When the moon rises, we straddle the veils

So many people move through time asleep. Asleep compared to what is available for them to be involved in, to feel, and to experience. There is an itch that tortures anyone who opens themselves up to these experiences, but in time that itch becomes a friendly push to keep them moving through rough experiences and on to pleasant ones. Long ago, men wrote only of the things that were accepted. They wrote of how the world was the way everyone wanted it to be, but this wasn't the solution. Perpetrating a fraud doesn't get you the real deal, it only wastes time and precious energy until the day when you realize that you can no longer lie.

Now I write of what is real, even if it isn't what everyone wants to believe is real.

As the moon rises, each person who has ever been initiated steps into a world that we call "between the veils". Between the veils means that we walk between what is and what isn't. Some say it's between the material world and the spiritual world, others say it's between the living world and the world of the dead... the general belief is that it's a place where space and time are suspended and we connect with our inner selves and create a world that we desire.

As the moon rises, the spirit within us that will not allow us to lie rises too. It pushes at our skin, at our frail facade to be revealed. We stumble and fall over words and reactions that are more truthful than we like to admit. The slip of the tongue that makes us wish we hadn't said that.. the few words that we mumble thinking no one hears, but they do.. the laugh that escapes our throats at some stupid lie that another spouts.. we can't help it, we are witches.

We are the ones who chose this path, the path of raw honesty. We chose a path that makes us honor who we are inside, and pulls us back to the space between the worlds every two weeks to remind us of who that person is. We are the ones who work magick, who honor the divine dance between the Gods and their precious loves: humans. But this is the secret: we often leave the path!

One would think, that after enduring countless hours in the space between the worlds, that the spirit would guide you back everytime: like it happens in fairy tales. The spirit does, but heart is stronger, and fear is stronger yet. Fear drives the blessed ones from their paths, it pulls and twists them into a shape that disgusts them and makes them want to hide from the moon. As they become more and more twisted, they run harder and faster, and in the end they cling to a mundane world in hopes that the cries of the spirit to return will ebb and fade away. They don't.

The path is what it is: the deepest love that you can feel for yourself. We doubt that love, we wonder if we'll be strong enough to forgive ourselves for the lies and the outright deceit that we've crafted. We tremble inside as the circle calls to us, and we each secretly wish that we had some preview of what lies ahead in the space between the veils. But we don't.

We must enter the space in perfect love and perfect trust because to enter any other way would be another lie. We must return to the sacred space with faith that we are the perfect creatures that the Gods believe us to be, and open heartedly feel the forgiveness flood our bodies as the energies rise around us in chant and song.

Exhale. Yeeeeessss.. you are perfect. You are the sacred, sensual, powerful burst of love that you feel rushing into your bones and untwisting your spirit. Freed from it's cage of fear, your spirit rises above you and flies free into the night sky, ecstatic. Your spirit is the truest form of you, and it flies free in this magickal space because you had the courage to walk in with your heart open and your will ready to be released.

Be the stars.
Be the beautiful moonlight as it kisses and caresses the earth through the shadows of night.
Be the sacred dance that tickles and touches your legs and arms as you disappear into ecstatic movement!
And in the end, return to your small but precious home within yourself and be held safely and securely within it's tender flesh.

Love and writing, or is it rockets?

Echoes of laughter and tears bounce off of the images that fade as the coffee cools in front of me. Deep felt emotions zing through me and fly off into the dark sky of a cold morning. Quiet.

There are those times, you know them, that come more and more often as you grow older... when you are more connected to the world around you in a moment than you feel you ever have been. In that moment you are part of the time and space right around you, like a tree or a bird you are no longer human and tangled up in the unneeded complexity of what should be, you just are.

In those moments it seems so normal to just be what you are and create whatever you want to create, doesn't it? In those moments I am a writer, and I write whatever the universe wants created in that moment. A beautiful stream of images and emotions floods my mind and heart and words appear, banging on the inside of my eyes and crying to get out. Yet as soon as they hit the page their life seems to fade like a shooting star. I often wonder what the Gods had in mind when they made me a writer. I feel as though everyday is wasted that I don't write.. and yet there are so many days that go by without writing.
The reverie is broken by something loud usually.. usually kids or dogs who don't see the magnificent bubble of magick that I think is so obviously floating around me. They probably see my state of being as normal and wonder why I think it's so special!

Either way, I am left deflated and cold in that moment. The soap bubble of zen unity with the cosmic consciousness is broken and I'm just a mother, a wife, a manager, and a priestess again.. no longer am I the incarnation of the Gods writing to keep up with their inspirational song.

Laying there on the floor, flattened like Flat Stanley, I quietly wonder to myself if all artists endure this kind of cold, shocking ejection into the mundane world? And do they feel just as pathetic and one-dimensional when it happens as I do?

That entire experience is why I can't imagine writing for a living even though I know it's what the Gods want of me. I can't imagine ever having writing bringing the mundane into my awareness, only other things. Writing is sacred to me, and as such should be free. I will learn to integrate the freedom with the creative cycle and grow a new perspective in the coming years, but I felt it important to log where I am now --> Kind of a " YOU ARE HERE" thing that allows me to take ownership of my fears and therefore use them to organically grow a new point of view.

Inspired by a friend's lessons from Brighid, I am honoring the darkness that a seed lives in for months before it germinates. We are in darkness now.. and I'm planting a seed.

Of visions and lessons, or how to channel successfully.

It is so easy for someone to claim that they've channelled a spirit or a divine being. Who is going to argue with them? The delicate subject of whether or not someone is a freaking looney tune or whether they are actually an open channel for spirits and divine beings is a subject that most people in the magickal community want to avoid. I mean really, there are enough non-pagans who want to tear us apart for our beliefs, why would we want to turn on each other and start that?

But the truth of the matter is that we need to verify and authenticate our seers. Not in some public, process-bound, manifest way... but in a heartfelt, spiritually authentic way. In short, do you FEEL the presence of the divine or of otherworldly creatures when the seer is channeling? Or do your instincts tell you that they're consummately full of crap and creating a very well crafted act of being possessed or channeling the spiritual energy?

Those of us who have been in the presence of a true seer can FEEL the presence. The energy in the room changes. It gets very cold, or warm... you feel as though someone with a lot of personal energy has just entered the room when no one new is present... and when the seer who is channelling turns their focus to you, you feel like a small child whose teacher has just asked them a question... or someone who is suddenly aware that they're being looked at by a very attractive person.

When we start learning to channel, the biggest challenge is moving our own ego out of the way. This is why it's so important to be around people who are successful mediums beforehand. It is about feelings, and about what is left behind. As mediums or seers, we need to be aware that we are not in control nor will we be while the spirit is present. NOTE that this is drastically different from a trance medium or spirit medium who speaks to the ancestors or those who have crossed over. Those mediums work and spend years honing their craft to be able to speak FOR the dead but remain in control. A seer or prophet works to allow the divine to come through without controlling them. They must allow the God\Goddess to use their bodies, their voices.. their senses to guide the interaction with the participants.

As someone who has channeled dieties, I can tell you that it's not easy and it's frightening at times. Dieities are strong spiritual entities, they do not apologize for their words or actions, and you must learn to release any attachment that the channeling experience has to you. You are a tool, a doorway through which they speak. Nothing more. There is no glory in being a channel, the glory goes to the diety who has blessed the group with their presence. There is no power in being the channel, for the power goes to those who speak with the diety and offer their gratitude and service in exchange for wisdom, guidance, and protection.

Having Saturn in Pisces in my 10th house, and my 8th house ruled by Capricorn it took me a long time to come to channeling successfully. I constantly berated myself for every failed attempt to channel. I finally took a course from a successful spirit medium who is also a Capricorn and her tough love style of teaching guided me away from the eternal critic to a place where I could authentically and confidently channel spirits. The tools she taught me help me channel diety as well, but I'm learning that diety is much more about my emotional state than whether I WANT to channel.

Diety comes through a medium when they are called or needed. Unlike Goetic or Thelemic work where a precise and complex ritual is followed to draw the demon or angel into a space for the purpose of control, channelling diety is more about a relationship that is nurtured with a diety over time, and through that relationship an emotional bond is formed that calls the deity forth and into the medium. This is about respect and love, not command and control. I have no judgement or care for whether one way is better than the other, I see them as separate processes that each serve those who engage in them.

We work to find value in our sacrifices, we work to find wisdom in our lessons, and we are often rewarded by unpredictable results that shock and amaze us when they finally materialize.

Never doubt that a willing medium will be able to successfully channel a spirit or divine energy, but always question whether the medium is truly willing.

Bleeding hearts and magickal arts

One of the most frustrating things about studying magick is being human. By being human I refer to the limitations or ties that we have to the mortal coil. We feel, and in feeling we are made brutally aware of our own weaknesses or areas where we have NO control. WE FEEL. We can control how we react to our feelings, we can work through the feelings and heal ourselves, we can walk the path and face our fears to become more purified and strong in our hearts. But we cannot STOP feeling.

Our hearts are the purest sources of magick that we have, yet they are the most misunderstood. Our blood carries truths to our minds and we get perceptions and understandings that are colored by how we feel. Our magickal patterns are taught to start in the Know, move to Dare, onto Will, and then to Silence. Yet, in my experience, once you've learned a tool (or a set of tools), the patterns reverse themselves and magick starts to come from the Silence, into the blood of Daring, that then moves the Will, to pick up the tools you've gained and use them. Then the knowledge gained from the magickal results flows back into you, and the pattern goes back the other direction.

Yes, magick is like the DaVinci's Cradle ride at an amusement park.. and if you're working on a magickal operation, instead of being rocked back and forth through the elemental energies you become cycled through them in a spiral fashion until the end and the beginning no longer matter and you're walking a path that is an endless spiralling whirlpool of energies that are woven into everything and everyone that you touch.

Only pain wakes me up to the reality that I am human, disconnected from the people around me, separated in Malkuth from the divine essences that flow through these amazingly beautiful creatures.

The crack of a painful experience sends me shooting back down into my frightfully small physical body and leaves me curled up inside like a little girl, weeping in lonliness.

Up the tree we go, driven by the connection we have the universal energies that draw us up to what "could be"... and then *whack* the Gods kiss us with power and love and drive us back down the tree into ourselves and into a reality that bound by having one heart, one head, and four elements into which we push our wildest dreams.

Waiting to exhale

When magick works, it tends to come gently through like sunlight filtering through the trees in a shadowed wood. When magick works, it tends to follow threads and expectations that feel as natural as the way water flows over rocks in a stream. Yet, when magick works I'm always gently comforted by the surprise that I have been blessed so completely with the insight into how magick works.

Emotional connections this week feel like a California mudslide. They creep, and creep along... and then suddenly everything gathers together and they engulf everything in their path.. burying me and every percpetion that I have at once. Wow.

Venus and Uranus are currently conjunct in my 10th house, that transit is also conjunct my natal Chiron. That is where the mudslide analogy comes from. Uranus lends a bit of divine insight to every experience, Venus rules emotional connections, and of course Chiron is the master of painful experiences that become powerful lessons that shape who we are. Saturn's endless lesson while cojoining my natal Stellium in Virgo reminds me that nurturing myself and others is NO TRIVIAL TASK! Ok, Master Saturn I get it... don't trivialize what it takes to keep people safe.. no really, I GET IT!! *sigh* At least I've got old father Jupiter opposing my natal Jupiter with a healthy shot of the Sun to keep my bouyant. Saturn transits are so heavy.

I am waiting to exhale because Mercury is retrograde in my 8th house, crossing back over into my 9th house after it turns direct in a little over a week. This Mercury Retrograde has taught me to go back over unfinished projects and work on them. This is a good thing, and I am taking this lesson with me into the next Mercury retrograde in May. Among these unfinished projects is one that I've been working on since I started as a Priestess: shielding and how it impacts a psychic's ability to predict the emotional flow of a situation.

As I review my emotional connections this week, and face deep truths about the people that I have emotional connections with, I realize that I keep a bubble of energy around me almost unconsciously in situations where I feel emotionally connected to the people I'm with.. but oddly I don't keep one around me in situations where I feel NO emotional connection to the people I'm with.. and that's the exact opposite of what I need to be doing to stay healthy.

In situations where I am emotionally connected the people I'm with, I've been afraid that I will be pulled into someone's emotionall whirlpool and have it ruin my experience. But what I neglected to realize was that as my Reiki abilities grew, so too did my ability to ground myself and keep my emotional energies seperate from someone else's. In situations where I am NOT emotionally connected to the people around me, I left my shields down because I expected that my psychic abilities would be hampered by the sheilds and that a lack of emotional connection would keep me from being harmed by their negativity. AGAIN, I was wrong. I neglected to realize that I am an energy being and thus will be affected by my surroundings regardless of the emotional depth of my connections (Moon in the 12th house, Neptune in Scorpio in the 6th house).

The magickal workings of this week were to learn how I relate to my emotional connections and how to improve my relationship with them so that I am healthier emotionally (and thus physically). What I have learned:

1) Loving someone adds a great deal of emotional energy to a connection, so bringing my sheilds down allows that love to flow more freely even in times of pain. Keep my shields down around people that I love.
2) Trusting someone adds a great deal of astral space to a connection, keep my energies focused and light around people that I trust to allow the connection to grow as it will instead of trying to control it. Controlling a trustworthy connection is a waste of energy. Trust is an emotion based guideline.
3) Allowing my shields to come down around people who are NOT magickally attuned is just about the stupidest thing I can do, they are like toddlers with guns and will inflict deep wounds on my energy body. I will work on jacking up my psychic energies so that my abilities will work around "muggles" without me needing to bring down my sheilds.
4) Everyone who loves you pays the price for doing so, but they do so willingly because they love you.. don't try to compensate for that bill, it only cheapens the love.
5) Let joy in, if sadness follows immediatly behind it, then trust in my abilities to handle sadness... but don't block joy whenever it comes, or worry that sadness is on it's heels.. more often than not sadness is nowhere to be seen, and joy will expand without bound if allowed to do so.
6) Magick follows the heart, if your heart isn't honestly and truely involved in your magick.. then it will fizzle. If your heart is in it, then there is nothing to fear for your heart is the purest connection to the cosmic-divine love and will only guide you to the right path, the right answer, and the most healing waters for YOU.
7) Make friends as often as you can, because you never know when one will leave unexpectedly and you'll need the others to help you heal.

The ties that anchor, bind, and support

In the cool of the morning I sit and reflect upon the connections that I have right now. I wonder why I have chosen to let some die off and nurture others? Did I mistake someone's callousness for intentional harm? Did I misunderstand someone's curiosity and believe it to be adoration?

In magick we believe that we create our own realities. This extends far beyond the marvelous blend of energies that become rituals and into the simplest of choices: who to keep as friends and who to let float away on the river of time. In pondering the ties that anchor, bind, and support I wonder if my natal moon being in my 12th house has made it so that I cannot trust my heart's voice when it comes to choosing people to love? Or maybe because the 12th house rules the dissolution of boundaries I can trust my heart more than anything else to lead me to the purest sources of love and support?

As I pause to reflect upon the people who are in my life now, I wonder if I've missed some major clue in how to define what is good for me. They are not toxic people, nor are they people that I regret knowing, but they do not tend to understand my emotional self. I'm sure that everyone has met people in their lives who "just get them", right? You know, those people that when someone asks why you're smiling, you say "They just understand me, that's all." I wonder if even THAT perception is merely a by product of a reality that we create to make ourselves feel more comforted, more secure and supported? How can we trust our perceptions of emotional connections when they can be clouded by so many different things? Different things like: your state of mind at the time, the other person's state of mind, your mood, the circumstances in which you met, the first impressions that you had of each other... all of these can be influenced by so many things that in the end it all feels like a by-product of the Wyrd.

My current magickal process is about being aware of the emotional connections that I have, what they give me, and how I can be more honest about relating to them in ways that feed my spirit and my heart. Thus I am walking through both the current astrological transits, and my natal astrological chart to gain insight into how I pick my relationships.

Neptune rules illusion, fantasy, dreams.. Mercury rules communication, connections, clans, and commonalities or patterns. I have a Neptune-Mercury conjunction in Scorpio in my chart .. in my 6th house of service and health. This means that I am very affected physically by the type of people I surround myself with, that's a fairly serious implication from picking unhealthy connections.

The Moon rules emotions, intuition, and psychic energies. Having a natal Moon in Gemini means that dealing with my own feelings is a battle, nurturing the feelings of others is even more of a challenge, and being restless and curious all the time leaves me exhausted, lost, and often craving a quiet place of solitude where I can hear my own heart.

The ties that bind are those that bog me down with endless emotional drama. Relating to the world through the eyes of emotion for me is a curious thing at best, and a draining thing at worst. Yet, with balance the ties that bind can become the ties that anchor, and for someone with a Moon in Gemini that is a vital thing.

The ties that anchor are those that patiently wait while I dance the anxiety, irritability, and frustrations out of my system and simmer down to a point where I can easily exchange both ideas and emotional support. These blessed individuals don't take my mood swings personally, they don't over-react to my wild ideas, and they lovingly encourage me to flesh out the things that seem to reccur in my mental meanderings.

The ties that support are the ones that express value in what I have created and shared. These exciting people ask questions, explore ideas, and add information and insight to my endless mental adventures into the metaphysical.

Where, then, shall I plot a course for the people who will help me keep my inner worlds balanced and my outer worlds healthy and interesting?

Walking the path of illusion

I have transits this week and in the coming weeks that deal with Neptune, the moon, and Venus. In EMC we have started doing weekly spellwork to increase our intimacy with our own power and to get practice doing short term spells that allow us to hone our awareness of energies. As part of my spellwork I am writing about my perceptions of emotional connections and how emotions contribute to illusions.
My definition of emotional connections are those relationships that I feel change me through my emotional ties.

The key to this spellwork is brutal honesty in my journalling. Neptune energies inspire us to rise beyond what we think and dream a new reality for ourselves. The challenge is translating the dream into reality without losing faith in the process. It's hard to reconcile within my heart the differences between the way I wish the world were and the way it is. But that reconciliation requires honesty on my part to filter out my own outdated and unwanted prejudices born from emotional trauma. In short, if I keep holding onto the pain, it continues to define me.

When I first meet people I expect them to find me boring. I don't see myself as someone amazing or worthy of anyone's attention. There are a dozen Jungian explanations for this perception, but they don't provide real, tactical solutions for how to balance it out. The truth is I'm quite the opposite of boring. Yet, my illusion is that I am boring. This illusion colors my interaction with people that I have an emotional connection with, by pushing me to view my relationship with them as dependent upon their vision of my "entertainment factor". Since I always think I'm boring, and having a Gemini moon means I equate boring with completely valueless, I allow myself to become dependent on those that I love for their validation that I am interesting. This creates resentment, and so on.

The goal of my spellwork this week is to balance my perceptions, erase my illusions, and free myself of the pains that they cause so that I can open myself up to the love and support that is all around me. I tend to qualify positive feedback in my head as it relates to being facinating, interesting, unusual. etc.
I want to just accept it, encorporate it into my perception of myself, and trust it.

The magick at work here is the heartfelt desire to see myself through the eyes of love. For a woman who has Pluto, Mars, and Uranus conjunct in her 4th house and Saturn conjunct Chiron in her 10th there is not alot of security in childhood and parental relationships. My entire childhood was about change, and that leads to all kinds of unbalanced perceptions about myself and my own value. Love is really the most powerful force for healing, and in healing illusions I must forgive myself for being imbalanced first. I must forgive myself for falling prey to my fears instead of facing them and working to love myself to heal.

The illusion is that I'm boring. This leads to over acting, over dramatizing, and being overly tolerant of others who are he same way. These behaviors steal energy and attention from others who may not have the courage or the desire to be center stage.

The truth is that I'm not boring at all, in fact I'm quite interesting for people who find people like me interesting. But not everyone does, and nor should I expect that everyone will. Current Pluto transits are helping me embrace deep truths with courage because I believe that they lead to balanced inner power. My inner power and love grows as I grow to accept that I love myself more as the unique woman that I am, and have no need for sensationalizing my life. I am more than just entertainment value, I am a whole person who needs to accept that I am lovable when I'm not entertaining.

The real challenge in all of this is that illusions are very powerful, for the feed off of my fears. Thus I am amazingly good at entertaining, because these illusions have been around for a LONG time. I get alot of positive feedback when I'm entertaining, and it's hard not to fall into the addictive cycle that feeds the fears. The key is remembering that illusions only feed me illusionary food. It's all in the moment, its not real. And having attention from the people who really love me, attention that is born out of that real love instead of being entertaining, is what I really want. I don't want illusionary love and adoration, I want real love. And real love hates it when I succumb to the entertainment demon.

The deep emotional connections that I have suffer when I feed the illusion of being boring. They suffer because my precious power is given away to people who don't know me well enough to know my true value. I waste my power and my attention on people who haven't earned it when I feed the boring demon.



Freedom from illusion comes in allowing the painful illusion to be voiced, and thus released. Then a counter illusion must be created in order to replace the destructive one. In this case, the balancing illusion is the dream of being welcomed, loved, and held precious just for being me. No fast jokes, no endlessly entertaining stories, no long dialogs about astrology, the tarot, or spirit mediumship. Just me.
And when I create that image, I feed that image with my love and faith, the change happens.

Soon, I will be free of the boring demon. And those that I love will feel the warmth of my attention and care more often and more completely... as it should be. And social situations will be fun, exciting, and rewarding instead of torturous hours spent waiting for the laugh, waiting for the smile, waiting for the approval that I am indeed interesting.

Namaste.

Requiem for a modern knight

Exhale, and smile, for the way is illuminated for you.
The shadows no longer taunt and torment your soul.
Like music rising on an evening breeze, your voice echoes.
Yet the emptiness left behind remains hauntingly unfilled.
The setting sun sings of the warmth in your heart,
the evening wind brings the bite of reality that you're gone.
Your heart now has limitless expression of the love I felt within it,
May we be blessed by the gift of your spirit's light, until we meet again.

As we evolve spiritually, our connections to kindred spirits strike us deeper than we ever imagine they could. It's not hard for me to understand why magickal people tend to be forgiving of a polyamorous lifestyle, because spiritual connections tend to open us up to deeper emotional ones.

A few years ago I met someone that I would classify as a modern day knight. Trapped in a world that lacked the mystery and the mythology that fed his soul, he struggled to rebuild and recreate it for everyone he met. The similarities between his life and the life of Don Quixote are striking. While many may have felt he was battling windmills, his heart showed him a different world than most of us see. Unfortunately, he didn't stay with us long enough for me to learn how to travel to his world and return to mine.

I will miss him, his gentle heart spoke volumes in soundless energy.
I will miss him, his eyes wrapped me in a protective blanket of love when I felt small.
I will miss him, his honorable heart was stronger in spirit than it turned out to be in reality.
I will miss him.

May the Goddesses welcome him with endless love.