Musings From The Trail

Musings From The Trail

What’s Your Dark Art?

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The arts of women have been called the dark arts for too long, and they are the keys to infinity.
Infinite form. Infinite being. Infinite life.
The art of far sight.
The art of inner knowing.
The art of sign-reading.
The art of deep feeling.
The art of song and circles.
The art of intuition.
The art of frequency translation.
The healing arts.
The art of kitchen witchery.
The art of communion.
The art of sacred story weaving.
The art of creation and manifestation.
And others too wild to name.

~Alison Nappi
The Wildness with Alison Nappi

🔥

Image: Fire Dance by Julia C R Gray

New Moon in Sagittarius

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New moon in fiery Sagittarius, the truth seeker. A total solar eclipse (visible in South America) also occurs today.

This is a traditional time to perform ritual in honor of earth and sky. Light a candle, say a prayer, make an offering to Mama Earth, the sacred planet that is our beautiful home. Honor the plants and animals that have fed and nourished you all year. Thank the water and soil and sun.

Ritual doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as sitting and listening to the potent dark of a long winter night.

Sit.
Listen to the dark.

Ponder the ideas and plans you want to pursue in the year ahead. Every seed that will grow in the new year is already waiting in the dark. Begin to nourish them now.

🌙

image: Wikimedia

What Really Matters

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“I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge. How many peyote or ayahuasca journeys that have blown your mind, how many master plant diets you’ve done or how well you can hold crow pose. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, or how “silent” your meditation is. I don’t care how many crystals you have or how long you’ve gone without sugar, salt, spices or sex or how vegan your diet is.

I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying despite the discomfort? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, fix or maintain it? I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra- aligned or complete you are – or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloveds in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big?

It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing trainings you have, that you live in the desert, forest or in a log cabin, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra.

What turns me on is busy hands. Planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, you board that plane, you love your children, you feed your family.

I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D, astral travel or have out of body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships. How do you hold the ones you love in the midst of conflict? How do you take responsibility for your part? How do you make amends?

I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy Earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student.

What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how f***ing better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next escape goat for “freedom.”

At the end of the day I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are. At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy, and join the dance with us all.”

~Taylor Rose Godfrey

🌙

Taylor describes this essay as a modern day call to shifting from spiritual consumerism to returning to human kind… heart inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s, The Invitation.

I call it beautiful wisdom.

Dark Moon in Virgo

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Dark moon time in Virgo, keeper of Earth’s cycles and rhythms. Mama Earth turns towards autumn in this seasonal time of letting go. Honor the shift with an Earth prayer or offering of gratitude.

Fiery change is all around us. Tend gently to your heart. Call on your spiritual support to help hold a vision of the future you desire. Remember that when chaos reigns, anything is possible.

Open your heart again and again. Help others when you’re able. And when you don’t feel able, ask for help. Now is the time to begin loving our world whole.

🌙

#DreamANewEarth

Growing Yourself in Darkness

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“The woman who takes the time to grow herself in darkness becomes familiar — perhaps for the first time — with the real source and containment of her psychic strength. No longer is her strength dissipated in obeying an idealized father figure, in pleasing a lover, in trying to satisfy a perpetually unsatisfied mother figure, in accommodating to a patriarchal organization or culture, in appeasing the inner witch who tells her she is worthless. No longer is her strength lost to obeying compulsions, drives, and obsessions that can slip in during the dark night of the soul and substitute for the real thing.

“And what is the real thing, the thing for which she longs? The love affair with her own spirit, the inner marriage that commits her to her destiny, the rituals of soul that feed her deepest hunger, and the sense of being pregnant with her Self, her creative essence.”

~Jill Mellick

Full Moon – The Grandmothers Are Calling

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Full moon tonight in earthy Capricorn, the shaper. The energies are amplified by a penumbral eclipse of the moon, visible in North America.

The deep feminine wisdom of the grandmothers is calling to you now. As old structures and rules are dismantled all around you, the grandmothers ask you to get clear about what you truly want.

What do you want in your world? Get grounded in this reality and then envision a new future unfolding before you.

Do you see a faint path headed in the direction of your truth? Follow it!

How can you begin to shape and build the future you desire? Transformation only requires you to take one tiny step at a time.

Nothing is impossible with the ancestral grandmothers by your side. Ask for their guidance and support.

🌙 ❤️

#Envision
#Act

Image: detail from my painting, Dreaming True.