Keep Your Spirit Warm

- Wrap Yourself In Magic -


It's cold outside-  need another blanket?

We all have our own favorite ways to snuggle up and get cozy. Blankets of all kinds seem to be involved. Handmade quilts stitched with care, soft warm woolens that smell of summer in a cedar chest, a tiny square of blue silk that used to be the edging on a blankey - a blanket of love, a blanket of snow. Cocoons of safety and warmth. We wrap them around us all the time. It's no accident that we call them comforters.

Salt water and snow are important in nature mythology, but these days technology is also important to us. So, we seeded our clouds with silver iodized-salt and made it snow.

Now that we have snow, why should't the kami in the High Plain of Heaven love it as much as we do? Wouldn't nature gods make snowmen? Great Big Snowmen... Why not Snow Sumotori! Our snowman is throwing the salt, just as the rikishi do before each match, and the salt of heaven falls on us as snow.

Salt purifies and cleanses, and protects us from all injury and evils. In piles outside the door, it shows where blessings have accumulated. In the symbology of dreams, a blanket of snow means love will soon surround you. In the Shinto tradition, white marks the places where the gods are present.

Now we are all beneath that comforter. Slip under the covers with us and make your own myths.

At this holiday time, we wish you all the Joy and Light of the season, every season in turn. Whether you are into hibernation or celebration, in your heart, as in the heart of the wheat, enjoy the fruitfulness of the past and nurture the kernel that is the promise of the future.

May your Dreams be as Bright as the Northern Lights and your Hearts as Warm as Live Arctic Fur.

We wish you the Brightest of New Years-  Safe Haven, Snug Harbour and Always the Welcome of a Loving Heart. As winter dances over the land, remember that you always have a warm, safe nest in our hearts.

 

Throwing the Salt     ©Gryphonsmith Graphyx 1999

words and music by Jim and Tay
with Frostbite, Ginger, HuncaMunca, Tiggywinkle, Little Richard, Solo, Illya, Coypu, BooBoo and Yogi