I wasn’t going to go. Well, I was, and then I wasn’t. As typically happens, I opted for  family before self, and my daughter had wanted to see a friend’s performance in “The Nutcracker.” The only show happened to fall on the Solstice, and so I decided I would miss my friend’s gathering last night.

When I picked my daughter up from school yesterday, she got into the car and announced, “I’d rather go to the basketball game tonight.”

“Are you sure?” I could hardly believe it. Suddenly, I was free to go to the gathering. I had no excuse not to, except no one really knew I was coming.

By the time I walked through the threshold and into my friend Deb’s home, I had no doubt I was where I was supposed to be for the evening. Three had became four.

“I didn’t know if you would be here,” Deb smiled as she embraced me.

Neither did I…

“The fairies said you might not come. That it was uncertain,” Sophia announced. “I drew a card for us before I left,” she told all of us. “It was called ‘Ancient Wisdom’ and it had an image of a stone circle.”

I was not surprised.

Minutes laster we are gathered in Deb’s yoga room, surrounded by the crystals of Earth. Four women seated in the four directions. I, positioned at Earth. In the center, our small altar is filled with offerings and candles. Hovering in a circle of energy around us are the ancients, holding space.

I nestle the rainbow goddess I have brought into the well of my throat and ease into a supine position on the rug. My mind follows the pulse of Sophia’s drumbeat down a stairway into Earth. I am in the ground below Castlerigg.

Minutes pass. More than I am comfortable with. Inside the canvas of my mind scenes morph and disappear. My body grows warm and restless, then cold. It wants to dance. To move. I know where it wants to go.

We are waiting for you, I hear before I return to the room.