by Adam Shaening Pokrasso
The wind is amongst the most powerful forces in our universe. From the winds that gracefully move seeds to the voracious movement that cultivates the most dramatic events our oceans experience, it’s smart to become friends with this ally. While many allies take up form as animals, plants, mountains and more, the energy of Wind – similar to Fire – does not hold a solid form but exists as a force that operates on our beings and all that it encounters.
So what is the wind if it’s not a thing? Father Wind is energy, He cleans, transforms and gives character to the movement of leaves as they dance their way from the limb of a tree to the forest floor. He helps snow swirl from the sky instead of falling straight down and He is the brushstroke that creates sacred geometry over land and water with the paint of clouds and earth.
The winds are therefore an invisible modulation, like sound waves or light waves, which can be felt and experienced only through the surfaces and elements that they operate on. Father Wind especially loves to dance here on earth with the movement of our sun and moon, participating in the flow of the solar and tidal cycles that we depend on. Contemplate how Father Wind deepens our experience of seasons, tides and the divine cycles of change and time.
For thousands of years our ancestors have worked with Wind, using it to sail the seas and pump water, and they also knew Him for His incredibly potent spiritual purpose. As children of these ancient ones, whether we know it or not, we still carry winds in our daily ceremonies of life – the wind we produce from within our own lungs breathes life into our voice and into flutes, allowing us to express our own unique songs and moving life force throughout our bodies in a life long conversation with our breath. As we experience this force inside and outside our bodies we are connecting to a continuous story that has existed since the beginning of time. Feel this force as you breath in and breath out. Feel your exchange with the world around you and feel yourself connect to all beings that came before you and have breathed the same air.
The power of wind is revered around the globe, and in just about every culture you can find myths honoring a wind god. The Quechua refer to him as Wayra-Tataa and represent him as a human form with two heads and serpents coiled around him from head to toe, while many Northern Native American tribes recognize multiple wind gods, including a god for each direction. In the creation story of the Sumerians, Enlil (the Wind God) plays an important role as the child of earth and sky/heaven and the one who made this world a livable home for humans.
The practice and techniques of Feng Shui, which translates as “wind-water,” go back 3500 years in Ancient China. Feng Shui follows “invisible forces that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together.”* In this way, the practice that many of us have come to know as a way to design our spaces draws on the elements of nature that surround us, and guides us to honor and participate in the incredible forces that continue to shape our world.
As we zoom way out from our local planet to observe the formation of stars and the dance of the cosmos, we see this same wind move the gases of dead stars and interstellar medium in glorious displays we call nebulae. Here, the scattered bits of ancient suns call on the winds to give birth to new stars.
Call on Father Wind to bring you inspiration. He is poetic, musical and particularly wise. He carries messages and Raven loves to play along as they both dance between the spirit world and our own world. With his movement Father Wind bring us new ideas, a new dream and serves as a profound force that cleans us of our dead leaves and breaths unbound freedom into our hearts.
Supporting Texts
*A Thousand Years of Persistence, by Yeyu
*The Bardic Book of Becoming: An Introduction to Modern Druidry, by Ivan McBeth
