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?