It was a busy moon and I started with a short ritual to the Goddess and then set to work right away. I knew I was in for a long night and as the sun was rising just as I was completing the final spells, I felt like the Goddess had given me extra energy to see it through. I usually cast over a two to three day period on the full moon and still had spells left for the next night but I was happy to have completed so many.

Many of my spells take three to five days to complete and some can even take a week or longer, so those require a bit more dedication of time and energy. I keep many candles burning which can be a little troublesome putting them out when I leave the house (so I don’t burn it down!) especially when I have so many going.

This time of year it’s not quite so bad as the dead of summer however when the candles do throw a bit of heat into my casting room.

It’s still very cold here during the day. Tomorrow it there will be rain and high wind at night. I’m actually looking forward to it because the bonfire the sisterhood has planned is so much more pleasant when it it is chilly and dark.

I had some remarkable custom spells that I worked on this past month for several clients and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge they presented me. There is nothing I like more than to keep expanding my magick. A couple of my clients had such involved castings that it took several weeks to finish all of them. Casting spells that are this unique is always an adventure.

I cannot believe the holidays are almost upon us. I have some terrific magick for this spring and summer and I hope you will be a part of it.

Love and Light

Lianne

Spiritually this a feeling of being stuck, in limbo, in-between jobs or relationships, physically, it can mean being in the middle of a dark Irish wood in the early hours of the morning!

Welcome to the Bardo then. The Bardo is a transitional phase between lives, life cycles, or even moments. The Bardo is where you transform your old self, shed your skin, and start anew. It’s a spiritual re-evaluation period when you let go of the impulses of the body and the complexities of the physical world, allowing you to return to essential spiritual matters.

In the Bardo, you’ll find yourself on an unplanned spiritual retreat, often with some financial stress because work has slowed or stopped temporarily. You might feel lonely. It’s a time of suspended animation. You’ve stepped into unknown landscapes where you face the death of old identities and belief systems.

Dans Le Noir – Seeing in the Dark

When you are faced with not knowing where you’re headed, you’ve entered the void. This is an embryonic state, a fragile state and it’s dark with no obvious light switch. But, the void being undefined is also free from limitations. In the void, all things are possible.

Your biggest asset during these periods of uncertainty is reflection and introspection. What’s the reward for all the internal wrangling? A new start, a fresh new beginning. Luminosity. A lightness of being. Clarity. The gift is vision.

How do you find your vision? By learning to see in the dark.

One of the sisters once described dining with a friend at Dans Le Noir, a popular restaurant in Paris where you eat in total darkness and are served by blindfolded waiters.

The Bardo state is like eating in the dark, and what gets you through it is:

Experiment: Touch, taste, and smell new things.
Surrender: Allow yourself to be led by helpers, including those you can’t see.
Playfulness: Sure, you’ll spill food in your lap. Laugh about it.
Unity: Let barriers fall away. Everything merges in the dark.
Trust the Mystery: Trust what comes in silence.

I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and experience a deeper river that’s constant, still, vibrant, and real. And the process of deep listening with attention and intention catalyses and mobilizes exactly what’s needed at that time.

Having given myself up to the Bardos state I emerged from the wood in no time at all, possibly even quicker than if I had dawdled with the flashlight working (as I sometimes do).  There half a mile away stood my little cottage bathed in welcome moonlight. I was reminded once more that there is always light, even at the end of the darkest tunnel.

Mai Li, the owner, prepares delicious foods; from homemade lemonade to crispy spring rolls and spicy squash soup. Mai’s isn’t a restaurant that only serves food, there’s a gentle energy about the place. Also, they often give you a gift when you are finished with your meal – a toy that is reminiscent of Walt Disney characters – for children and adults alike. On a silver platter with our bill, Mai Li presented us all with a pearlescent mermaid key fob.

This is something you might see at a promotion at a McDonalds, but not a Vietnamese restaurant in a quaint nook of small seaside town in Ireland. The key ring stood out to me as significant and special. I realised that seeing this little mermaid key fob not only announced the call from a special friend the next day that loves mermaids and mermaid colours, but a subtle awareness of the meaning of the mermaid as a symbol.

Mermaid energy is intuitive and sensual, carrying an emotional fluidity that is open to creativity, possibility and the spiritual nurturance of the Divine Feminine. The mermaid takes us to the subconscious realms of the imagination where dreams are born. This is the gift of the mermaid.

This symbol sparked an internal look at the reciprocity in relationships, the give and take and expectations we hold in our relationships.

The flipside of the mermaid or the shadow side of this symbol asks us how we can get emotionally muddled in fantasy-like notions of our relationships. She asks us to look at the illusions we hold in our life, especially our relationships: do we tell the truth, do we judge, do we develop unhealthy dependencies in our relationships with our lovers, families and friends. The mermaid seeks emotional honesty and ultimately after some travail, a new sense of emotional independence springs forth.

We three left happily clutching our mermaid gifts, and with a sense of having been touched by the divine even in the simple and humble dining room of a lonely restaurant on a chilly December night.

I had two possibilities to consider: Either use my usual veterinarian in up country rural Ireland, or go with the high-tech vet who was based in the city, the areas industrial centre.

The city vet came highly recommended as the best veterinary surgeon. Plus, he was licensed to do acupuncture on animals. And he had the best life support equipment for the surgeries he performed. Not surprisingly, he was also the most expensive, almost twice as much as my regular vet, for the same surgical procedure.

I didn’t know him at all, so I took Milo for his first visit to this vet to get an estimate on the surgery and more generally to see how the two got along. The city vet’s assessment of Milo was very precise. He was good and efficient in his examination, but I felt Milo was handled like just one more cat out of dozens handled that day. A personal connection was distinctly lacking.

Still, when dealing with a serious surgical procedure, is that warm connection the most important thing?

The thought I kept in the forefront of my mind was: What does Milo want and where would he prefer to go?

A Dream and a Dark Wood

Months earlier, I had a dream that haunted me for a while – I had dreamt Milo was dead. He was gone and I knew it. In the dream, I was talking with the staff of a high-tech animal hospital. They were all in a car and wouldn’t step out to talk with me – an aloof group. From the parking area outside the animal hospital in the dream, I could clearly see a nearby dark wooded copse surrounded by a fence.

After a while I forgot the dream and even the talk of Milo’s surgery didn’t jog my memory. After our appointment at the city animal hospital, I had the instinct to take Milo for a look around the building. On the other side of the animal hospital, looking out of a window I was startled to see a small dark wood surrounded by a fence. The dream flooded back to me.

I knew immediately I couldn’t leave Milo here – he would die because he wouldn’t feel on familiar ground and because they didn’t know him. Milo would feel disconnected, unnoticed, alone, and more vulnerable to the shock of a surgery. At Milo’s usual vet office, they not only knew him, they were fond of him. Anyone will recognize that loving feeling, especially an animal. They are natural love detectors.

When a prominent dream symbol also shows up in our daily life, a guiding hand is trying to reach us. When dreams are so lucid that the symbol reappears in our daily life, an important message awaits us. I’ve also found these symbols to be right on time. The image of the dark wood had settled into my memory only to be recharged at the appropriate moment to serve as a cautionary guide, and in fact, may have prevented a premature death for Milo.

So, what happened with Milo? His regular vet did the surgery. He not only survived the surgery, but healed very quickly – and he’s quite healthy and very much alive six months later, as active and eccentric as ever.

What I Learned From Milo

When we are going through a major transition — a surgery, a relationship crisis, a divorce — sometimes we need a familiar place to go to, a place where people know us by name, where we have a sense of home. We need that personal touch to get us through the mire: the doctor who knows our name as well as our children’s names, the bus driver who waits for us when we’re running late, and the friend who remembers to send us flowers on our birthday. Kindness and warm familiarity is real and long-lasting medicine.

Love and Light

Lianne

Drumming teaches individual and group syncopation; you learn to listen to your internal rhythms more acutely. Drumming teaches you how to take risks — the sound of a drum gives you permission to move in new directions with a feeling of joyful spontaneity.

Listening to the sound of a drum reminds me not to watch the clock as much as observing the flow of life. Watching the clock doesn’t give us all the information. When we observe life’s natural rhythms, we learn what good timing really means.

I eventually realised that what I needed was something more like a journal. But I’m afraid of those silk covered journals. I’ve had one before, and I’m more tempted to put a beautiful poem in there than my extraneous thoughts. Thoughts can be beautiful, but they can also be full of mud, so I prefer a journal that’s functional to one that’s overly pretty.

If I don’t have time to think about what’s going on in my life, I feel lost. I want to follow the movements of the moon, collect inspirational quotes, do some pencil drawings, and ponder. I need to contemplate not so much what needs to be done but what has transpired, and how can I learn from it.

It wasn’t until I found a journal that would accommodate my spiritual self that I started to be more consistent in my journal writing. I’ve written in a journal now for almost five years. I’ll record symbols, spiritual insights, life events, and many other life treasures. That journal has inspired me and helped me maintain a regular journal writing practice. Who knows? One day I might have it published.

Timing is cyclic, ever moving and changing, redirecting us from moment to moment. I’m not so concerned with keeping time as letting time coax me into new ways of being.

Love and Light

Lianne

When this happens, expect some kind of emotional outburst: an argument flares up, a disagreement begins, tears flow, or frustration mounts. Cups are our emotional containers – carrying our pool of feelings — and when our emotions get stirred up, we are prone to breaking a cup or two or tipping it over.

We can choose to let our emotions throw us off balance or use it as an opportunity to tune in to them. When we start to feel emotions rising, the temptation may be to run away from those feelings that are churning inside. Something is churning for a purpose. There is wisdom in the churning – a mystery of the self is unfolding.

Now when I break a teacup or it overflows, I pay attention – I know to tune in to what I’m feeling more closely. When I don’t stay with the emotion – when I don’t listen to it or feel it – then I tend to criticise or bemoan myself. I’m also more likely to have the emotion burst out unexpectedly when I don’t tune in, leading to arguments with others, losing my temper when driving, you know all the possibilities. But when I go inward, I connect with insight, I find a wellspring of wisdom.

When you order for a Tarot reading you are setting up a subtle link between you, your reader and the Tarot symbols.

The Scary Cards

All of the cards are awesome, but there are three or four that can make you especially uneasy, unless you understand their meaning.

The Hanged Man sounds grim, but this person is actually hanging by one foot. He resembles the Norse god Odin, who hung from the World Tree to gain the secrets of the Runes in a shamanic revelation. So the Hanged Man can mean a hesitation before inspiration dawns.

Death looks worst of all, shown as a naked skeleton swinging a scythe, and it’s no accident this card is numbered 13. However, the physical death of any person is not by any means necessarily foreshadowed by this card. It is most likely to mean the ending of a phase, which is essential if you are to move forwards, and while this card may presage some loss or dark passage, rebirth is implied, so don’t dispair!

The Devil looks evil, but truly this symbol means caution – you need to examine your subconscious motives, so you don’t act as your own worst enemy, and be realistic, so you aren’t seduced by promises of goodies that will betray you.

The Tower is perhaps the most negative card in the pack. Struck by lightning, it seems to be crumbling to destruction. It can indicate disaster as a result of pride or wrong-doing, but it can also mean a bolt of inspiration which may bring some uncomfortable changes.

With Tarot the only thing to fear is fear itself, so let your expert reader guide you into making wise choices, as the cards clarify your situation and throw light on your path.

Which cards will be drawn for you? Have a reading today!