The Fifth Season

Late Summer is considered the Fifth Season
- Season of the Earth.

The Earth element harvests the light of Fire,
And like photosynthesis,
Transforms it into nourishment.

Insight and inspiration coagulate into
offerings from the heart, set like
swollen fruits upon outstretched limbs.

Earth rules our digestion
- both physical and psycho-spiritual

When we embrace the kaleidoscope
of our human experience.
When we allow it all

To pass through our being;

To transform and catalyse us.

To return that which won’t sustain us,
back into the Earth’s embrace.

To take only what is life-giving.

And to synthesise
Something of value;
Born of our unique experience.



When we allow this flow of Earth energy,
We till the soil of our own potential,
Until it yields the gifts of our ripened expression.

To do so is to gift not only ourselves,
But the world itself,
A soul-deep nourishment.

When we lack faith in the value
Of our own voice;
When we deny our unique, lived-in wisdom,
And the skills it has forged,

We may shrink from the ripening of their expression.

We may wait dutifully for life
to hand us the opportunity
of space, of time;

We may wait endlessly
For someone to shine the light of recognition
upon our unseen self.

If we deny these parts of ourselves-
Our passions, gifts and knowledge-
Their sweetness goes untasted.

The fruits of inspiration fall to the ground,
and like the decay of organic matter
they succumb to the entropy of the Yin forces.


But Earth doesn’t demand perfection
Or grand displays of profound artistry.

Instead she asks for steadied commitment
To showing up;

To the tending
And the gradual revealing of self

So that the light of your individuation
Can offer the world its humble warmth.