Saturday 31 January 2015

Imbolc- Candlemass- The Lambing

Imbolc- Candlemass- The Lambing




The Lambing


The stinging sleet was blowing sideways. It stung the face and chilled the fingers to the bone. The sky was February grey. In the distance the she could hear the ewe. It was labouring loudly. Tiny white feet were already showing. Wiping the wet from her face she walked slowly towards the ewe. Distracted and upset the ewe barely notice her presence. She ran her hand over the slick sweetly pungent wool. The ewe calmed some. Just having someone there, sending the message with her touch  It will be alright, you are not alone  was often enough for some frightened new mothers. The sheep shuddered and a nose appeared. The ewe panted more heavily and the head was almost out. Speaking softly old words that had no meaning but meant everything , the woman knelt one knee onto the soft wet grass. Then in one swift motion the little grey lamb landed heavily on the grass. The woman didn’t pick it up but waited. It wasn’t moving, no breath just yet. The ewe hadn’t moved. It still heaved and sighed. More feet started to show. The woman sighed. She began to rub the lamb on the ground. Her numb hands becoming slick with warm wet life and blood. The lamb shivered. She tried to make him stand but he couldn’t even open his eyes. Taking off her scarf she wrapped the limp body and placed him inside her coat. The next lamb had turned quickly and was born more quickly. Just as grey and lifeless she waited for the ewe to turn, and lick them into life. She didn’t. All the afterbirth came quickly too. It was clean and had no infection. The ewe turned and looked at the grey wet thing on the ground. The woman rubbed the afterbirth on the ewe’s nose. She snorted and turned away.

“Damn.”

She picked up the other lifeless grey body and placed it inside her coat. She turned, walking into the bitter wind towards the dark grey smudge in the distance. The pungent smell began to rise from the bodies inside her coat. Singing old lullabies softly under her breath she put her numb feet one after the other until she reached her stone steps. As she opened the door a waves of warmth and silence embraced her. The wind no longer singing in her ears her own voice singing sounded strange to her. The oven was still warm from the wood she had placed carefully placed before she had gone outside.  The old applewood made the room smell sweet. The little bodies she placed on an old towel and she wrapped them together. She placed them into the oven leaving the door open. She took off her coat and put the kettle on. When her fingers began to feel fully she found a small stump of a candle in the draw by the sink. She lit it with a match from a large, scruffy box from the same draw. The room was then filled with light and dancing shadows. She placed the candle on small saucer that had long since lost it’s cup. The slick from her hands was drying but she smeared what she could in a circle around the lip of the saucer and then washed her hands in the sink. The kettle began to whistle starting her back to the room. She dried her hands and made herself tea. She moved back to the oven and waited. The tea was strong and sweet and warmed all the way down her throat. A shadow came to the door. An ancient dog stood there, his tail thumping against the door frame. He sniffed and groaned and he came and lay by the open oven door. Suddenly the lambs began to cry. Their tiny voices urgent and insistent.  The woman smiled and reached into the oven and took out the grey twin lambs. The old dog wrapped his body around them and licked them clean. The woman found two bottles and made up some milk. Kneeling again she feed the lambs together, their tails wagging excitedly as they butted to get more milk, though it didn’t come any faster. When they were feed she found an old chair and settled down, boots still on and just rested her eyes. She woke to the smell of cooking.

“Can you spare sometime today to go to the stone?”

He nodded and kissed the top of her head.

At the standing stone the wind still whipped wickedly but the sleet was holding off.  Nearby the woman and man buried the bundle full of gifts carefully saying little until they were done. Stamping their feet they chatted about what was to come over the next week and headed back to the warmth of the farm kitchen.

While the above story is a fiction, this is how I remember Imbolc, as The Lambing. The smells are of milk and blood and of the cold, and of whiskey, woodsmoke and warm tea. It is not about snow drops (the kind we were worried about that could kill or make our lives miserable). As an uncomfortable urbainite these days the trops of this holiday in the pagan world are often laughable and very alien to me.
Traditions differ place to place, community to community, even farm to farm. It is not surprising to me that it was an important or holy time of year. Much of this Mighty Isles wealth came from wool until last few centuries. Sheep have changes our landscape. They are strange creatures, wily as a fox, and dumb as box of wet hair. I think sheep get a bad rep really. That have a mob mentality. On it's own a sheep can be smart, even cunning and dangerous in it's own right. When they get spooked they will throw themselves off, through and into things (the way that we were told lemmings did) and will get hurt, stuck, or injured that way. They have strange eyes too, almost demonic, but they are just a humble farmyard animal.
This is also the time of year when hunters would take their Jack Russels and nets to stem the rabbits before the first sowing of barley or wheat. 
In some places or traditions there would be Brides or dolls, or St Brigids Wheels. Our rites were simple. The first two cawls/or afterbirths were collected. One was buried near a boundary stone, and one was burned in the hearth (yes it stank). There was not a big fuss because everyone was cold and tired, not like the end of some getting in the hay, or even the potato or turnip harvest late in the year. No it was unspoken. If it was a good year, no one wanted to jinx it, if it was bad, no-one wanted to make it worse. 
Holy stones, and standing stones got offerings, but they were subtle and everyone pretended it didn't happen.
They say that holy stones are worn or even given as gifts at this time of year. I find my own a comfort. An earthing while I can still not bear the burn of walking barefoot from the cold floors and muddy ground.
You can get one of your own here.
Incense is something I usually make way in advance of a holy day. I am still to make my Imbolc blend. Yet I know it will have a pinch of powder milk in it, to honour those tails quivering like the catkins in the rough winds. Things unspoke about the future of the year, too delicate to say aloud sit just behind my lips and I would not speak them just yet.
The snow here has been amusingly pathetic, even compared with a few miles up the road but the birds appreciate the shelter and the food there. Yet the snow has washed away much of the old and as the blue sky waxes (and wanes) new beginnings seem to be creeping, pushing through.


Bright Blessings xxx
  


Thursday 29 January 2015

Divine-ing

Divine-ing

Tarot, Reading and Scrying.




Due to popular request (alright it was one request) I am going to write about tarot. Cards like wands and crystal balls are a tool. Yet they have a LOT of psychic and emotional energy run through them. Each deck develops it's own quirks and so on. Especially the longer you read with them.
The origins of tarot cards are murky. They were probably brought from Turkey to France around the 14 century but where they were invented is still unknown, what is known is they were playing cards used for games, as they are today.
They gained popularity in Italy and artist were commissioned to paint more elaborate cards, and more cards like Queens and the trump cards were added. Over time the symbols and symbolic meaning added to the cards began to grow. 
By the 18th century exotic myths had sprung up about their origins cementing the mystic around them.
Interestingly to me, they do seem to fall into the alchemists model of the world and it is easy to see how such educated and secretive people might adopt this beautiful things to work with.
Divination is much older. Yet too we find the "game" aspect comes up because dice of all shapes and sizes have been found in ancient sacred sites in sacred caves near Delphi. 
Divination is to touch something "beyond" and to speak it into this world. If you just shuffle cards and lay them on a table you may get some narrative or a card that you bring meaning to. Yet it is the connection of the client to the reader/diviner and to something else that makes the difference.
Not all readers are clairvoyants. Yet this energy that comes through can be very moving and healing.
The other thing is you can have the most dire cards one after the other and not have them mean an apocalypse. You can have all the sunny cards and it suddenly feel like as cold as a wet weekend in Blackpool.
A King card can mean a person, an idea, a place or event, as can a 9 or a 4. Yet the face cards tend to be people and numbers tend to be events and situations. It is the energy and the persons "threads" of choices you are seeing. Three readers could draw exactly the same cards, and give three different readings and all be right on the money.
A 2 of swords could mean an internal conflict, an important decisions, a folk in the road ahead, or forces working against you or someone else.
It is the patterns. Like watching the clouds and seeing shapes and creatures form and fall away that are important.
It is the soft breathe and gaze too. Knowing how to connect to a person, and connect with something else, a light perhaps; that is the skill. The more light and non earth energy I touch in a day the harder it is for me to form words from the telepathic words, images, cinematic films and photographic fragments that fall through my mind. Some things stick (like permanently) while other fade to nothingness really quickly.
This is why I have not seen a course about tarot I would attend, and why when I teach it is not over simplified. 
I feel like I am being called to spread this light again. I do not know what it will mean yet. Our choices light our path more brightly than almost anything else.

Bright Blessings xx 

For R

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Spell and Hexs and Curses OH MY!

Spells, Hexes and Curses


Now lets gets some things straight shall we. Firstly I never ask permission to do a spell on someone else. I do however have to balance the books about whether it would be worth the effort. I mean why heal someone who won't quit smoking, while drowning in their own bodily fluids?
If you have the power to heal you have the power to harm. I have seen a great many healers just throw light and power at a situation that really required common sense and a stern word.

A hex, by the way, is a visual spell. A carving or drawing that is usually done for protection. 


I am a kind giving person. Those around me bask in this warm glow of my affection.
Those who piss me of on a personal level, bring nothing but drama, shit stir, lie to me (just because I haven't called you out doesn't mean I am stupid, it means I am waiting) and so on: all care, compassion and kindness gets turned off. That energy pipe line gets cut off, often permanently.
My "mother" used to say "be sure your sins, will, find, you, OUT." In that weird scary way, but she is right about that. Bodies don't stay buried. Lies get uncovered. Eventually it all comes out.
I don't often carry much malice beyond that if it is about me. On personal grounds I have done maybe three curses.
The rest are reserved for those that hurt my family (blood and otherwise) and for those that hurt children or animals.
Now I get accused of doing curses a lot more than I ever do them. Sometimes this is amusing. Sometimes it pisses me off. I have to care to curse. I also have to watch the threads and and ask: will me doing anything be worse than the consequences they will bring on themselves?
Most people do dumb shit. I mean really dumb shit and when you sow misery, water with tears, you only gather bones. Trust me, I don't often have to bother (unless time sensitive). Know if you make promises (especially magickal one) and don't keep them, bring the fucking drama all the time, play people off against each other, hurt more than you heal, it will go to shit and that has...ZERO to do with me.
Yet those adolescent souls can not shoulder the responsibility for their own thoughts let alone the awful things they think, do and say; like to blame someone. I make a good villain apparently. 
If I did all the curses I was accused of I'd never get anything DONE!
How can I say this politely?
I don't care.
You are not important to me. 
Especially if I have never met you. 
You are an ex-, and ex-friend, ex- acquaintance, and ex-lover: you are my past. I have little to no interest in you. If you screwed up badly (and often) enough for me to cut ties, then assume until you wake up one morning and decide that being a dick isn't something you want to do all your life, I won't have any interest. 
Life is short and I have no inclination to carry your sorry asses around with me by giving you ANYTHING from me. If you get dropped from "friend" to "someone I know" this is the time out zone where I am either having to be polite for some reason, or keep and eye on you in case you do something that hurts other people.
Yes, you, person who was my friend but treats his sick wife like utter crap. Yes you, person I may have to work with in the future. Yes you, who I have to be polite to for my husbands sake. One day, that polite will run out and then, you are outta here!
Bright Blessings xxx

Sunday 25 January 2015

In The Veil

In The Veil


In my brief morning meditation today I felt something I have not felt for some time. My spirit self is taller than my physical self and people are often surprised when they realize how short I am. Since I put working with spirit on the back burner (for many reasons) that energy had become the size of me.
This morning I could feel myself again, not confined. Like a bird unfurling it's wings for the first time in a while. There is a almost physical pleasure to it.
My dreams and visions have grown increasingly vivid and intense. the light and the dark. Beings of light and beauty heal and nurture me, carrying me home; and two murderous human vile monsters capture, torture and kill "me" (I am seeing through someone else's eyes) and put my body on top of someone else's corpse.
I feel more myself than I have in a long time.
I am off to pray to the Goddess in the Water (aka swim) and look forward to the day I can swim every morning. Good things are going to happen I can feel it!

Bright Blessings xxx

Saturday 24 January 2015

Happiness is a skill.

Happiness is a skill.

 

Happiness is not something that occurs spontaneously very often. We are often taught to value everything more than happiness. We don't teach our children joyfulness, we teach them fear in the disguise of practicality. I remember being at school and doing my exams. We were all brought together in the hall and told that if we fail at these exams our lives would effectively be over. I hear that the pressure is worse these days. I know of children who had their parents plan out there whole lives, to post university, without ever asking if their children wanted or desired this life. I don't know anyone who went through this and found themselves happy.
At every turn we rob ourselves of time, and joy. We mistake pleasure for happiness. We fill this void with all kinds of things, from shopping for things we don't need, relationships with people we think will give us happiness, consume food that kills us, even drink and drugs, to fill this void.
No-one can fill this void. Not a lover, friend, or child;except us. Like most things of the psyche, the soul, we must address the problems as well as work on the solution. Make no mistake taking back your own happiness is a revolutionary act. Companies have billions of dollar and pounds invested in your external quest, one you can never succeed in. From drug companies who pump out antidepressants, to alcohol companies, to shopping channels.


Accept where you really are, then choose change.
I don't mean household chores, paying bills or going to school. I mean if you have a job you can't stand, change it. If you can't change it, work towards changing it, today. If your relationship makes you miserable don't be in it. If you can't change it today ( if so why not) change your perspective.
If someone is hurting you, ask for help and refuse to allow it. I know so many miserable people who endure because they“ love him” or “their my Mum/family”.
You have a choice. Always.
If someone is terrible towards you and you allow it, it will never end, and never get better.
When you refuse to allow this pain and toxicity in your life, you can heal, forgive and work towards a better relationship. It might never work. Sometimes things don't and if you spend your time working on them you will not work on your own.


Learn something new.
While distracting yourself from some of the problems in your life can be harmful learning something stretches the mind. It focuses your energy back on yourself. It adds strings to your bow and polish to your soul. You could take a simple class. Decide that you want to know about a certain field, or language. It doesn't matter if it is martial arts of macramé. The only “rule” I would suggest, is that it should have nothing to do with with any other part of your life. If you spend all week at a nursery with little children do something adult and sexy, like tango dancing. If you spend all week fixing machines, take a gardening class. If you can't get out easily, try something on-line,there are thousands of tutorials out there.

Meditate.
Meditation has many different form, practices and teaches. It is not about a certain faith or religion. It is a way of removing the gaze from the external to the internal. Whether it is just sitting dwelling with your breath or focusing on one thing; there are many scientific studies that confirm that meditation doesn't just help build happiness in that moment, it allows the brain to be happier over all.
Again there are many books and on-line tutorials that can teach the basics, but having a group or class around is a great way to meet people and avoid cheating or lapsing.

Gratitude.
It is easier to focus on the problems than work on fixing things. Yet counting your blessings shifts your perspective quickly and easily. It gives you more patience than you might usually have. It quickly and easily helps you take stock of your life. If you just “can find it”start small. Try and do simple things you know lift you. It could be going to the park. Warm socks. Fussing the dog. The quiet hush of children sleeping. I know a lot of folks who are grateful to coffee!
So count the blessings in your life. Ask yourself: what do I need to change about the situation to be happy, what do I need to change in myself?

Thursday 22 January 2015

A Spirit Healing or Asking for help.

Asking For Help or
Spirit Healing 


I have been reminded today that in all the hardships my body has gone through this past year I did not ask for help to heal myself, with the exception of just before my lumbar puncture. 
I am surrounded by guides and friends in spirit and not once did I ask. Yet today I was reminded by someone I have never meet to ask and I barely said the name of that winged friend and a warm tingling covered me and soaked through my body and being. I was healed as soon as I asked.
I am self sufficient to the point of bloody mindedness because as a child I had no-one but spirit*. 
I don't suppose it hurts that my BFF gave me some great healing crystals during our late Yule party yesterday. Shungite to be exact. I popped it into my water this morning to charge it before I used it to take my meds. I might even get a jug and put it with my Preseli blue stone.
TK and mini witch (who is getting nearly as tall as me) are not people persons. I like company and being around other like minded folks as well as outside connect to the Great Divine of earth and wild. Being ill makes both of those really difficult. I can't even train like I used to, but I am ALIVE and today I was healed because I asked.
I have been meditating a lot lately moving through the depths of self towards my core of love and radiant stillness. The past few days have been wonderful. I went on thrift store shopping spree for warm winter dresses (which I knew were going to be there). Four outfits later and £20 to good causes I found jam jars in bulk, unused for £3.50! The up to Macclesfield to see my Queen B. It was great until I got this feeling I was going to pass out and thought I should go home to do that. As we came in through the door, it was clear the dog had not moved from the sofa the whole time we were gone and that she had slept funny on her face. A new book had come but bed was calling and I barely read the first 23 pages before I was asleep, somewhere else... out cold.
I know now that it is time.
The book will be out soon and Queen B is doing some amazing art work for me. Another meeting next week to finalize the whole thing.
As I count my blessings, I must also remember to ask for the help that is so freely given to me.

Bright Blessings
*
Spirit is a whole realm, worlds and worlds of them. They move through this plane as well. Spirits sounds too small for all that some how. Spirits sounds like there are one or two instead of the thousands of people and places, life times lived in dreams and visions that only lasted an hour or a night here. (This answer was brough to you by my students who are always paying attention, even when I am not!)

Saturday 17 January 2015

Morning meditation

Morning Meditation

My morning has been quiet. Everyone including the dog are still asleep. I did try and wake everyone but not as persistantly as usual. I have had tea and breakfast and done my candle meditation, though my focus has been a bit rough today. From the sparrows in the gardening jumping in and out of my eyeline/edge of vision, to the smell of onion in the bin, or my stomach making noises from my cereal my longest patch was 15 minutes today of "pure" clariety. The rest of the hour was in dribs and drabs of focus.
StillI remind myself that it is the doing that matters and doing it poorly is still better than not bothering.
I have this feeling of unease today I can't shake. I have managed some fragmented peace but I have this sensation I am waiting for something.
I say a Gratitude Prayer and do a white light meditation. I see th light flowing over my spirit and body healing it and connecting it to the light. My guides old and new greet me and give me gifts.
I feel clearer now, my vision sharper. I allow the knots in my belly to soften and breathe deeply.

Bright Blessings xxx


Friday 16 January 2015

More Adventures In Ghost Busting

More Adventures In Ghost Busting

Or Walking with Spirit.


So last night while eating dinner (literally fork in mouth) I get an emergency call from a family about a house clearance/haunting. The spirit was in the little boys room and he was too terrified to be anywhere in the house but in the kitchen (the furthest from his bed room). Now quite unusually for me my kit wasn't ready to go.
It sounded bad but it also sounded like the family knew about spirit and were quite gifted but they were scared especially the boy.
So I slapped on some make up, got my posh but more uncomfortable shoes (anything that isn't my hiking boots is uncomfortable to me) and called a taxi.
I don't know what I was expecting but "the brother" was a boy somewhere between 10 and 12. Skinny with a cast on his wrist blue grey eyes lined with red from crying. He was on the sofa chewing his thumb viciously. There were fish tanks and mirrors everywhere(aka doors for spirit of all kinds but the living room was empty and I sat down to find out what had been happening.
*Den, the older brother (tall sandy blonde, handsome but very gentle, almost feminine quality) who had called me was telling me that Chris* was going through his "awakening". A common term when it comes to those who see spirit. I took one look at their mother and could see that the gift came from her side of the family.
"Irish? Or Scottish?" I ventured
"Scottish." She looked surprised but pleased.
So I spoke with Chris who mumbled through his thumb and we climbed the stair to the loft to his bedroom. It was cold and a confusion of things and energy. I had had the impression of a woman but I could not encourage her to speak to me.
As she was talking to Chris (and he was the one afraid I cleared the space first with the singing bowl and (I got him to go into the corners I was "too big for". I also told him (and got him to repeat back to me) That no-one is allowed into your space without your permission. The spirit wasn't talking even with a pendulum. I got out my brass censer and banishing incense. We cleared the room and Chris put salt where the trouble had started.
Then as she would still only speak to the boy I got us to all hold hands around the staircase. The sister Shelly (teenage, dark hair, lots of make-up) held Chris's hand, who held mind and I held Den's. I got everyone to visualize white light flowing down their bodies and into the room.
Suddenly the room was alive with spirit and to my surprise Shelly had a mermaid (or that is how she chose to appear) as a guide. Chris was indeed awakening. He poured light into the room like Neo from Matrix 3.
We poured light into the room and the spirit seemed to be a very frightened special needs lady. Slowly coaching Chris to encourage her she went into the light. Den felt the rush and release of the spirit crossing over very strongly.
I then (getting Den to carry my case around, went room to room smudging and cleansing. I closed an energy weirdness/could have been a doorway in the Veil above Shelly's bed with my wand and some simple closing sigils and she was pleased that it now felt "just like a wall".
I chatted cheerfully as we moved down through the house noticing guides and so on. The mother's (and step father's?) room was clear but I still smudged it and kept going.
I got to the living room and did a bit of a ready for the mother and Shelly, got my minimal fee and got a taxi home.
All in all a very good busting.

Bright Blessings xxx


*not real names

Thursday 15 January 2015

Second edition!

Second Edition

Or Adventures in self publishing

The new art work (done by myself after the other artist who didn't submit the work by the deadline) is almost done.
I enjoyed this artist work and some of the images that were sent are amazing BUT I chose continuity over creative style. This kinds of calls are hard to make. I try not to chew myself up over it (or my own art) and just rip the bandage off.
This has ment that in the on the darkest cloud covered days I have had to sit almost in a window to work on images for the book. I have drawn all the ones I want to use with a couple of exceptions.
I want them to illistrate but not push my idea of a guided meditation so I am kind of a bit stumped.
I am working on it. Just not today. Today is laundry day. I may well add a little extra salt and some herbs to the mix. I may even...clean the bathroom today!
Cleaning is simple (if never ending) where as drawing a waterfall is not!
Still almost there!
I have also had quite a few people ask to review the book on blogs and so on which is really exciting!
Writing compared to editing and publishing is for me the easiest part of the process. It is a shame that I have had to focus all this time and energy into it, but re-taking control to get more of what I wanted will mean that the NEXT book will be even better (Opening the Door).

Bright Blessings xxx

 

Wednesday 14 January 2015

My other life.

My other life.

I have only dreamed in shades of grey a few times in my life. The rest of the time I get super bright HD more real than life dreams.
After time and practice as a kid I could leave my body and "fly" since I was about eight years old, the same with lucid dreaming.
I can tell the difference between those dreams and the important ones.The ones that are messages or would be visions if I was awake. I can lead whole other lives in this dream space, sometime up to six months in a night.
When the dream is pleasant and I wake it is easy, well easier to get back to this one. When the dreams are violent, dark or horrifying it can be harder to shake those off. 
Writing them down helps. 
Writing down the people and the significant images helps too.
Last night I was at a museum event. I remember studying an ancient jaw bone and discussing with a lecturer from this event (he was younger than me and that fact bothered me) about bone cells.
I discussed with him how TK was doing his degree (something that might have happened this year but for...issues) then I went home and I was in the mountains, really high up. Higher than the cloud, looking down onto the backs of eagles.
You see I know something that people don't want to admit to be true. That dreams are just as "real" as our waking life. That they are different and have different rules but they are real because they happen. Not all of them will be astral (Veil) journeys or warnings, or visions of what could or has been. Yet they are real because they happen, even if they only happen inside us that is how our whole lives happen really. Inside our brains. Learning this and working with your dreams shifts many things.
It does make me get a little irked when someone does the old "it was just a dream" chestnut.
From my dream I can tell I have let go of all tensions and fears (the jawbone) that those teaching me might be younger than me and I have to know that age is a number. 
From my "home" atop a mountain, my safety, my spirit meeting the heavens, my goal reached I will and can see beyond the confusion and cloud. Eagles, hawks and the like are birds of spirit, messengers of the divine, crows always harry the hawk, the hawk just fly's higher.
I felt a sense of peace and safety. Contentment and relief.

I don't know if this helps anyone else understand dreams differently. Helps them explore their dreams while awake to find healing and wholeness.

BrightBlessings xxx

Tuesday 13 January 2015

Adventures in "ghostbusting"

Adventures in "ghostbusting"


People get stuck for lots of reasons, mostly because of their issues, fears, guilt and so on. Sometimes because of their deaths. Dead people (as I say in the blog) are people after all. There is a big difference between soul and spirit, and there is a place between this side and the other. Understanding that your fear binds you and love releases you is important. Most spirit is guided through to the other side by guides. family members and the like.
Let me give you two examples (of the hundreds I have done in the last few years.)
I was at a party to do tarot readings and a lady in her 60's came into the conservatory I was working in. With her, clear a day was a man, young, in military uniform. I spoke to the lady and spoke about this man with her, clearly on "this side" of The Veil. It turned out he was her fiance who had died in a motorbike accident 43 years before and he refused to leave her side that whole time. We spoke calmly and quietly and said that he would still be able to watch over her from "the other side" and that it was time for him to be at peace. We were all crying joyfully and as he past the whole room lit up for a moment and we both heard the sound of a motorbike in the distance, and then silence on a sunny late summer day.
On a darker note I again went to a house to do a private reading but the house had the most awful vibe and I was struggling and asked my client about it. She burst into tears relieved that "it wasn't just in her head". She spoke about quite a vicious haunting and violent things happening to herself and to her young son. Well I came face to face with a nasty alcoholic, about 40 when he died, drunk and in his sleep. As far as he could tell he was still living his life and the living people were the "ghosts" in his house. I tried softly and nicely for a while. In end he he passed over, mostly because I wasn't scared of him and he found out he couldn't hurt me. Again as soon as he crossed into that door way of light all of the anger, resentment and nasty went with him and the whole house was calm and still. A beautiful peace and light came over the whole house.
Nasty ones are rare really, about three in a hundred. Most or just confused, or scared or frustrated. Talking to them, guiding them this side and the other helps the living and those of spirit.
I have dealt with quite violent spirits only to find out when I get there they just need to be spoken to softly, explained to they are dead and to take the hand of the "white lady" or "your mother" and they pass over gently like a sigh.
I travel in that between space. Seen the light, the wonder, the other worlds.
I am a medium and with a little thought and some effort I can call that light that makes a door. I don't often get paid to do what I do. Sometimes spirit seeks me out. Sometimes people seek me out to help spirit.If they have a purpose, a job to do here and don't hurt anyone I let them be. That is their choice too.

Monday 12 January 2015

Tarot and divination

Tarot and divination

In our front garden (which was more of a meadow than anything else) my step-brother put a small caravan when I was about 13. It kind of became our clubhouse/retreat/rainyday hang out.
One of my best friends when I was growing up was a girl called Rosie. Her Dad was my step-brother (yes big age gap). Anyway her Mum was rather odd (even by our standards) yet the one thing I knew was that she was a gypsy, or had been a gypsy until she had settled in a house in a village near by.
I don't know how it happened, I just remember her being there on a warmish day and I would have been about 14, in our caravan. It would not have been unusual for Rosie to be there, but S wasn't usually. She and R had a stormy ex-relationship even by Welsh standards. Yet I clearly remember her sat at the table with a pack of playing cards teaching us all to read them.
We were all pretty good.
Yet the unspoken irritation of my sister and the unspoken awe of everyone else was that I was the best.
That summer and the years that followed I would read anyone any chance I got. Mostly other friends.
S had told me some of the 4's mean this and 9's mean the other, that the face cards were people and so on. Yet I could see patterns, what was happening, and what had happened and what might happen, even if I didn't want to believe it.
That was the only schooling in reading I ever got. 
Yet the lessons kept coming.
I remember reading my friends cards over and over and seeing a baby coming into her life. Over and over. I saw it but I could not believe that it would be my friend. Yet it happened. At 17 after not being able to see each other for a few weeks (doing a play wrecks your social life) she had dumped her boyfriend of two years, met someone else and was pregnant.
This revelation, that I had been on the money but wrong made me so mad I didn't pick the cards up for almost a six months.
That was the lesson that seeing it doesn't make you believe it. That emotion often blinds you was one I learned too.
Then next lesson happened months later. I was doing a lot of readings, and I do mean a lot for folks at college, still with playing cards. I insisted on some kind of payment by then. Most stuff from the vending machine. Most of my clients were on the same B-Tech, I knew them but not well.  I did a reading and I absolutely spoke what saw. I saw a cheating partner and a new job. Talk about table flip! I got called all the names under the sun. I was mortified.
Until a day later he came back and wanted another reading because his boyfriend had indeed been cheating and now he wanted to know more about his job...
At this point I went through this weirdness of seeing things (especially bad things) and worrying I might have been making them happen. This was just rubbish but the fear gnawed at me. When I saw a friend again tell me she was pregnant and I only saw death I said nothing and smiled. As the weeks passed by I told myself I had been wrong. The first time I saw her after the miscarriage, she looked at me and said "You knew!" and I burst into tears and we stood their holding each other sobbing. The relief she wasn't angry with me was amazing. 
I was doing three to five readings a day, sometimes more. I was meditating daily, sitting in circle three times a week, channeling and crossing over the restless dead too.
As I began to channel more I stopped using the cards and just spoke what I saw. I remember doing a cold reading for a friend of a friend (either he had bet him or it was a dare) and just having the words pouring out of my mouth at this stranger and his face draining of all colour and the guy storming off.
Only with permission (though in this case it had been) was my lesson there. This self appointed rule cost me dearly over the years where people have screwed me over because I respected their privacy. 
I was at Uni next and I got my first real tarot deck. A gift from my evil-ex. Second hand, beautiful and they smelt like incense. I have the same deck now (but new). I learnt to read again, this time with a whole host of new faces. Yet the patterns were the same.
I did readings through Uni. They paid in money now instead of food. Yet I always felt weird about the money part.
A wizard friend of mine noticed this uncomfortableness and told me if I did not value what I did certainly no-one else would.
I gave readings in a booth in central Manchester when someone far more famous was on holiday through a referral. It was odd but good.
I did readings in pubs after Uni (so I could eat) and had people give me large sums of money (for me) at the time. Only a couple of months.
People wanted my readings, and to my surprise the most often clients were other readers.
I worked with other readers and learned that you charge your minimum or the average of the room so as not to over charge or undercut the other readers. I also learned that "fluff" readers are despised by those with the gift like me. I watched con artists talk shit and expect people to pay for it.  This taught me well for when I started to psychic fairs (more for fun than for money) for a while. Yet the toll of travel and nine or ten readings back to back made me sick for up to four days. I did parties and private readings too. I much preferred one on one than drunk women crying and so on.
There was always plenty of crying. Most people have a damn good reason for coming for a reading. They are lost or trying to find a solution. The simple act of seeing someone without the bullshit is emotional. Placing someones life before them in all it's horror and glory is not a fun pastime and is deeply moving for me as well as for the client.
This is the reason I won't do tarot parties anymore. I got offered a hen party gig (a permanent job more or less) but turned it down. Truthful emotional exposure and alcohol around weddings is NOT a good idea, regardless of what I see!
I have taught people to read cards over the years but most of what I know I can't put into words.
The cards are permission to read someone. They are pieces of broken mirror reflecting the other person to me and back at them selves. It is the truth, not also a reflection. Subject to change and choice more strongly than destiny. 
Tarot has taught me how much choice and power people have and how most often they won't use their choices. Yet sometimes they do and it is amazing.

Bright Blessings xxx


Saturday 10 January 2015

Working hard at writing?

Working hard at writing?

So after deciding that waiting for months on end with little to no results was not okay I took control of my book and had to make my own art work and diagrams. 
I have done quite a few and not all will make the book, I am mostly pleased with them.
We have spent (me and TK) slogging through working with Microsoft word to format the book. Why Microsoft you ask? Isn't it so slow, difficult and annoying? Yes it is. But it is the only document type the Amazon website thingy will work with. So last time I wrote it in open office and then had the frikkin nightmare of watching it distort to hell and back (change words it didn't recognise some I didn't catch) as it was "converted" to Microsoft.
It moves pages without asking and is basically a word document possessed. HOWEVER, I am a witch, and I don't scare easily.
So this time rather than start in one word and watch it distort I had to.....write in word. 
It is a challenge to my patience, even working with TK. A simple word correction can cause "lag" in the document of something like 5 seconds.
After an hour of that, it feels like you have ran a marathon! After about two and half/ three I just can't even seem to read straight anymore. 
Now I could pay the Amazon thingy peeps to do this for me. Yet part of my brain knows they will have some simple software and at a push of a button it with just "unmicrosoft" the whole damn thing. Also it costs like £200. Not a fortune but still. 
I mean the way they deliberately make it difficult so you spend money makes me pissed off. It is an horrible thing to do. Still sometimes in the depth of my "OH MY GODS WHY IS IT DOING THAT" moments I do think "you could just pay them...." then I grit my teeth and carry on.
Still we are so damn close. I would say about 80% of the way there.
The "nearly, but not quite" is painful. 
You would think that the creative side of thins would be the hardest, but no. Write is simple.
Me, tea, laptop, sometimes the dog.
The rest of it....
Yet I have done it before and I will do it again and it will be bigger brighter and better.
I can do this. 
I will rock!

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Letting go

Letting go

Last night TK held circle and gave me some much needed healing. 2014 was a great year but I also suffered loss, after loss, after loss. In my desire to hold it together and help, teach, heal and write books I forgot to breath. To grieve. I allowed the living and dead to take from me.
I forgot to heal myself. That is why you marry someone who reminds you. Someone who sees all ugly and dark and tells you that it is only clouds on the mountain. 
So much to let go of. All blood and knives, mistakes and lies. Yet I am not just anyone of these things. I am something, someone else. Someone few people see. Even fewer name. I carry a flame.
Lightly.
What a waste, but is kindness a waste? 
Yet naked in the candle light cut by witchblade and moonlight, feeling bloody and numb I come back to myself. In the light of the ancient Ones I take back what is mine. 
All my measure and I name my blade in the dark.
The dragon in my belly whisper's of revenge. Yet I know it is folly. I can only pity those who have betrayed me, not because of my actions against them, but because I am watched over.
I am guarded in spirit. How many have I crossed over? How many a year? How many have I healed?
In The Veil where I am so bright.
Pity.
Pit them for their blindness, cruelty and lies for those will always, always be found out.
Then to wash in salt and water. Then to cleanse in breath. Then to dream of those whom protect me. Those who heal my body with silver sigils dance through my body. 
Even in my dreams I was singing and giving voice to others. The same line repeating and repeating...

Oh say can see...
Oh say can you see...
Oh say can you see...

Bright Blessings xxx

Monday 5 January 2015

Writing...

Writing

 

I love books. I love to read them, I love to keep notebooks and journals. Yet as with my mind they tend to be disorganised. THE SCOND EDITION of the KEY will be out later this month. I am super excited about it. I am also a bit sad. I wanted my students art work to be in this book but after very little communication and missing her deadline by over 6 weeks I had to do the right thing and "let go of the ideas and people who make my life harder not better".
Still after some simple artwork of my own is now in the editing/making it digital stage I am waiting for TK to be awke enough to do the job. More waiting. In an attempt not to lose my mind I decided to dedicate a new note book to incense (and steams and herbal blends) so they are all in one notebook not three...
I am dyslexic and have a hard time remembering anything if I don't write it down (something about my short term memory being rubbish) so I have many note books so I can grab one and write it when it comes.
Also my dog is in season. So she keeps nudging me when she is butt muching...not helping Lady, trying to mak it look smart!
Any way more tea and watching the small birds in my garden while making notes should make me calm right?
There is something magickal about putting pen to paper. To make a mark.

Bright Blessings xxx

Saturday 3 January 2015

Cernunnos Archetype, Symbol and Myth

Cernunnos Archetype, Symbol and Myth

Cernunnos (pronounced KIRE-NIN- NOS) The Horned One is an old God. 
Yet to me, he is more archetype than myth. For me myth has it's space in narritive, in healing and teaching story. In myth, as in The Dreaming we see ourselves and not ourselves. A "traditional narrative", but where would these stories have sprung from? Narratives tend to follow a form, and often weave deep psycholgical truths, images and ideas with current ideas, people or settings. It is our most deep nature to create stories, narratives. Interalizing the outer world and externalizing the inner one. Yet their must be a middle ground, usually one of ritual.
As an archtype he can be seen as a liminal guardian. One who gives life and rules over death. He is wild and untamed but poised and contained. This liminal space of potentiality he allows exploration of both places and expands the middle ground.
Yet this place is not pulled from fantasy. This place is where the red deer dwells. Calm and placid until threatened where the males can roar like a carivore and fight to a bloody death. Yet their fights for territory among males are highly ritualised and often end peacefully.  
We tend to think of humans from the past as "primitive" but in truth there is little difference from them and us. Their reasoning was as great, their capsity for thought, feeling and imagination. They would have seen this mighty animals politely dance with this opponent and perhaps thought it a good idea.
As an archetype he is so potent because he crystalized as part of our earliest collective memory
The Sorcerer made 13,000 B.C




While for some he is an absolute virtue of "maleness", other see him as androdine. His horns reminisent of both female reproductive parts and like the Tree of Life the placental tree.
As a symbol of "wildness" and life and death his gender is less important than the Guardianship of the boundary of "human" space and non human space. I have tried to draw and paint him many times, trying find the wild, dangerous and violent side of him, yet the eyes always come out calm, and even gentle.
As his painting looks down at me through the soft lights of our Yuletide tree I wonder at the merry dance he leads me on. Allowing me glipses, like the white stag at hunter's moon last year only move unheard back into the shade. He reminds me of someone I used to know.

Bright Blessings xxx 
 

 

Thursday 1 January 2015

The wisdom of the Womb

The wisdom of the Womb


Womb Prayer

I am at the centre of your creation
I am at the depth of your breath
I am change and acceptance
I am wise and ancient
I am the cup of imagination
I am the dreams of what will be
I am the gateway to joy
I am your womb and I am holy
I am womb sit and listen
I am yours surrender to wisdom
I am yours let go of your fear
I am yours let of your shame
I am yours embrace my healing
I am yours let go of your pain


Much of the time in the West, even today the womb is only honoured when carrying a child. Everything else tied up with her deep and knowing cycles are about conception or contraception. Yet a woman will have nearly 360 cycles in her life time and most of those (luckily) she will not have a child. Is the rest of this process just a waste, a punishment, a shameful dirty break?
No. Nothing in nature is wasteful.
Menses is a holy time, but the womb is always speaking. This lump of muscle, both tough and flexible carries our creative energies. When you breath deeply (belly breath) it moves. Just as when you sing or dance, or have sex it moves too. While the ova have their own tune, the womb is the one that speaks in blood.
Yet this blood is healthy. Normal. Good. Not bleeding often indicates poor health of either the body or mind. It is not a curse, but a blessing. It is time of dreams and awakenings.
Belly dancing (moving your hips in circles or arches), learning to focus your breath, energy and focus to this place removes much of the pain of this process. The more you fight yourself, the more pain and difficulties tend to happen. The mind, after all is the pivot of this cycle. Your mind (anterior pituitary gland) is where the regulation of this cycle happens. Stress, distress and fear have a large part to play in many of the disorders of the womb and hormone system. That is not to say it is "imaginary" or "all in your head". The womb knowledge and understanding of P.M.S is still largely based on the fact that women have a hormone cycle that does not agree with the social system it is currently living. While medical science knows something happens at this time, in large the way they treat it is much like they used to treat hysteria. 
I am of the opinion it is because women who are often brought up to be "feminine" (polite, kind, compassionate, selfless) have no energy left to pretend at this time. They give and give and smile and smile, and then they wake without the energy to pretend. They weep. They snap. They yell. Yet this doesn't "come out of nowhere". It comes from all the thing she swept under the rug because she was too busy, too nice, too careful to say. Suddenly the real fears, and rages and deep emotions explodes (when you pressurize emotions it usually pops), often not at the people or situations that made you upset, fearful or mad, but at your partners, your children and friends. The less a woman is heard, the less they talk through, let go of or vent about how they feel inside, the busier they are, the more extreme the P.M.S. 
You may not even be carrying those feelings in your heart, but that project you wanted to do, those dreams you push down, those heartaches and heart breaks, that loneliness, those betrayals, they sit in your womb until it can no longer hold them.
If you keep hold of them while you bleed, if you fight to keep going as though everything is "normal" and okay, it hurts. This vulnerability, this real-ness, as well as the pain makes women run from this time.
Once you let go. Once you understand that if you are crying their is a deep reason that you are being told of, and you listen things change. It become a time of healing. A time of knowing and surrender. Of cleansing and gratitude.

Bright Blessings xxx