Wednesday, August 26, 2009

travel as a shamanic journey

This week I am in Edmonton, working with my shamanic mentoring students, and women from the Journey Oracle card party. My experience arriving here became a shamanic journey filled with interesting lessons and powerful insights. My car broke down during the first leg of the trip, and yet through the kindness of five strangers, I was able to make all my connections--arriving relaxed and on time.

I translated the events in the journey into this list of suggestions for transforming breaking down into breaking through.
See that there is a problem
Receive a sense of capability for dealing with it from another’s appraisal
When serious trouble happens STOP in the best place to receive help
Find the open door within which help is available
Receive guidance and recognition of capability, then wait without expectations
When help arrives move to a safe place
When there is no obvious next step go to the next possibility of help
Feel welcome--allow another’s greater capacity to take over
Say YES to an unexpected solution
Discover a new way of going

After I arrived I drew a Journey Oracle divination card, asking the Oracle, “What did I learn from this situation?” I drew this card, and smiled at the image of this little bird, comfortably riding on the head of this strange magical creature. I felt like that bird, being carried by magical kindness in a flow of comfort and ease. All our life’s situations can become spirit journey work, when we are willing to let breaking down become breaking through.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Finding rain magic

We here in the Canadian northwest are in need of some serious rain magic. Withies of drooping brackets hang from the cedar trees, the depleted leaves of the maples form tents as they rustle in the constant afternoon wind. Each intake of hot air and fine dust feels more arid as my gaze turns repeatedly toward the blue-white August sky. It becomes each day more difficult to remember that once the garden pond looked like this.
And yet as a white person of European descent, I understand that drought is, as Laurens van der Post writes in The Voice of the Thunder, “a fear no European can know or understand, because it is a compound of horror, dread and hopelessness which is more of the blood than the mind, for those…born of Africa.”

Certainly the Oracle of Delphi, the Dodona Oracle in Greece, and the Ammon Oracle in Libya were asked to bring their divination art to the predicting of rain. What spirit-directed divination story will the Journey Oracle tell about how and when the rains will come? How will we interpret these messages and find revelation? What training of shamanic vision will call into dreams for a way to call the rain?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Answering life questions

How do we find personal power? I have been giving psychic readings with the Journey Oracle card deck, recently to a dwindling clientele. When I drew a card to ask what was happening, I received this one, and was struck by the question: “Am I trying to sing along?”

In this situation, I understand this to mean that I am trying to do what everyone else is doing, trying to fit in. I don’t want to fit in. I want to honor the unique perspective of this spirit-directed tool. I’m sure I could use this divination art to find revelation for my clients in a way that matches the tarot and other painted divination cards, but I would rather transform their daily life and self-knowledge by applying the uniquely shamanic, Celtic and Wiccan meanings of these divination cards and dream stories.

The Oracle speaks of this card with the phrase: The power needed to create change will be power. I think power shows itself in the physical sensations of our body in daily action, more than in the vast reflections and anticipations of our thinking mind. One of my favorite writers, David Abram, says in The Spell of the Sensuous, “I remain standing on this hill under rippled clouds, my skin tingling with sensations. The expansiveness of the present holds my body enthralled. My animal senses are all awake—my ears attuned to a multiplicity of minute sounds, the tiny hairs on my face registering every lull and shift in the breeze. I am embedded in this open moment, my muscles stretching and bending with the grass. This present seems endless, inexhaustible. What, then, has become of the past and the future?” I understand that the personal power needed to create change is “embedded in this open moment.” I will be in my senses, awake, and the clients who seek teachings by nature spirits for life questions will find me.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Receiving a psychic reading

Sometimes when we are in a dilemma, someone else can see our story better than we can. Close your eyes, breathe deeply a few times, and think of a situation in which your choices and possible actions are tangled and difficult to see clearly.

You have just drawn this Journey Oracle card for your psychic reading, and this how I describe your situation. I see a face with two different eyes…the right one, which means to me the eye seeing in this ordinary reality, is rimmed with red. The left one, which means to me the one seeing in the spirit world, is a clear deep blue. The right eye has water pouring above and beside it, flowing along and over several ear shapes. The face and along the large right ear in the background is rimmed with white, as if frosted and cold. What is surrounding this face is out of focus—shapes that flow and change without apparent structure or meaning. The face and ears are a bright red-orange under the white, as if this were the more basic color. What aspects of your situation am I describing?

I ask you to think of your situation and see if these questions have meaning. Is the eye of this reality rimmed with red from crying? Yet can you also see clearly into the spirit world surrounding this situation? Is the water pouring on the right your feelings, your tears? Is this because of what you are hearing? Is this situation keeping your natural brightness and passion covered over with frost? Or is this a result of your coldness? What is surrounding you that is out of focus?

I conclude this divination reading by asking you the question that appears on the card you have drawn. Say aloud to yourself: “Do I realize who I am?” Is it now time to apply the life wisdom gained from this divination card reading?