Look to your inner fire and call it up before you. Carefully burn away all that does not serve you – the anger, resentment, hatred, and fear. Allow the ashes to nurture and free you. Remember that some seeds can only break open when they are met with great heat and force, initiating a change you never thought was possible.
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Giving Voice
I have been trying to finish a blog about a particular location in Vermont that we went to recently. It is a place that holds a certain kind of history that quickly conjures images and emotions long before you arrive and captivates you once you enter its grounds. As I was writing, I realized it was becoming quite long, and I have been trying to figure out how to fix it for about a week now. I am not sure what can be cut. It is a place with many layers and stories to tell. This location deserves respect and I don’t want to just give it a few paragraphs and move on. Quick blurbs and soundbites flood our media. As a result, much of the story is lost or shrugged away, reduced to broad stroke summaries and assumptions charged with fear.
Read MoreBetween the Darkest Depths and Sunniest Skies
Over the last few months, I have been feeling a push and a pull within me. For a time, I am offered space to feel the sun upon my face and the ocean’s spray upon my skin. Joy and excitement flow through me as long held dreams materialize before my eyes. It is like I am living a dream come true. I feel weightless and free. Everything within me rises to the surface to mingle with the sea and sky as my dreams take flight. It is beautiful and surreal all rolled into one gift that has no strings attached. As I smile with my eyes closed and face to the sun, the ocean waves consume me, dragging me down into the ocean’s dark depths. I am instantly carried down below my own waterline. Into the darkness I go; acceptance and silence my only guide.
Read MoreAn Offering to Medusa
As long as I can remember, I have been working with a variety of gods and beings. The work that I do, both publicly and personally, calls upon myth and legend to find the threads that can be woven into our modern lives. Through this work, I have been able to find the strength, wisdom, and healing I need. Over the years, I have found that these stories contain important lessons. They were significant thousands of years ago and the themes still ring true today. Honestly, I feel that they are just as important now as we are all searching for understanding between ourselves and our world. By reaching into the pages of the past, we can find the seeds of wisdom and plant them in our own lives. We can find inspiration. We can see our own pain and trauma. We can recognize common themes and begin to chart a new way forward as we break old and tired patterns. As a witch, these stories are more than whispers from a time long ago.
Read MoreMoments In Time
It was an early mid-September morning, and we were already out. The light was shining, but the sun still hid behind the Catskill mountains. While the car climbed up the winding roads, the temperature kept falling. I should not have been surprised by that, but I was. Sometimes the anticipation gets the best of me, and this was one of those times. Maybe I should have expected that too. I wanted to come to this area for quite a while and now it was happening. The land held such a presence in its wild beauty. It was an old presence that would watch and wait. At times I felt like a mouse running from rock to leaf pile trying not to ruffle the feathers of the hungry hawk in the trees. Other times, I felt I was being embraced by a long-lost friend inviting me to sit for tea. At night, I would dream dreams of sorrow and joy, ghosts familiar and unknown, and of conversations that held deep meaning yet faded quickly upon waking. It was such an interesting place. We were wandering through the lands of Rip Van Winkle after all. It was a land that was certainly held in a time without time.
Read MoreInto the Liminal Part Six ~ Exploring the Shifts of Change
Over the last five weeks, we have talked about liminal spaces as physical locations. Places like river beds, swamps, forest edges, and the ocean’s shoreline hold a special meaning and energy. They are the transition points between two types of land. Just like dawn and twilight, they stand between night and day, light and dark. A describable location with a sometimes-indescribable feeling, a borderland holds a special energy and can often feel unsettling. If you were to walk through a once bustling town that has become abandoned, you can feel that the land holds something different. That place can heighten your senses and demand that you pay attention to the electricity in the air.
Read MoreInto the Liminal Part Five ~ To See In the Dark
As we walk though this life exploring our light, dark, and mysterious borderlands, we quickly discover that one meditation, one epiphany, does not clear everything. No. It simply allows us to scratch the surface to explore a myriad of other pieces, waiting to be seen through the lens of Love. Although it can feel overwhelming at first, we quickly realize that there really is an endless number of possibilities with many paths to walk.
Read MoreInto the Liminal ~ Part Four Surrender in the Sacred Swamp
Traveling deeper into the liminal spaces, we begin to slow ourselves down. Walking slowly, each step must be more purposeful than the last. We know there is a purpose to life and what we discover within it. We strive to understand our own pathway forward. Our society demands production at a rapid pace and proof that we have created. Proof that we exist to make an extraordinary mark upon our society in a clumsy dash for our fifteen minutes of fame. Yet in our race to compete for the top, what is the quality of our creation? What is the quality of our lives? Are we to create shoddy representations of ourselves where a shallow image reflects the disinterested attention of the masses or are we daring enough to go deeper? Are you willing to pull the filters off and stare into the unknown depths of your own soul? Are you prepared to shatter the image of what you think you need to be and trade it in for who you can be? Time, patience, and reflection are needed for the process to explore our depths as we wade through the still waters of swamps and bogs
Read MoreInto the Liminal ~ Part 3 From the Sea We Emerge, To the Sea We Return
Staring out at the endless sea, there is a deep primal presence that churns within. It rises. It falls. It beckons. It lures. It dreams. It envelopes. It coaxes. It devours. It renews. As we peer out to that something beyond the horizon and below the surface, we feel it, but what is it? Do we understand the enormity of it all? As mere mortals, do we even have the capacity to even scrape the surface of it? Try as we might, just as our ancestors did, we stare out to the endless sea and feel… something. That deep churning, the longing, that hunger and need for connection and meaning. As we search for understanding, we seek to know what our purpose is. We can feel the ancient and primal forces that are all around us and we try to understand them. As we do this, something shifts below the water’s surface before us. From the deepest depths, she emerges. The Cailleach rises once again.
Read MoreInto the Liminal ~ Part Two Opening the Gate to the Time Between
From the mist she rises in the cold light before dawn. Strange shapes and shadows move but what do you really see? There are whispers from tree line, but can it just be the wind? Taking a breath, you close your eyes to clear your mind, hoping to understand what you see when you open them again. When you do, the whispers and shadows seem closer as the mist creeps around you now. The sound of water rushing by echoes in your ears. Does it make you feel unsteady? Does your heart race? Does your breath quicken? Are you feeling the chill in the air or is it a deep, unknown, and primal memory gripping you now? As the Cailleach stands before you, what do you feel as you both look beyond each other’s eyes and into the depths of forever? The Gate of the Time Between is now open and without realizing, you have already begun to walk through it.
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The Whispering Crow 