Tarot

I went to Isis Bookstore yesterday to get the Druid Animal Oracle cards...they had them on sale and while I am yakking about it...here is a plug for Isis online...it is an individually/locally owned bookstore and healing center...great online store and not a big box store.
ANYWAY...
On impulse I had a Tarot reading done while I was there. I wanted to get some input about my new career plans and I just decided to get input from someone else through the cards instead of my own (possibly biased) readings. It was very nice, all positive signs and some good insights.
We also talked about how those Saints from my childhood prayers had popped up again and seemed to want to communicate. I am never quite sure what is real and what is my imagination. She helped me sort some of that out. It was very nice to get some objective feedback and we had a lot of fun. I was feeling very calm and grounded and happy when I left.

wildthings

Early this morning on my way to work I saw a huge bald eagle perched in the highest branches of a large cottonwood tree next to the highway. Many miles away from where the bald eagles usually hang out.

This afternoon I spotted a coyote running parallel to the road, he stopped and looked directly at me, yellow eyes meeting mine, then turned and trotted away from the road.

This evening as I drove past the closed site where I used to work I spotted a large raven on a fence post next to the road. There used to be a pair of ravens that claimed that entire area, banishing all rivals. They had been tagged by the wildlife department and were approximately 30 years old at that time, about 15 years ago. I wonder if it was one of them.

update
I wanted to see what the Druid Animal Oracle cards had to say about the animals that I was seeing. I think it is not so much what is there...it's a crowded planet...but what you actually see at any given moment.
The eagle and the coyote (wolf) are teachers of courage especially courage to make changes.
The eagle can teach about the courage to move into new territory and the wolf can teach about the courage to take risks.
The raven can teach about intuition, healing and learning.
All good things for changes that I am working on.

pathworking

I had set aside my pathworking meditation for a while. I found I was struggling with it and drowning out any message I was supposed to get.

For the last two evenings I have found a few minutes to ground and quiet myself and begin the meditation that begins in the stone room. On both occasions my guide greeted me without words, led me back into a long hallway with many closed doors and indicated that I was to walk down that hallway. There was no sense that there were any 'good' or 'bad' choices to be made, just that I should go that way.

I think this is an affirmation that the somewhat tentative first steps I have taken to make some major changes in my life are in the right direction and I should continue, perhaps with more confidence and looking behind even more closed doors.

an invitation...is it time?

I received an invitation today...kind of out of the blue. As you know I have not been a part of a coven or even any other group of pagans. My aborted attempts to make contact with other pagans through meet-up groups was the focus of a post that now is funny but at the time was just depressing. (Solitary or group practice?)
I had decided that if and when something came along I MIGHT look into it.

So today I was chatting with a lady that I give riding lessons to and she invited me to join her 'women's group.' Thinking to myself, .....knitting, quilting, husband bashing...nope, not me, I stalled and asked 'what sort of group?'
It's a circle she said, we meet on the full moon every month. I was speechless.

Turns out that her 'little women's group' has been the host of the women's circle at a large pagan festival for several years.

I am excited. Is this a gift from the goddess? I know I was not going to seek anything out on my own for a long long time.

Interesting timing.

to be or not to be?

I think I am about to drop the term 'wiccan' from my self description.
I feel wiccan, I follow the sabbats and esbats, I'm polytheistic, the Rede makes sense to me and probably because of my upbringing I am more comfortable with some structure than without.

On the other hand, for a long time my path was a faint set of footsteps that I followed without much looking around but now it is getting wider and I am picking up things along the way.

I am definitely a witch. My practice is decidedly wiccan.
But some days I am a wiccan witch and some days I am a green witch and some days I am a druid witch and some days I am a shaman witch and some days I am a secular witch.

Do I have to have a name for it? I'm afraid that 'pagan' won't do. There are too many alien forms of pagan that I can't relate to at all. If I have to have a label it has to be more accurate than that.

Maybe I don't need a name for it. I can always use wiccan so that Homeland Security knows which file cabinet I go into....I'm sure that one's a mess anyway, they will never get it sorted out.

Do I have to have one name? Perhaps I could have little cards made up with a diagram on them. Like we were taught to diagram a sentence back in grade school, it could show all the descriptors.

I'm still thinking about this.

an incredible act of nature

The geese are on the move. The skies are full of noisy flocks.

The local flocks are flying in close formations from lake to lake, scoping out the best possible nesting sights.

The migrating flocks are flying high and hard and fast, heading for their temporary resting place a few hundred miles north. One stop on their long trek north.

South Platte, Nebraska, where the North Platte River and the South Platte River come together to form a large area of wetlands, is one of the largest layover spots for migrating birds in North America. Here in Denver we are not in the center of the path of migration, many birds fly too high and fast to be seen easily and some travel at night. So the main indicators for me of this activity are the flocks of geese.

I have traveled to South Platte a few times to see the migration. I don't do it often enough. The highways between here and there can turn in a heartbeat from clear and dry to dangerous blizzards with drifts higher than a car. But the main reason is that my sense of spring approaching doesn't really come alive until mid March and by then the birds are gone.

The largest part of the annual migration arrives in early February. The lakes are frozen here, the ground inhospitable. I have to wonder about the landscape that these birds are hurrying toward. It surely can't be any more welcoming the farther north they travel.

The resting area in the wetlands is unbelievable. I once counted 70+ golden eagles in a bare cottonwood tree. One of hundred of trees around the ponds, each full of eagles.

I saw snow geese and swans so crowded together on ponds that I was reminded of overcrowded knick knack shelves.

Five foot tall sandhill cranes, so many in a cornfield that they surpass any crowded mall at Christmas time. Thousands and thousands of birds, as far as the eye could see. As I approached them, even though their legs are as long as mine, they did not walk away. They would make a small jump into the air, spread their enormous wings and glide 50 feet away. Feet trailing a few inches above the ground, an apparently effortless change of position. Occasionally one would lift his enormous wings over his head in a beginning courtship display. The sound of the flock chattering to each other was deafening.

I saw every sort of hawk and falcon, crowded together in trees, motionless, silent, unmoved by my presence, photographed often and by better than me.


The birds arrive in February and by the first week in March they are gone. Some rest for weeks, pick mates, court and dance and eat. Others come in and rest motionless for days or weeks and move on. Some arrive in large noisy flocks. Some travel with a mate or last year's offspring. Some are flying totally alone.

I have been incredibly moved by this gathering since I first witnessed it. And humbled.

Long ago our first ancestors came down from the trees and moved into the caves. Found fire, art, community, tools, building, teaching and learning. Civilizations have been born, died and their remains have disappeared. Wars have been fought, won and lost. We have been proud of our learning, our building, our skyscrapers, our space shuttles, our 'power' over the earth.

And throughout all this time, the geese fly north every spring.

getting off to a good start

I feel that I have, at least temporarily, cleared my mind of some of the incessant worthless chatter that had nearly consumed me a few years ago and still annoys me.
It is a continuous uphill battle but the small victories are worth it.

I am doing several things to fill my mind with more useful, enjoyable and even soothing things to think about.
I am taking a few minutes each day to do some meditating, even if I only have 5 or 10 minutes it is worthwhile.
I have started working on some of the things I want to learn in my spiritual life.
Like taking the time to really listen to Celtic Myth Podcast. It really can't be absorbed while driving or working.

I purchased some new books on assorted aspects of Goddess worship and modern Paganism. I have yet to find just the right book on Shamanism. I have thumbed through many but put them back for various reasons. I am open to suggestions, if anyone would like to send me the name of their favorite book on Shamanism I would at least check it out, but not promise to buy it.

And I am opening myself up to setting aside some serious time for my creative side. I used to be a semi serious artist but that part of me got pushed aside by letting my life run me for many years. I joined a couple of group blogs on creativity. I think that allowing myself to exercise some creativity in my pagan blogs has re-awakened that part of me.
I feel invigorated and like I am starting a new phase of my life.