Wildheart Club | are you ready to ignite?

Podcast notes and journal prompts for S11E1

Welcome to your weekly edition of Wildheart Club, back with a new series for summer! Every Wednesday afternoon throughout the current season of the podcast, we’ll be sharing notes to accompany our most recent conversation - alongside journal prompts to deepen your exploration of the word and themes we chat about.

This post relates to Season 11, Episode 1: Ignite. We recommend listening to the episode first, before exploring the notes and prompts below.

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This week’s notes

Why is the idea of ignition so relevant right now?

‘Ignite’ is our guiding word for May. We feel it mirrors the sudden burst of colour, life and energy that we experience in the wild world at this time, which has been slowly building over the past few months, but now really begins to herald the abundance of the incoming summer season. It particularly reflects the rising solar energy of this period (from now until the Summer Solstice, the sun is moving through the peak phase of its annual cycle), as well as honouring the fire element, which is connected with summer.

As a word that describes the point at which a flame comes alive, ‘ignite’ offers a fitting representation of this time of transition from spring’s air element into summer’s fire element, symbolising the way that air acts as a fuel for fire (consider how embers suddenly spark into life when you breathe into them) - showing us that everything we’ve been doing throughout spring can be seen as the ‘breath’ that will kindle our energy and momentum throughout summer.

Thinking about the act of ignition also reminds us of fire’s unpredictability: when you blow on embers, you never quite know when they’re going to catch light or how fiercely they’re going to burn, so the moment of ignition can take us by surprise, especially if we’ve been too enthusiastic and preemptively added too much other fuel (metaphorical paper, sticks etc) that can then catch light too much or too quickly. Holding the word ‘ignite’ in mind as we enter the summer season can help us to be cautious of this and to remain mindful of how much we’re taking on - thereby keeping the ‘fire’ of our lives manageable, rather than risking it turning into a fierce blaze that runs the risk of becoming uncontrollable and overwhelming.