Category: Magic Touch
Third New Moon of Spring
By Phoenix of Elder Mountain – Greetings Dreamers, Artists and Moon Walkers, our third and last new moon of spring arrives on Thursday, May 25, 2017. I did an oracle for all of us, to remind us to hold the completion of our dreaming for the remainder of spring:
GRADUAL HARMONY
Still your passions and settle your will; all things come when its the right season at the right time. If you wish for a speedy outcome, you will be disappointed. If you do not expect too much from others, you will find gratification. Remember that unbridled ambition is repugnant and wishing the world was the way of our “little self” is futility. We practice contentment at whatever stage of life we are to refrain from grasping. It is only a practice my friend until it becomes real.
Gemini moons represent a few things: the mind first and foremost, and then all its forms of communication, the natural duality of our life, confusion, busyness, listening and magic – which is basically insatiable curiosity. This moon is also the tricks that life can play on us and as most of us know, the tricks in life that can lead to sorrow or at the more severe, shock and anger or sadness. If the tricks are more magical, we enter the spiritual realms of illusion and confusion. Symbolism of the Gemini twins in solar work represents me and the world or me and the “other” but in lunar work it represents the two sides of our own duality, the bi-polar me.
One of the keys in life is to practice accepting all struggle as good for our life, in order to grow, but this is two-fold. The struggle only becomes valued, when we can make clear decisions about what is good and healthy for us, so we can let go of what is harmful and destructive. Accepting struggle as a practice, must include sacred intention and decision making as part of the practice, otherwise we do not step forward in our personal evolution. We end up always seeking the light, when its our own shadow we must understand, and learning to not let others take advantage of us or tearing ourselves down in the process.
When we resist our personal struggles and don’t face our fears when its time, we don’t make the necessary changes as they arise. Many times we look away because we are too busy in life, or we are fearful of change or we get angry at anyone or anything that challenges us about our weaknesses.
But if we don’t challenge ourselves, then our life becomes a fertile ground for Gemini’s opposition (his brother Sagittarius) and this Coyote Heyoka Trickster then enters our personal space because we let things get too far out of hand for way too long. In our 20s and 30s we strive and grow and the things that can knock us down do not keep us down, we can get back up. Once we enter the midlife transformation after 37, the energy clock starts ticking and how we spend our energy becomes as important as what we spend it on.
With the Sagittarius Trickster on our tail, there are no boundaries that prevent us from pain, he arrives to pressure our analytical intellectual faculties and shows us what is real beyond that facility of logic and reason (which never serves our emotional body or our soul).
The Sag component is releases & trouble makers, and for a good reason. The world is not any crazier than it was in the 11th or 2nd century, we just added more problems with the mind cult, too many choices that have led us away from the simple basics of our life for sustainability on the “inside” … Positive essential disruptions of any kind, created by nature, god.dess, human, animal or ancestor is based on the destruction of matter to get to the heart and soul of an internal matter.
Disruption invites our real ego (eccentricity) to be challenged, this is because in order to heal the wounded inner child or the inner narcissist or the fearful one within, we must be uncomfortable until the duration or cycle is complete. Sometimes these cycles can last a few months, sometimes ten long years or more. Our issues do not work themselves out, we must participate, and when we are ready, then changes will occur. If the issue is another person, we can’t fix them, as all women think this is possible, the other person has to lose you if they cannot change otherwise you remain in limbo, wanting to do whats right but frozen in the past.
Learning patience, listening and flexibility is difficult and even more difficult when we are challenged. The hoarding opinions of our mental body must learned to be controlled and the emotional body or soul must lead the revolt against it. Our personal privilege of the “mind kind” where opinion, thoughts and beliefs have more power than feeling and emotion, have all been breast feeding our ego way too long after we are adults and it is our emotions and feelings that must rise because they are the truth sayers.
Without weaning ourselves when the time or 11th hour has come, this will only makes us more dependent on our belief system that has been worn out in other decades of our life. When we challenge the self, we add deeper listening, and begin to listen to what we are really saying, thinking and doing. We begin to prune the inner mental garden.
This is Gemini at its finest and I have a lot of experience at this as an Aquarian in the Gemini house opposing Uranus (the bad boy chaos of life) who constantly was throwing his lightning bolts at me as my Sagittarius energy ran and then finally I turned around and pulled the Archer’s Huntress arrows at my target: Change. I began the work at decriminalize my mind (excuses, pity parties, victim consciousness) and how I justified my suffering. That had to stop. I wasn’t ever afraid of the truth, I needed to seek the truth to find out who I was at those moments. Once I did, most of the things I thought to be true about myself or life in general, were not true, that lead to sorrow, but from tears comes replenishment. So I worked on my own shadow and Illusions after that as my main interest and work in life.
To heal a mind who keeps us distracted, stagnant and noise filled does require revolt against this part of the self and only the part that seeks health and peace can challenge it. All the mental pain, mental break downs, mental confusion, headaches and migraines, or mental opinions without experience or even the believing the communication inside our head is real… most of the time its not. Mental healing and mental break throughs are possible and then we eventually go from perspective to higher perspective and silence as a relief.
Self Rebelling in a positive way against words and communication that are not real in our head, in our life or outside our head, the gossip or even political gossip are all story telling at its root or slick marketing of the mythology that was built two thousand years ago, which sometimes knocks us down.
If you are struggling right now, the medicine of all struggles great or small can be worked within the practices of surrender and acceptance because those are required before we can work with “letting go” which leads to real “rebirths.” Even within a crisis or the aftermath, the same still applies. There is never a simple answer to the troubles in our life, but there are always solutions to our long standing behaviors. Air signs like Gemini, Libra and Aquarius offer us a great tool to be creative, to be in the world of knowledge, to have inter-personal communication with others to express and share our feelings (truth).
Value Identity: I have seen relatively healthy people, debilitated from change, when change is much needed. Ask yourself if life is asking you to change right now from your old ways, old memories and old wounds and those belief systems to create new ones (called values and morals). Values were one of the themes of Taurus last moon cycle, so put what you learned from your intention last month into seeking that new found value of yours. Be kind to yourself in your self evaluation and also be honest to form a new identity of the self at this stage of your life;
Mental Confusion: The mental body has flaws, sicknesses and weaknesses just like the physical body, its one of the most difficult attributes when it comes to “change” because this requires actual mental awareness which comes from stilling your mind. Every movement of over-stressing in one direction calls forth in time an equally extreme movement in the opposite direction to find mental balance. This means if you are very silent then you need to talk more, if you are a big talker, you need to fill more silence into your day and all the variables that goes with these two.
Meditation is always a good practice to still or slow the mind down, in order to become aware to grasp personal change. And for those who want self mastery, go master Zen meditation everyday for an hour for four years until you will slay the wicked parts of your mind… but in the meantime, just set one moon intention one month at a time for the next ten years : ) or both!
Examples for your 3rd New
Moon Intention (set only 1)…
I am mentally peaceful
I observe with clarity
My mind is clear
l am positive
I am impeccable with my words
I forgive myself
I forgive
I listen deeply
I live in the present
I am grounded
I am patience
I practice self respect
I am brilliant (if you don’t feel smart)
I practice humor (if you need to lighten up)
I heal my impulsiveness
I am a good communicator
I have endurance
I am fair
I am inspired
I am creative
I make my voice heard in a healthy way
I overcome boredom
I listen deeply
I embrace who I am right now
I accept change
I share
I practice selflessness
I share uncomfortable feelings
I allow personal critique
I have healthy boundaries
Images: Becca Stadtlander Flowers; Ukraine Market; World Tarot Card.
Telekenisis Hydrokenisis Aerokenisis
The Kinesis Generation (Uranus/Neptune conjunction) who were born between 1988-1998 world wide, have some unique chemistry. Kinesis (biology), is a movement or activity of a cell or organism in response to stimulus. Telekenisis, Hydrokenisis, Aerokenisis, a movement of the physical, the wind and water through a persons biology/energy systems.
If you were born during these years, especially the peak of 1992-1993, start your practices now or tell your kids or grandchildren to start their practices now to get good at them, it will come in handy in their future.
This doesn’t mean they are Avatars (yet) it means they have only the possibility to heal their soul’s karma to attain all gifts back this lifetime through very intense hard work everyday for at least two decades. The mystery is never free, she always demands a price.
~Phoenix
IFO Magical Dance
Karelian Magic
By Phoenix of Elder Mountain – Various folk shamanic tradition practices are called Folk Healing, like the Grandmothers in this video (in other traditions its called medicine woman). The Slavs, Balkans and North regions like the Karelians pretty much have the same basic rituals for healing. The feet are important because they are both where the greatest amount of our detoxing of sickness releases and our root on the earth and grounds our body to the earth. The folk singing (chanting, spells its called in some traditions) are the direction in which the healing “intent” of the energy is given as a direction.
Song, movement, specific parts of the body, water and fire rituals, all work together as the root foundation, be that medicine chanted or spoken into sacred clothing through embroidery, or the folk healer (who whisperers) a directional energy, or our relationship to the spirit (benevolent energies) of earth to work with the healer (in shamanic way), which is closest to our body and soul of the sick.
The Karelians are a nation that belongs to Baltic-Finnic ethnic group that are currently living in Finland and Russia. In Russia Karelians mostly settle in the Republic of Karelia and in other north-western parts of the Russian Federation. There are also significant Karelian enclaves in the Tver and Novgorod regions of Russia, as some Karelians migrated after 1656 because of war.
In Finland they traditionally settle in the regions of Savonia and Northern and Southern Karelia. The historic homeland of the Karelians has been the Karelian Isthmus, Ladoga Karelia, Olonets Karelia in Russia and the provinces of Northern and Southern Karelia and Savonia in Finland. Many became refuges from German Occupation (of ww2) and their numbers are very small today.
Photograph of Marppa Martiskainen embroidering a ritual towel, käspaikka, in Ilomantsi, Karelia which is very similar to Russian or Slavic Embroidery of the Goddess Makosh.
Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finnish, 1865-1931) – Karelian Mother
The Hawthorn Tree and the Soul of the Goddess
By Phoenix of Elder Mountain – I recently added dried Hawthorn leaves and berries (the berries are also called Pixie Pears) to our smudge which we sell, because there are a few trees on the land and in the local area. I thought I would write up the great benefits that are positive medicinal properties, not only in smudge but other uses and share some folklore.
Hawthorn is one of the many sacred Trees, she is not very big and some are even more like shrubs. She has been honored for thousands of years because of her many benefits as natural medicine. Its considered a Goddess tree because she is very healing to our hearts, both the accumulative and the karmic principles. We humans all experience when love hurts, bringing sorrow or pain to the heart chakra area and if prolonged without emotional healing, it begins to cause physical damage. Hawthorn is an excellent herb for our heart.
When i have a client that has an emotional heart issues but it begins to appear on a physical level, I know the underlying sorrows are mainly about the long journey of love, love that was a loss, or a betrayal and heart related emotional issues that has accumulated over decades and begun to eat away at the actual physical body.
Long ago, body & soul were equally important, but over the last 2,000 years the mental body and physical body have become “over” dominant, and body and soul (which includes the emotional release body) as a working interdependent relationship has been severed. Our proof is so much physical sickness in the world today and not enough emotional healing in direct relief of physical ailments. As a soul healer, dreaming soul folk healer, its been most of my work this lifetime, not only on myself but my clients, students and especially apprentices. The core or root body is the eternal soul as both the human body and the deer body lay in the ground after we leave. Its wise to love our physical body and life because its a gift, but our soul is what allows this gift to even be experienced at reincarnation. Without a soul, there is no rebirth.
Hawthorn, white and odorous
with blossom, framing the quiet
fields and swaying flowers and
grasses and the hum of Bees.
– F. S. Flint, 1885-1960
Hawthorn for the reluctant Dream
Hawthorn has been proven to help with insomnia and allows one to see the dreams that are more intense by falling asleep. We fall asleep sometimes to do this work which is brought forth from out karmic issues. Everyone including doctors calls these nightmares, and insomnia can be the result (of avoidance). Average insomnia is natural and the soul tells us when “not to sleep” for the dreaming will be too difficult and you need some time off so you stay awake. That is a good sign, and should be honored.
When insomnia becomes a major issue four or five times a week and over a few years, and then sleep apnia sets in, that is not healthy and then, one is completely avoiding the difficulty of their emotional body which can be avoided here, but in dreams the soul comes in and says you cannot avoid it. Thus the creation of medications to sleep then over rides everything and you soul is torn and fragmented more and more each year. This is when nightmares come as a last ditch effort with a double negative dreaming life. I do not recommend Hawthorn for that, but for the occasional insomnia person, whose dreamer is not avoiding their emotional life and dream life.
Hawthorn essence encourages forgiveness even in the most stubborn and prideful persons who wears the heaviest of heart in the waking life, and thus the dreaming life will reflect this. We learn to be vulnerable, to forgive, to slay our own mind and its belief systems when it prevents us from growing emotionally (mature). The mind convinces we are right, when we might be wrong… that is the shadow side of the ego my friend, if its continuing beyond reason or causes arguments or only triggers anger.
Herbal Medicine for the Physical Body
A medicinal flower, fruit, leaves and berries, all which are all astringent and useful. They are very helpful in curing that Winter sore throat to bring relief. In more serious ailments its a good dilate for the blood stream improving oxygenation and re-energy metabolism in the heart and decreasing lactic acid, basically any physical ailment connected with the heart. Hawthorn berries used in combination with motherwort will also strengthen the heart.
Medicinal Uses for Hawthorn:
Parts used: Flowers, leaves, berries.
Cardiovascular Heart Issues, Stress, Hypertension
Properties: Cordial, Hypotensive. Constituents: tannins,
flavonoids, essential oils, triterpene-carbonic acids
and purine derivatives.
Hawthorn is used for diseases of the heart and blood vessels such as congestive heart failure, chest pain, and irregular heartbeat. It is also used to treat both low blood pressure and high blood pressure, “hardening of the arteries” (atherosclerosis), and high cholesterol. So far, research suggests that hawthorn might be effective in treating congestive heart failure. Some people use hawthorn for digestive system complaints such as indigestion, diarrhea, and stomach pain.
It is also used to reduce anxiety, as a sedative, to increase urine output, and for menstrual problems. Hawthorn is also used to treat tapeworm and other intestinal infections. Some people apply hawthorn to the skin for boils, sores, and ulcers. Hawthorn preparations are used as a wash for sores, itching, and frostbite. Before taking hawthorn, talk with your a professional and seasoned herbalist, for she or he would want to know if you take any medications. It has major interactions with many prescription medications.
Folk Rites & Protection – Magic, Magick, Magik
When using Hawthorn in magical rites or healing, add a little hawthorn leaves to your smudge which allows a statement that you are trying to release some emotional pain and release is always done on a full moon. Hawthorn has magical powers to ward off evil as well, so as long as you are ‘aware or conscious’ enough of your evil, then it will work. It you avoid your own shadow “as in dark and shadow is neither good nor positive” and working on your shadow to heal it, then Hawthorn can assist you.
Hawthorn can be woven into a growing fence called a Hedgerow and protect spiritually the entrances of any entrances or gates to your home. These thorny barriers are very effective and have saved many villages from thieves and highwaymen. This twiggy thorny tree, with its white-stalked flowers and red anthers, also advises caution to passerbyers w ho know that a sacred person lives there and uses Hawthorn to deter the unconscious sides of people. So make a stick and wrap it with the intention to hand it around your driveway or gate.
Hawthorn is what some pagans call a Tree of Enchantment and many feel that the Insect Clans (faeries including butterfly) along with the nessie, dwarfs, domovoi and gnomes souls – are all Hawthorn’s smallest and most dedicated Guardians in the middle worlds behind the scenes. They protect the wells and springs located nearby where hawthorn grow. In a smudge, its beautiful flowers and new leaves dried, mixed together with your white sage, and used with intention or prayers reaches the upper-worlds (heaven) for good fortune and answers to your intention or spell, in any situation, if you also do the karmic work (personal healing work) as well for the yin types who must do that type of work. For yang type of people that is not really required.
If you sit under a Hawthorn on May 1st, the Celtic legends of the Goddess says that you are liable to be whisked away to the faerie worlds in your dreams at night or for the lucky few, a visit to you during the day if you can be still of mind enough. Also at dusk candles are lit on the Hawthorn (May Tree) as it is also known, to welcome Summer although May is technically still the third moon of Spring until the Summer Solstice happens on the equinox, so use common sense today regardless of tradition and their timelines to align with mother earth.
The blooms of the Hawthorn are used for fertility, happiness and good luck in fishing. Wands which are made of the sacred Hawthorn have great power and allow the person some boundary power. Witches and Magical people use Hawthorn for protection, love and marriage in ceremony. As an Omen, its said that if you take a blossoming branch of Hawthorn inside one’s house it will bring illness to one’s mother, but that is a religious backfiring from the church fathers who no longer wanted any of the old healing rites in community.
Hawthorn for Protection
Hawthorn is for the protection of your soul, for she is not manifested in physical matter and therefor for many who are not seers, unseen, espcially unseen soul shadows of living people. Hawthorn protects your soul from the unseen forces. Try carefully gathering a few thorns from the Hawthorn tree and on a piece of paper, write the name of the person or situation from which you seek protection from. Then wrap it around the thorns and bury this in the ground – if possible near the tree from which the thorns were collected and do it out of love and forgiveness to that person (Sandra Kynes). You can carry a few berries in your pocket or even string them like a beaded necklace and wear them during ceremony or for protection or anytime you feel you need protection from shadows.
There’s also the eventual corruption of the Goddess Tree. Mara Freeman (from druidry.org) writes in her Tree Lore: Hawthorn…
“The hawthorn, was once known simply as ‘May’, is naturally enough the tree most associated with this month in many parts of the British Isles. When we read of medieval knights and ladies riding out ‘a-maying’ on the first morning of May, this refers to the flowering hawthorn boughs they gathered to decorate the halls rather than the month itself. For on this day, according to the Old Style calendar that was in use until the 18th century, the woods and hedges were alight with its glistening white blossoms.
This and similar customs to welcome in the summer flourished in rural places until quite recently. In some villages, mayers would leave a hawthorn branch at every house, singing traditional songs as they went. The seventeenth-century English poet Robert Herrick wrote:
There’s not a budding boy or girl this day,
But is got up and gone to bring in May;
A deal of youth ere this is come
Back, with whitethorn laden home.
The young girls rose at dawn to bathe in dew gathered from hawthorn flowers to ensure their beauty in the coming year, as the old rhyme goes:
The fair maid who, the first of May,
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the Hawthorn tree,
Will ever after handsome be.
May was the month of courtship and love-making after the winter’s cold; and so the Hawthorn is often found linked with love and sacred sex. In ancient Greece the wood was used for the marriage torch; and girls wore Hawthorn crowns at weddings in full bloom. One writer has even gone so far as to suggest that the ‘stale, sweet scent from the trimethylamine the flowers contain, makes them suggestive of sex.’ (Geoffrey Grigson: The Englishman’s Flora, Phoenix House, 1956)
But while hawthorn was a propitious tree, when the church got a hold of it, circumstances changed and the church fathers demanded that it be unlucky.
Hawthorn blooms and elder-flowers will fill a house with evil powers.
Even today many people will not allow the branches inside the house; for, as one might expect from its association with Beltane, a time when the two worlds meet. The threshold of the Otherworld became feared. The Fairies are a part of the tradition of Hawthorns, and as he sits beneath an ancient thorn known as the Eildon tree. In another old rhyme, the Ballad of Sir Cawline, a lady dares the hero to go to Eldridge Hill where a Hawthorn grows, to await there the faery king.”
Last note….
Many are now able to honor openly with strength our healing ways and practice them again as the Goddess (nature) returns to help us heal during this last cycle of the patriarchal gods. When the Pagan witches healing teachings were forbidden so the new medicines of the Greeks and Romans could dominate, around the 4th century the long and beloved Hawthorn tree was then under science’s control. Even though in small villages and smaller clans, the women still did their teaching, healing and magical healing work with Hawthorn, by the 11th century it was renamed and called the God of War’s Tree (Mars) and thus was followed by the plague in the 13th century.
The seeds were then less for healing, and put more into alcoholic drinks, as the berries were in widespread use and the middle ages phrase “what ails you, drink your troubles away” was then acceptance, but alcohol even with hawthorn berries was not enough to stop the development of broken hearts and with so many heart issues and diseases today, 8 centuries later, the soul has turned dull as the magic of the goddess was gone.
Nicholas Culpeper, in 1653 believed that there was nothing left of the Goddess in the Hawthorn flowers because they still bear the smell and experience of the Plague of London and all over the world, from a thousand years of war. The tree then was regarded as the Crown of Thorns and was crowned in English royalty having won the battle over the old ways, the Oglives, chosen by Henry VII.
Yes we can be 100% physical fit as a sign of health, but the soul isn’t in the physical world, a part of her is within us (the energy body, chakra body or whatever teaching your familiar with, they are all the same, your well spring or life force). The majority of our soul is spread out in the graves of your karmic lifetimes sedimentary past lives. Or what we shamans call, the dreaming tree, which for most has died. Its time to replant them!
Sources: http://www.thegoddesstree.com/trees/Hawthorn.htm ; anniesremedy.com, webmd.com, thegoddesstree.com, Whispers from the Woods, by Sandra Kynes ; The Old Woman in the Wood, from The Grimm’s Fairy Tales, illustration by Arthur Rackham ; Hawthorn Tree Vintage Botanical; druidry.org.
The Touch of Magic
