Nabasvan

When you take a breath early this morning, before the dawn, don't bring to mind an image from yesterday's news, or an anxious thought about the non-existent future. Just flush your mind with the breath itself. Simply bathe in the sparkling stream of nectar, charged with the star energy, flowing so gracefully into your body, a gift of inspiration from the Mother of Silences.

As we enter the dark half of the year, and the Light that was manifest in summer's fruit returns to his mystic seed in the womb of the Great Mother, we learn to embrace the Void, the Hollow in the spore, where the Christic radiance will be reborn at solstice.

This feast of time's return to mothering night is expressed in India as Diwali, in the ancient mysteries of Northern Europe as Samhain. I wish you a profound feast of Winter magic at this turning time. Remember that Darkness is not the opposite of Light, but the womb of Light.

Here is a poem in honor of the turning. Nabasvan, better known as Brahma Muhurta, is the "breath of dawn," the hour before sunrise, most ideal for meditation because the air is rich in the energy of prana shakti.

Hello, my name is Darkness,
and I am addicted to light.

I began to savor sunbeams about the age
of four, and soon was in the hopeless habit
of drowning in flowers.

The first sip I remember: a yellow
chrysanthemum on a September afternoon.
Now I guzzle from the grail of the full moon.

I wake after midnight craving stars.
I creep downstairs, tip toe past
the cider and cheese, wander out beyond
the pumpkins to the meadow's edge,
leaving crystal footprints in frost.

It is not the florid summer noon that mystics love,

but the radiant liquór of what is not,
the hidden pulsar in the void.

I stand here shamelessly shining from belly to brow
with blackness, secret nectar known to mad
Taoist mountain poets, Benedictines drunk
with vigil hymns, Sufis, Beguínes, whirling ones,
the wiccans of Mary magic.

Tipsy as a reed I sway, my spine a hollow
twist of stillness til my roots tingle down
to the planetary seed, my crown
aglitter with Andromeda.
By sunrise I am utterly wasted.

O Nabasvan, breath of the mother-hour,
when silence turns to cream and ghostly
mushrooms quiver up from mud-musk like
virescent nipples of the crone:

I promise to reveal what can never be known.
Let my body sheathe your dagger of angels.

Hello, my name is Luminous.
Pierce me with the flame of your shadow.
I am addicted to night.