Around Halloween, I felt nudged to create the New Year essence for 2013.
I always approach this annual task with some trepidation. Will I be able to capture the pulse of this particular time? Given the intense focus on the end of the Mayan calendar (on December 21, 2012), I felt even more nervous about the process this year.
The process of creating the essence
To prepare myself and open to the universal energies that are shifting at this time, I pulled a Tarot card (from the Thoth deck) and threw an I Ching spread.
Their differing messages created a paradox. The 3 of cups (shown here) is a picture of beauty, abundance, and fertility. Meanwhile “Calculated Waiting,” the message of the I Ching, was distinctly cautionary. “Many areas are undergoing significant change; any action would be foolish overreaction…”
What was the universe saying through these apparently conflicting messages?
Then I turned to the essences themselves, centering and grounding myself before testing for the combination.
There are nine essences in this year’s combination — six single flower essences and three combinations. What is nature’s hidden story? I wondered.
Working with the Raven Essence system for nearly 18 years, I’ve learned to trust the inner story revealed within the complex combinations. As I decode the messages through each new combination, I often sense nature whispering her secrets of loving wisdom.
This time was no different. The message was clear — and it did not contradict either message from the divinatory tools I’d used before.
What I learned about 2013 through the essence
2013 is both a time of abundance and of caution.
How we proceed is best described in the a few of the words from the Giant Milkweed essence, the central energy in the combination: When fear prevents easy movement, the essence offers a quality of maternal support to help us take baby steps out into the world.
Positioning Radiance, the pivotal essence in the Destiny kit, focuses on the importance of the present moment: Use the essence to stabilize yourself before moving forward. This moment, only this moment, is full of all grace.
Many flowers in the combination (Phlox, Gloxinia, Bridalwreath Spirea and White Climber) affirmed, as they often do, the heart-elements of hope, freedom, and new possibilities. Meanwhile, Immunization Toxicity pointed to culturally accepted belief systems, dogmatic spiritual practices, environmental pesticides that were created with good intention but imposed upon the population.
I realized the 2013 combination embraced everything, the challenges we face and the beauty that is still abundantly present to us.
Star of Bethlehem helps us unite these disparate elements by healing inner splits within the psyche. In the wake of a divisive US election, it seems important not to fall into the trap of viewing the world in simplistic terms, good and bad, right and wrong, them and us.
In the midst of all this, the surprising and most delightful element was an essence made for Diane Brown, a colleague who has created the Belstar labyrinth. This essence is not published yet but it speaks most poignantly to the larger picture, a vision of wholeness that we are being called to embrace in 2013.
An excerpt from her essence, Restoring the Earth’s Song: The restoration of 
the Earth’s song is parallel to the discovery of our creative expression of Love. Restoring the Earth’s Song tunes the body for an experience of Love that is deeply in communion with the earth and fully alive in our bodies... As new songs of Love dance between heaven and earth through our hearts, we are able to name and follow our dreams, thereby truly fulfilling our destiny. Activating our co-creative magicianship invites all the elements on this beautiful planet to participate with us in their own natural fulfillment.
There it was, a banquet of nature’s wisdom laid out before me — a call to action, and a prayer for peace.
Now my work was to shape this into new language, the definition for the New Year 2013 essence. (To read the complete definition, click here.)
Creating a Visual Meditation
Once the definition was complete, and while I was still in the creative energy of the process, I began making the power-point slideshow.
Ever since 2008, I’ve created slideshows to illustrate each Annual Essence. I love combining words with evocative images. (That’s also why I like writing blogs!)
Searching the web and my own stash of wonderful images, I found the ones that resonated with the feeling-tone of nature’s story. Hours flew by as the images landed, in sync with the words and making them more vivid. Gradually, the fluid through-line of the story became ever more apparent. And when it was all done, my legs stiff and my shoulders in knots, I went to bed exhausted, but very content.
I trust you enjoy the final product, a silent, visual meditation that invites you to breathe with what is happening, both within your own heart and the world’s soul.
To view the six-minute slideshow, click here.
Ravenessences 