 A sharpish breeze skims your cheek. The air shifts around you with a snap, a slice. Overhead your eyes catch Eagle in full flight--wings spread drawing a clean line across the open sky. You become keenly aware of your eyes, the focused point of your gaze. You observe a sense of levitation, a lift from your feet to the crown of your head, your spine lengthens. You feel three inches taller and in that, a new perspective. The three inches might be three feet, how vastly changed the view becomes!
You have been lifted from habitual thinking, from mental imprisonment: those worn down grooves of inherited beliefs and of fixed mindset. Queen of Swords is stepping with a light footfall to the front of the pack. As a breath of fresh air, her aptitude for employing tools of intellect and logic can lift her swordarm effortlessly and cut smartly through blindfolds and the ties binding your hands and heart. In her enlightened aspect, the snares of emotional enmeshment, tired obligation, cloudy judgement are non existent. She takes a deep breath, shoulders back, brow smooth, sword singing and simply recognizes “what is”. No problem making decisions when the way is silvery, inspired, light as a feather. But in Shadow, her judgment has none of the warm glow of soulfire engaged. Her intellect dominates the wisdom of her flesh and blood. Chilly, indeed. That cool clarity turns icy and isolating. Her Direction: East Her Element: Air Medicine Totem: Eagle Vision allows a long view from a lofty vantage point at great distance to identify working systems and relationships down at ground level. Raptor talons and beak dissect, slice to the core truths. Astrological correspondences: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius Key Aspects: Perception- Communication- Reason and Logic- Intellect- Holding Sacred Vision- Cutting through illusion/confusion/disillusion- Clean boundaries through razor strokes of language, wit- Freedom of thought and action In Shadow, cold, clinical, heartless, mind over matter, sorrowful What do you believe? What do you perceive? Can you see the long vision? What are you tools for battle with mind-fuckery? From outside and inside To Be Her: Sharpen your sword and use your powers of unfettered perception to dissect issue at hand, lifting clarity of vision on high.
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 Click here to eTo date I have created/co created many thousands of altars. For new moon, full moon, birth, death. To plants, animals, planets, goddesses, wishes, fears. An altar to say “please”, to say “thank you”. Altars made for and with strangers. Altars with other women, spread across the globe, in sisterhood lighting flames together at just the same moment. Unlikely altars, the best of all.
An altar is a place to make offerings and sacrifices. It is a point of worship, ritual, ceremony. Altars make fast, powerful magic in an instant. Again and again my body serves as an altar. An altar in the crook of my arm while nursing an infant, an altar with feline curled asleep behind my knees, an altar with my back pressed against the wall legs wrapped around a lover’s waist. And always, when dancing, when the music alone places invisible hands, lips, spine against me. ..melody makes an offering, demands a sacrifice. In a galaxy, far, far away, my ex-husband would see me clearing clutter to build some small space of beauty in the chaos and equate it with “straightening deck chairs on the Titanic”. (P.S. Witches and Atheists maybe not quite same vibe level?) As a practice, altar building and altar observing are essential to my work on the Medicine Wheel. That Medicine Wheel itself is a living altar with directions filled by the Stone People, Star Nations, Green World. We all know the feeling of walking through the woods or the wide world and finding those altars, perfectly made by wind, wit, or whimsy. We know the medicine when we see it. A Gentleman Friend and I had a clever way to refer to the ecstatic trance where found ourselves meeting in body and soul. We added the magic we co-created to joke about our “altar-ed state”. Really, an intentional space, where meaning is layered over what we see with our eyes, where offerings are made, where a stone fucking cold miracle takes over. Living in an altar-ed state is my instinct and my imperative.  Tarot’s Queen of Wands inhabits a space of light, heat, and glory. Her inner flame fuels untold numbers of creative endeavors. She is a woman in motion. Driven by her manifest need to express and take action she is a rockstar of multitasking and you can nearly see the sparks fly from her fingertips. Her words leave her lips quickly, with purpose, with a glow: game on. She is director, connector, initiator: in one fell swoop.
Queen of Wands strikes the match, drops it, and watches the flames rise. Yes, we did that project. Yes, we made that event happen. Yes, we rose from the ashes times a hundredfold. At home, work, in relationship, on her own two feet, she DOES. Her guiding principle is action. When her actions are an extension of her inner flame, her desires, her soul... beauty crackles around her. When her considerable powers are used only in abstracted service to others, in the name of obligation or disconnected/deadened models, structures, or promises: beware, Lady. In her Shadow over-expression she is burned to a crisp, annihilating the landscape of her Self with no reference to the cooling springs of feeling or lofty winged breezes of communication. She is the Woman Who Does Too Much. Ain’t no fun to be her or be with her. We can talk at length about our cultural expectations, pace of modern world, the cache of busy-ness.We can recognize our disharmony of expectation, perception. Medicine, please? Yes.... Slow down. In front of a bonfire, time slows. Your gaze shifts and softens and you have great care for how you navigate the flame. You add fuel and it rises, how beautiful! You may consciously watch the heat dwindle... let it sit, get quiet... then toss in enough to rebirth the heat and steadily glow. Have such a care for your inner flame. Junky fuel means smoky fire. Where’s your nice clean birch bark for a fast ignition? Now what do you add to build endurance of that soul-light? In my work, I help steward that inner flame. If it burns too hot and fast, destructive rather than creative we gently and with tenderness scale the flame down slowly and peek in at the structure of that fire. What causes it to burn the way it does? Are parts raging while other fuel lays untouched and damp? Alternately, is that fire o-u-t? No idea what fuels you? That we can tend as well. With a sense of play (favorite tool of Queen of Wands) we can help you to harmonize that flame and revel in the beauty of your life as it is in this moment…. then we get hot, drop the match, and party starts  Journey is big medicine. When practiced with reverence, devotion, presence: inner worlds, Otherworlds, world beyond worlds are accessed by riding the drumbeat.
And when you get to be an old hand-- you can journey quick and dirty. Drumsong is in your body. Flick of the fingers, blink your eyes and you travel right beside yourself as enlightened witness/you- but-more-than-less-than-you even as you experience everything as freshy-fresh, raw, in the moment. By then, you are always journeying. On the bus, making supper, stacking wood. Let’s slow down.... After over twenty years of practicing magic/medicine I can cut to the chase. But for a seeker who has never journeyed- how does this work? What is this all about?! Drumbeat is a vehicle. As sound, as a vibration it creates interplay with the human animals who hear and feel its power. Throughout time and cultures, people have received the music: the drum beat of their mama’s heart before birth, the range of voices humming around us, sounds of wind/storm/tides/ fire. Drums create entrainment, a beautiful group mind flow, sync-up of cosmic consciousness. Drums call you home, drive you to new places, magnetize bodies. This humble friend, keeping a steady rhythm allows you to drop your baggage at the door and take that tunnel down, down to the dark. Journey accepts you exactly as you are: requires no specific dogma/belief system, no giant investment of cash in exchange for your enlightenment, no relinquishing of your voice, no power- over hierarchy. In some cultures it is believed that only the Shaman can intervene on your behalf with the Holies. You wanna ask something? I say, lie down here. I will start this beat, I will hold space, watch and tend you, pray alongside for your safe journey and return but YOU go ask, babe. Go ahead. Life being life-- some journeys are spectacular, beyond words. Others, softer, simpler moments of knowing. With every journey you build fluency, you forge relationship with the Holies. They don’t want you knocking at their door when you just WANT things! Go say hello, sit and the table and talk. Yeah, I was just in the neighborhood. Brought you a little something. My first conscious/intentional shamanic journey was over twenty five years ago. Of course, I had been journeying plenty before then, just had no language for what was happening and surely wasn’t about to tell anyone about it! Building a solid practice many years later, no sooner did I hear that drum speak I went into orgasm state. Everytime. Hey, how am I supposed to get to the..??? OH!? I will just go right along my way and trust it. Journey evokes all of the joy, sorrow, beauty, fear you have the capacity to feel. My experience is that it allows access to a deep wellspring of compassion and connectedness...One of my most intense journeys found me running down a narrow and dark alleyway, in a very old city, sliding my hands along the stone walls. I could hear a violin resounding through the empty space. And I said aloud. Exile, this is what exile feels like. Friend, I felt the grief of all who have been driven from their Paradise. That was a sneak peek. In my life I was about to be found and welcomed after the pain of exile and then, too quickly turned out again to wander. Then there’s the fun of scaling a cliff face with no handholds, barefoot in a buttery yellow, silk gown, loaded in gilt bangles and a diadem. A ladder gets thrown down. Thank You, Golden Eagle! I will come to the Upper World and dance. To journey is to be restored, revived, have your conscious mind blown, practice expansive curiosity as sacred. Journey is ecstatic, fluent: an invitation and gracious r.s.v.p. Want to feel deeper connection in your life? With self? Spirit? Let's go. |
AuthorLinda River Valente Archives
November 2017
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