Why I love the Oracle Cards

I spent decades trying to get good at reading tarot cards, to no avail. I spent long years wrestling off and on with the runes, and never could read them well. I don’t have the patience for things like scrying. So when I had a reading done using the oracle deck I wasn’t hopeful.

The reading itself was accurate – almost scarily so. And it didn’t LOOK any harder than the tarot. So I invested in a deck and the Complete Lemorand Oracle Handbook. Mayhem ensued.

I know that people say that reading the tarot is telling a story. You just have to be good enough at deciphering what the story is. With these cards I don’t have to strain to string words together – they damn well write themselves.

As an example – a question I asked yesterday. Will Freyja offer me training again? (yes, I was offered once but ran screaming and the alf didn’t take it well and well, it’s a long story).

I drew, in this order,

22 Pathways – 15 Bear – 20 Garden – 5 Tree – 26 Book

yes, I’ll be made the offer and I can choose my path (22 and 15) to work with the alfar as a group (20) with growth in wisdom and knowledge.

Can’t get any clearer than that, can it?

And my deck – Gilded Reverie – is sooo pretty! Just looking at the individual cards is enjoyable.

 

 

 

Been a while since we last posted…

And like everyone else here we’ve been dealing with the pandemic as best we can. Nic and I are in a small town on the Oregon coast. Nic is working at the local hospital and I’m adopting cats from the local shelter and trying to enjoy the natural beauty. We hear seals barking occasionally – they beach themselves at low tide and talk amongst themselves, maybe about the local salmon runs. People are coming out with their boats from out of state and we expect the number of infected to rise as the summer wanes. It’s windy enough to blow the virus away from us when we talk to eachother outside, and distancing is easy to do with all this space we have on the beaches.

The OR team got together for a pot luck on the 4th of July, high up on a mountain with space and wind to keep us safe. We watched the fireworks the town set off under the bridge and enjoyed food and a bonfire along with new faces to talk to.  Nic made 3 bean salad and ribs. We could see the rv park below us, tiny in the distance. The cats didn’t seem fazzed by the fireworks. Dee and her husband who own the land up there on the windy heights have adopted 60 cats fromt the shelter, and they have the run of the place. Not many rodents around.

I signed up for John Beckett’s class on magic and enjoyed it. Two of the three parts of the spell I worked for Nic’s place of employment have come to pass, and I expect the third and final part to kick in this month.

A year later I’m able to contemplate working with Freyja, and I bought a lovely little sculpture from a couple in Russia for my altar. I did have some reservations about becoming a devotee after the tumultuous 4 years back-and-forth with the alfar, but She’s always been welcoming to me when I wanted to visit my cats there, and this last time when I had to go to see my darling Chinle again She let me in without a problem. So I’ve persuaded myself that She’s not going to refuse me out of hand and I’ll start making offerings and prayers, and see how it goes. I’m hoping to be able to ask Her for training. I think I can approach it now without running away or having a panic attack.

I hope that all of you are doing well, holding onto sanity, and not forgetting to prepare for whatever the Tower Times has to throw at us next. It’s certainly been a year to remember!

Loss in the time of Covid

Normally I would tuck this post over in my yoga blog but it wanted to be here on Moonlit Path.

“The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.” ― Rob Montgomery

My girls have a favorite game they play with me. “Mama do you remember when….” Some times the story is funny, some times our two sides of the story are so far from being the same that we wonder if we are talking about the same event. Sometimes we laugh some times I cry on the inside because I wasn’t a perfect parent. Somedays the memories bring me warmth and others I morn for those times when my babies were still babies.

A few weeks ago, I had a moment in my Yoga Nidra.

For those of you unfamiliar with this practice Yoga Nidra is both a goddess and a practice – it is deep relaxation where the body sleeps and heals but the mind travels to the place beyond ourselves.

I was in my Yoga Nidra practice when something happened that shook me to the core. In meditation I saw a wailing woman full of pain and grief. She was nothing but a bundle of pain, blood and rags and she was coming for me. I was instantly snapped out of my meditation. My heart was racing and I could still feel in the back of my mind her presence.

Who or what was she?

Was she a banshee or a La Llorona? In most traditional mythology she is a bringer or harbinger of death. Was she the Morrigan, a goddess that I associate with war and insanity?  Was she one of the Furies the Erinyes coming to visit to remind me of some past wrong now here to extract vengeance?

(Sometimes you can know too much mythology)

I did something I almost never do after that Yoga Nidra session. I reached out and asked for help in understanding. What did this mean? I am blessed to have so many wise women in my life.

Schizophrenia does run in my family. And there was the deep fear with in my that I had finally lost it.  Talking with all these wise people helped me though this and I learned that I was not going crazy but that I was remember my loss.

I was remembering all that I had lost. Personal loss watching my girls grow up to be young women. Generations of loss etched into my DNA. Loss of homes, jobs, the loss of loved one, the loss of my dreams unachieved. I was embodying my loss. I had changed and I needed to give myself the time to mourn all these losses.

It’s not a one-time thing, I know she will be back, my wailing woman. She has been back, my wailing woman but now I invite her to come sit with me and we mourn our losses together. I will remember. I will remember, then I will forget again and she will return.

In yoga we remember. We remember that we are dragons, we are the banshee, the furies and that we are the healer. With yoga I remember I am the phoenix.  

“And when all that was left was ashes, she would again clothe herself in flame. Rising from the dust of her past to rekindle the spark of her future. She was a Phoenix, her own salvation; rebirthed, renewed, resurrected.”   

 — LaRhonda Toreson

The path of yoga is not linear it is both what we have forgotten and what we remember. It is what we do when we remember all that we are. Life is not linear our dreams must be able to change, to grow, to evolve and to be reborn. We must also remember loss and keep our ability to mourn.

“When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.” ― Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape

There is a lot to mourn as what we once knew as “normal” is being changed into our new “normal”. It’s okay to be sad during these times and let your self mourn.

Much love

Nettle’s Cat

Smite the Unbeliever!

My elder brother, Dave, is very dogmatic. He’s been in therapy for years now, he tells me, about what I haven’t inquired yet. Could be his tours in Nam. In any event, he tells me that religion is bunk, gods aren’t real, and only the stupid believe in them.

This is the time I really wish I had a deep close connection with some deity – ANY deity – and could ask the favor of him being enlightened. Just a quick visit by someone the god sends. Doesn’t have to be the deity him/herself. Just a series of eye opening occurrences  to jolt him out of his ‘logical’ mindset.

He struggles to continue to live because he’s afraid of what happens after death. I wish I could help him see that it’s not the emptiness he fears.

Haven’t spoken to him after that call but I’m sure I will sometime soon, and I’m going to ask him if he thinks I’m gullible, stupid, etc. for my beliefs. I tried to explain UPG and SPG, and what’s going on, but without an open mind none of it makes sense to him.

Poor Dave.

Are they really that?

Ah… Hope my darling love

The gods are evil rat bastards and do not deserve our worship.  With all the raping and pillaging, fighting & backstabbing, we can add a few plagues and rivers and/or lakes of blood worst yet never giving us what we want but what we need and yes, we can come up with the idea that they are EVIL. Evil just evil.

Not worth our worship or time. After all, don’t’ they need us just as much as we need them. OR as rational beings we have science so to hell with the gods.

I hear you  

I hear your panic at the idea of trusting this

I understand that fear, and I know that fear.   

I hear you

I love you

I want you to remember.  

1. Mythology is not literal it is allegorical
2. Mythology like parables, Grimm’s folktales, stories and other fables exist to teach children and adults what to fear and how to behave or how not to behave.
3. Mythology was translated and written by the winners (in most causes what we consider modern translations were written by good white male Victorians who didn’t want their women to be free thinking sexual beings. Power and control over the means of production – heirs, preferably male to maintain holdings of money and land. Or even more devious in my mind adopting them into your pantheon and changing them to make them weaker something to fear.)
4. How you look at a myth is how you gain it’s understanding. Medusa seducing Jason and getting her head cut off because she was a monster – a perfect example the decapitation of female empowerment or is the myth just about a poor man just trying to get home back to his wife & country and all these evil monsters are in his way.
5. Follow the pattern of conquest and see how the gods changed and evolved with each conquest. The mythology of the Mediterranean starts in ancient Egypt and Africa thousands and thousands of years ago. People will change the mythology of the gods to fit their government, their tribal beliefs and their need for power and control. And what is rape if not all about power, fear and control.    
6. You know my past, the abuse I had as a child so I ask you with that abuse of power and control how could I if I believed that Hades raped Persephone would I worship the both of them? I in all my years of communion and worship with the both of them have never gotten a rape vibe off of Hades. There have been some thought forms or some darker force that did try to approach me in such a way but that was not MY Hades and I sent their asses packing. My Hades does not dwell in a Christianize version Elysium and Persephone is their QUEEN. All my years of worship Persephone has never felt weak, or the victim of circumstances. She is not the side note to Hades story she is a power all to herself and a Queen of her own realm.
7. Ask yourself who benefits from the telling the tales of the old gods as evil raping villains?

I do believe that the gods are a reflection of humanity in all our good, bad and ugly. Their maybe even one or two who are reviling in this notion of making the old gods look petty, vengeful and full of spite. There are more than one or two that are about peace, love and tranquility. I know that when I feel down and overcome by the crazy happening in the world right now I remember Quan Yin, Nammu, Sekhmet, Hestia, Nut, Saraswati  and Hathor. Goddess of love, community and protection.

You always have the power to choose who and how you worship.

You have the power to deiced IF you want to worship a god or goddess. Which ones you worship which ones you don’t.

You have the power over how you worship.

You have the ability obverse, question, discover and interpreter mythology to empower you.

Much love

Nettle

Are the Gods virtuous?

John Bennett, whom I greatly admire, says that the Gods are virtuous.

I read the stories and find little virtue in them.

They rape. They murder. They are petty and vindictive. They are arbitrary.  They are dishonest. They attack each other, slander each other, backstab each other.

In essence, they reflect humanity at its worst.

Even the ‘good’ ones.

To accept them, you have to accept ALL of them, ALL of their traits, ALL of their faults.

So what separates us?

You have more power, more experience, a better view of events.

Is that enough?

Can it be enough?

Reluctant Conclusions

I’ve been obsessing for years now over wanting to know who has been emotionally manipulating me, and why. Also about who took some memories I once had. I’ve had readings and gone to psychics, asked friends who have better divinatory skills than I do, even tried to figure it out myself logically, with little success.

You’re probably wondering how I know that the aforementioned happened. I had two very obvious examples. In the first one I took an unwarranted reaction to someone I know. It didn’t make sense at the time, but the grip was so strong that I accepted it. The anger I felt was illogical, and I knew it, but couldn’t shake it. This lasted years. Then, over the course of no more than a few days, the feeling faded away completely and I didn’t feel the same way at all. Nothing else had changed. The person was the same as ever. But the emotion was gone.

I had had the same thing happen once before. I was angry at the behavior of someone and meant to cut him out of my life. As I walked home fuming the emotion disappeared between one step and the next. It was so obvious that I stopped and tried to figure out what happened. It was like someone had hit a delete key. That shook me.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I’m sure I’m not the only person it’s happened to.

Then Nammu showed me by example what an imposed obsession felt like, and I knew that this was what had happened to me previously. The sudden burst of sustained emotion, totally unwarranted, and then the waning over a few days mirrored the previous episode completely.

I don’t think Nammu was the one who was messing with me previously. I didn’t even register on her radar until I was standing in front of Nettle when she was communicating with her. As far as I know, I’m not on anyone’s radar. But at least twice, and probably more times than that, someone interfered. And I want to know who and why.

But it occurs to me that it doesn’t really matter. What if I get a name and confront him/her? Is it likely to stop just because I demand it? Is it likely to get me an explanation? Would they even care that I noticed? Powers be arrogant that way.

Another interesting thing about the Nammu obsession is that I felt….odd….for two days prior to it kicking in. And when I was having my wee problem with the Alfar, I felt the same thing two days before that sudden toothache that only shifting my shields stopped. Is that a sign of Powers acting on a person? It seems to be. I wish I could explain the sensation but I can’t. However, you best believe that if I ever feel it again I won’t be taken by surprise.

Things Happening

I see Derek Acora died. I used to watch Most Haunted, until it got to be so fake and insulting. Not once did the team ever say ‘welp, nothings happening here tonight, so we’ll try again some other time’. I understand that Acora was called a fake, but by that time I was no longer interested and didn’t care. It seems to me that people expect a medium or psychic to be ‘on’ 24/7, and it doesn’t work like that.  I’ve tried for years to boost my own psychic abilities, without much success. I guess you’re either born with it or not!

Not sure where this Middle East shit is going, but with it being Tower Time I imagine it won’t be anywhere good for us or the planet. I wonder what some experienced tarot readers would see if they read the cards about the situation. Open invitation for anyone who wants to give it a whirl – with your permission I’ll include it in the next post.

On a lighter note, we introduced KoKo to the harness and leash, and she slunk around as though she were being tortured. A few days later we took her outside and she slunk around there, too. Lol. Hopefully she’ll embrace it as that seems to be the only way she’ll be outside. We took advantage of a sunny day to drive up the coast to Heceta Head lighthouse. Wind, roaring surf, and as lovely a setting as can be imagined. No wonder one of the lighthouse keepers wives chose to stay on and haunt the area. I didn’t see or sense her, but I took a lot of photos and will be peering over them to see if I got lucky and caught something.

I’ve been watching/listening to Arith Harger’s Norse videos. He did a series of them and he’s great. I discovered that if I had wanted justice I should have gone to the Aesir, not the Vanir, because the Vanir aren’t concerned with the whole law/justice thing. So I was expecting something from Freya that she really wasn’t giving.  My bad. Still pisses me off though.

My apologies to everyone – I know I should have been blogging. I know I should have kept it up. I just didn’t have anything worth saying, and didn’t want to inflict that on others. I’m going to try to do better now.

My Drought Time is over, kinda, and I’m back offering to Loki, and talking to him. Considering branching out to Freyr and Freya, but also wary because of the alf thing. Damn it, She attacked me! And frankly I expected better from Her. That’s probably because I don’t/didn’t understand Her nature. I’ve gotten a little bit better now, but it still rankles.

I found a new source for incense, too. Hermitage of the Holy Cross – no, really! holycross.org. I bought a package of amber, a package of Blachernae Rose, and a package of Bethlehem Rose. Incase I decided to approach Freya. But they have a whole bunch more kinds and I’m going to judiciously try them out. The rose aroma is very much like a just opened rose. I’m looking forward to trying it soon.

And Hermes, because He’s the god of travel, and it seems logical since we move 3 or more times per year. Tired of it, to be honest. We’ve done it over a decade now. I’m tired of struggling to find a decent rv park that isn’t outrageously expensive and doesn’t mind our cat going outside.

We lost two of our furkin within 3 months this year. Abbycat disappeared while we were in New Mexico. Three months later Chinle went outside and didn’t return. We were in Wenatchee then. The only one left is Corvallis Koko, and she had a close encounter that left her with a patch of fur missing so we’re keeping her inside from sheer paranoia.

A couple of weeks after Abby left I heard a faint scratching at the side of the mattress, which was a thing she often did. I take it as a sign she’s really gone. Nothing from Chinle, so it’s possible that he was picked up by someone who took him for a stray, and he has a good home. He was always very friendly and would go up to total strangers and rub against them. Quite unlike Abby and Koko.

Been following John Beckett. He’s got a great blog. Almost everything he writes about is above my pay grade, but I enjoy reading it.

2019 was a rough year for many of us. I doubt that 2020 will be any easier, but one can hope.

Drought Time

I’ve wandered unwittingly into a desert. There were signs – I’m sure there were – aren’t there always signs? – but I plodded ahead and now I’m lost. It’s a featureless desert where nothing seems to matter and I have no connection to anything spiritual.  I stopped talking to Loki. I stare at the stuffed dragon Nammu wanted me to pick up and wonder if – or when – I’ll get the message to give it to someone. I’m still waiting after all these years for that sign.  I know that They’re still out there, even if They’re too busy to connect with me, but it’s cold comfort right now.

John Bennett posted the other day about the storm we’re in. He said it wasn’t a post for everyone. I’m one of those not tapped. I wish I were. I would like to contribute something. I’d like to have a role to play and a job to do. It kind of resonates with the military background. There’s a battle but I haven’t been invited to join the troops. I’m sure it’s my own fault, but that’s hindsight talking.

Our cat Abby went missing 10 days ago. Nic and I were heartsick. I called the county animal control but she wasn’t there. I called the local shelter without finding her. I hoped that she was taken in by someone who thought she was homeless, or that she had died giving life to another creature. I didn’t expect to see her again.

Last night, after reading a post on wandering in the desert, I took its advise and put up Loki’s altar. I put out the chalice, the pretty crystal, the poppet. I made an offering and talked to Him. Then I went to bed. It was another restless night and I tossed and turned until shortly after midnight. Then I heard a cat crying in the distance. I thought it might be the stray I feed but I didn’t get up since I had filled her bowls before retiring. It got closer and louder and my heart leapt in hope. It sounded like Abby!

It was Abby! She jumped on the table by the rv and demanded entry. I threw KoKo into the bedroom so she wouldn’t try to rush the door, and let her in.  It was a wonderful moment. I gave them all treats and fed Abby some canned food. She ran into the back looking for Nic, but their reunion will have to wait until he returns from work this afternoon. I called Nic (it was 0030!) to give him the happy news. Joy reigned supreme in the family…well, Chinle did hiss and bop her head as she walked by, but he’s never accepted them completely.

I thanked Loki, in case it was His doing. Maybe a sign that even though They’re busy, They are still watching.