NATURE BASED SPIRITUAL PATH
I am happy to announce the release of the latest project in collaboration with Cortney Cameron, whose wonderful idea and beautifully designed images materialised in this invaluable resource. It has been my absolute pleasure contributing to this project. Enjoy!
With hair smelling of earth and aching leg muscles I feel like I can fly. Air element is strongly present since calendar spring began. Identification with flying, birds and wings propels me into areas I would not have visited before or even considered. There is space, openness, possibilities and opportunities. Ultimately freedom. Elemental change has been quite sudden and quick this year just as one day we had snow and the next all the flowers were out. From Water I stepped into Air, or rather flew into it.
My pace changed from gentle quietness of winter to a very busy mind full of ideas, engaging with a lot of research and literary feeling like I was going to take off any minute and fly. My views expanded hugely. I didn’t just begin to step outside my comfort zone and think outside the box I threw the box away. I also experienced my clients having breakthroughs in their process one after another. There was an opening of some sort, which again invited us all, it seems, into being something different. This all feels like a big change overnight.
What I am working on now is bringing myself back into balance and what is needed is Earth, so I walk a lot. I wash my hair (crown chakra) with clay and mud and exercise my body so I can feel every muscle and joint to connect me to the physical. It is grounding. On my walk today I encountered a heron bird I often see and even though it was a bird, a lot of them in my awareness right now, Heron is a wise old crone, which warns against haste and too much speed. I hear her and I slow down standing next to the bird.
Experience is exhilarating and again different. What I notice most of all is lack of fear. Courage is all around me. I feel like I can fly and not just that, but I also know how to. I am in touch with my skills and inner wisdom more than ever and what also comes in strongly is trust, which overrides doubt every day. It feels incredible and liberating to a point of ‘jumping’ off the cliff and being ok. As many doors remain closed or get shut in my face I find my ‘wings’ grow bigger. I find my way, I manoeuvre life and people with greater confidence and skill. I think things through and able to step away when I feel I have overdone it. Too much thinking is never good, hence bringing in balancing elements is important to keep the overall effect positive and yourself intact and healthy.
I am enjoying ‘my flight’ so far and excited to see what else this spring brings with it. In the next couple of week we will have Ostara and nature will burst into blooming picture of glory. I am ready!
This morning a familiar energy called me into the woods. I woke up feeling whole, balanced and knowing I will be doing some restorative magic. After having a heart-felt conversation with a friend the call of the forest increased and armed with a small white candle and my charged palms (my hands buzz before doing a spell) I stepped on a path familiar on my way to the sacred grove.
At a distance very clearly as I approached I saw a face of a maiden (beautiful she was) outlined at the entrance to the woods, which then changed to a crone’s face. It made me smile and I bowed as I always do entering the forest.
I sat on a familiar Holly tree and created a place for my energies to be sent into a simple white candle with dry leaves around it representing release (a word also inscribed on my candle). Holly tree is very of the season and to me it spoke of unconditional love, resilience and protection. I invited all the elements to assist me with this work. Fire to transform, Air to clarify, Earth to neutralise and Water to cleanse. It felt just right as I recalled names of people who are in need of a release from a soul turmoil right now. Two people in particular. As I released the energy from my palms to all four directions I saw and heard the last remaining leaves falling off trees all around me and I saw a deer just a few meters away from me. We looked and acknowledged each other for a few minutes before he walked off. Deer is sacred to me and they symbolise tender heart, purity, divine energy and sensitive nature. I thought of both, my friend and my sister, both in need of reminding of their prime qualities. I asked for peace in the world and a release of all that is no longer in service to us. It is waning moon right now and the right time to let things go.
As the candle was about to burn out I picked up a couple of leaves surrounding the candle circle and burnt them in the flame and once done I collected it all together and buried it under the tree in rich, most soil. It is one my of my favourite spells, which can be adopted depending on what’s needed. It always feels great afterwards.
I exited the grove and the woods with a bow and on my return I engaged with the water element by taking a shower to reinvigorate my energy back.
Sending blessings to everyone!
Opening up my Book of Shadows today after some time sent buzzing energies up and down my spine and tingling feeling around body, chest and hands in particular. I also felt immense strength within and had a desire to move my body. I am being drawn back into spell casting lately and what it tells me that there is a need, there is a blockage or a need to release, heal or transform. I love working out what my intuition is pointing me towards and I never resist following what I am called to do. My practice is 90% intuitive and has always been. That is one element that hasn’t changed.
It is going to be an Air element spell, a releasing spell, I feel, as I am getting in touch with breathing, singing, throat chakra, blue crystals and selenite for clarity of thinking and intention. This is about releasing a particular habit that is impacting on me again this year, at almost exactly the same time as last year looking at the date on my spell. This shows me a strong connection between what my intuition is telling me and exactly what’s needed.
Singing and music is going to be at the centre of it, so is moving my body here and there to shake off the threads of negative attachment, which is within my body. Type of music – whatever you want, a mixture of anything I feel, things that you can connect with and sing out loud, the louder, the better, as the aim here is to get things literally ‘off your chest’. Continuous flow of music throughout the ritual and spell, no interruptions.
Extract from my visualization while doing the spell last year:
“I saw the Goddess conducting an orchestra consisting of the Elements. I saw the Crone and a child (my fourth face of the Goddess). Tension in my shoulders and pain in my lung and chest on the right and my back (exactly the same as I am experiencing here and now). Child within me comes up when I am anxious and that’s what leads to the feeling insecurity and wanting an escape (the habit). I feel alone, unsupported, small. The Goddess gives reassurances here of a strong spirit within the child and a heart of a lion, strong, the girl carries an eternal light within her. Red Clover crown on the Goddess, she has short hair (how relevant). I am being told that every time the child needs support visualize the embrace of the Goddess.
When I was making sounds I felt rocks rolling off my chest, off a cliff and dropping into abyss below.”
Unwanted habit, please be gone
Leave me when the candle (black one best, if don’t have white is fine) is done
Candle burn to remove all ill
By the power of my will
Blessed be!
One would think quick manifesting is a great thing, however, I am finding out it is not always the case. It can be so quick one has no time to settle into an idea of something to be manifested. Often we confuse our desires with needs and mix our attachments and history into the mix. If your tendencies are to do everything quickly, very organised and efficient it is likely you will be able to manifest things quickly. You will possess a strong Air element qualities (good networking, working things out, communicating, create lots of ideas and be inspired a lot) as well as strong Earth element qualities (bring ideas to life, good decision-making, sensible ways of going about things).
What I am being shown lately and, on reflection, not for the first time that sometimes a long game is much better where a range of qualities get tested and clarified and there’s a satisfaction of achieving something at the end of it having gone through a process rather than a single action. This longer process is still manifesting yet being in life at the same time, being present with each step weaving magic carefully with evaluating every step rather than experiencing it so quick it can feel almost unwanted at the end. This puzzled me a couple of times before and the more recent events, which included super-fast manifesting, made me stop and reflect. When what seemed like ‘a dream come true’ action occurred very quickly I was thrown into the sea of emotions and not the ones I would have expected to feel. I felt tangled up, very unclear in my mind with a lot of shadow material of the old original coming forward in me. I couldn’t understand it. This felt like something that did happen before and it made me think about manifesting quick.
We are such animals, I think, that need to have things settled within us. Part of the problem today is that we rush and we don’t stop to hear ourselves, listen to our hearts and slowdown in life, therefore nothing has time to settle in its planning stages and subsequently post- manifestation. I believe we need to pause and often with ourselves to check, to feel, to revise, to ask lots of questions and be in our bodies fully. I failed to do all of the above this time round, which then activated events, e.g. accidents and illness, having to do things I didn’t want, almost on the back of that ‘awesome’ manifestation that happened.
Quick magic and modern life, perhaps, is a way of bypassing the moment of quiet slowing down and settling in the heart. May be they don’t mix well when done impulsively and with what can be described too much Fire energy. Perhaps, manifestation spells and work should be more aligned with Water and Earth qualities within.
This is such a good lesson for me and I hope some of you might relate to this and continue to observe your own magic in this world and learn to navigate it with more awareness, softness and patience. I do have patience, but it seems to present often in a direct competition with my driven, impulsive nature. I need to learn to balance.
I recommend this book on the subject of weaving magic in the modern world.
This year for me is intended to be all about the Sun. My relationship with it, its energetic associations, masculine energy and the quality of Fire. The Sun and I have not been friends I must say due to my intolerance to heat, however, there is more to the Sun than the ability to warm and dry the earth. It shows us different sides, I feel depending on the season. Through running my workshop on the four seasons ‘Four Seasons of the Psyche’ I intend to redefine my relationship with summer and the Sun’s heat and the meaning of ‘burning’. I seek to grow into embracing and opening up to what I had often shrunk from. I would like to start observing the Sun in all its seasonal presentations, colours, energies, meanings and its effects on me starting with winter.
In spiritual terms I am drawn to an old ritual and story from Russia surrounding the Sun God, day and night Zorya Goddess
In Druidry there is a tradition to welcome the Sun in the morning and say goodbye to it at night RITUAL, which I do most days and it gives me a strong sense of belonging to the natural world and it also offers a purpose to the day, I find. In the morning I am ready to open myself up to whatever a day would bring, I go about my tasks and musings with intention and focus and when it is evening time I feel grateful to have lived another day and feel blessings inside my heart for all the joys I had experienced and challenges I had overcome. It can be a sort of meditation morning and evening, a daily practice, which roots us in where we are and what we are doing. I adore going out every morning into my garden whatever the weather, the first thing after waking. At night I often bow to the setting Sun and the rising Moon sometimes. It feel sacred, peaceful and meaningful.
For inspiration and devotionals, as part of your rituals and practice I recommend this book containing beautiful musings Celtic Devotional, Daily Prayers and Blessings by Caitlin Matthews
It is January and the Sun today is bright and glorious. Winter Sun, I find, is not necessarily warming, but illuminating of senses, invigorating of energy within. It takes the film off my sight, so to speak, and clears my senses and I am able to gaze into it with clarity. Instead of Fire energy it has Air qualities to it – penetrating, alert, imaginative, light, and free-spirited. It has a spiritual feel to it too in terms of a visionary and intuitive, it is clear, pure, bright and inspiring. I am finding that I love winter Sun, which also brings crispy, frosty mornings and clear blue sky with it. The whole combination is so rejuvenating that I can never help myself but go out into the clear space of a winter morning. I like feeling a tingle on my face and warmth on the inside as I walk through woods and country fields. I can breathe fully and oh how life-giving it feels.
Image by Katie Still Jackson (Facebook)
I learnt to apply elemental wisdom to my every day activities, the way I think, feel and behave. A certain system has been formed in my awareness based on the four elements. It happened through continuous observation of nature it all its forms and presentations. It seems to go like this:
When I am in my Air element my thinking is engaged. I focus on my thoughts in a given moment and go through them deciding an action or making a plan.
Out of a thought comes a certain feeling, emotional response to what my mind is presenting. The more I focus on a thought the more I feel. I engage my Water function. Some emotions are not pleasant and my Fire might come in to inform me whether to act or not, whether my Fire is to be dynamic, productive and needed or is simply a response to a thought, which is not something I want to engage with. Fire is the necessary part of the process as an alchemical operation of burning something to clarity, purifying something till its purpose is revealed. I am given a choice in this part of the process. I choose whether I trust my feeling and therefore the original thought it is connected to will serve me or I recognise its nature as something that needs to be put aside or healed.
After a thought and a feeling with engagement of Fire comes behaviour. Next comes manifestation, the doing of what once was only a thought form. The Earth element is needed here and I test myself on how ready I am to hold the energy of the thought and emotion and how confident I am about bringing it to life. Earth is holding, strong, calm and reassuring and when engaged is a powerful tool to help us manifest.
So that’s how the process goes in a form of a system. With practice similar to certain psychotherapeutic approaches one not only can become aware of their thoughts but how they make us feel and behave. Nature is a powerful tool to use along the same lines yet so much deeper as nature serves as a witness to our process engaging all of our senses.
Ever feel that you are being pulled into water when what’s needed is to stay grounded? Nature is clever like that it tests by giving us options and challenges our choices whether it is to act, feel or behave in a certain way, a bit like a therapist might.
The other day consumed by worrying thoughts, which were producing powerful emotions in me ,I found myself by the water. I needed to decide what’s next, am I to manifest my state or am I in need to look at it further before making a choice.
As I stood on the bank of a lake between Water and Earth I saw my dilemma clearly. Do I jump into my feelings and get consumed by them or do I remain on firm Earth and allow myself to be held together. There was anger, sadness, frustration all emotions with an undertone of Fire. I made a decision to transmute it back to the Earth through holding on to trees allowing them to balance things out within me. I left more together, composed and with awareness of what was happening within me that morning.
