Finding Power in the Darkness:
The Medicine of the North

Here we are, together, in the dark time. The dark is physical, as in the long winter nights in the northern hemisphere. And it’s metaphorical, as in all the dark energies washing through the daily world.

On the Celtic Medicine Wheel that I work with, we are now in the direction of the North. This is the direction of dark, winter, and cold.

·       The East is the sunrise and springtime.

·       The South is noon and bright summer.

·       The West is dusk and autumn.

·       The North is winter, the deep night, and the deep dream. It is the direction that acknowledges the struggles of life.

Many spiritual traditions affirm that discomfort is our finest teacher. The ego wants a life of comfort, but comfort is not why we came into this body. Spiritual power comes at a price, and that price is discomfort. This can be a hard lesson to grasp. This is not to say that we should seek discomfort merely to prove our worthiness or power – that’s just another game of the ego. The focus is on learning to be a “true human” – on training our spirit self – not just on acquiring a string of painful experiences to boast about.

This medicine wheel is out there in the world, marking the seasons and the hours of the day. But it is also inside you, in every breath you take: the inhale is East, the full breath is the South, the exhale is the West, and the space between—the dark, empty stillness—is the North. Every direction on the wheel is an ally, offering us medicine, wisdom, and power, if only we learn how to ask.

The Gifts of Struggle: Endurance and Fierceness

The North acknowledges a core truth of being human: To be human is to struggle, and often to fight battles. We are told by the wisdom keepers that external battles are unaddressed internal battles. What we don’t deal with inside us spills out into the world to cause trouble, and to create karma. The Jesus of the banned Gnostic gospels said it like this: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you” (Gospel of Thomas, Saying 70).

The Dine’ (Navajo) people tell about the two heroes who, in the beginning of time in this world, battled and killed many of the monsters left over from the previous world. But they left some of the monsters untouched because these monsters could become our teachers. Lice were left on earth because they teach us to wash ourselves and keep clean. Stupidity was left on earth because we learn best by making mistakes. The cold was left on earth because it teaches us how to survive, make life-affirming decisions, and take care of one another.

In some forms of Christianity, it is said that we are “learning theology in the Devil’s classroom,” meaning that the devil is here to teach us the difference between virtue and vice. This work, to stand up strongly against the cold wind in the struggle of life, is a critical part of refining the soul.

Cross-culturally we see stories of wise beings battling the lower forces of chaos. In the Celtic tradition, it’s the battle between the people of the Earth Goddess Dana (or Danu), and the misshapen, gluttonous creatures known as the Fomorians. The Fomorians are horrible beings, but they also carry the power of fertility and knowledge of farming. In a sense, they are pure “want,” untempered by the higher wisdom of Spirit, vision and the arts. Both the Fomorians and the People of Dana are inside each of us.

The North is our powerful ally in our life struggles, offering essential medicine for hard times: endurance, patience, openness, and piercing common sense, discipline, decisiveness, fierceness, and trust in life. It can help to take your struggle to the ally of the north, tell it all the ways you feel up against the wall, and ask it to deliver these medicines to you to help you endure the struggle, or to change your perspective – to raise it to a higher level – so that is no longer struggle.

The North reminds us that all new life begins in darkness. It is the womb where the next cycle begins, the profound, dark stillness that precedes creation. For me, the North is the birthplace of prayer, because all prayer springs from the paradox inside us of wonder and awe mixed with our reality of disappointment and struggle. A shamanic prayer does not so much plead with God to take away the discomfort, but to open and ask for power, clarity and wisdom to navigate the inherent struggles of life.

If you are in any building right now with heat, it’s because deep in the belly of the building is a little piece of the sun bringing life to you, creating a bubble of protection from the cold. To help us stay alive while learning from the cold, the Great Sun placed a bit of itself in the belly of the Great Mother (scientists call this the molten core). The Mother delivers that energy to protect us in cold times. So, in cold weather, it’s good to thank the Great Sun and Mother Earth for the way they care for you and ask the cold what it has to teach you about becoming a true human.

Seriously, I’m saying: make prayer of thanks to the spirit of the furnace. Or as a colleague of mine says, “every morning give thanks to your cats and technology, because each has a mind of its own that we cannot control but we need them both.”

The great sun also placed a little bit of itself inside your body – in the upper right chamber of your four-chambered heart. Scientists call this the sinoatrial node. It is a tiny bundle of neurons that deliver a burst of energy about every second, which tells the heart to beat another beat. That energy comes from the other side of the doorway of the heart – the doorway to Spirit. So, inside your heart, about every second, your internal medicine wheel, delivers day and night, summer and winter, the four seasons, waking and dreaming, and the four sacred directions, all teaching you every second. Inside you, every second or so, is a little winter solstice. This heart-center is the fifth direction on the Celtic medicine wheel – the direction of “sovereignty” or “power to make my own decisions about life.”

The cold months are a good time to ask Spirit to open that door of the heart and give you a good hint about what you need to learn next on this journey to becoming a true human.

I leave you with one of my all-time favorite poems that, for me, is about gathering strength from the darkness.

The Jewel by James Wright

There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.