Events – Page 4 – Serendipities

Grand Healing Ceremony

Earlier this month, Glasreo and I had the opportunity to work as healers at Monika Healing Coyote’s Grand Healing Ceremony. It was the first time we’d worked that sort of ritual, and the most clients we’d worked on in a single day (except for brief work at reiki shares) and though we were somewhat nervous about how much we’d be able to do before we got tapped out, we both managed to work on 3/4 of the attendees before we needed to stop.

For privacy reasons we obviously can’t tell what we all did, but we can give an overview and some general themes. Most of the attendees didn’t have specific things they wanted worked on, but I ended up doing deep healing work (and some soul retrieval) on just about everyone she worked on, even when the requests were vague. Glasreo found that his new lithomancy set was needed to work through blockages for some people, giving them answers that hadn’t been made clear by other forms of divination. Both of us found ourselves holding part of the warding for the space in which we worked, and my Waystation energies in particular seemed (to Monika, at least) to be helping the healers work longer more effectively!

It was a nice plunge back into healing work, and we will definitely be working the next one (schedules permitting) so watch for it some time in the winter months!

Wep Ronpet 2017

This year for Wep Ronpet I was (once again) out of town – this time, at my brother’s wedding. Same as last year, I blogged pictures of offerings (votive offerings for the modern age) for the Birthday Kids during the Epagomenal days, and offered them a shot glass of cool water in front of my travel shrine. On Wep Ronpet, I did a red paper execration (no throwing a pot this year, drat), took my ritual meditative bath, dedicated my new statues of Bast and Sekhmet, and came away with the following pledges as my oath for the new year:

I will light my shrine candle(s) weekly, attempting to do so each Sunday.
I will answer one of the new prompts in my list of 45 Kemetic Prompts every Sunday, though I may skip some weeks and catch up on others as long as I am finished before next year’s Epagomenal Days.
I will make a larger offering on the Bright Moon, because as the moon is a reflection of the light of the sun, so too am I a reflection of their power. I have a three-day window, and if I am sick or there are extenuating circumstances it may be as small as a single stick of incense.
I will channel an oracular message (for myself but also the wider world) on the Bright Moon (again with a three-day window), and it can be tarot-assisted but I should pull the cards after, not before.
I will answer at least two oracular requests, if I have received any, again on the three-day Bright Moon, unless I am sick or otherwise out of spoons.
I will perform at least two heka requests, if I have received any, again on the three-day Bright Moon, unless I am sick or otherwise out of spoons.
I will complete one major research project a year, to include such projects as: read and review a book on Ancient Egyptian religion, do in-depth research on one topic, etc.
I will celebrate both Wep Ronpet and the Sailing Holiday.
On Wep Ronpet, I will purchase one shrine upgrade or magical tool and dedicate it, and I will renew my oath for the new year.

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My new statues are from ShadowOfTheSphinx on Etsy!

Sacred Space 2017 – Days 3 & 4

See Days 1 & 2 Here!

Workshop: Glamour, by Gwendolyn Reece

Gwendolyn Reece is Hellenic Revivalist priestess of Athena and Apollon and a member of the Wiccan Assembly of the Sacred Wheel who lives in DC, where she has founded a temple to her patrons, called Theophania. She has always been politically involved, but recent events have kicked her up a notch, and she believes that humanity, as a group and oversoul, is on the cusp of an initiatory challenge. In order to succeed, she believes we need to clear out what is preventing our spiritual evolution, and one of the largest obstacles is what she refers to as glamour, inspired in no small part by the book Glamour, a World Problem, by Alice Bailey. This echoes thoughts about the change from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius, and Gwendolyn emphasized that we really need to look at trends in terms of 200 years, not 20 years, in order to really see the patterns she’s talking about. Part of the initiatory challenge, she said, comes from several different crises: crises of government are obvious (remember, modern democracy is only a little over 200 years old!), but she is especially concerned with the crisis of climate change. She believes that most of these crises and movements toward spiritual evolution can be boiled down into a move towards the self governance of adulthood. Previously, most forms of government revolved around the idea of sacred kingship. Now, most world governments give at least lip service to democratic elections. But a lot of glamour needs to be dispelled if we are going to succeed at this initiatory challenge.

Gwendolyn defines “glamour” as: a delusion that occurs at the level of consciousness in which cognition is mixed with emotion. She adds that most humans are functioning at that level most of the time. Academics and occultists frequently work at higher levels but tend to return there; some people may spend time below there but tend to return there when they are more clear-headed. She spent a while explaining the different planes/vibrations and how, for the most part, humans are aware of only the center, but if we shift our perceptions (via trance, etc), we can access different parts. It is the work of the occultist to go higher, and in doing so, we can get above the cloud of glamour in order to see it more clearly – and hopefully dispel it. She emphasized the need to start with the glamours we are carrying, ourselves, and then working up to small groups and larger groups that we are a part of, potentially all the way up to the human oversoul (though that’s probably best done in a group effort, she says).

She gave one pretty detailed functional example that I’ll share here: Cynicism. This one raises three very important glamour red flags: 1) it is a cognitive pattern that evokes an emotive pattern that allows them to feel superior, 2) it is a cognitive pattern that deprives them of power while giving them the illusion of power, and 3) it functions as a self-reinforcing loop. Cynicism has become a marker for intelligence, which then allows those who are cynical to feel superior to those who are not, because they’re smarter and not hiding from “harsh truths”. Cynicism removes swathes of intelligent people from being invested in their communities because “there’s no point”, and they feel self-righteous and correct when things then fail – but their refusal to engage is actually one of the causes of failure. As Gwendolyn says, if she was Sauron, contemplating how to enslave Humanity with a really good spell, she couldn’t do better than that!

To dispel glamours in yourself, Gwendolyn says the best thing you can do is to strengthen your intuition and practice mindfulness. At a higher level, she recommends rising through the planes above the cloud of glamour, and contemplating it until you truly understand it in a mystical way – what is the core of the glamour itself? And once you know, find the light within you or ask for assistance from a being of light (like Apollon), target the center of it, and blow it away as best you can. This will require repetition. And the larger the group that you’re trying to remove the glamour from, the larger a group of practitioners you’re likely to need to make a dent. She emphasizes, however, that dispelling from above is a lot more effective than dispelling from the same level, and you probably only need about 20% to hit a real tipping point where it will steadily get clearer and clearer.

Ritual: Tea with Your Dweller, by Holli Shan

This was a guided meditation to help with shadow work, where we were guided to have a talk with our Dweller on the Threshold, our shadow self. We discussed the concept first, and then did two short pathworkings, which I found immensely useful. There was actual tea provided, a warm and calming blend made by Tintalle Foxwood (but alas I failed to write down the ingredients).

The guidance was more or less as follows: Take our cup of tea, take a large sip and hold it in our mouths, really tasting it. Then, focus on breathing for four breaths as we sink into trance. Holli led us down a spiral staircase, and into a room in a palace deep in the ground where there was a small table, with a single candle, and a single cup of tea. We were to sit down at the table, and then call to our Dweller, who would take the chair opposite us. Then, we shared the tea – three sips each, back and forth and back and forth. Once the tea was gone, we were told to ask our Dweller what they had for us, be it message or object. Many of us were given gem-like objects (which Holli had previously said was how she often pictured the exchange) which we were then told to identify, and release, destroy, or re-integrate according to what it was that we had been given.

Some people were given childhood memories that they had to reintegrate after releasing negative emotions. Some were given more overt messages, like “You need to make time for self care so you can love yourself again”. I was given two objects in the first pathworking that I could not identify, but the first one I knew I needed to release, and the second one needed to be cleansed and then re-integrated. In the second pathworking, I was given more information to better understand what the two things had been, and was given an additional two gems. It was very healing, and reminded me somewhat of soul retrieval. I will definitely do it again on my own.

Workshop: Magick for the Good of the Polis, by Gwendolyn Reece

This was Gwendolyn’s second and more overtly political worskshop. She said that before she does any large workings aimed at a group (because that is what a polis is – a body of which an individual human is a part), she starts with an ethical reasoning process, borrowed from academia. This is a six-part process of ethics questions:

Self-Assessment: Is it really about service? What is it feeding in me? Am I doing this for myself?
Self-Assessment: Do I know enough about the topic to properly identify the risks?
Risk/Benefit Calculation: What is the probability of harm? What is the magnitude of the possible harm? What is the probability of benefit? Magnitude of possible benefit?
Comprehensive Identification of Risks: What is the risk to the individual practitioner? To the community of practitioners? To the community targeted? To any institutions? What is the risk of attracting unwanted spirit attention? Etc, etc.
Risk Mitigation: How can you mitigate the above risks? How many of them can you mitigate at once?
Consult Others: Ask your fellow practioners for advice, and also consult your personal guides and guardians, deities, etc.

She did say that in the case of enviromental collapse, the risk/benefit calculation gives her more leeway than on most things, because the risk of not doing anything is total disaster.

Gwendolyn discussed various types of Ancient Hellenic practices, starting with the religion of the polis, then personal and household devotions, the Mysteries, and lastly the different types of magic: Magika, Goetia, and Pharmakon. She said generally, magic on behalf of the polis was attempted after the following steps were taken: 1) recognize the miasma of the polis (miasma, in her definition, is what occurs when humans are out of right relationship with the gods and with each other, ie, when social contracts have been broken), 2) look for the causes of miasma (this was often done by consulting oracles or taking omens, etc), 3) appease or remove the causes of miasma and bind what cannot be removed (this is usually the majority of the magical workings), and then 4) strengthen the beneficial (by making sacrifices to the patron of the polis, for example). It’s a decent pathway for modern practitioners to follow before doing workings, as well. She then discussed various kinds of magic, including Apompe, Katadesmoi, Judicial spells, and Baityloi, before discussing a couple of workings she’s done recently.

Ritual: The Healing Labyrinth, by Irene Glasse

This was a labyrinth walk, on a labyrinth Irene brought with her rolled up on a huge sheet. Irene is a yoga teacher and a trained labyrinth facilitator. Her spiritual home is Frederick Unitarian Universalist Church, which has a large labyrinth in its courtyard. Labyrinth walking is a somewhat unique form of mediation, because of the movement required. She also said that everything on a labyrinth walk is an allegory, so make note of times you get lost, get distracted, or stumble. It is also a very personal journey that sometimes must take place with others around, giving it a sense of community not unlike a meditative yoga class.

On our first walk, she wanted us to focus on what was stuck in our lives on our way in, what our blockages were, and what we must release. On the way out, we were to focus on what needed to be received, what needed to come in to fill the space instead. Before the second walk, she placed rattles and bells at various points around the labyrinth.
on that second walk, we were to stop at each station on the way in and pick up a rattle. Then, through the sound of the rattle and the sound of our own voice, we were supposed to name a blockage and release it. On the way out, our blockages cleared, we were to use the bells, and with their sound and our voice, welcome in those things we needed to receive. As more and more people entered the labyrinth, it became a symphony of sound, and while it might sound cacophonous, it instead was a very healing sound overall, and many of us found that the things we were struggling with were also things others needed to release.

Closing Ritual

Like the Opening Ritual, this one is scripted almost the same every year, and yet it feels important to go, to get that closure. The patrons are thanked and released, the egregore is put back to sleep as a chrysalis, and the wards are dropped as we return to the mundane world, with a parting gift. The gift this year was a blessed Constitution, and since I already had one from a friend who attended one of Gwendolyn’s Theophania Temple rituals, Glasreo and I passed ours on to vendor friends who hadn’t been able to attend.

As always, after four days at Sacred Space, it was a little bit difficult to move fully back into our mundane lives!

Sacred Space 2017 – Days 1 & 2

Opening Ritual

The Opening Ritual is scripted just about the same every year, as its primary purposes are to 1) awaken the egregore of the conference, 2) invoke Djehuty and Athena, the patrons of the conference, and 3) ward and sanctify the space. The main thing that stuck out to me this year was part of Gwendolyn Reece’s invocation of Athena: Let us be useful. It reminded me of my own budding work with Athena Columbia, a local cultus of Athena as Patroness of the District of Columbia and Protectress of American Democracy. (For more info, see my devotional tumblog.)

Workshop: 5 Herbs for the Hedgewitch, by Tintalle Foxwood

Tintalle Foxwood is a clinical herbalist who works out of her home in Baltimore, MD, and is part of Orion Foxwood’s temple and tradition of Faery Seership. She presented this workshop on 5 herbs (plus one extra that jumped in) that can help build the spirit-mind-body connection, in order to keep occultists healthy and grounded in their mundane lives while still able to do their spiritual work. Her six herbs were Eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus), Milky Oats (Avena sativa), Linden (Tilia spp.), Ashwaganda (Withania somnifera), Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica), and Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata). She picked these six herbs because they can all be grown and harvested sustainably, they are generally safe for most people to use (barring allergies), they have a history of traditional uses, they have scientific evidence-based uses, and the plant spirits were willing to be part of her program. She talked at length about nervines and adaptogens generally (most of the herbs are one or the other), and then spoke on each herb specifically, giving uses for each. I was somewhat familiar with Stinging Nettle and Passionflower, but her workshop gave me more ideas for the use of even those two familiar plants! At the end, we each had the chance to blend an herbal tea out of those six herbs, plus a number of extras that she’d brought as flavor enhancers and “backup dancers”. I blended a tea for Glasreo, to hopefully help on days that work fries his brain a bit too much.

Ritual: Ogma and the Voices of the Tree Ogham, by Raven Edgewalker

Raven Edgewalker is part of the Reclaiming tradition and has worked very closely with the trees of the ogham for twenty or so years. At the ritual, she began by casting a circle calling on the trees to stand guard around us, and honestly I think it was the most comfortable cast circle I’ve ever been in. (Frequently I feel more cut off and claustrophobic than protected inside of Wiccan circles, which is why I tend to prefer druidic rituals!) After an invocation to Ogma himself, the ritual was reflective, based on questions drawn from four ogham trees: Birch, Oak, Hawthorn, and Blackthorn. Birch asked, “What are you beginning?” Oak asked, “What in you is strong?” Hawthorn asked, “What do you fear?” Blackthorn asked, “What do you wish to protect?” We answered in our hearts, and then gave our answers to those whose eyes we met as we moved within the circle. At the end, having found our answers, we raised energy to bless ourselves. It was a very enjoyable ritual, and I gained a number of important insights. Additionally, it cemented for me that it is time for me to start my ogham journey. I purchased a set of staves from Raven (check out her etsy shop!) later that weekend.

Ritual: Oracular Seidhr, by Scott Momhern and Becky Sheehan, assisted by Laurel Mendes

This was my second time attending this ritual. Previously, Laurel Mendes and Diana Paxson had taken turns being seer and guide; this time Scott and Becky were the seers, guided by Laurel. I did not ask a question this time, either, but Glasreo did, on the topic of his personal path and growth that I won’t share here. Highlights included this business advice from Odin, paraphrased: “Tell them what you need to – which does not mean tell them everyhing. You can best serve them by doing your work well, whatever it is.” As other questions were asked, I found myself in journey space, talking to Hela about our coming work together. I gained some insight into why I find her so comfortable to talk with, and learned that deathwork is also within the realm of my healing work. Freya also talked to me about oracular seidhr, and volva-ship, though she cautioned that it’s not a good idea to begin that work while pregnant, as I am too close to the edge already. I imagine we’ll discuss that more come summer.

Workshop: Guardianship and Trance Possession, by Raven Fitzcarraldo Mohnkern

After the mishap and my successful possession last year at the Conjure Dance, Glasreo and I both thought it would be a good idea to attend this workshop. Raven is a member of the Universal Temple of Spirits and has been a guardian at trance possessory rites for about twenty years. Guardianship, as she explained, means protection of the human attendees, moving energy into/out of people as needed, holding sacred space, and keeping the mundane world from interfering with the rite. UToS is a polytheist pan-pantheon tradition, but they borrow some terminology from ADTs, including the use of Horse/Rider to describe possession. At their rites there is a team of Guardians and attendants, and because it is a fairly small community, they tend to know which human is likely to be possessed by which spirit and what the human’s needs and boundaries are, as well as the spirit’s expectations, but Raven emphasized the need to express your own boundaries and any allergies, etc, to the Guardians whenever you are at a trance possessory rite. She used the car driving metaphor to explain different levels of possession: sometimes, you’re driving and there’s a spirit outside the car. Sometimes they’re sitting in the back seat. Sometimes they’re sitting in the front seat, navigating. Sometimes, the spirit is driving and you’re in the passenger’s seat, navigating. Sometimes you’re in the backseat, watching. And sometimes you’re bound and gagged in the trunk and have no idea what’s going on. That last one tends to be the kind Guardians need to keep the closest eye on, and is often the most obvious during a ritual.

Raven gave a run down of basic Guardianship rules: 1) always be watching (you have to learn by experience what to watch for, but erratic behaviour is a good start), 2) when someone is possessed, your job is both their safety and the safety of the entire ritual, 3) use whatever senses you’re good at to discern what kind of spirit is present and whether it’s going to play nice with others, 4) research and get to know as many spirits as possible so that you know their personality and preferences, 5) get to know the human attendees as well as possible, including their boundaries and limitations, 6) learn to use your body to catch people without anyone getting hurt, 7) take breaks when you need them, and 8) carry a tool kit. In that tool kit, she recommended things for helping bring spirits in (like spirit beads and devotional objects), things for helping kick spirits out and grounding the human (like florida water, salt, and iron), and utilities (like bandages, flashlights, and lighters). If the rite doesn’t have attendants to take care of the spirit once it has possessed a human, then that’s a Guardian’s job, too – keep things like alcohol, food, and tobacco on hand. She ended with a couple of things everyone could do to help trance possessory rituals go more smoothly: things like keeping track of your friends, catching them if they stumble, waving over a Guardian if you need help, and making sure others know their boundaries/limitations. Water is also helpful, she said: just about everyone who has a possessory experience, even if it’s not very “intense”, will need water afterwards. I think Glasreo has a lot to think about (even though possessory rites aren’t really his “thing”), and I certainly need to think about how to keep myself safe as I work more closely with Bast and Sekhmet.

That’s it for Days 1 & 2. Here are Days 3 & 4!

Soul Retrieval Certification!

This past weekend (Jan 13-16), Glasreo and I attended a Soul Retrieval Certification workshop, taught by Monika Healing Coyote, in the neoshamanic healing tradition of Sandra Ingerman and Gryphon’s Grove. It was an INTENSE experience. Which is part of why it’s taken me this long to blog about it… I’m still pretty heavily processing,but I think it’s time to share! I’m going to give a brief overview of each day of the class, the topics covered, with more details on any personal insights I gained. I will probably forget things and miss things because I learned SO MUCH, but hopefully this will be a passable record of my experiences.

DAY ONE:

There were six other attendees, plus myself, Glasreo, and our instructor, gathered in her living room. It was a small room, and a cozy fit, but pleasant. We did a round of introductions – the usual. Name, experience level for journeying, healing modalities practiced, why learn soul retrieval? My answer to the last question was pretty much,
Another Tool in the Toolbox. I’ve been spirit-led to do soul retrieval on a few reiki clients previously, and I jumped at the chance to learn it more deeply.

We talked a bit about ways to jump in and out of journey space in order to take notes and ask multiple questions, but I already have a system I use for “pausing” journeys in order to do that. I’ve really found it useful in my reiki practice, because it allows me to receive messages from spirits and look at the energy body deeply, and still talk to the client and be aware of where my body is in relation to theirs and everything else in the room.

Our first journey was to talk to our soul retrieval guides about soul essence and soul loss, on micro and macro levels. My guides are the same as my main reiki guides: Airmed and Miach, Irish gods of healing. They gave me imagery that spun up and down on different levels, comparing the soul to the nucleus of an atom, or the star of a solar system – the center that animates the outside (the body). Many of my classmates also got solar or fire imagery, and most of us also got messages about the soul of an individual being part of a larger soul (and likely made up of smaller souls, as well). Fractals, spiraling up and down out of our ability to conceive in both directions. Soul loss, then, can affect us all on many different levels, and it’s as important to do soul retrieval for individuals as it is to do it for groups, the land, and the planet, if you can.

Since we started in the evening and everyone was pretty beat, it was a short session.

DAY TWO:

Day two started with us asking our guides for a dismemberment healing, to prepare the way for new energies. As usual, I dissolved into the water that borders my Waystation island. It’s very very calming, and a bit less violent than what usually comes to mind for a dismemberment healing, but just as potent. We talked a bit about my own shadows and blockages, shadow work I need to do and things I need to be aware of as I’m doing this healing work. Most of it was things I’m already aware of and trying to work on, one or two were new and struck a chord. Self improvement is never finished, and I’m glad to have their guidance.

Then we talked for a bit, with Monika introducing concepts like client education, confidentiality, consent, other complementary healing modalities, so that we could discuss them and figure out our own paths through this work. Glasreo and I will probably be combining this work with our reiki practice, first and foremost, and using reiki to both prepare the bodies (physical and etheric) as well as to help with integration afterwards.

The next journey was a pretty intense one – we were to ask our guides for a run-down of our specific method, ie, how we were going to perform soul retrieval with their help. My particular method requires me using sound to call in nearby pieces, and visiting an underwater (but air-filled) cave to find pieces that get lost. I see the soul like a little squishy ball of light as I work on it, clearing things out and helping pieces assimilate back in. After learning our method, and hearing about everyone else’s, Monika paired us up to work on partners. My partner and I didn’t have any trouble working on each other, and it helped me really cement the method I’d been shown.

We then talked a bit about integration, and how to tell the client what we’d seen, and when it’s best to keep some of the story to ourselves – it’s not a good idea to share something if it will trigger or re-traumatize the client. It’s better to focus on what the soul pieces are bringing back, rather than focusing on why the left – you want the client to move forward, and heal fully. We also discussed how different messages come through our filters, and how sometimes a symbol will mean a different thing to us than it does to the client. It’s okay to just say you’re not sure if the symbology or metaphor is unclear – maybe it will become clear to the client afterwards! After discussing integration, we did a journey to the soul pieces that were returned, to ask them for their story, and advice moving forward, in order to cement our own integration.

Our last topic was soul theft, and we discussed the topic before journeying to ask our guides how we would handle it as healers, and what we should do to prevent it from happening again. Monika pointed out that frequently, human-on-human soul theft is a chain that goes pretty far back, and it might be best to go as far back as you can, or until you hit someone dead, to prevent the cycle from recurring. Most soul theft is unintentional, and the perpetrators often need healing, themselves, but consent can be difficult, so I will probably free pieces and hand them off to someone’s guides or Higher Self, as attempting to put them back into the core soul without consent is likely to get me nowhere, and it’s not very ethical. Spirits can also steal pieces of soul, or pick up pieces that left and hold on to them, and those may have to be battled or psychopomped, depending on the kind of spirit and how reluctant they are to give up the piece. I’ll be working with the Morrigna in these cases, though, so I feel ready to do the work.

DAY THREE:

The first half of the day was spent on smaller topic discussions: ancestral line soul loss in the client’s family, past lives/reincarnation/soul contracts of the client, working on clients with mental or physical illnesses (especially the limitations of this work to “fix” biological problems – it can help, certainly, but “miracle cures” are incredibly rare), working on clients with addiction issues (and the limitations it puts on healing if they are not Ready, Willing, and Able to change), working on clients remotely (can totally be done, across time and/or space), working on land spirits, working on animals, and group healing ceremonies.

After we discussed animals, we did a small group session on the dog that lived in the house, and we found that some of us were called to do different parts. For example, I ended up doing mostly gunk removal, from both the core soul and pieces, though I was not guided to gather or integrate more than one piece. Another classmate was called to gather many pieces but not clean them, and a third was guided to hold space for the rest of us and then finish the integration process. That led us into the discussion of group healing, and once we had finished all our discussion topics, we did a brief healing on Monika, as well.

The final journey of the day was a discussion (with our guides) of trickery and intrusions, from spirits and thoughtforms and suchlike that could mess with a healing. We were to come up with a system to guard against and deal with these issues. My personal system is to remain basically the same as what I already do with my guides when working on reiki clients, or when encountering new spirits in journey space, so that was more confirmation for me than anything new.

DAY FOUR:

The first half the day was entirely devoted to a discussion on ethics. We revisited consent and confidentiality, and also covered topics like holding space, moving past our own ego, self-healing work and shadow work, honoring equal exchange, knowing our personal limits, and making sure not to cause dependency, not to hold any healing back from the client. Monika shared with us her own ethical code, and talked about the code put forth by the Indie Shaman quarterly journal, and we all thought a bit about our own guidelines. Then, another journey – this time to ask our guides for their input, and to be told what the consequences might be if we broke our oath. After that, we all participated in a short meditation to release any soul essence that was not ours that we had taken or ended up with, consciously or unconsciously, so that those pieces could find their way home.

After lunch, Monika led a ceremony to call forth many many spirits as witnesses, and we all gave our oaths. The core of mine is that I will abide by the sacred rules of Hospitality, and I will Put Right what is Wrong. Some things will not be mine to change, and I should never put anything wrong that was right to begin with… It is somewhat difficult to put into terms, but I understand and my spirits understand, and the consequences if break this oath will be immediate and dire, and completely out of my control.

OVERVIEW:

I feel like I learned so much, from both the discussions, and the journeys. It was also really helpful to hear about other people’s journeys, and where everyone else was coming from. It was one of those times where I’m not sure it could have been replicated with another group of people, because we were all so in sync! Hopefully Monika will teach the class again – I would highly recommend it to any experienced energy healer. It’s been a lot to process, but I would do it all over again. I really think this is going to help deepen my healing practice.

One last thing – before we receive our final certificate, we have to do 1 free soul retrieval healing, so if you’d like to volunteer for that, do let me know. I’ll probably offer a handful for free to make sure I’ve really integrated what I’ve learned, and then I’ll add it to my reiki bag of tricks and stick it on the menu, so to speak. I’ll be updating the reiki & healing part of the website with more information soon.

Wep Ronpet: In Review

Well, it turned out that I mostly ended up doing a very short meditation on the deity in question on the day-of, after queuing most of the shrine images and the “about this deity” posts on my kemetic tumblr in advance. Then I pulled a single card from my Lo Scarabeo Egyptian Tarot deck, as a message from the deity. If you want to see those posts, check out this link. The messages were overwhelmingly about hospitality and working together, so I think I’m going to be working a bit more with the Kemetic pantheon in the coming year.

I didn’t manage to see the star rise, unfortunately, because it was cloudy, but I was awake and I did my brief meditation at that time or a little after. I did the execration on Wep Ronpet itself, because rain made our other plans for the afternoon and evening somewhat delayed, and by the time we had eaten and everyone had written on the pot, I was much too tired. So the next morning I donned my whites (my casual whites – I decided a nice white tank top was a better idea for camping than my new white dress), took the pot, declared it to be isfet, and offered its destruction to Bast and Sekhmet, Eyes of Ra! Then I handed it to a friend who has some serious things she needed gone, to smash because I was still not quite energized enough to really slam it. But she slammed it. Gods did she ever. And then a bunch of us picked up the pieces and tossed them in the trash where it belongs. Good fucking riddance, isfet.

Then Glasreo and I headed home from our lil druidy camping trip, and the next day I had a New Year’s bath in honor of Bast and Sekhmet. I used a “yoga” Bath bomb from Lush – that’s in the posts from the link above, too. I realized that my original oath of service to Bast has expired… I am due to re-oath myself, this time to both of them, and I did, briefly, but I need to write out a more formal contract sometime soon, to honor my role as an oracle-priestess-in-training. And I may need to figure out an Egyptian phrase for that.

All in all, it was a very excellent first holiday, and you can expect more Kemetic holiday celebrations getting written up here in the future.

Wep Ronpet – Kemetic New Year

I’m attempting a Kemetic New Year celebration for the first time this year! I’ve been a devotee of Bast and Sekhmet for a while now, and I decided it’s finally time to really start doing holidays. Previously I had not done much by way of Kemetic holiday celebrations in large part because the calendar is pretty complicated – the new year is calculated starting from the first day the star Sirius can be seen in the pre-dawn twilight, ahead of the sunrise. That requires staring at a lot of star charts and comparing dates to find the first day… and then calculating how many days between Wep Ronpet and any given holiday in the calendar, and adding that many days to your calculated Wep Ronpet date… and honestly, it was bit overwhelming. But this year, I bit the bullet, and I’m doing Wep Ronpet. I’m using the date for DC even though I live a bit into Virginia – and that date is August 7th, at 5:42 am. That means that the five Epagomenal Days start on August 2nd, with the Birthday of Wesir (Osiris), followed by Heru-Wer (Horus the Elder), Set, Aset (Isis), and Nebhet (Nepthys) being the final birthday on August 6th. That evening I’m also planning on doing a red pot execration, similar to the one I described in a previous post. With any luck I will also rise early enough to see the star herself rise, ushering in the new year.

Although I will be camping with druidy friends for Lughnasadh for most of that week, I am setting up a follow-along for the Epagomenal Days and Wep Ronpet on my Kemetic tumblog, so check that out if you’re interested. I’ll also post a reflection once it’s all over.

I am very excited and I hope this will be the beginning of a year with many new holidays for me! (Especially if the Egyptian Daybook is actually released soon.) I have stuck a few into my calendar already: the Festival of Bast and Sekhmet (Nov 19), the Sailing of Bast, Sekhmet, and Anubis (Jan 3-5), and the Festival of Chewing Onions for Bast (Apr 16). I don’t know what I’ll be doing for all of them, yet, but I think Bast and Sekhmet have big plans for me this coming year.

Our First Reiki Class!

July 18, 2016
by Alexandra

This past Saturday, I (with help and support from Glasreo) led my first reiki class! It was a mixed class, I’s and II’s, with a few other Reiki Masters sitting in and helping explain concepts through their own experiences. Everyone there was a friend of mine – most were also students of my own teacher, but for various reasons no longer wished to attend her classes. It was good to have a group of friends, because I felt more secure in my ability to teach a class, knowing that I had a safety net!

I started off at the very, very beginning for the Reiki I student (there was just one!) with “What is reiki?”, and gradually moved forward into the history of reiki, reiki concepts, and reiki techniques. I gave everyone an outline so they could follow along, and the Reiki I student also has William Lee Rand’s manual for further study.

Then I did the attunements! The Reiki I student’s attunement is the first full reiki attunement I’ve ever done. I’ve done healing attunements, and I’ve attuned objects, but that student is my first full attunement – and it went very well. I’ve been in contact with the student for the past few days, and it sounds like the detox process hit but isn’t too bad – and I’m sure the student will manage it pretty well, with lots of fluids and rest and self-care.

I also did the Reiki II attunements at that time, on the other two students, and it was interesting for me to see how different their pre-existing connections to the reiki energies made the attunement process! It seemed to go well, however, and I’ve been in contact with both students. They got sent home with homework to try distance reiki on someone they knew, and I haven’t heard back yet, but I can’t imagine they’ll have any problems.

After the attunements we started in on the Reiki II class session, starting with the symbols, and then discussing more advanced reiki techniques. Afterwards, one of the other reiki masters set up a traveling table (since Glasreo and I have not yet purchased one), and we did a few short reiki sessions on willing participants, before finishing up and having dinner.

It was a very long, productive day, but I am very glad it happened, and I’m looking forward to teaching more reiki again soon!

Pendulums!

We got some pendulums and pendulum necklaces from our supplier in time for Baltimore Faerie Faire! Here are the little gems all wrapped up in their packaging still:

They’d come a long way through the mail all smothered in plastic, so the poor little babies needed some TLC. First, we set them up with a sea salt bath for about a day. Here they are, a few layers deep, before we covered them completely in salt. We go through a lot of this sea salt in our house…

After a day or so of that, I pulled them out, dusted them off, and set them on a cookie sheet out in the sun on the deck for a long afternoon.

After that they were much happier and much less sluggish! Then Glasreo (yes, we’re calling Gwdihŵ by a new name now – but it still starts with a G, so hopefully you’ll find it easy to remember who he is) journeyed to talk to all the crystal spirits so that our little pendulums could find their way home – Amethyst, Aventurine, Jade, Opalite, Rose Quartz, and Tiger’s Eye.

There they are sitting on top of a sigil waiting for me to attune them! The Tiger’s Eye will be more geared towards grounding and removing blockages, and the others will be more geared towards pulsing energy to break up blockages and to raise vibrations. I even put my personal pendulum in the mix to get recharged . I use it in my reiki practice to help me find blockages and places that need more healing, both in the physical body and in the energy body and aura. About half of them are on short chains for pinching between fingers, but the other half are on necklace chains so that they can be worn to help you when you’re not using them on others. Hopefully others will find these as helpful as I do!

If we don’t sell out of these at Baltimore Faerie Faire I’ll put them up in the Etsy shop next week. Otherwise I’ll have to order another shipment and do this whole process over again!

Sacred Space, Day 4

Unfortunately, due to a sudden migraine, I missed the first workshop I had been intending to attend, Ellen Lorenzi-Prince’s “Inside-Out Magic.”

Working with the Celtic Tree Ogham in the United States, by Raven Edgewalker

This was a sort of follow-up to her presentation on Friday, where Raven went over working with the tree ogham in an experiential way, although both presentations would have been excellent as stand-alone workshops as well.

She began with listing off several ways one could work with the ogham outside of the UK, where all of the trees are native and available. First, she said you could simply work with it as an alphabet, linguistically, with poetry and the bardic arts. The ogham was never just trees, that’s just the most complete of the surviving symbol sets – perhaps because many of the ogham have tree names (although not all of them do). There seems to have also been a sow ogham and a bird ogham and perhaps many, many more. Secondly, she said, you could just work with the celtic tree ogham as-is, though in that case she recommends getting staves in the proper woods, so that you can have at least a small amount of the tree to work with. Her third point brought her to the topic at hand: creating your own version of the tree ogham, using trees local to your particular geographical location. She fielded a question from the attendees about a perhaps North-American-wide ogham, about including things from all across the US, and she said, sure, you could do that – but you’d have the same issues with not having a nearby tree to work with. So if you want to actually visit each tree in person, it’s a better idea to stick to trees that are no more than a day trip away, instead of including things like the Californian redwoods.

Starting from the presumption, then, that you want to create an ogham set based on local trees, Raven said there are still several different approaches. Some people try to find whatever tree is most closely biologically related to any missing trees, but she says that the meanings may be different, then. She gave an example of this: say you live in Florida, and the closest thing to a European Common Oak is the Live Oak. Now, the common oak is a deciduous, but the Live Oak is a hardwood evergreen. Those are very different trees with very different energies. Their magical and healing uses are probably very different, and that will change the meaning as a divinatory symbol. Instead, Raven recommends looking into the meaning of the missing tree in the divination system, learning what niche it occupies in the Celtic/British isles, and learning its magical and healing properties, and then finding a close substitute. For example, she says that Birch is the first letter of the ogham because in Britain where she lives, the birch is the first tree that re-colonizes cleared land, and it’s the first tree to bud leaves in the spring. So perhaps if you were trying to replace it, you should use whatever tree by you best occupies that ecological niche.

Next Raven gave us all a piece of silver birch bark, and had us really experience it for moment before describing it. Words used were shimmery, silvery, and it reminded some of the fae or the bardic arts. I found it to be rougher and stiffer than I expected, being more accustomed to paper birch, but others found it surprisingly soft. Then Raven led us on a brief journeyworking to meet the trees of the ogham – first the grove of the twenty Celtic trees, then our “own” ogham grove, where we might find trees different than those twenty. She had us interact with our “first” tree, Birch or its replacement. I had two – a Sugar Maple, and a Paper Birch. I suppose that makes Paper Birch my second tree, then!

Now that we had at least one tree and a place to start, she said it’s a good idea to go one tree at a time or one category of knowledge at a time as we learn about the trees and develop a personal relationship with them. She emphasized the importance of a personal relationship, because she believes that is what a lot of divination draws on: our own memories of and feelings for the trees. So perhaps your tree for new love won’t be the traditional Apple, but rather the Maple, because when you were a teen you and your boyfriend used to sit in the branches of a maple for hours together. And that is perfectly fine! The categories she mentioned are the following: learning to identify the tree by bark and leaves, learning what ecological niche it fills; learning what parts are edible or medicinal; learning what the wood is used for (like shipbuilding, furniture, etc); learning the role the tree plays in any folklore or mythology; and then doing journeyworkings to go and talk to the trees themselves and see what they have to say and what insights they offer.

I can’t wait to get started!

Closing Ritual

The Closing Ritual is always a bit low-key, and it’s hard sometimes to want to attend because everyone is so low energy and just wants to get home to sleep, but I find it provides important closure.

Gwendolyn Reece and Michael G. Smith thanked all spirits, especially Djehuty and Athena, for being with us and sharing in the hospitality. Then we sang a short chant and helpers moved around with small bowls of stones, offering one to each attendee as a parting gift. Then we ceded the space back to the mundane world, and the egregore of the conference was placed back into abeyance until the conference next year.

And that’s the whole conference! Thanks for reading!

~Réaltán~

[Day 1]

[Day 2]

[Day 3]

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