Sweet Dream

I hear the owl echo from

deep in the wet wood 

A long lonely sound mixed with the whir 

Of bugs and cars and wind in the leaves

That drip rain as dogs bark while words cease

An evening, alone

Here and now is all

I float on the quiet life

I dig deep in my grave

For I know I boxed me up

And buried me one day

This moment is so solemn

It almost seems right to wake the dead

Its as if this is what they’d live for

If only they could live instead 

And all my sorry cares

My broken hearts and broken bones 

Might seal themselves back up

Like loves holy light come home 

Its like nothing had ever broke me

Not at 7 or at 9 or 14

No world I ever lived in had been less

than a sweet dream

Going Home

Truth telling time

my lips close

lies becoming concrete

my heart drops below my feet

God the father is dead-

but killing me

We do not escape

no place to run or hide

we are but children

we speak in code and travel

in the mind

We become small

smaller in plain sight

we shrink- our lights go out

We are bodies only

buildings, like the house

furniture, floors

awaiting the lions next roar

the howl, the brawl

Still, so still

our breath even hangs in the air

If you are very quiet

and you never move

no one can ever care

But you do move

and days do pass

and its always a disappointment

you, always an empty ornament

a reminder of seen crimes

an accomplice to horror

complicit to your mother’s, brother’s, sister’s torture

lips sealed shut, lies firmed up

Out… out

and the flame is only soot

the fire, a fantasy

who says you are dead to me?

Forget the enemy, the family

Snatch the breath from the air

Alive! Inhale!

Do all this as if you care

our heart will beat, our selves will align

His truth is not our truth this time.

EMOTIONAL RECALIBRATION, FATIGUE AND DETOXIFICATION: PROCESSES OF CHANGE AND WAYS TO SUPPORT YOURSELF

Just an excellent post, as usual, from the Sky Priestess.

Dr. Bairavee Balasubramaniam PhD

Empathy fatigue or burnout is a real thing. Practising self-care, taking time out for yourself becomes ever more relevant. This is the minimum baseline for anyone seeking or providing spiritual services at this point in human evolution.

What I am feeling, and interpreting from the skies (not just now, but a couple of years ahead) is that we are being asked, or rather, required to evolve more resilient emotional circuitry.

Things are not going to calm down any time soon. Expecting them to will only cause further inertia, struggle and unnecessary suffering. So we´ve got to up our game instead.

Basically – 2012 was a threshold and we´ve been recalibrating since.

This does not mean that we can no longer afford to feel vulnerable or to recognize it as such. Suppressing your emotions is probably one of the worst things you could do. Numbing them by resorting to substances, addictive…

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Ereshkigal

She sits in the dark with me

and cries my tears

Oh, Mother…

I put my palms down

on her dirt floor

I feel her body

The dark rises

and I sink

under

underworld

I hear her wail and sob

it is my voice

She is more

than my earth mother

more than

a soul eater

we go to the bottom

all the way

her creatures

move in shadows

I am not afraid

this is the quiet

of ancient tombs

of buried treasure

of grief and burden

this is her quiet

the quiet of death

I die here

I die as many times

as it takes

and she is my witness

she marks the time

she says goodbye

she mourns me

over and over

she mourns me

over and over I wake

in cold sweats

in heartbreak

in horror

on hands and knees

I search

they say the keys to heaven

are hidden on the floor of hell

I feel her sharp and perfect body

her sharp and perfect love

our sharp and perfect pain

this time I will not die

this time I will be reborn

born of darkness

to reclaim my light

 

Doing too much

Pushing, trying, forcing, harding, efforting…

These are all verbs of the grind, all ways in which I push myself to grasp at what I desire. I suspect others do the same. Like anything else its easiest to observe in another first. I have a phrase for this.

 

Doing too much.

 

As soon as I become aware of the signs, I say it out loud to whoever is in the room and if I am alone I say it to myself. Its my incantation. It signals me to step out of my mind and put down whatever the mind is holding and back away slowly.

 

What are the signs of doing too much? Lets start with how we might end up doing to much first.

 

I’m a thinker and an analyzer and a researcher by nature. As soon as I decide I want things from the mundane to the occult I go forward with the intention to gather info and amass knowledge then to carry out specific plans and become the queen of whatever it is in 12-24 hours. What a horrible way to ruin what you love, right?

 

Since I am aware that it begins this way I have learned to trick myself into falling down the obsessive doing hole by more subtle means.

I have learned, many times over, the lesson that working from intuition, living from center, and trusting the present moment are the ways to drift into flow and move with the natural order of the cosmos. Sometimes this divine alignment just isn’t sufficient for my mind. She cracks up, ‘how ridiculous,’ she says. ‘Our heart is a tangled mess. She can’t be trusted. We will do some meditation and yoga and work on that later, right now we only have X amount of time to spend learning or doing our way to the next step and that’s when the magic will happen. We must press on! We need to read this chapter, complete this exercise, then clean the house, go to work and come home, spend time with family and there is just no time for you to take 15 minutes going within. We have goals!’

 

Oh, mind. You mistrustful logical seducer of willing victims.

 

What results is the inevitable moment where I am agitated, mad I have not completed my projects because I cant settle into my body and get started. Madder still that I am not more disciplined. Angry even that I do not have enough time to do all the things I want to do. Disappointed that the moment I was living for has yet to come and so much time has passed and I am not the queen of anything yet!! I am sharp pointy needles all over, anxious, frustrated and finally emotional as well. Then I do something like burn the supper, that as a kitchen witch and someone who aspires to cook from a place of sacred intention at least 3 or 4 nights a week because I believe food is medicine, totally derails me and I consider myself the worst kind of failure at life. I would love to say I get the message already but sometimes it goes on a little longer before it dawns on me.

 

I’m doing too much.

 

Why is it so hard to slow down and rest in Spirit?

Why can’t we just believe that we are already full, already whole, already anointed, already Blessed? We are already enough. We are already a part of the One Thing. We already have access to the very divinity that we are grasping after.

 

Magic 101~ calm the mind. Drop it, even.

 

When I remind myself that this is the only lesson that I ever need to learn I just stop. I am not going to say that I cease to struggle with this realization when it occurs. I still feel some type of way about it that puts me out to say the least but I can, at last, give up. Surrender. Most of the time that feels good because the amount of tension that I have built up over trying to so damn hard is clamoring inside me to break.

 

I know that a few of the words I began this article with are not proper English. Language, vocabulary,  are meaningful even when misused and sometimes more so. There is a difference between applying effort and efforting, there is a difference between the quality of hardness and harding and thus hardening. This is a kind of punishment and pushing that is not self loving. These ambitions are coming from a space of inadequacy, not joy. Not love. Not Spirit.

 

So, what I have found is the same truth that I have been finding for years now. Stop, settle down, ground, connect. Even and ESPECIALLY DURING YOUR MOMENTS OF GREATEST RESISTANCE. Then move on with your projects from that place of union and connection. Now you’re holding sacred and intentional space, now you are home. Now you are Queen of everything.

Well, thats what I tell myself, your affirmations will be phrased as you are.

 

Much love folks, have a beautiful day and make haste slowly.  xoxoxo

Love your gifts anyway

I didn’t think my poems were any good

(who even reads poetry anymore?)

What is good?

What is bad even

its all there

do not hide the gifts you’ve been given

within them lies

Spirit

God(dess) grants us just these things

these little flowers from her sleeve

these little notions

not after-thoughts

but forget-me-nots

and I let mine languish

tucked it away

and for what?

She gave me purple, silver and gold

so that I could wear gray?

Absolutely not!

Drink the rich coffee

spill the cheap champagne

write the things you hate

because they are not perfect

or cheerful

or sane

or pleasant

or fluffy

and they do not

explode into glitter

the moment they hit the page

they are marvelous anyway

because you are the one

that can say it

the way you say it

No one expresses this feeling

in your words but you

You were made to-

believe that its good

damn it

its good

to get it out

and into the world

you were made to

love your gifts anyway

even if you asked for different gifts

even if you prayed for different gifts

even if your friends

must have gotten those gifts

that you prayed for

sweet little poet

just write and share it

you were made to

share your heart

and that’s good enough

Better even

Best of all

because we do not get gifts

just to shut them up

trust enough

that someone knew

you would be the one

to use what you’ve been given

if you wont be grateful

be courageous

and if not courageous

then foolish

it’s all there

Do not hide the gifts you’ve been given

The Goddess, Generational Curses and a Damn Good book

I am reading a gem of a book. The Magic and Power of the Goddess by Gareth Knight is such a blessing. Like so many things, right time, right place and right message. I feel as if I am being called to enter a trans-formative journey, spiraling deeper and wider with the Divine Feminine. The generational curse that has been a legacy of the women in my family is one of anxiety, depression, shame, victim-hood, weakness and low self esteem. I only gave voice and vocabulary to this curse over the last several years and I have been on a quest to break this cycle and to free my daughters and their daughters and so on from these lesser energies and patterns that manifest themselves seemingly without effort or intention. I say curse because that is what if feels like and the weight and gravity of the word fit the circumstance. I do not mean that someone some where in history doomed our family line but… enough struggle, strife, sorrow, and abuse settled into and seeped through the hearts and stories of enough of the women in our family that we have passed these things like lineage to one another with each generation being affected worse than the one before it. The Goddess is alive and she can heal this. Through her rites and her myth we can find our way back to the light, back to love and health and happiness for all beings. This is deep work that means so much to me right now.

This is not exactly what this book is about but it is giving me wisdom, knowledge and context to carry out the inner work that is required for me to heal and in turn offer support for the healing of others. As a mother who was poorly mothered and in turn poorly mothered her own I have long felt it is my responsibility to create growth and change through the energy and archetype of the Divine Mother, whether you call her Isis, Mary, Ma Durga, Demeter or so many other names she is simply waiting for us to reach out to her and seek her solace, her guidance, her loving embrace.

Once I have finished this book and assimilated the teachings I intend to post some excerpts, exercises and journeywork or just some storytelling that might of be of interest here. This would be an excellent book to do a group study with. If any of this interests you keep a lookout or private message me.

Enjoy this beautiful day that Spirit has made and that the blessing of this planet, our earth mother, has made possible. May all beings know peace, may all beings know love. Be blessed! ❤

Altars

​Altars are our topic of discussion today. How exciting! 

Generally speaking an altar is a focal point for a working area. Usually altars refer to the table or surface where we place our magical and ritual items, tools, and pictures or symbols associated with the deity or energy that we are working with to achieve our aims. Affirmations or prayers will also find a home on the altar. 
While shrines are reliquaries or visual representations that are meant to stimulate the imagination and encourage contemplation altars are associated with our desire to bring about action or outcomes or to ally ourselves with forces that will aid us and strengthen our ability to reach our goals. A working altar is attached to…well, a working, so lets touch on that too. If your desire is self love and generating compassionate and loving feelings on your own behalf the working is toward this aim and the altar is the focal point.

That being said altars do not need to be elaborate or take up much space at all. A dish with a pink candle, a piece of rose quartz and a quote or affirmation written on a scrap of art paper that expresses self love can be very powerful.

Would you like to try this with me? Self love is always a healthy thing to work toward. Gather a couple of items that speak to you of self love and compassion; whatever you have on hand will work so long as it jives with the idea of self love. A candle or tea lite, a flower from your yard, something in the shape of a heart, a crystal like selenite or rose quartz, a swatch of pink cloth or ribbon, even a picture of something that embodies love and compassion can be added to give you a few ideas. Be creative or keep it simple, it doesn’t matter. Maybe you could write this quote from the Buddha on some pink paper (whatever paper you have on hand will work fine) ‘You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.’ You could also write an affirmation underneath it such as ‘I am love, I feel this love grow within me each day.’ Once you gather your items arrange them on a dresser or some place where you will see them each day where you can burn your candle safely and if you have a cloth to place them on that adds a nice touch too. 

Once assembled in any way that is pleasing to you we will set our intention. Light your candle if you have one. Place your hands over your heart space and take a few deep breaths, center yourself and calm the mind. Getting in touch with your quiet animal helps 🙂 Set the intention to be kind to yourself, to forgive, to be soft. Your soul is not intrinsically worth any less than any other soul no matter what you have done or been through. All beings are made of love and all beings are redeemed by love. Promise yourself this redeeming and healing love. Know that you are worthy of it because everyone is worthy of it. If you have a higher power kindly ask them to bless your altar and help you be more self loving. Just a simple request will do. Put your hands together as if in prayer, take a deep cleansing breath, breathing in love, on the out breath imagine that your intention has become a part of you and you are now breathing it into existence in the universe. As you let this breath go you let your intention go and the universe picks it up gently to set it in motion. From this moment on the changes that need to be made to bring you into a greater state of self love are being made. Its a subtle process and you need not worry about the universe’s part just be mindful of yours, your promise to yourself. Bow your head toward your prayer hands and say ‘so it is.’ I let my candle burn and go about my day until I have to leave or for about 30 min to an hour. You can fold the paper so that others cannot see it while you are away from your altar if you like. Return to your altar each day or whenever you need to sit with your desire for greater self love, take a few moments to read your affirmation or quote, and light the candle, letting it burn as before. You can stand at your altar and place your hands over your heart space and feel the love there any time you need to. You can also ‘charge’ a talisman, such as a necklace or a pocket stone at your altar for a few days with self loving energy and then carry it with you for extra umph! If you like, let me know hiw it goes.

Brightest blessings ❤

Shrines

Lets talk Shrines! When people think of shrines a lot of different ideas can surface. Lets start with the definition: a place regarded as holy because of its associations with a divinity or a sacred person or relic, typically marked by a building or other construction.
synonyms: holy place, temple, church, chapel, tabernacle, sanctuary, sanctum….

I personally like the idea of sanctuary. Typically teenagers build shrines, whether they know what they are or not, to their secret crushes or pop idols all the time. It starts with a sacred item such as a bottle cap from something the beloved drank that you were able to discretely keep then you place it on a dresser surrounded by other things that remind you of that person. It becomes a holy place or a center of devotion- a shrine… Ok, so, maybe you have never done that and it does sound a little creepy. What about celebrities, personal heroes or pop culture shrines? I had a wall in my room dedicated to Jim Morrison and the Doors where I also had my books of poetry (by Morrison himself and others), my incense, concert tickets and anything that espoused my deeply held belief that music and poetry really does soothe the troubled soul. Maybe you have a favorite band or a collection that you have placed symbols, items and tidbits around that hold great value, an homage to the object of your devotion. Thats what a shrine is to me. It is also the object of meditation. We can sit at our shrines and meditate on or contemplate their content or drift off in peace knowing our devotion is an anchor for us in difficult times. Fandoms work this way and I see many people create shrines around their fandoms. They are a sanctuary in times of stress or transition and even still in times of ease they steel us for future trials, rooting our personalities in strong faith or a particular set of values.

Are shrines creepy? Ok, yes and no. I get the creepy factor just thinking of Spike’s shrine to Buffy but the idea is that most shrines are sacred and private. It isn’t meant for the world to share, its personal and is made up of your most precious artifacts, relics and images. Its an outer reflection of our inner world and we (or perhaps those who share the object of devotion) are the only one who is meant to enjoy it. I say if it seems a little creepy then you are probably on the right track but keep it healthy- balance that devotion with non attachment. Be able to break from it and do other things. I have a shrine on my altar (altars are tomorrows topic 🙂 ) to Venus/Aphrodite and to Tara but I have a wall where my favorite writers, singers and celebrities are posted. I also have a little Buddhist shrine in my living room. I have been a natural altar and shrine maker my whole life.
I am leaving you with an article featuring photos of peoples shrines from pop culture and beyond over at rookie mag. Its fun stuff but I encourage you to do some image searches of shrines on your own and even a pinterest search. Shrines can be very artistic and the visual element is what makes them so moving to our imaginations and emotions. Love you guys! xoxo Lis

http://www.rookiemag.com/2012/02/not-creepy-at-all/

 

The One Thing

This morning on my way out the door, I intuitively stopped in front of my kitchen window which faces west, rang the little bell on the window sill, placed my hands over my heart space and said a prayer to the Goddess of the West. Because west, for me, is associated with water and the emotions I prayed for uplifted emotions and a blessing of love in my home along with a clearing of negativity from the air. This was the first time that I addressed a directional energy as “Goddess.” The whole thing came to me organically as I paused at the window, it fell out of my mouth and onto my breath so quickly I realized I couldn’t question it as it had already begun. On my way to work I wondered at what happened. Water, in my magical system, is feminine so it makes sense that west would be engendered by a goddess, likewise I might consider south to be a god as fire is a masculine energy to me. Magical systems work no matter what system they are because we give them the power to work and they work best when we employ consistency in that system. What I did was consistent with the arrangement of my thinking/system and so, for me, it felt solid but it still had me thinking.

What about the wisdom of the One Thing?

The little magics and entreatys, the altars, the mantras, the talismans, blessings, goods made and enchanted, the divinations, the writings of my faith (any faith)…are the workings of mind in the physical world to unite with Spirit who we are already united with. At the heart of all mystery schools and ancient wisdom is the idea that there is only One Thing. EST UNA SOLA RES -This is the Latin inscription on Arthur Edward Waite’s simple grave marker and it translates ‘there is only one thing.’ Waite is well known as a Golden Dawn member and the creator of the Rider Waite Smith tarot pack with artist Pamela Coleman Smith. What a beautiful distillate of belief and commemoration for Waite. This simple truth of the One Thing teaches us that we are already one with God consciousness, the life force of the universe is in everything and it is the animating force of our purest existence. As Jalaluddin Rumi put it,

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

We seek repeatedly to come into an alignment that is inherent to our being, an alignment that we already possess. It is the natural state of things. It is Sat Chit Ananda- consciousness is pure bliss.

This world has all the potential- as above, so below- to become heaven, we are the divine personified. Being so personified in the material world such as we are we perceive the world through the mind as individuals, an experience the One Thing requires to know itself. Hence, we need to know ourselves and the circle of oneness then becomes complete. How to know ourselves? Know God or Goddess or Spirit or Oneness… our names are important in defining our experience of the One Thing but they are only vocabulary and they are personal to each of us. Stillness will always bring us right to the heart of Unity yet we live lives of human trial and triumph. We feel our separateness. It pains us. We cant get close enough, to Spirit or to each other. Despite our fleeting moments of divine oneness and union to our god consciousness the mind still requires the tricks of the Shaman/Magician archetype to pull us out of the spiral of separation so that we can better perceive the truth of this teaching. There is only one thing and it encapsulates ourselves, the cosmos, Spirit, it is the World card of the major acana of the tarot.

My little prayer this morning did change something and it was useful. It allowed my thinking mind the space to stop, honor the divine, align myself with the intention to bring in love, to clear the air, to know the aspect of the One Thing that I needed was available to me. On one level we can know the World, the whole, the truth of the One Thing but it is through the agency of the Magician that we utilize the tools of this physical existence to make the magic that sets us free from the illusion of separateness. Like Dorothy we have had it in us all along but these little magics help us to believe in our own divinity, no matter what teaching or school we follow or what words of power we use or who we call to ~there is only one thing. We can connect to it however we like because it is all there is and it is never not there.

xoxo Lis