from within the tube-shaped flower, like a dragon’s tongue. At that moment I had no idea what kind of plant this was - all I knew is that it was bright and loud and very particular. Particular in where it was growing. Particular in its appearance and energy. Like that person who walks into a room and you wonder who the heck are THEY and what kind of magic do they hold?

The entire scene felt shamanic. I was slightly light-headed in the heat, entertaining a thought that we should come back to this place and do ceremony to connect with the land. A raven circled overhead calling its klook klook, klook klook.

The moment passed. We moved on. And then around another boulder I found the same plant in full flower. They were so loud. Do you know what I mean when I say that a plant stands up and gets your attention? Have you been called and bidden to come closer?

I was engrossed, enchanted.

We continued our hike, which had become mostly a scramble, until I thought there was no further we could go. The red rock walls rose almost directly above us, and the prickly vegetation became dense. I sat down on a rock to take everything in, while Victor said he was going to explore a little more. I heard him moving through the branches behind and slightly above me. Then his sounds disappeared and I was left to myself and the piercing blue vista.

Minutes later I heard him scrambling through the brush, and his voice calling to me excitedly, exclaiming that I needed to see what he had found. From my vantage point, it was impossible to ascertain where he could possibly be. The red sandstone appeared to narrow into an impossibly narrow chasm, and the vegetation created what seemed like an impenetrable wall. There was such urgency in his voice, that I picked my way through the brush, sometimes scooting on all fours, or side-stepping around prickly-pear, taking care not to lose my footing on the crumbling rock wash that was rising with every step. Once I had made it through the thickest part of the desert thicket, the reason for his summons was apparent. What had seemed from below to be a narrow crevice in the red rock wall, had opened into a stunning cathedral. A few hand and foot-holds up and over the lip of the wash, revealed a huge bowl-like area, with gorgeous red walls striated with quartz seams, rising hundreds of feet into the clear blue sky.

It was stunning. A miracle. A land unto itself, hidden from view, but very much alive with tall slender trees, prickly pear…and a fiery-red penstemon, growing straight out of the rock.

One of my first thoughts was how glad I was that Victor is so adventurous. The second was that we were probably some of few, if not the only, humans who had visited this particular spot in earth’s recent memory. I can still feel the sensation of being perched along the gritty sandstone walls, while gravity seemed to draw the very atmosphere out and over the rim of the red rock. Sky filled the cavernous space and spilled out into the surrounding desert. Even sitting on flat rock, the feeling was of falling or flying, so present was the element of space. The normal parameters of the three-dimensional world seemed to bend ever so slightly in the curving dance of stone and sky. Even while I could locate my body in physical reality, an undercurrent of disorientation pulsed within my sensing mind.

I didn’t know it at the time, but we would return to this spot several days later a few hours prior to the full moon moment. In our subsequent desert wanderings, I discovered that the Firecracker Penstemon were quite particular about where they would grow. I do not remember finding others, none at least who stood out to me the way these had. A tone had rung in my heart the moment I beheld the first scarlet flowers, and desire to draw closer in connection with this unique being who grows so decisively in rock, wind, and the solar fire. For me, that kind of felt connection with a plant often translates into essence co-creation. Together with the plant’s permission and the natural ability of water to store information, an imprint of the energetic signature or vibrational essence of the flower is given. In this way, the field of intelligence that is this desert dweller, can be taken in drop doses as support, remedy, and teacher.

I have chosen the Firecracker Penstemon essence from my collection as the Spring Equinox Essence-Drop for paid subscribers. With Libra Full Moon correspondences, I consider this to be elementally precise support for the burgeoning Eclipse Season that we are currently stepping into - the first eclipse to occur on March 25th (Libra Full Moon), and the second on April 8th (Aries Total Solar Eclipse). The primary essence mailing for current subscribers has already occurred, however I am offering a second mailing for those who wish to take part in this offering. The deadline to upgrade your subscription is March 21th.