Descending the scales of soul.

December 2023

Dear Friends

As the year folds into its final chapter, and the pages of the next one beckon, I find myself at a threshold, a liminal space between what was and what is to come. This crossroads moment—an annual dance that is familiar to us all—sways for me to a tune of something more substantial.

It feels as though I am delving deeper than ever, cutting closer to the essence of my being. Layers are being cast aside, peeled away like old skin—tangible and corporeal.

This is not without its challenges, of course. Shedding one’s skin is much more than a physical act, it's an emotional odyssey, and where I had previously considered myself unattached I am finding shackles refusing to relinquish their grip: ideas that feel too rigid and small, old habits, roles and identities, relationships that no longer align with who I am becoming. There appears also to be a kind of reliance on old styles of awareness that are no longer suited to current conditions.

Cultivating the ego is a lifelong endeavour. It’s uncomfortable, but I do understand the need for an irritant to get things started—like a snake rubbing itself against a rock.

I’m reminded of the poet Robert Bly, who first introduced me through his work to an old Scandinavian folktale, The Lindworm.

A serpent of enormous proportions, the lindworm is an archetypal embodiment of the shedding process itself. Each layer of scales removed to mirror the journey from childhood to adolescence to adulthood—a continuous cycle of initiation and transformation, collapse and renewal.

An old story living inside me is rearing its serpentine head in the mythopoetic landscape. I see a young boy's urge to protect himself and his loved ones, to try and keep them unrealistically safe no matter what the cost.

The lindworm urges me to confront the inner fears that have arisen in me—the need for control and certainty—and to begin the painstaking work of sloughing away layer after layer of armour that no longer protects, but has become a place to hide.

It helps me see that our skin is not just a protector, an impenetrable barrier keeping the inside in, and the outside out, but a porous edge with a healthy exchange of information moving freely—one that needs constant renewal as old ways of being wear out.

In learning to let go, we need search no further than the edge of our own bodies. Like all thresholds, this is where the ingredients for new growth abound.

As the Lindworm myth unfolds, I am also reminded that the shedding of skins is not a solitary act. It is a collective cry, a shared catharsis that resonates with the human experience. During Bly's telling of the tale—which was predominantly to groups of men—those gathered were often encouraged to shout out in agony as each skin of the beast was removed, creating a guttural chorus of men in a symbolic enactment of the excruciating pain required for such a metamorphosis to take place.

In the aftermath lies a mess of a man on the floor; bloody, skinless, vulnerable and exposed. This delicate moment calls for a bath of milk and an ancient song, a ritualistic act of self-nurture. When the fervour of all our ripping and tearing subsides, there is a need for gentle care, a reminder that after the roughness of transformation, we require tender cleansing and purification to rejuvenate our soul.

I kneel down where I began, at the feet of Janus, the wild two-headed god of transitions, the snake charmer ever-present in the doorways of life.

The Janus kinase is an enzyme that lives in the membrane—the skin—of the cells in our body that involve immune responses and hematopoiesis, the growth of specialised blood cells. In essence, the Janus kinase opens and closes gates in the cell wall that allows specific information to flow along cellular pathways.

Again, we see the need for porosity, not impenetrability. While it might be true that in my journey with cancer Janus has gone a little rogue, leaving a few too many gates open, perhaps he needs the extra bandwidth to whisper his secrets into my blood.

My inner work is simply attuning myself to his pitch.

Oceans of love.

Asher

’Shedding Skin’ by Harryette Mullen:

Pulling out of the old scarred skin
(old rough thing I don't need now
I strip off
slip out of
leave behind)

I slough off deadscales
flick skinflakes to the ground

Shedding toughness
peeling layers down
to vulnerable stuff

And I'm blinking off old eyelids
for a new way of seeing

By the rock I rub against
I'm going to be tender again

Note: On the last day of the year, I will be joined online by mythologist Dr Nicole K. Miller for Jammin’ with Janus: A Breath Between Years. Gather with us to honour the threshold of the past and the promise of tomorrow under the watchful eye of Janus.