This essay explores what it means to live cyclically in these strange, liminal times, within the confines of this strange, Machine-world. Along the way, I take a tangential, slightly esoteric detour to contemplate the topic through the World Dancer archetype, but I promise it comes full circle! I then leave you with a practical tool I use for my own cyclical/seasonal planning, which I hope you’ll find helpful—assuming you’re in the Northern Hemisphere.
We live in a world that idolizes the Machine, and we have moulded ourselves in its image, expecting to operate more and more like one. We’ve grown increasingly desensitized to the subtle signals of exhaustion, and many of us, myself included, simply push through, regardless of changing seasons, energy levels, or unexpected life challenges. Such expectations are even more exhausting for women, whose hormonal rhythms unfold within a 28-day cycle, compared to men’s, which fluctuate on a 24-hour circadian rhythm—hence the enduring association of the archetypal Feminine with the moon and Masculine with the sun.
Technology’s appeal is its promise of emancipation from the daily hustle and from the inconvenience of our ebbing, flowing biology. But more often, the Machine creeps deeper into our systems, intensifying the myth of self-optimization and raising expectations of efficiency and productivity to inhumane heights. And then we get terribly sick, or simply burn out.
We are cyclical beings. Our animal bodies aren’t cut out for the steady, unrelenting grind of the Machine. Our souls either.
Until relatively recently—meaning a very, very long time before the Electrical Age, which, lest we forget, began little more than a century ago—our ancestors were bound to nature’s cycles by necessity. Their lives unfolded according to the rhythms of the land and sky: planting and harvest, hunting and rest. The seasons instructed them, and shaped everything from food and sleep, to community and rituals, to the very flow and experience of time. Cyclical awareness is woven into our ancestors’ myths and stories, and into systems like astrology, which essentially stems from a mythopoetic expression of astronomical and agricultural correspondences.
All that to say that if, like me, you’re feeling tired, it’s normal, it’s winter. We were not meant to be staring at a screen for 8+ hours a day under fluorescent lights. It’s normal to feel dead inside.
In our death-phobic, rest-averse culture, winter is the most misunderstood season. Though we often feel pressure to get things done the moment we cross the New Year threshold, winter calls for undoing. When we bypass a season, we miss the long-evolved wisdom it has to impart. Winter invites us inward, into rest and renewal, into the dark cave of the psyche where the healing waters of the soul can revitalize depleted ground. This is the season of breakdown and composting, where the previous cycle is metabolized and returned to the soil as fertile black earth. Here, in the creative void of potentiality, we find clarity and orient ourselves toward what is yet to be born.
Reframing our creative energy around land-based metaphors helps us remember that it’s natural for our energy to change and fluctuate as we travel around the sun. It enables a necessary shift in perception: we are not the ones doing the growing. Our role is to tend the conditions that allow Life to grow and bear fruit in its own time. Productivity conditioning gives way to a cultivation approach; force yields to patience and care. This reframing helps us harness creative energy without exhausting ourselves by swimming against the currents, allowing us instead to ebb and flow with it. We, too, pulsate within the vitalistic web that links earth and sky.
And yet most of us are taught to override this reality and feel a nagging pressure to remain generative at all costs, at all times. Winter reminds us that rest is not a failure but a necessary phase of creation. There is no rebirth without dying first. Really, I’m writing this as much for myself as for anyone else, because I need the reminder. And I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way.
“Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hieroglyphics of deeper ideas.”—P.D. Ouspensky
I often consult the tarot when writing essays, and this time, I pulled Arcanum XXI: The World, an uncannily fitting archetypal lens through which to contemplate the theme of cyclical living.
As the final card of the Major Arcana, The World communicates themes of realization, completion, and wholeness. Having passed through each shade of archetypal experience, Arcanum 0: the Fool, has come full circle, an idea symbolically echoed in the evergreen wreath—symbol of victory and Life’s endless renewal.
Central to the card’s symbolism is the World Dancer, a figure of joy, perpetual movement, balance, and grace. The World Dancer implies a beat, the cosmic and earthly rhythms expressed by the bull, lion, eagle, and human figures in each corner of the card. Astrologically, these correspond to the Fixed Cross (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), as well as to the four elements, the four suits of the Minor Arcana, and the four seasons, together indicating alignment with natural order, stability, and equilibrium. The four elemental qualities radiate towards the centre, fully integrated and realized—or is it the other way around? For the World Dancers implies an ever-whole universe in perpetual motion, held together not by a fixed point but by an ever-moving centre, an idea tarot luminary Rachel Pollack articulates in the following passage:
“Everything in the universe moves, the Earth around the sun, the sun within the galaxy, the galaxies in clusters, all cycling around each other. There is no centre, no place we can say, ‘Here it all began, here it all stops’. Yet the centre exists, everywhere, for in a dance the dancer does not move around any arbitrary point in space, but rather the dance carries its own sense of unity focused around a constantly moving, constantly peaceful centre. Nothing and everything all at once.”
As such, The World paradoxically represents success and achievement while simultaneously challenging the idea that these are fixed destinations. It speaks instead of perpetual endings and beginnings—of Life expressing itself through an endless cycle of death and birth.
“Complete orgasm is Death. Complete orgasm is Life. Complete orgasm is Birth.” — Christopher Hyatt
The world is born anew through each creative act, and so are we. True to his delight in symbolic transgression, Surrealist Filmmaker and tarot aficionado Alejandro Jodorowsky reads The World as evoking “a female sex organ inhabited by exultation (orgasm), or an individual (pregnant woman).” To my mind, the imagery translates to ecstatic, even orgasmic birth, an experience intrinsic to the physiology of childbirth, and a near-perfect expression of Nature’s creative design, which our weird birth-phobic Machine-world systematically hinders in its treatment of birth. The point is that bliss and ecstasy are not rewards for creation, but embedded in the creative process at every level, through birth, sex, and death. To me, this is part of what the World Dancer communicates.
As a card representing the perpetual dance of Totality, The World dissolves the boundaries between part and whole, self and other, birth and death. It speaks to creation as a single, interpenetrating living ecosystem, the great web of life that finds fulfillment in the harmonious, reciprocal functioning of all its parts, and that swallows itself whole when the time has come.
So, my takeaway is this: many wonder how to best serve the world right now, our unraveling Machine-world. Perhaps it is by following the Fool within, willing to take a leap of faith. Perhaps it is by tending to the conditions that beget more life and more beauty while embracing the breakdown as a necessary shedding, and grieve wholeheartedly as we situate ourselves within a much larger historical cycle of death and rebirth. Perhaps it’s by ensouling the sterile Machine-world through our creative acts, naive or wise, and restoring the ecosystem to wholeness, birthing it anew as we go. And perhaps, just like T.Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer,” it’s by dancing ourselves simultaneously out of the womb and into the tomb, in perpetuity.
“From the sacred center of the world streams forth an irrepressible desire to overcome the silence between things. Art, the ever-flowing fountain, reveals the secret of life through word and gesture, color and sound.” — Hermann Hesse
Ok, and now, something more practical. I created this seasonal living tool for myself and decided to share it here in case it’s helpful to you, too. It’s designed to support a more cyclical, seasonal approach to planning, with notes on how each phase can inform the growth of a creative business, which is one of my main focuses this year.
Element - Earth
Direction - North
Pentacles - Body and physical health, financial resources, stability, and practicality
Fourth Quarter of the Zodiac - Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces
Prioritize rest and nourishment
Establish grounding, supportive routines for the nervous system
Prune and review what’s in place; strengthen and optimize existing systems
Dreamwork & shadow work
Reflect on the previous cycle—metabolize and compost what has passed
What it means for building a creative business
Take stock of what remains unfinished
Envision the year ahead (vision boarding, subconscious priming, gathering inspo)
Clarify and set goals
Element - Air
Direction - East
Swords - Thoughts, ideas, intellect, strategy, communication, discernment
First Quarter of the Zodiac - Aries, Taurus, Gemini
New beginnings
Sow meaningful seeds of intention and action from the clarity gained in the fertile void
Gently expand nervous system capacity, supported by the grounding routines developed in winter
Playful experimentation
Nurture growth through small, consistent actions rather than big energy expenditures
What it means for building a creative business
Build income streams: create useful offerings that meet real needs
Skill-building: develop the skills you need to learn to support your creative business
Strengthen communication channels between your audience and you
Element - Fire
Direction - South
Wands - Will, desire, passion, creativity, erotic energy, purpose, action
Second Quarter of the Zodiac — Cancer, Leo, Virgo
Step into visibility; radiate and shine
Action and expansion
Growth: seeds planted in spring now bloom and blossom
Joy, connection, outward focus
Adventure and exploration
What it means for building a creative business
Strategize
Share your work
Collaborate and network
Go all in: increase frequency and activity out in the world (not in the studio)
Element - Water
Direction - West
Cups - Emotions, relationships, intuition, healing, the subconscious
Third Quarter of the Zodiac - Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius
Harvest: cultivate a sense of abundance and enoughness
Prepare for descent
Reflect and let go
Assess where rebalancing is needed
Cultivate surrender and acceptance
What it means for building a creative business
Celebrate achievements
Share the bounty: have a sale
Recalibrate after the outward-facing energy of summer
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