At a crossroads

where snakes and horses collide

Feb 11, 2026

Dear Beloveds ~

I write you today shortly after Imbolc, the cross-quarter holiday associated with Brigid - the bright or exalted one. The Celtic three-faced Goddess of life, death and rebirth; fire, forge, flame; poetry, metal-smithing and creativity; healing, prophecy and wisdom. Imbolc, sometimes translated as in the belly, aligns with the timing of pregnancy, gestation, liminality. In the cycle of the year, I associate this space with the time between forms, in the unseen—under the soil, and in the womb. Down the road, goats are giving birth; their milk feeds their young and will bless our local community with another season of nourishment. Brigid reigns over child-bearing, midwifery, babies. Her flame must be burning hot these days.

This year, between Winter Solstice & Spring Equinox, Brigid’s flame and the sun’s return illuminate — the hideous. Based on hisde or hide (fright/terror), hideous acts are that which are so offensive and grotesque, they’re painful to see. So painful that plenty would rather they be kept in the dark. St Brigid (the Christianized veil for the Celtic Goddess) is known for a miracle of curing a nun of blindness. When the miracle was granted, the nun realized that the clarity of vision had blurred her sight of God, and thus asked Brigid to return her to the beauty of darkness. In some ways poetic, the story also reveals a shadow, a pattern that some Christians and conservatives continue to choose: to stay in the dark to maintain even misplaced devotion.

As of today, the current —still-active— President of the United States name is mentioned over a MILLION times in the Epstein files.

Brigid is associated with change and transformation — through fire.

May Brigid’s fiery arrow and flames burn strong to guide the way towards profound change of these millennia-old mythic patterns normalizing the stealing, ravaging, raping and murdering women and children.

May the purifying fires of purgatory burn strong for those who have transgressed these sacred laws.

~ ~ ~

On a related mythical note, I’ll share an excerpt from Sylvia Lindsteadt’s writing released this week. I highly recommend Lindsteadt’s fierce piece (linked below) in its entirety.

“Demeter Kalligeneia: she who births well. Demeter Karpophoroi: she who bears seeds and fruits. Demeter Brimô: she who shines terrifyingly torch-bright. Demeter Chloê: she who blooms, she who protects the green fields. Demeter Chthonia: she who protects the interior of the earth. Demeter Sitô: she who feeds the people grain. Demeter Thesmia: she who lays down laws.

Demeter, who for all of her power could not stop Hades from abducting her daughter. Demeter who stood there with her earth-blighting sorrow when she learned that it was Zeus, Persephone’s own father —by rape— who had promised their daughter to her uncle Hades in forced marriage without either Persephone’s or Demeter’s consent.

Persephone was out with her companions, the many Okeanides, the daughters of Okeanos, gathering flowers in a broad field, when it happened. They were gathering crocuses, narcissus. They were gathering women’s plants, herbs for the womb. They were like the saffron-gatherers on the frescoes at Akrotiri, women gathering saffron for a great goddess like Demeter, or Rhea, or Aphrodite.

In the earliest written version of this story, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone says Kalypso was among her companions, and Artemis too, Elektra and Ourania and Styx. These are old goddesses and nymphs. And that field where Persephone gathered flowers was not just located in the country of her maidenhood, a field of virgin women readying for menstrual rites. It was located in another era. It was the last ground of matrifocal memory, ground that once was the fundament of the Aegean, Old Europe, and pre-patriarchal Mesopotamia. Ground with older stories coiled there in the bulbs of narcissus, crocus, and wild iris. Stories from long before Zeus’s fatherline and its matricidal, mother-and-child abusing hatred.

But when Hades came up from a chasm in the earth and seized Persephone, he broke that final ground, and Zeus his brother, Persephone’s father, allowed it. Zeus and Hades forced Gaia herself to open, and betray her daughters. Zeus made it so that no creature or being, not even the olive trees, heard her cries for help. But there was one whose ears he could not control. Hekate.

Hekate with her shining headband, Hekate with her torch ablaze. Hekate with her black dogs. Hekate with her midwife hands. Hekate who was Iphegenia. Hekate who was Hecuba. It was Hekate who told Demeter what had happened to Persephone, though she was too late to intervene or to follow. With this information, Demeter went before Zeus and used the only power she had left to get her daughter back— the power of the seasons. She forced famine upon the land. She made it so that nothing grew, no womb quickened, no seed sparked.

She held the line until Zeus relented, and agreed to make his brother Hades send Persephone back to her mother. But Hades had a trick up his sleeve—a pomegranate seed he forced Persephone to eat in the last moment before she bounded up through the depths to try to reach the field full of flowers where she had last danced with her mother.

But that seed, she was bound to him for six months of the year. That seed turned the story of the breaking of the power of the motherline, of matriarchal law, into a story of “how the seasons were made.”

The seasons, are we serious? The seasons were created by the abduction and rape of the daughter? Demeter willingly gave her daughter for half the year to keep the grain coming up? I call bullshit.

How can we have been sitting with this explanation for the seasons ever since? And so it is that we have the winter, when Persephone is underground… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this story told blandly, like it makes perfect sense.

I’m here to say it does not. I’m here to say it sounds like the most elaborate, f*ed up seizure and suppression of the power of the female body and the earth that I have ever read.

When Persephone reached her mother at last, she searched for the field with her eyes. But it was gone. Hekate held the torch up. Demeter smoothed her hair.

Did you eat anything he gave you?

Only one seed, mother.

One seed, and Hades stole the power of the pomegranate and the seasons from the Mother and the Daughter. He stole them through sexual violence and the trauma and shattering of selfhood that ensues. Through this action, the seasons were not made but broken, and Demeter, granddaughter of Gaia herself, has been gracious enough to let us have them for a few thousand more years.

But a few thousand years aren’t many in Earth-time, in Gaia-time, and as we all know, our reckoning is now upon us. Earth’s seasons aren’t the same anymore. And this fact is inextricable from all the other facts I’ve been writing about today. Climate chaos is hitched to the Epstein Files is hitched to the Trojan War is hitched to Clytemnestra and Iphigenia is hitched to genocide in Gaza is hitched to Hitler is hitched to America in 2026.

Demeter is looking us squarely in the eye, and she does not flinch. Demeter says: these are the seasons you created, Zeus and Hades, when you betrayed Persephone, and Earth’s laws.”

Lindsteadt from: In the Name of the Mother, In the Name of the Red, part 1: this old story is done.

May Brigid, Demeter, Persephone, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Durga, Kali, Oshun, Oya and all many Goddesses collaborate to bring justice to the men and women, of all religious and political persuasions perpetuating this cruel nightmare.

We’re at a profound, precarious, and possibly volatile, crossroads, where snake and fire horse collide on the path towards a solar eclipse. What a weird and wild synchronicity that the Buddhist Monks —12 men walking from Texas to Washington for peace— who have shown such kindness and compassion make their last stop today. After 108 days of walking, they land at our nation’s capital. They continue to gather people and walk —while the unredacted Epstein files are being read by Congress revealing even more powerful men and heinous acts—while Attorney General Pam Bondi is questioned publicly about her role in concealment of the files—while Trump and Netanyahu meet in private (IN D.C.!), while there’s talk of clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for testifying. While the monks walk, our government continues their deceit and protection of criminals and pedophiles.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

In recent months, I’ve been more focused on shedding and strikes as aspects of the snake. But now, we’re getting a glimpse of the magnitude of decades-deep deception and duplicity. The rich and powerful with their forked tongues manipulating to maintain their privileged comforts and status at any cost, even war. Meanwhile, the renunciants gather people in discomfort and harsh weather, towards peace. I can’t help but see all of this, protests against ICE, and Bad Bunny’s historic performance as a meeting of the snake and fire horse. Not to demonize actual snakes, but the archetypal energy of deception and malice is here. And alongside it, the bold, heart-centered transformative fire of the horse.

Snake in the Grass, (A Deceitful Man.). Care of Digital Library Company of Philadelphia.

Potent, celebratory moment of Bad Bunny’s recent performance. Total Fire. Giddy up!!

May the Fire Horse year bring the level of heart-centered presence and kindness that the monks have modeled, the bold care of community actions in places like Minneapolis AND the historical honesty, collective joy and heart balm that Bad Bunny offered at the Super Bowl.

May any final sheds of the snake year include stripping power and wealth from criminals from government officials and tycoons around the world.

May their wealth be redistributed to the victims of all of their sexual, business and political harms.

May this disgusting culmination of patriarchy end, now.

To close, I’d like to share a story that’s closer to home…

The day after my nephew, Zelda and I joined the Buddhist Monks in Liberty, NC, just before the major ice storm here, a female German Shepherd arrived on our porch. Immediately, I remembered what the monks had said: Adopting a stray is an act of loving kindness. Within a day, it became clear this dog had no home to return to and she’d need shelter through the storms. Then, it also became clear: she’s pregnant.

We quickly realized—through heart attunement, intuition and divination— our Dharmic duty to this dog. In honor of Brigid and the monks, we’ve committed to midwifing this Mama’s puppies. We’ve been calling her Mama Aloka after the Peace Dog. Like Brigid, the Sanskrit terms Aloka is also related to illumination, enlightenment, exaltation. Her presence has further illuminated the vulnerability of motherhood and childbirth. Loving and fierce, as all mothers are, the safer Mama feels, the more calm, loving and kind she becomes.

May all mothers have warm, safe, loving spaces —free from predators of all kinds— to give birth and raise their young.

May the fires of the heart illuminate the truth and bring justice where it is needed.

In waking, dreaming and dying breaths, may those who have trespassed the Goddesses of fertility and birth, of children and beauty, of rain and rivers, of fire and justice receive the gift of empathy and fully feel the harms they’ve caused. May their karma ripen, in this life and beyond.

with a flaming heart ~

Julia

Link to Sylvia Lindsteadt’s full piece:

In the Name of the Mother, In the Name of the Red

part 1: this old story is done