The Healing Path, Part 1

It was my lover who wanted to take the Reiki class: she was training to be a Doula, as was the woman who was teaching the class. I’d never heard of Reiki before my girlfriend told me about it. The Reiki Master had encouraged me to take the class as well. Guided by my fascination with natural healing and earth centered spirituality, and nudged by my developing intuition, I decided to go for it.

It had been over a year since I opened my first book on Wicca, and life seemed to be getting harder all the time. My girlfriend and I were financially strapped and isolated in spite of efforts to connect with our community. My parents were barely speaking to me since I came out to them a year previously. New Orleans was populated with giant, flying cockroaches, and I was so terrified of them I was in a constant state of fight-or-flight anxiety. (New Orleans belongs to the roaches, I think, and they let us humans stay because we provide cool places to hide and plenty of garbage to eat. I think when the apocalypse comes, whatever form it takes, the cockroaches, dandelions, and pigeons will inherit the earth.)

I worked in a flower shop in the garden district (with a giant roach living in the bathroom–I tried not to go to the bathroom when I was at work!). It was the worst week of the year for Florists; Valentine’s Day week. Florists make the bulk of their yearly profits on Valentine’s Day–but V-Day behind the scenes in a flower shop isn’t pretty. The night before the holiday we were in the shop until midnight getting orders ready. Valentine’s morning we arrived at 8:00 a.m., and a crowd waited at the door. The constant onslaught of last minute shoppers asking why there were no roses left didn’t cease until around 6 p.m.

Since I’d never had a Reiki session, Valentine’s evening our soon-to-be Reiki Master would give me my first Reiki session.

After eating and changing into dry clothes I dragged my exhausted, aching body to the Reiki Master’s house. She had a room set aside for healing: that night it was dimly lit, warm, and very quiet. The massage table had blankets and a pillow; she told me to get comfortable and lit incense and candles. On her desk, a specially designed box housed several honey bees, which she used in her Ho Shin practice. As the smoke from the incense curled through the room, the bees began to buzz around their temporary home. Somehow this sound was the most soothing one in the room. I felt safe for the first time since I came to the city.

She began the session with her hands at the top of my head, and I immediately felt warm, tingling sensations there, which slowly spread downward to my neck and the tops of my shoulders. Over the next hour, warmth and comfort flooded my body. The sensations were all subtle and gentle, and I grew more and more relaxed. When she finished, she told me to take my time getting up, and left the room. I sat up slowly . . . and burst into tears.

I was crying partly out of a sense of relief or release–I’d been wound so tight after my stressful week, and the session had drained all the tension from my body.

But I also cried because I felt a stirring of hope–the first hope I’d felt in a while. At the time I didn’t have any concept of emotional and spiritual healing. I knew you could go to therapy for your mental problems, but I didn’t understand that the spirit and emotions could be healed just as surely as the body can. What I couldn’t articulate in that moment, but felt deeply, was the hope that I could heal from a lifetime of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse.

After I stopped crying, I went into the living room and drank water, and we talked about the session. She gave me some input on what she had sensed when she worked on me, and some ideas for how I might make my day-to-day stress a little more bearable. I told her I was excited about the class, and went home. I slept better that night than I’d slept in months.

I sensed, after that first session, that Reiki would be an important force in my life. I didn’t know, of course, that it was only the beginning of my explorations into healing and vision work . . . more about that to come.

Let’s Write (Another) Blogvel!

For those of you reading the posts on my spiritual journey, I’ll post the next entry soon. Today I’m taking a break for a little fun.

Do you all remember Skeleton Key, last summer’s Round Robin Blogvel? It was possibly the most fun I’ve ever had with my blog, and I think we need to do it again.

What’s a Round Robin Blogvel, you may ask? It is a Blog Novel, written by many different authors.

Here are the details of how it works:

• I will write chapter one and post it on my blog.
• The next Monday, someone else will write chapter two, based on my beginning, and post it on his or her blog.
• The Monday after THAT, someone else will write the next chapter, based on developments in previous chapters, and post it on his or her blog.
• Repeat until everyone has had a turn.
• I will write the concluding chapter and post it on my blog, UNLESS someone else feels a burning desire to do so.
• Each person who posts a chapter will include a link to the FIRST chapter (for newcomers who want to start reading at the beginning), a link to the PREVIOUS chapter, and a link to the blog where the NEXT chapter will go up, to make it easier for readers to follow the whole story.
• I will make a Round Robin Blogvel page and update it weekly.
• Chapters will go up on Monday every week.
• The more authors who participate, the longer our blogvel will be.

I think it’ll be a great way for writers to meet other writers, and for readers to find more awesome blogs they didn’t know about. Also I think it will be very fun.

So here are the RULES:

• You can write in your own style, and you can make just about anything happen. The only thing I ask is that what you write flows naturally from what came before. A hypothetical example: If Mary Sue has always been kind to animals throughout previous chapters, and you decide she is going to throw stones at a puppy in your chapter, you MUST provide a believable motivation for the sudden change. Like, you know, demon possession, or being under a spell. Or maybe a killer puppy.
• Please keep chapters to 2,500 words or less
• Please be sure you can do it if you sign up. It will be more difficult for everyone (but especially me) if you flake out.
• Post your blog entry on MONDAY the week your chapter is scheduled. Email me a link to your chapter at michelle [dot] simkins [at] gmail [dot] com.
• I’m happy to give feedback/editing help to anyone who participates–if you can get me your chapter by noon Pacific Time on the Sunday before it’s due.

Now you are asking, “How do I join in on this fantastic adventure?” Lucky for you, no dwarves or wizards need mar the green paint on your door to issue an invitation. All you have to do is email me at michelle [dot] simkins [at] gmail [dot] com. When you send your email:

• put “Round Robin Blogvel” in the SUBJECT line.
• include a link to your blog
• let me know if you want to write a chapter at the beginning, middle, or end of the blogvel. OBVIOUSLY if you start at the beginning, you will be writing your chapter sooner. If you go middle or end, you are at the mercy of the plot twists of all authors who came before you.
• Get your email to me by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, May 31.

After sign-ups close, I will take all the authors’ requests and assign chapter numbers to everyone. We’ll shuffle things around as need-be over the weekend, and I’ll post Chapter 1 on Monday, June 4th.

Still undecided? Consider reading Skeleton Key, and see how much fun you’ll miss if you don’t participate.

Losing–And Finding–My Religion, Part 2

A few months after I decided to part ways with the church for good, summer arrived in Grand Rapids.

One muggy Saturday it started to rain. I sat in my studio apartment and watched the rain falling on the green, green grass, and felt the charge in the air that meant a storm was coming soon. I was restless and anxious, but the rain was beautiful. I needed to walk in it.

I grabbed my sandals but didn’t put them on. Instead I carried them as I walked slowly around the perimeter of my apartment complex, at the edge of the neatly clipped grass. To my left, a strip of woodland–all young trees and tangled, snarled undergrowth–separated my complex from the adjacent property. The air was hot and the rain was cold. I had recently cut off all my hair, and the raindrops tickled my bare neck and shoulders. I wanted to plunge into the trees, but I didn’t do it. What if I got in trouble for trespassing? What if there were snakes and thorns and spiders or . . . who knew what? I’d grown up in the country and spent my formative years alone in the woods, but this little plot of trees seemed different, and inaccessible.

But standing in the wet grass and looking into the green shadows, I felt that stirring again, that awareness–here is the sacred thing, the sacred place, this is what I’m looking for.

I went back to my apartment and dried off. Outside, the wind picked up and twilight fell. The storm was approaching; my skin tingled with it.

I had one of those concrete squares outside my apartment door, roofed by the balcony of the apartment above, with a sort of half wall to afford me a little bit of privacy. I wanted to watch the storm, so I spread a blanket on the concrete. I brought out a few candles and a stick of incense I’d bought on a whim, and I sat there with the candle light and the sweet smoke and watched the spectacular display of lightning. While the storm swept through I felt intensely alive, like the electricity was under my skin as well as in the air. It didn’t last long enough–not at all. But the charged feeling accompanied me through the rest of the evening. I didn’t know what had just happened to me, but I knew it was important somehow.

It was December of the same year, in an apartment in New Orleans, that I opened my first book on Wicca. I found the book on my lover’s bookshelf and picked it up out of idle curiosity. I huddled in a blanket in a corner of our unheated, unfurnished apartment and read about the holiness of the earth and creating sacred space. I thought back to the night of the storm and my instinctive need to honor it in some way, about my blanket and candles–so similar to the instructions for casting a circle in the book. I realized that the night with the storm had been a kind of initiation, or at least had marked the beginning of a shift. I hadn’t known it then, but I’d started down a path toward a more meaningful interaction with the world–both its visible and invisible aspects.

What followed was a year of exploration, sometimes slowed or complicated by poverty, relationship drama, work drama, and frequent bouts of scary illness (pneumonia, etc.). In the midst of painful circumstances I discovered Scott Cunnigham’s works on Magical Herbalism as I was also discovering books on herbal remedies. This simultaneous discovery took my spiritual path in a direction heavily steeped in herb lore and magic. It also made me really, really want to have a place where I could grow a garden. That seemed out of reach (see “poverty”, above)–so of course a lot of my first spells were about getting more money. I’m sure a lot of us have done it: a spell with a silk pouch and oats and pennies, and a cheesy rhyme about “coin and grain and silk of green, money to my wallet bring” or some such nonsense. Of course it didn’t immediately dump a load of money in my lap, and I learned my first important lesson about magic; it never works the way we expect. It’s not a shortcut to anything–it is, instead, a way of tugging on the threads of the universal web to shake something loose. It was followed immediately by my second lesson–when you start tugging on the threads of the web, sometimes the thing you shake up the most is yourself. Sometimes the thing you are trying to summon to yourself is missing for a reason–and in order to get it, you have to let go of the things that are in the way. And sometimes, YOU are the thing that’s in the way, which means things are going to happen to change you whether you like it or you not.

In other words: Be careful what you wish for.

While my life exploded around me over and over, I started having dreams about tsunamis and earthquakes, about being in the middle of a forest while all the trees were toppling. Strangely enough, these dreams were comforting. In all of them, I was unscathed by the disasters. For the first time I understood what intuition was, and began to realize that I could trust mine.

And the next place intuition brought me was to a level one Reiki class with a woman I met through my partner. But I’ll tell you all about that next time.

Losing–And Finding–My Religion, Part 1

A few months ago I shared the story of how I began, as an adult, to reconnect with the sacred in nature. As I said in that blog post, I didn’t give up on church right away. I was still trying to hold onto my childhood faith in some way. I finally knew what I was searching for, and I kept hoping to find it in some space that carried a Christian label.

The Catholic church came close–the beauty and mystery of their services almost gave me the feeling of the sacred I’d been searching for. I started attending mass and reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church . . . and that was when I bumped up against the wall that I couldn’t ignore.

It was women.

I knew myself to be an intelligent, capable woman. I was single, and it seemed likely I was going to stay that way for some time. I supported myself and provided for myself, I thought for myself, I acted on my own behalf. And yet the bible and the catechism of the Catholic Church told me I was inferior to men. That god didn’t call women to teach or have any position of authority. That women should always submit to the authority of men.

I struggled. I prayed. I stopped going to church because I felt so WRONG there–I felt disrespected and unwanted there. Finally one day I picked up my bible and asked god for a sign–some kind of sign to help me know what to do. And I let the bible fall open. It opened on the the first book of Timothy, chapter two. And there they were, verses 12-15:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

What I got out of that verse was “All the sins of the world are a woman’s fault, so shut up, have babies, and do as you’re told.” I threw the bible against the wall. It would be days before I would pick it up again–and then I would only touch it long enough to put it in a box so I could take it to the used book store.

That moment was a major crisis for me–the woman issue was the proverbial last straw. I couldn’t do it anymore. Everything about the Christian faith was wrong for me, and I couldn’t pretend anymore.

I was terrified of the choice I was making. What if I was wrong? What if hell really was waiting for me? I could see freedom as a possibility for myself, but was I really brave enough to make a break for it? Could I really just set it all down and walk away? How would I navigate the world without the rule book?

And what would my mother say if she found out?

I felt scared, and a little bit lost, but I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t feel regret. I didn’t miss Church, or bible reading, or praying, or anything at all about Christianity. I did feel a huge sense of relief, in spite of the terror I was experiencing. Suddenly Sundays were days to look forward to instead of days to dread. Suddenly I didn’t have to follow guidelines that made no sense. Suddenly I didn’t have to evaluate potential friends according to whether or not they were sufficiently religious.

I have to make a little detour here and talk a little bit about the fundamentalist Christianity I grew up with. I imagine it’s almost impossible for someone not raised in an evangelical environment to understand just how much religion controlled my every interaction, every choice, every thought. If you want to really get a look at the world I grew up in–and if you are not easily traumatized–you might check out all the Jesus Camp clips on Youtube. As someone who lived that life, I can assure y’all that the videos do not exaggerate. The clips I watched were very accurate.( They also triggered the hell out of me–pun intended– and I wouldn’t recommend them to any recovering fundamentalists.) I was taught that the rules of the evangelical church were absolute truths, as inescapable as gravity. And I was taught that if I broke even ONE of those rules, and died without asking god to forgive me, that I would go to hell–no matter how long I had followed Christ, no matter how carefully I lived. No joke: I was taught that if I said “shit” and then died without repenting, I was barbecue. The relief of not having to police every thought, word and deed was profound.

I know so many people who were raised in church, and found it comforting, found it to be a place of community and support. I think if I’d been raised in a different church, I might still be a Christian. I have dear friends who are Christians and also lovely people. But for me, after being raised in an evangelical setting, Christianity will only ever be scary and uncomfortable. And for me, leaving the church was the best decision I ever made.

Back to my story. For a while after the Bible hit the wall, the relief was enough. For a time I just enjoyed spending Sunday mornings in my apartment, wearing pajamas, eating cereal, and reading a novel or watching a movie. But after a few months of reveling in my freedom I remembered that I still hadn’t found what I needed. I still hadn’t found a path to the sacred–and now I wanted it more than ever. In Part 2 I’ll share more about that search.

New Moon Reading for May 2012

Happy New Moon! We have three cards today: Sylvanius, The Singer of the Chalice (reversed), and The Faun (reversed)

Sylvanius would like you to consider the masks you wear–and those other people wear as well. We tend to think of mask-wearing as deception–and it certainly can be that. But if we consider the idea of a masquerade, where everyone is masked, we can see the positive possibilities of mask wearing. Assuming an alternate identity can be very freeing. When no one can see our faces, and we feel anonymous, we are free to behave differently without fearing consequences.

In this way, putting on a mask allows us to see our true nature. Who are we when we don’t think anyone will hold us accountable? The answer to that question will tell us a lot about who we are at our core, about what lies in our hidden places.

I’m sure a lot of us are afraid of what we’ll find there. What if we are, secretly, truly awful people? What if the scrutiny of others is all that keeps us in check? Sylvanius admits this is possible, but he says it’s quite improbable. He says if we could delve into our hidden places, we’d probably discover that we’re far better than we think we are. He says we have no idea what we’re capable of, but maybe it’s time to find out.

The Singer of the Chalice represents the flow of all good things into our lives. Today the Singer appears reversed, as if all the good is draining OUT of us. Or maybe that’s just how we feel right now–drained, depleted, like we can’t hold on to our resources and we can’t get our needs met. It’s far worse than the cup is half empty–the cup is, in fact, spilling everywhere, and will soon be completely dry. What can we do to turn it around? How can we get more of what we need, more of what everyone needs?

The Singer says the greater part of our experience is determined by our ability to allow ourselves to be what we are, to feel what we feel. This is an enormous challenge for many of us–myself included. We receive so many messages from the time we’re born about what we ought to do, be, feel. We are inundated with criticism from day one–and many of us wither under that criticism. We begin to shrink and fold in on ourselves, strap ourselves down, in an effort to meet the expectations of those who have power over us. And by the time we are adults, capable of making our own decisions and setting our own course, we don’t know how to let go and just be who we are. But as Sylvanius pointed out, who we really are is probably better than we think.

And the thing about resisting who we are is that we close ourselves off to everything–including any number of blessings the universe would like to give us. Allowing the world and ourselves to be what we are also allows us to have more of what we need. If we are feeling drained, perhaps we could find a way to resist less and flow more. This is harder than it sounds, but fortunately we have some help if we ask for it. And we have at least one idea of how we can begin this process in The Faun.

The Faun would like to remind us that we are, first and foremost, animals. Sometimes we like to pretend we’re not. We focus on our intellect, on culture, on religion as a means to elevate ourselves above the animal kingdom. And while there’s nothing wrong with attuning ourselves to the spark of god in each of us, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the gifts of culture . . . it isn’t good for us to neglect our animal nature. Here the Faun appears reversed, indicating that at present our animals selves are blocked or stifled in a problematic way. The cure for this is to tune into the wild magic of the body. It would be a good idea to get some time in the real world–that is, in the world of trees and grass and fur and feather. A good time to take off our shoes, to get our hands dirty, to hug a tree or swim in a natural body of water. Maybe even a good time to keep company with other kinds of animals. The only rule here is to engage, somehow, with Mother Nature in a fully aware, connected way. Turn off the phone, put away the music, and be truly present with the natural world around you. And–this is the important part–feel the ways we are still part of it. We are creatures of this world just as much as the pigeons and dandelions, and the things we really, truly need all come from it. Remembering that will do us more good than we can imagine. The trick here, of course, is not just to do this for a few minutes once or twice a year. The challenge is to be what we truly are–part of nature–every day. We don’t have to leave the city behind forever or forsake technology. But if we were fully aware of ourselves as creatures of the earth, we might make our decisions a little differently–and that would make a big difference in our lives.

The Faun also nods at Sylvanius and points out that one of the masks we love to wear is “spirit wearing flesh”. That is, we tend to think of ourselves as spirits who just happen to be wearing bodies. Perhaps this is true–but it is no excuse to treat the flesh as an encumbrance. Spirit or not, we are embodied for a reason, and would benefit from honoring the experience.

This reading was a general message from the faeries for the readers of the blog. If you’re interested in purchasing a reading specifically for you or someone you love, see my Etsy shop.

To learn more about the creator of The Faeries’ Oracle, please visit the World of Froud website. I am not associated with Brian Froud or Imaginosis in any way: I just love his work.

Earth Day 2012

Douglas Fir

Happy Earth Day!

Of course, I like to say we try to make every day Earth Day around here, just like we try to love each other and be nice to each other every day instead of just on Valentine’s Day. Yeah we’re kinda hippie-ish that way.

Everyone has been ill this week, so we don’t have any major tree planting or beach cleaning plans. But I did get a few walks in, and reminded myself to look up every once in a while.

The Douglas Firs are everywhere around here–and I swear they smell just like Juicy Fruit gum. Or maybe Juicy Fruit smells like the Doug Firs, since I know the Firs have been here longer.

I love these trees. They’re like big gentle guardians, and the sound of the wind through their needles is like a lullaby.

I recently learned that Douglas Firs are not TRUE firs . . . they are sort of their own creature, who inspired the creation of a new genus after confusing the heck out of botanists back in the 19th century.

Western Red Cedar

Confusing or not, they are lovely. I like to infuse the needles in olive oil, and use the resultant sweet, slightly warming oil to make bath salts. I bet the oil would be an amazing base for a soap, too–if I made soap.

 

Another of my favorite trees is a Cedar that’s not a TRUE cedar. What is it with me and misnamed trees? “True” Cedar or not, Western Red Cedars are magical. They’re big and soft and friendly and generous and plentiful. They smell sweet and woodsy–I haven’t made an infused oil with Red Cedar yet, but I think I’ll try it this summer.

Red Cedar was one of the first trees I started using to make smudge sticks–before I even knew for sure what it was.  I didn’t need to know its name to know it had the kind of sweet, serene energy I wanted in my space.

I recently read that the oldest documented Red Cedar tree is 1,460 years old.

But why am I sitting here writing about trees? Why are you sitting here reading about them? (We will ignore the fact that if you weren’t sitting here reading about them, I might not have much reason to keep a blog.) It’s Earth Day! And here in Oregon, at least, the weather is beautiful. I’m going to go outside and spend time with actual trees, instead of talking about them. I hope you’re able to spend today interacting with Mother Nature in some way. If not, at least open the window, get some fresh air, and try to remember to be aware of what’s outside the walls. Awareness is a really good place to start caring for the green things.

New Moon Reading for April 2012

I’m doing this reading a little differently than the usual reading–I felt like it was important to show the cards as they were laid out, because they hang together in a way that seems important to me. (Also, this message is painfully relevant for me. It’s SO relevant that I’m a little bit afraid the reading is ONLY for me, and won’t be any help to y’all. If that’s the case, my apologies! Maybe next month I’ll do a reading for myself before I do one for the blog. Anyway, moving along!)

Note how many cards are upside down–stuck, stuck, stuck, they say to me, especially the right-hand column. And the left-hand column gives us clues about why we are stuck, and how to change it.

So what’s going on here?

We have honesty, standing on his head. When he does this, it usually means that we are not being honest with ourselves. And if we’re not being honest with ourselves, we certainly can’t be honest with anyone else–and we probably don’t have a very easy time trusting anyone else, either. And when we are dishonest with ourselves, we stunt our growth–indicated by the Green Woman standing on HER head.

There are plenty of problems with this kind of dishonesty, but one of the most significant problems (according the the Faeries) is that life IS growth. If we are unable to grow, to evolve, then we are suffocating ourselves, twisting and warping our energies. This is all kinds of unhealthy. Stuck energy hurts our bodies and our spirits, and it hurts the people around us too.

Arval Parrot says the solution is clear communication. Initially, of course, this means communicating with our own selves–and that might not mean talking. It might mean, instead, listening very carefully–to all the things we’ve been trying not to hear. Of course the things we don’t want to hear are different for each of us. For some of us those little whispers in our noggins are lies. Things like “I’m not good enough/smart enough/pretty enough/whatever enough”, things like “I don’t deserve love/success/happiness/whatever.” If we are being tortured by lies, it would be helpful to listen to what the lies are saying–and THEN, clearly state to ourselves what we know is really true. We might need help with this–more on that in a moment.

For others, the little whispers are trying to help us see mistakes we are making, patterns that we need to change, situations we need to walk away from. What truths are we avoiding?

Whatever it is that we are hiding from, truth or lie or fear or desire, continuing to hide will eventually summon Gawtcha–and we don’t want that. Gawtcha is sort of like the universe’s last resort to get us to pay attention. If we refuse to heed the subtle signs, then refuse to heed the not so subtle signs, then refuse to heed the giant billboard . . . Gawtcha comes in to trip us up. Right now, we are just stuck in a rut–but Gawtcha has us in his sights. We can avoid a bigger fall down the line if we pay attention right now.

Fortunately, we aren’t entirely alone in our self-deception. The Oak Men like to remind us to seek out the help of older and more experienced friends, counselors, family members, to help us sort out our muddled thoughts. They want us to know that it is definitely worth our time to do this work of knowing ourselves more truly. It might seem like a slow, painful process, and we might think we have better things to do with our precious minutes, but they insist that there is nothing more vital than finding our way to the truth. They also want us to know that trees are very, very wise, and it’s just as important to spend some time with them as it is to spend it with humans. “You might be surprised what a tree can tell you about yourself,” they say.

Nelys agrees. Actually, Nelys doesn’t really care HOW we get to the truth: She just wants us to shake ourselves up and get busy exploding our limiting personal myths. Our ridiculous ideas about who we are and what we can’t do are getting in her way. She likes to do her work by waving her wand airily over our lives and transforming them–but she probably wouldn’t hesitate to use her wand for bludgeoning if that’s the only way to make a change.

We can’t stay where we are. We just can’t. The world needs us to get unstuck so that we can share our gifts with it. We have all kinds of help from all kinds of friends, but we have to do the work ourselves, and we need to do it soon.

his reading was a general message from the faeries for the readers of the blog. If you’re interested in purchasing a reading specifically for you or someone you love, see my Etsy shop.

To learn more about the creator of The Faeries’ Oracle, please visit the World of Froud website. I am not associated with Brian Froud or Imaginosis in any way: I just love his work.

Don’t Forget to Stop and Hug the Oak Tree

Saturday I took a notebook and a pen outside. My plan was to sit under the oak by my workshop and write a to-do list for the week. I sat down with my back to the tree trunk. The Squog joined me. I looked up.

Sometimes Looking Up Makes Me Dizzy

I kind of forgot about my to-do list, at least for a little while.

I realized that I look out the window of my little workshop at this tree all the time when I’m making product for the Etsy shop, and that I always feel like the tree is sort of watching over me while I work, some kind of guardian spirit or maybe just a friend. But I’d never, before Saturday, just spent time sitting under the tree.

Stunning Sky

I put my notebook down, watched the clouds move, and gave the Squog some pets. She was extraordinarily filthy and, therefore, extraordinarily happy. She chattered at the Scrub Jay that landed on a branch above us for a while, but didn’t bother to chase it. She definitely approved of my choice to drop the pen for a while.

I thought about the roots of the tree extending down and outward from the trunk, sort of a mirror of the branches above–this is one of my favorite visualizations, being inside the circle of a tree, feeling simultaneously rooted and connected to the heavens. It’s even better in the company of an actual, growing tree. Especially when the weather is pretty much perfect and I’m ignoring my to-do list.

Pausing and paying attention is something I don’t do enough of these days. I’m working on that.

And yes, I totally hugged the tree before I went inside.

I’m Branching Out! Upcoming Workshop in Portland, Oregon

"The Herbwife" Nature Spirit

Readers of my blog probably already know how plants and trees have fascinated me since I was a small child. And if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you probably know that plants and trees are integral parts of my spiritual life. After more than a decade of studying herbs in a spiritual context, I’ve decided to start sharing what the plants have taught me with the community–and probably to learn even more from my community.

So on May 12, 2012 I’ll be leading a workshop on Sacred Herbcraft in Portland. It will be a four hour class, with a potluck lunch and all the tea you can drink, introducing participants to the sacred uses of our plant friends. I’m so excited about it!

To learn more about the workshop and find out how to register, hop on over to the Greenwoman Healing Arts website.

Hope to see you there!

Full Moon, April 2012

Smudge with Artemisia, Lavender, and Willow Leaves

This is a very simple full moon activity for a group or an individual, to be incorporated into your full moon ceremony/ritual. I think it’s especially nice for a family to do together. It requires a tiny bit of planning ahead so read through the instructions before time to start your ceremony.

A smudge stick created from local plants with your own hands will be an amazing addition to your ritual supplies. For one thing, it will be much fresher when you use it, so the fragrance will be far more intense and lovely than a smudge that traveled through the post for ages, then sat on a shelf in a store for a month or two before you bought it. For another thing, a smudge stick charged with your intentions and your energy will resonate very strongly and the energy, like the fragrance, will be stronger.

In addition to your usual ritual items, you will need fresh herbs appropriate for smudging. Please harvest your plants with reverence, and pay attention to the affect of your harvest on the ecosystem (especially if you are wildcrafting). Also, choose your plants carefully–some plants are toxic when burned.

I recommend up to three of the following:

• Any form of Cedar
• Rosemary
• Lavender
• Mugwort
• Desert Sage
• White Sage
• Lemon Balm
• Mint

You will also need:

• White string or embroidery floss in a natural fiber (synthetics definitely won’t work for this).
• Scissors
• Plant clippers
• A table to work at, or an easy to clean surface. This project is a bit messy.

Create sacred space in whatever way you normally do–be it casting a circle, etc.

Take up a bundle of herbs that will be the center of the smudge stick, and hold it in your receiving hand (your non-dominant hand). Focus on your intention for this smudge stick: will it be to purify? to bless? to create vibrations of peace or happiness? Feel the energy of this intention, and hold your dominant hand over the herbs. Visualize the energy you are focused on flowing from your hand into the herbs.

If you are doing this ceremony alone, continue adding herbs to your smudge stick until it is the desired size (I aim for about an inch and a half to two inches in diameter, which will shrink down to around 1 inch as the herbs dry). As you add plants, hold your intention clearly in your mind.

If you are doing this ceremony in a group, pass the bundle clockwise to the next person in your circle. He or she should repeat the first step of holding the herbs and sending intention into them. It might be helpful for each person to speak the intention aloud.

Continue passing the bundle to each person in turn, until everyone has added his or her herbs and intentions to the bundle.

The bundle then comes back to you. Once again holding the bundle in your non-dominant hand, trim both ends even.

Next, unwind several yards of the white string. Wrap the bundle tightly in the string, and tie the ends together.

Say a simple blessing over the bundle; if you are working in a group, ask all participants to focus on the blessing and direct their energy to the smudge stick one last time.

Place the bundle on the altar, or in the full moon light overnight if possible.

Close the circle in your usual manner.

In the morning, hang the bundle somewhere warm and dry. When it’s completely dry, you might need to re-wrap the string if the herbs have shrunk a lot.

The smudge stick should be ready to use by the New Moon.