Hello my darlings, Full moon is: 12/7/2022 at 11:08 PM EST in Gemini Jupiter goes direct 12/20/2022 9:32 AM EST (Alleluia!) Winter Solstice is December 21, 2022 Mercury goes retrograde 12/29/2022 4:32 AM EST FOR GIFT CERTIFICATES SCROLL DOWN ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ December: Treat yourself kindly and gentle. Unhook from as much toxic stuff as you can. That’s the short version. As for the long version: There’s a ‘Why me?’ energy going on, right now, and it’s beating people over the head. All energy has right use. To use this particular energy you have to be willing to recognize that you’re not being punished, even though it may feel like that. Whatever is going on isn’t your fault. And if you need to make a move to talk things through, keep in mind implicit in talking things through, there’s someone on the other side who actually wants to work it out. Most people don’t want to work things out; they just want to be right. If the conversation is about making someone see your point of view, it’s not going to happen. Enter boundaries. Boundaries will be getting a lot of play this month, a terrific exercise perfectly preparing you for mid-January when all the planets are finally direct! Just so you know being “nice,” isn’t going to get you what you want, or for that matter, what you need. This doesn’t mean you have to be a raging bitch! (unless of course it’s called for) But you do have to be firm, especially when you know someone’s walking all over you and/or you suspect there’s something going on behind the scenes, that concerns you in some non-beneficial way. It’s not about someone seeing your point of view, it’s about being firm enough that they are aware of your boundaries. If you’re in a position of negotiating, it helps if what you’re negotiating for, is written down; that way when the other side goes off on a tangent, you can bring the discussion back to why you’re having the discussion in the first place. It is a stressful time of year. If things are piling up on you and the pressure feels unbearable, unplug and bitch and moan for an hour. I mean really bitch and moan, loudly. Get all the frustrations out of your body. And if you’re really, really mad at someone, write their name on a piece of toilet paper, drop it in the john, and piss on it. You’ll feel infinitely better. To speak and live your truth demands Warrior energy. The archangel Michael is pure Warrior energy. He’s kind, loving, fiercely protective, and carries a cobalt blue sword. Warrior energy is not about bombing and shooting people. Warrior energy is about knowing who and what are, who and what you want to be, who and what you’re going to create, you get the idea. Warrior energy is not co-dependent, but interdependent in the best possible way. Warrior energy always takes a stand for justice; justice in your life, justice in the world. Warrior energy, in this instance, is the Ace of Wands and the Ace of Swords. The Ace of Wands is the most creative card in the tarot; fiery new beginnings, ideas that make you go hmmm. The Ace of Swords is about a rock solid decision to commit. The frosting on the cake of all this is Jupiter, the planet of expansion and money, is going direct December 20th. Yee Haw! But….. Given the fact most the planets are retrograde and Mercury is going retrograde the 29th you may feel stymied re: moving forward. It’s like all the ingredients are there but nothing’s moving…yet. Your instincts are correct, you can’t push the river right now. It all feels heavy and maybe I should turn on Netflix and stream something. I’m a huge fan of streaming something on Netflix, but I don’t think that’s wisest use of this energy. Cleaning, clearing, throwing out, getting your tax stuff together, and organizing IS wise use of this energy and you can finish up all the boring necessary drudgeries that need to be done. By mid-January, all the planets will be direct, and you’ll hit the ground running. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0x0x0 ________________________________________________ GIFT CERTIFICATES: If you’d like to purchase a gift certificate: click here All gift certificates have a 3 month expiration date and can be paid for by Venmo. For the holidaze, I am offering: 30 minute readings for $55. ( $15 savings) 45 minute readings for $100 ($25 savings) Combo Session: reading/absentee healing/chakra balancing/energetic re-writing are $300. A $50 savings.
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Hello my darlings, Fall is hands down my favorite season and I’m feeling vibrantly alive! I wish this feeling for everyone! And I wish you cinnamon toast and a big bowl of café-au-lait, with a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. With so many planets retrograde over the last few months, we’ve been living through a big pause. Spacey on top, with lots of activity underneath. Activity you can’t quite put your finger on. Changes you don’t really have the words for yet. Wanting to break free, but not sure how. What’s happening is a new way of being is forming, triggered by the aftershocks of the pandemic. You don’t know what it’s going to look like (yet) You’re not even sure what it’s going to feel like. What you can be sure of is a powerful, growing, refusal to judge yourself against society’s “shoulds,” threading its way through your being. We all know the “should” voice. It’s the nasty critic telling you, you should be further along in your life. The voice that tells you how you should, and shouldn’t be; what you should feel and what’s wrong with the way you’re feeling. The nasty critic is an interject; a piece of the culture that’s splintered off into your psyche. It can be familial, social, religious, etc. The point is IT’S NOT YOUR VOICE. You were not born with this voice, like you were born with lungs and a liver. When the nasty critic gets noisy, it's like apocalypse now in your head. When I started the metaphysical dance of knowing self, back in the early 80’s, teachers were always telling me to love myself. When I got sober in the late 80’s, sponsors and allies told me to love myself. But nobody could tell me how. It’s not like I didn’t ask, I asked. The answer was either pray and/or meditate. Except for one sponsor who had me buying a rose for myself every week for a year. It did absolutely nothing. We’re programmed, to be ever on the alert, to find fault/defects with self and being, and fix it. This mechanistic approach works quite well for machines, but you and I are not machines. We are life force, the divine made flesh. We’re here to evolve; to love beyond all reason, and be loved beyond all reason. I’ve often wondered how the fuck we’re supposed to remember that, when we live in a world that has been purposely set up to disempower and defeat us. There isn’t one person reading this, who hasn’t wondered the very same thing, and experienced the resulting feelings, of rage, depression, and what’s-the-use. New Age thinking will tell you it’s all illusion, but I don’t agree. New Age thinking will also tell you to rise above, BE POSITIVE(!), The cult of positive thinking devalues, harshly judges, and criticizes the not-so-pretty feelings of human experience. Being positive is a brand, earning billions of dollars a year. I am not against being positive, I love feeling positive, but to cut your feelings off at the knees, to deny your intellect, instinct, and intuition, and jump to positive, because you’ve been told the so-called bad feelings are creating your reality, is insane. As I’m writing this, someone is dying from hunger every 4 seconds, and no, the people who are dying are not creating this horrifying reality. An economic system that serves an oligarchy is creating this reality. Man’s inhumanity to other human beings is creating this reality. I've decided the best way to love self is to treat yourself humanely. Learning to treat yourself humanely takes some time, especially if you’re used to beating yourself to a pulp, or holding yourself to standards, that the Christ himself couldn’t follow, or the critical voices in your head are destroying you. Learning to treat yourself humanely is an incremental process. Giving up the “shoulds,” is THE beginning. Pay attention to the feelings, the interjects (nasty critic) trigger. Honor those feelings. Keep in mind, you are not your feelings, and feelings are not facts. Feelings are a barometer of your weather, and one of the greatest tools you have, with which to create. No question all great art is born from feelings. You can write the feelings down, you can paint them, dance them, see the face of the feelings in the mirror, act them out, the list goes on. The not-so-pretty feelings are as much a part of the symphony that is you, as the pretty ones. When I think symphony, I think of the ocean. I think of calm, I think of the wave building, I think of the crash, the rush, and the flooding. The water recedes, everything is changed, and once again there is calm and the wave begins to build. Again. I am witch. I hold true that human beings are as much a part of nature as rock and tree, sun and moon, sea and river, stars and tide. Like nature each of us has different shapes, textures, colors, timing, and purpose. All feelings, whether they make sense, or not, are comfortable, or not, are human. Vitally human. Alive. Necessary and needed. Feelings are guides, sign posts. The human contains the humane; without the human, there can be no humane. Spirituality (as it is commonly taught) is about transcendence, being out of body. Transcendence feels great, opens you to new possibilities. But, if the experience is not embodied, the sense of oneness, of wholeness, is lost. The glorious feeling dissipates and soon enough you're back to same shit, different day. The humane act is what embodied spirituality looks like. Treating yourself humanely is how you embody the spiritual experience. When I am having a hard time getting to and/or feeling the humane, I watch animal rescue videos. Without fail, I am reduced to tears. The tender, the caring the compassion, this is what human beings are capable of. This is what you and I are capable of. This is what you and I are capable of giving to self. And then, to each other. In this way, we strengthen collective humanity, and set ourselves free.. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Katherine Manaan x0x0 P.S. Mercury goes direct October 2nd at 5:07 am est. Slingshot those desires out there! If you’re trying to figure out what those desires are, contact me, and we’ll set up a reading. Art: Egon Schiele Creativity was not created, and cannot be controlled, by man and his kind. Creativity is the child of imagination and whimsy, (also not created and controlled by man and his kind) Creativity is of the soul and of the spirit. Creativity drives a human being to give her/his/their unique form to sound, to color, to objects; to words, to life, to living; to protest and resistance. Creativity can be light, skimming the surface, like a little water bug. Creativity can be deep — rappelling into the darkness and the depths of soul wounding and toxic belief systems. Creativity is a muscle and like any muscle the more exercise it gets, the stronger it is. The actual process of creating is every color of feeling.
When you find yourself judging yourself (harshly) against society’s and familial invalidating paradigms — of who, what, and how you’re supposed to be — and/or enraged and lost in dystopic future (we’re all going to die tomorrow) — and you’re ready to break free from hamster-in-the-wheel thinking that is doing little more than making you feel worse than ever, say out loud, “I am going to change channels now. I am going to think about what man and his kind did not create.” This statement does not deny, repress, or split you off from the stinking thinking and feelings you’re quite tired of feeling. This is important because if you split off, the feelings go into shadow, where they will continue to fester and grow, and ultimately call the shots in your life. Nobody wants toxicity to call the shots in their lives. Now, back to changing channels….I think of this as a creative response to walking through hell. Changing channels, thinking about what man and his kind did not create, makes room for other thoughts and feelings. You can hold more than one feeling at the same time; you can even hold opposing feelings at the same time. Who hasn’t loved and hated a person, a place, a thing, in equal measure? I love thinking about what man and his kind didn’t create. Gravity, nature, fall. The first time I saw quadruple rainbows and had to pull the car off the road. The miracle that is my body. Fuchsia geraniums. Two black cats on a red Persian rug. Instinct, intuition. Clients I dearly love. The list goes on and can be new every time. Or a repeat of what I’ve written before. It doesn’t matter. What matters is thinking on these things makes me feel better. Feeling better is ridiculously underrated – someone once said to me, “But Kat, feeling better doesn’t change anything!” I agree. Feeling better doesn’t change the horrors happening around you, it doesn’t change what you can’t control, and Goddess knows it’s a sh*t show out there. What feeling better does do is give you space to breathe, and we need that. I need that, because quite honestly I get so damn tired of feeling miserable, and hopeless, and utterly lacking in power to change anything. Power is meant to serve humanity, not the other way around. Humanity contains the humane; without humanity, there can be no humane. Each of us are born with incredible power, but our programming/socialization does pretty much everything it can to destroy it; to make us fit. This purposeful misuse of power is the primary seed of collective and individual rage. Right use of power is not about control and keeping others on their knees and obedient. Right use of power is rooted in the eternal, of, by, and for self, humanity, and the planet. You always have direct access to the eternal. Re-member. Stay creative, my darlings. Give yourself an opportunity to feel better and follow your path. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0x0x Hello my Darlings,
This week, expect to find your footing after last week’s remarkably intense, super full moon in Capricorn. Saturn (ruler of Capricorn) triggers the not-so-nice and the not-so-pretty. Saturn can trigger deepest fears, profound sadness, feelings of powerless-ness and a terrifying vulnerability. Saturn, though, is working for you. Feelings are not facts. Feelings are great allies and a barometer of what’s going on with you. We are taught from an early age that some feelings are good, (right) and some feelings are bad, (wrong) and having bad feelings makes you a bad person. Nobody really wants to be a bad person so you do what you have to do to avoid the bad feelings, which usually takes the form of rising above, or drinking and drugging to die, or simply denying that the feelings are there. Another popular way of dealing with the so called bad feelings is to try to figure out what’s wrong with you. This is often thought of as spiritual, and the question becomes what have I done to create this. What is my part in this creation? I have no patience with this kind of thinking. The human contains humanity; without the human there is no humanity. Human beings have feelings. Since we all seem to have the same ones, rather than trying to get rid of them, which no one ever can, perhaps we can figure out what they’re for. The question is never, ever, what’s wrong with me. The question is, who am I? Am I a raging bitch? Sometimes. Am I a sweetheart who intuitively knows how to help others? Sometimes. Do I resent getting old? Big fucking time. Do I love being an accomplished woman, hysterically funny and wise with rich experience? Absolutely. There is no static answer to who-am-I because you’re always evolving and growing and uncovering. My therapist Wise Joe used to say, “Hold the question. You’ll get pieces of the answer and then you’ll get more pieces of the answer and so on and so on.” Clearly, understanding is open-ended, not closed, not fixed. Try honoring your feelings. Try honoring the woman/the man who has the courage to have them. How? Go to the mirror and see what the feeling looks like. I’ve been doing healings and readings for over 40 years and I’ve never met anyone whose feelings weren’t appropriate to their situation. Could be shame, could be rage, could be resentment, could be wanting someone’s head to blow up, the list goes on. Interestingly enough most of our uglier feelings are rooted in an old context. Context is socialization- context is why and how you judge yourself the way you do. It’s the big ugly feelings that bring context to the surface. I told you Saturn was working for you. Threading through all of this is a new determination being born. A flat-out, aggressive but quiet rebellion against that which keeps you small. In the coming weeks, expect abrupt shifts, in consciousness. Think unapologetic; think this is who I am, and this is what I’m going to do. Ground and watch this spectacular aspect of self, come to surface. You don’t know her…yet. It’s an ancient kind of healer-as-warrior energy dedicated to planet and humanity. Of course I drew the shield card. In life, there are times when we have to defend ourselves; our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, our actions and we have to be rigid as bone about it and not give an inch. Watch for people trying to hook you into a fight. Smile and step away, or don’t smile and run away. You owe no one any explanation for the changes flooding your being with absolute radiance. Stand in your truth. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0xx0 Art: Eileen Agar WitchSpeak: Mars in Taurus, Weekly Card – Bridge - Connect
The overall each of us will be experiencing (no matter what sign) through August 20th, is Mars in Taurus. Mars is ambition, Taurus is earth and grounding, ergo a grounding of one’s ambitions. That’s the nice, balanced way to put it. How I see it? Mars wants everything yesterday, Mars is in a BIG hurry. Taurus refuses to be hurried. Hurry a Taurus and they will purposely slow down. I am a Scorpio, but never more Taurean, than when I’m driving and some fool starts tailgating me on a two-lane, double-solid-yellow- line, road. I purposely slow down. Best way to work the Mars in Taurus, is to give your Mars side time to dream; to write down what you want to create/desire/must have, and then purposely give the timing of successful completion, over to process. It’s a hanged man experience. You never loose sight of what you’re creating, you’re just not insisting on your time frame. Sometimes a time frame, other than your own, really sucks. When the timing feels beyond frustrating, take a step back. Either drop the subject for now or if you can’t, think about the goal and REMEMBER: of course you’re going to get what you’re going for – this or something better. That doesn’t mean you have to fucking love or even like the process. New Age thinking tells us we have to let go of those kind of feelings, that those feelings are creating all kind of negativity. This has never made any sense to me. I’ve been a soul counselor and healer for over 40 years and we all have the same feelings. Clearly, we need to figure out how to work with these feelings, rather than beating ourselves into the ground over having them. To this end I’ve been experimenting with new kinds of self-talk on me, and my clients and we’re loving it a lot. “The wait feels like crap, I feel like crap, I am so tired of feeling like crap. I never get what I want. Actually that’s not true, I have gotten what I wanted numerous times, it’s just doesn’t feel like it right now and I’m feeling powerless to move things along, to impact to my benefit. I know for fact that if I feel my powerless-ness, and if I give over to the feeling, the path of power will open for me. I am not going to judge myself here, I’m not going to look for lessons and all that crap. I am simply going to be, and honor all my complications, which are part of my astounding uniqueness. We all have things in common and we all that which makes us unique….” The point of this kind of self-talk is to find/create what I call breathing room, without cutting off and denying your feelings. To cut off from feelings, they will simply take up residence in your shadow, and continue to fester-fester-fester. Self-talk, (as per the example above) is about consciousness and living consciously. To live consciously is not to be controlled by the wounds in shadow. As my dearest friend, Shaman Marie says, “You gotta own where you are, sistar.” But without the harsh judgement. Remember we/you are programmed to judge ourselves/yourselves as harshly as possible to keep us subservient and on our knees. You’re not just the face you see in the mirror. Each of us are huge entities, visible and invisible, with about a million different aspects. Living consciously is a means of building bridges to all of our different aspects. If you’re feeling like you’re not worth anything, and you go to the mirror and you see face of the woman/man having those feelings, and you put your arms around her/him and rock her/him ever so gently, like you’d rock a child, that’s an act of self-love. Too many people have been taught that you can only love yourself when you’re rid of the so called negatives of your being. Low-self esteem, shame, guilt and jealousy, the list goes on. Entirely too many people are working on perfection rather than self-love. It’s like we’re not worthy of love unless we’re always working on improving ourselves, reaching for some kind of ideal, created by man, for man, and unattainable, to keep us groveling and subservient. Self-love is the ultimate act of revolution. Stand tall, stand free. Stand in love, of love, by love, and for love. You are ever building your own bridge over and through troubled waters. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0x0x0 Odd dreams, shattering dreams, changing the internal. Sculpting away the extraneous. Your will, your hands, your body, your mind, your heart, reshaping life’s externals. There is no there, but there is an enjoyable, reasonable facsimile — a sense of completion, perhaps exhausted, perhaps joyous, perhaps WTF. A dance of opposites rather than a singular feeling. Take pride in the strurm and drang of the process; your process would no doubt have killed a lesser person. Look in the mirror, pound your chest, and say: “All right me!” MAGICK Saturday, April 30th – partial solar eclipse – in Taurus. 4:28 pm est This eclipse is coming right on top of a resurrection and the freeing of slaves from Egypt. New ways of being, new life. Since the eclipse is in Taurus, it’s the perfect time to take control of your physical/financial security. To dispel anxieties over physical/financial survival: write an ad for an angel. Write: I need an angel to help me see clear of my financial anxiety. Please show me what actions to take to get control of my physical security. Write the ad on a small piece of paper; fold and keep with you on your body in your waking hours. Periodically read your ad. Mull it over in your mind, say it out loud. In the evening put the scrap of paper under your pillow. Intuitive actions will result. Take the actions, even if they’re scary and/or hard, and/or both. If the action is scary and demands more than one step, simply do a little each day. And don’t forget to thank the angel for all the help. “Where there’s fear there is power. Desire cracks open the gate if you’re ready it will take you through…” ****************************************************************************** Saturday, April 30th – new moon/black moon – in Taurus. 4:28 pm est Chant to Yellow Tara at least one time (108) around the mala. Om tare Tu Tare Ture :Pushtim Kuru Soha If you’re not sure how to pronounce the chant, go to youtube and click on Yellow Tara Chant. You can also put on your headphones and just listen to the Yellow Tara Chant. When you’re finished chanting and/or listening, say: I am One with the Universe I am One with divinity I am One with the riches of my conscious and unconscious mind Well-paying opportunities Flow to me freely, in profusion and endlessly Yellow Tara blesses me with well-paying opportunities And in turn I bless others with my talents and my love So mote it be. “She changes everything she touches and everything She touches changes…..” ****************************************************************************** Beltane, May 1st Beltane is a sabbat, one of the eight solar holidays. Generally, witches don’t do big spells on sabbats. Beltane is about sex, fertility, and pleasure; passion and love. The dance of the Maiden and the young God. Beltane fires are lit on May 1st to burn away the dark of winter, and celebrate the growing power of the sun. Beltane is a horny time – do what you gotta do my darlings Wishing you big happy blooms! Given the fact Beltane is a fire celebration, I do a lot burnings. If I had a big yard, I’d invite all my friends and we’d a mass burning of stuff, none of us wanted in our lives anymore, dancing naked round the fire. I’m in my 60’s, as are most of my friends. I see flapping bosoms everywhere. Anyway, for a basic burning, write down what no longer has any benefit, and is taking up too much of your time, Write it down, be specific AF, and burn it. Do take precautions….i have a burning pot (cauldron) and due to its size, the size of the paper I’m burning is small enough that I will not set my room on fire. If I’m outside with a firepit, I can use a lot more paper. When the burning is complete and the ashes have cooled, scatter the ashes to the winds. I stand in the sun on Beltane, arms out, face towards the sun, eyes closed and feel the sun in your third eye. If it’s not sunny on Beltane, I do the standing sun exercise the first sunny day. You will not forget the way that Beltane sun feels. At Summer Soltice, repeat the exercise, and then again at Lughnasa. Each time the it’s going to feel different. Experiencing the seasons of the sun is worthy experiment and won’t take up much of your time. The resulting knowledge is priceless. “We are the flow and we are the ebb, we are the weavers, we are the web…..” ************************************************************************ Mercury retrograde May 10th – June 2nd. Shadow of the retrograde begins April 25th, meaning that’s when you’ll start to feel it. From May 10- May 22, the retrograde will take place in Gemini. From May 22 to June 3rd, it will cross into Taurus. Mercury retrograde is what it is. Don’t buy anything big, electrical, and expensive. Don’t sign any contracts, don’t buy a car. This Mercury retrograde is kind of a doozy given the fact it’s in Gemini and Taurus. I find that in most Mercury retrogrades there’s a sting, and the sting in this one has to do with expectations and a sense of feeling thwarted. When I feel thwarted, I get angry. Denying anger is not healthy, you have to get it out of your body, so beat something, or run hard, or do whatever you have to do. Maybe write it down, maybe draw it, and burn it. Chanting during this retrograde will be tremendously helpful, Try: Om Mani Padme Hum or Om Namah Shivaya. Again if you don’t know how to pronounce the chants, you tube them. May’s Mercury retrograde is the best ever for spring cleaning. And I mean heavy-duty-on-your-knees-scrubbing-the floors type cleaning. Do the windows too, and open them and air out your home. As a writer I have more paper than I know what to do with so I’m cleaning out my file cabinets. Not so much throwing away, as organizing. Quite a few people started something new in the past 2-3 months. Not a little thing either; could be creative, could be business, could be a diet and working out. This retrograde is about a step at a time, try to stay grounded in the moment, in the step and that will take you where you want to go. You’re not going to go as fast as you’d like, and the results you want aren’t going to come as fast, but the good news is they are coming and by staying in the moment, in the step, you’ll enjoy life a whole lot more. There’s something about the slow-up that’s of benefit. Come Jun 10, June 15 it’s full speed ahead! Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools, Kat ****************************************************************************** “The river is flowing, flowing and growing. The river is flowing down to the sea. Mother Earth carry me, your child I will always be. Mother Earth carry me down to the sea…….”. ART: Helen Frankenthaler The solar eclipse and new moon happened, Saturday, Dec 4. We're in Yule Season, in the shadow belly of Goddess. This eclipse was both tower and devil and the being is raw. The Devil is the worst kind bondage - that which diminishes - and the Tower supported the center in its refusal to hold.
The Tower destroys anything and everything that interferes with the cycle: life, death, re-birth. Psyche calls the Tower but it is not an act of anger, but of compassion. When the tower shows up, it completely destroys the frame (devil) holding everything together – space opens, fresh air rushes in and the rocks come tumbling down. All those lovely ways of compartmentalizing this, that, and the other (thoughts, beliefs) within the self-diminishing frame are gone and you’re in the rubble of raw and clueless, thinking WTF? But…..the battle is over and there is relief in that. Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, have a hot cup of coffee, and breathe. Psyche is one of your best friends. She does not operate outside of your desires, but works with them, and She is particularly strong right now, animating that which is unique unto you. Artists, healers, mystics, those doing the great work of knowing self, can expect life altering shifts, by mid-December, as a result of living empty for awhile. Do not frame it small. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Katherine Manaan The Samhain Letters: Samhain 2021
The wheel turns, the old year burns. In the blessed dark we hold the seeds of new life to be born at Winter Solstice….. Holy was never something I felt in church. It was something I felt low in body when I was outside riding my bike, or building dams in the creek near Moss Mansion, or sitting on the beach in Rehoboth, watching porpoises playing tag. The holy’d push outward inside me, deeper and deeper, into forever and safe. Into what had always and would always be. Sitting at my desk in school, in my cheerleading uniform and saddle shoes, I used to think the shape of me that could be seen, had nothing to do with the true shape of me. I still think that way. The difference now is, I live from my true shape, rather than calibrating to what others think, need, or believe. Some days I’m really good at it; other days not so much. There is always a benefit though; could be alchemical, could be a need for change, could be an entertaining drama. Some will tell you your experience makes you who and what you are. Well, maybe if you’re seaweed, swaying with the tides; but, I am not seaweed and my beloved friends and clients and witch nieces are not seaweed. They’re complicated, many faceted, and know that what you do with your experience(s) is what makes you who and what you are. That’s where the power is. I always think about power at Samhain, and death, and rebirth, and dancing the wheel. I think about love beyond all reason and the dance between the living and the dead. Whether you walk a sacred path or not, at some point the old survival mechanisms turn on you, because your true shape is rattling at the chains that bind her/him/they, yelling, “Hey! What about me?!!” No question, your true self can scare you shitless. No question, wildness, imagination, creativity, love, and freedom reside in the true self. It can hurt to get there but the ouch is worth it. You can either live as a nice little cog in the wheel, whose upset will be determined and contained within society’s approved paradigms, or you can take a scalpel to the fucking boil. Drain it, bath it in copious amounts of peroxide, and give it lots of light and air. This kind of exploration tends to get triggered by the desire to feel more comfortable, to fit in, to make yourself a better person, perhaps more spiritual. But, what’s actually calling you is your myth. Your myth is your sacred tale. Living an authentic life is about creating a world that resonates with your myth. Great works of art are decidedly NOT all sunshine and light. I can’t quite picture Mahler at a Tony Robbins seminar, anymore than I can picture Ryder at a Ted Talk, or Anna Magnani doing a commercial for Charmin. I hold true that gravity is real, diversity is needed and vital as oxygen, and that human beings are great works of art. I am not being Pollyanna here; I loathe as deep as I love. But, I have been doing readings, healings, and teaching for almost 40 years, witnessing and encouraging people to break from what that which diminishes and controls them. I have seen people feel the sacred for the first time. I have witnessed people begin to live truer and truer to self and soul. I have welcomed angels and spirit guides and ancient Reiki masters and dead relatives and Fey, and Gods and Goddesses, into the classes I teach. I have witnessed the sacred/the divine/the light, within and around human beings come together in joy and celebration, cracking the programming that has kept them separate. The great mystery is that everything is interconnected; the mystical experience is the pragmatic, undeniable experience of interconnectedness. It can be a blip on your radar, it can be drop to your knees and holler Yo Avohe! And anything in between. The experience of sacred connection cannot be denied by the so-called rational mind. In the middle of October, I begin to leave out butter, honey, and water for the trooping fey. My home fills with the energy of other realms and beings, and ancestors, and old friends. My father was military, his best friends – he was an only child, they were uncles to me - were all military. Everyone’s buried in Arlington Cemetery. As I write this, my dad and his friends, in full dress uniform, are sitting on my couch, laughing, drinking martinis. I can smell the Old Spice. Mother is to the side in something chiffon and wonderful. I remember going to see Jackie O’s clothes at the Met. She had nothing on my mother. Mother stands in front the dark entrance to a tunnel, with which I am unfamiliar. She is somewhat shadowed, veiled. My parents’ processes on the other side are quite different. Mother’s is of the dark, I can’t really read it, though she has let me know in no uncertain terms that the relationship I insist upon having with her has changed the texture and path of her death experience, which all started when I gave her, her shadow back. That’s another post. I did StarHawk’s zoom ritual last night and much to my surprise it was my mother who led me to the boat to Avalon. The experience of unconditional love makes me cry hysterically and I was crying so hard last night, I couldn’t breathe. I have never met anyone on the other side who is punitive, even those who were the most tortured. I am going to repeat that: I have never met anyone on the other side who is punitive even the most tortured. The theme I run into on the other side has to do with what-can-be. Yes, it’s vitally important to uncover what was, but to keep wrestling what was into the ground is futile. Ancestral healing is not about carrying the pain and trauma of our ancestors. The point of ancestral healing is to break the pattern of victimization and set the ancestors, set ourselves, free. The point of Ancestral healing is to break the energetic vibration that keeps us stuck in a past that is no longer, repeating the same behaviors over and over and over. What we heal in present time, we heal in the past. (Funny how ancestral and personal healing dovetail, huh?) Change is rooted in wondering what-can-be, and what-can-be is rooted in the humane. What-can-be serves the humane. I am wiped out today, a veritable wack job, periodically crying over how deeply loved I am, and the connection I felt last night with hundreds of people attending the ritual. There is a connecting chord, an energetic flow that I share with ALL those willing to love beyond all reason, who are committed to justice and the kind of resistance that point blank refuses to become what it’s fighting. When the soul sheds the body and passes to Avalon, or heaven, or whatever you want to call it, all that’s left of the earthly experience is love, and I felt that love so powerfully last night. Today, thinking about what-can-be, I am more sharply aware than ever, that the power-over-powers-that-be in the earthly world will do anything to stop us from from knowing how phenomenal, how beautiful, and how powerful we actually are. The dance of divisiveness has some pretty strong hooks. Step to the side of the manipulation, the projections and the programming. Remember you are vital and integral part of a giant web of live, living, death and re-birth. I am wishing you the knowledge of that which has always been and will always. I am wishing you your glory. Happy New Year Witches. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Katherine Art: Dorothy Tanning There comes a point in your life when you have to stop wrestling your issues into the ground, simply because it doesn’t work. You know your issues, you know what’s connected to what, and continuing to wrestle more details out the issue isn’t going to do bumpkus, except give you some kind of justification for the reason you feel the way you do. You don’t have to justify why you feel the way you do. The way you feel is always valid.
You can’t think your way to inner peace and clearly, just because you understand why something is the way it is, (and it’s toxic and bugs the hell out of you) doesn’t make it go away. If you really, really want something to change, walk the path of the alchemist, and learn to hold the opposites. I hear a lot about higher vibration. Well, given the fact everything contains its opposite, higher vibration contains lower vibration, and aiming for high is going to get you low, the see-saw kicks into effect and clearly you’re loosing your mind. It’s a good thing to loose your mind, it’s a great thing when you think, ‘I just don’t fucking want to do this anymore,’ because then you start looking for something that makes more sense. Rather than a higher vibration, try a balanced vibration, a sweet dance between opposites. Sometimes it’s a tight wire of a dance. The point is…. the true dance of balance gets you out from under either/or programming. The true dance of balance is the result of the alchemical process. The Alchemical Process: A simple exercise…. Feel the so called ugly (anger rage hatred resentment etc.) on one side of the heart and the beauty (happiness, joy, eagerness, love) on the other. If you’re having difficulty figuring out the opposite, pick up a thesaurus, or simply google opposite of____ and fill in the blank. Allow the opposites to press, not mingle, but press hard, even harder, against the other. Ultimately you will feel the give into something holy, something humane, a vibration that has been waiting for you all along. If there was ever a week to burn away the dross, this is it!!! Chanting gets rid of dross, faster than anything I know. I chant, a lot, and usually Goddess chants. But, when it’s clearing time, I go straight to what I call the Tina Turner chant: Nam myoho renge kyo. Nothing burns away the unnecessary faster. Someone once told me, “You’re a witch, you can’t do Buddhist chants.” Oh for heaven’s sakes, I can do any chant I want and I have found over the years mixing chants together has afforded me a delicious joy that I refuse to relinquish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGSUDRQKFPE The above link is the nam myoho renge kyo chanted for 30 minutes. I chant along for 30 minutes, first thing in the morning, and 30 minutes before I got to bed. I intend to do it for the next 7 days. it’s good magick, nourishing medicine, and even if I get bored doing it, and I’ve been known to, the way I feel when it’s over is beyond worth it. It’s not thoughts that turn things around, it’s vibration. Affirmations are great but if you don’t feel the truth of them, the benefit is largely lost. Chanting changes your vibration, chanting bring clarity, chanting brings me firmly into body and in perfect alignment with the 7 bodies. When I chant I am colluding with the energy that builds mountains. When I chant I am colluding with Love. When I chant I am colluding with soul, dancing the brilliance of my light and deepest dark. Not that it always feels that way, sometimes it feels like, aren’t I done yet? Ha!! Live loud, Love fierce, and suffer no fools. k art: June Leaf Significant shift in energy. Sacred masculine, good father energy, good king energy, all are wildly, vibrantly alive. The sacred masculine is only as strong as the sacred feminine. Think about it. Healing father wounds. Fathers healing family wounds. Kore is alive and the Gods buried standing return. Triggered by Kali Yuga, the great and life affirming balancing between the Sacred Masculine and the Sacred Feminine begins. Patriarchy is NOT the Sacred Masculine.
The tidal pull of underneath is rip current strong. Water lights other. Questions, more questions, and telepathy more meaningful than words. The honest, overwhelming relief of depth experience and understanding. The Dagda, life - played for fool, and the Morrigan, death - washing the blood from the shirts of the souls, She collected from the battlefield. Life and death, they love, they mate. Alike in their power, unique in their flow, and we live in the waters that ever ebb and flow between them. Give over to who you and what you are – sink into lush. Areas of life that we refuse to shift or change are in focus. From shadow to surface, it’s the way of things and it’s GREAT. Maybe uncomfortable, perhaps insanity provoking, flooding tears and insomnia inducing, but GREAT. Keep in mind the reason you (unconsciously) slipped these things into shadow was to survive. Osiris is the King of the Underworld. His beloved, Isis, is the Goddess of Reclaiming. Reclaiming is about calling in the pieces of self, of soul, that have been splintered off by life. The underworld is home to both shadow and a resting place for souls waiting for rebirth. Think about it. The beneficial power of shadow is immense. The opposites are pressing hard and no they do not mingle for they are equal in their strength and of differing vibrations. Feelings are running wild in pretty much everyone these days, but you can’t keep on looking at things through an old lens because it will just make more of the same. Trying to get someone to understand this, that, or the other, and/or where you’re coming from when they are decidedly invested in NOT understanding where you’re coming from, is a futile battle. They don’t want to hear; they just want to be right. And so do you, but you’re a conscious person and you know this is a futile battle, and you can still want to be right, but a futile battle is just that, futile, and a waste of time and energy you could be using to create something wonderful or maybe just take a nap. This is the take-a-way from the current energies; stepping out of futility, the essence of powerlessness, and into freedom. When my mother was dying she said, “Kathy, your freedom is the most important thing to you, it always has been,” and she was right. I am not terminally unique, we all need to be free, the earth and her people ache to be free, and each of us, in this time and this place, are part of redefining and making freedom a reality. Not an ideal but a human reality, strong as gravity, wherein the health and vitality of the humane and the planet take precedence over all that is made by man. I love being one among many. I love being a link in the chain. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat x0x0x0 Art: Lousie Ritchie Services |
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