Seed Magic, Soul Magic
potential and possibilities
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Last week, I wrote about Lament. In that essay, we examined Persephone and touched on her most ancient form as a vegetation deity. It’s easy to conceptualize life as a plant, germinating, growing, blossoming, dying back, being cut down, and returning to the earth. We see this pattern in all life. We’re born, we grow, and we die.
But there’s something else. Something more essential and powerful that precedes the ordinary growing season. There is something that comes before germination and after dying. There is the seed.
Today, we will explore the symbolic significance of the humble seed and uncover some of its profound secrets.
When we examine the ages and stages of life from a psycho-spiritual perspective, we become aware of an interesting fact. Age 0, Pre-born/Womb Time is the Time of Spirit, and 106+/Post Death is also the Age of Spirit.
All seeds and souls exist somewhere in realms beyond our ordinary perception. They are thought forms in the Mind (of God, Universe, Source, etc.).
This pre-material world existence is bracketed by Birth, called entering, and Death, including the years just before it, known as the Age of Releasing Breath.
In the seasonal round, we find ourselves in the long, slow exhale of the Age of Releasing Breath. But the seed stands apart from the temporal. Like the soul, the seed belongs to the eternal, to the dimension removed from external cause and effect and untouched by either birth or death.
Like our soul, the seed holds all possibilities and potentials harmonious with its essence and nature.
Different seeds need different conditions to activate. Some seeds need cold temperatures, some need darkness, and others need light. Some need to be scarified: their hard shell needs to be scratched, pierced, or otherwise compromised so germination can occur.
The magic of the seed resides in its potential. The sunflower seed, for example, is a sunflower in a different guise. The potential within the sunflower seed is the fully mature sunflower itself, along with all of the seeds the sunflower will produce.
The abducted Persephone of the Underworld, the seed in the ground, is the fully realized Demeter who flourishes and provides the grain that feeds the world. She is also the mysterious Hecate who stands at the crossroads and moves between realms.
The magic of this is the potential, not the physical seed nor the plant that comes after, but the energy that is held like an inhaled breath waiting to exhale and manifest itself on the earth.
The seed holds potential energy because it contains the DNA necessary to grow into a specific plant. More profoundly, its potential comes from the archetypal realm, rooted in the Source of Being that resides beyond the material. Potential is akin to potent, the power to become.
Seed Magic is Powerful.
Every farmer, gardener and a great many of our ancestors understood seed magic. They understood Persephone, John Barleycorn, Lord Millet (a Chinese version of the vegetation story), and many others who play this role in local folklore and myth.
The magic of the seed was one of potential transforming into manifestation. A tiny seed growing into a harvest that would stave off hunger and death.
An intimate working with nature, enacting ritual around plowing, planting, reaping, and storing seeds, does more than provide food. It acquaints one with the deeper, hidden processes that link the material and spiritual worlds above and below.
Soul Magic is Transformative
As we head into the harvest season and winter, we have an opportunity to examine the correspondence of seed and soul and glean some important insights into how the potential within our souls can be unleashed.
Your soul has a unique potential that can manifest in this material world. There is someone you are meant (destined?) to become. Because a Loving One is working for your Good, circumstances, synchronicities, and causes are placed in your life to activate your potential.
Different souls need different conditions to activate. Some souls need darkness, and others require light. Some need to be scarified: the hard shell of their heart needs to be scratched, pierced, and broken open.
Some of these circumstances (perhaps most) we would see as suffering. A dark night of the soul or a heart broken open are among the most difficult to bear.
The fate of all seeds that are to germinate is, at the very least, one of being buried in the ground. This implies a dying of ego, shedding unhealthy personas, entanglements, and attachments to material vanities. Remember, the necessary preparations of the seed are required to yield the proper growth and flowering of the potential concealed within the seed; the same is true of the soul.
For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction. ~ Cynthis Occelli
In the garden and the garden of the heart, autumn is the time to plant seeds.
This entire season, from Lammas, August 1st, through the end of Samhain at the winter solstice, seeds, and souls experience darkness, cold, and processes that break down what had previously shielded and protected it in preparation for the potent magic of manifestation that spring ushers in.
What will you be pondering, contemplating, or meditating on through this season that will allow the seed of your soul to move closer to its full growth and potential? Seasonal wisdom and seasonal living are a spiral of constant prompts to see in nature signposts and maps that guide your journey of inner development and transformation. What will your soul, what will you, become when you fully realize your potential?
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Notes- Psycho-Spiritual Ages and Stages from Gathering Wholeness | Identifying and Working with Parts of Self. Comparative Psycho-Spiritual Developmental Ages and Stages © Cat Caracelo M.A.
This is beautiful. The phrase “what would it be like to let yourself go to seed” has been in me all week, and this piece was a delightful deepening of that contemplation. Thank you!
Oh I just loved this. Seed energy as unformed potentiality. Once planted, once the intention is made, the potential does its magic!