The first snow had finally come and now there was a layer of white snow- crystals covering everything, the trees, the ground, the bushes...
Everything was white, but not only just white.
It was glimmering as if the whole Milky Way had been cast out over the forest. Small, small snow crystals glittering like stars in the sharp light of the full moon which was hanging over the mountains like a big lamp.
When the full moon is shining like this it is also casting very sharp shadows so it almost looks a bit unreal, and the black sky is full of stars. Yes, of course...
But if you are far away from the nearest city or village, the sky, the background is totally black, intensively black and that´s why you can see so many stars.
If you don´t use any lamp the stars give an overwhelming impression, the feeling of “can this really be true?”
The moon and the stars are seen in an almost incredibly strong way, suddenly you see billions of stars when in the city you can only see the biggest ones.
In the middle of the night you can walk out without any lamp because the moon is giving such a hard, white light, that you can easily see where you are.
But it is not like dawn when the twilight sets in.
When the sun rises the whole sky slowly becomes illuminated so the light doesn't make any shadows like this.
The full moon produces very sharp and intense shadows of everything, projected on to the white snow. You get the same effect if you turn on a small but sharp LED-lamp in a totally dark room. But only one lamp!
But the moon has a special effect that the lamp does not have. It is probably the frequencies of the moonlight that makes me feel as if the fairy tale world is suddenly presenting itself.
It opens a window to say something to us and it opens a window to receive what we want to say back to cosmos.
For one night there is a window open for communication. The portal to the dream-time.
That´s why we usually make our ceremonies under the full moon, especially in winter time when the effect is so great and everything is glittering like natural x-mas trees.
This day, December 10, was the day of the moon eclipse, which occurred around five o´clock in the evening.
But it was only for one hour or so and then the moonshine was again as bright as usually and the moon slowly got higher and higher up behind the pines.
We had collected a big heap of woods, planks and sticks in the middle of the yard between our house and the barn and now was the time to make a big bonfire out of it.
The huge , hot flames threw huge clouds of small, red sparks up into the cold air.
When the fire had been burning for a while the wolves started to sing their songs to the moon.
We heard them howling, with varying sounds and tones going up and down all the time, somewhere on the next mountain.
Here was the reality behind all these pictures of wolves under the full moon!
So for maybe an hour our world was filled with those songs, together with three different kinds of shining sparks.
There were the ice-cold, frozen, white crystals that covered everything around us, glimmering and glittering on the ground and on the trees.
There were the hot, burning sparks of fire that constantly tried to reach heaven but failed after just some meters, when they died and turned into ashes that fell back to the ground.
There were the innumerable sparkling stars on the black sky above us. They look like glitter, but are made of big fire-balls, big suns, super-hot beings that live for millions of years.
We are in the Middle World, we are not burning hot and we are not frozen ice-cold, we are kind of medium, in many senses.
We cannot fly like the birds and we cannot dive like the fishes.
We are not in the Upper World among the Gods and we are not in the Lower World among the trolls and demons.
We are like the trees that have their roots going down and their branches going up.
We are in the middle of everything so we have the capacity of contacting everything as we are not far away from anything.
We can use our mind and intent to go both here and there.
Just focus on something and you will attract it!
This day we had chosen to make an offering to Mother Earth, and to her goddesses that promote growth and prosperity, so we cast rice into the fire and danced around it and prayed to all the nature spirits of the area and promised that we want to live in harmony with them.
It means that we will not do anything to nature or take anything without having first asked the spirits for permission to do so, and we will help the animals as well to have a good life.
We keep away from everything that has been cultivated with the help of unnatural chemicals, also when we buy food in the shops. It is a philosophy.
Anything that we do to nature will come back to us and to our grandchildren.
If we force Mother Earth to be a producer of rubbish against her nature, then we will also be forced to be producers of rubbish against our nature. And when Earth gets sick from it we will also get sick from it, both mentally and physically.
I sang a song to Isis, the Mother Goddess, and I felt like a servant to her, wanting to feed and protect all children that come into my way.
During the years I have also done that very much. Sometimes there could be as much as 25 children and teenagers here, just coming from here and there.
Many parents just dropped them here for a weekend and drove off again without saying anything.
Children are always welcome to this place, especially if they have some trouble that they want to get away from.
Some hours later the wild, burning, hot fire had turned into a heap of black dirt, sot and grime.
The full moon disappeared behind the trees and we went to sleep.
Now the the sparkling phantasy land is gone. Everything is covered with a gray dust of water, the trees are just brown, gray and black and the glimmering snow has turned into slippery ice with water on.
The window to the spirit world is closed again, but not fully. It never is. It is just somewhere else!
It moves around to keep your own spirit alive and alert.
If you go out in the rain and really like the rain then you will find the spirit there too. It´s a matter of putting your heart into it.
But right now I like the stove best.
Now is the time to sit by the warm stove in the kitchen, remembering old times, singing old songs of wisdom to the grandchildren and the sleeping dogs and cats.
We have no TV and no computer so the only background sounds are the cracks from the fire, the drip drop from the rainwater and some wind blowing in the trees.
