Presenting at Many Gods West

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I’m happy to announce that I’ll be presenting some brand new material at Many Gods West, a polytheist religious conference taking place in Olympia, WA later this summer. It’s a real treat to have the opportunity to explore religion, spiritual practice, ritual, and magick with such a diverse group of presenters and attendees.

I’ll be presenting a session called “The Labor of Love: (Re)Valuating the Purpose of Devotional Practice”. It’s my hope that this material will help further a consideration of what purpose devotional practice actually serves in our greater religious traditions and how the development of increasingly-articulate forms of devotional engagement actually contributes to the growth and maturation of the traditions that practitioners are part of. Some of the static surrounding a conversation about devotional practice is the opinion that this work is indulgent, delusional, or simply selfish; I hope to counter these attitudes by highlighting some of the physical and metaphysical advantages that this practice yields. (And to speak to a concern that I imagine a few of you have: No, I don’t think that devotion is important because of its concrete, measurable, or observable outcomes. I do plan to mention that valuating the human emotional experience at all is a problematic and potentially reductionist endeavor.)

Click here if you’d like to take a look at line-up of presenters and rituals. The precise schedule of events is still being determined but this is what the weekend has in store (though there’ll also be some musical performances, too).

If you’d like to know more about the event itself, visit the Many Gods West homepage. Registration is still open and last I knew there were still rooms open at the hotel.

I love teaching and sharing information and conferences are a great place to do this. I also get to meet lots of people that I’d never have the chance to otherwise. I’m by nature pretty reclusive – which is good since I can’t really afford to go far or do much. Finicky health also keeps me close to home and that can make traveling complicated, too. Needless to say I’m a little nervous about the trip for these and other reasons but I’ve never had the opportunity to visit the Pacific Northwest and I’m very happy for the chance to spend some time there.

If you’re a little nervous about the prospect of going to such an event and, like me, kind of a socially awkward kid, perhaps think about coming anyway. We can stand in the corner and fidget together while thinking about the pets we left at home. (My cat, you guys! I’m gonna really miss my cat!)

Spirit Work Stories

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Sometimes I’ll come across a book or TV show that strongly reminds me of certain aspects of spirit work. There are actually quite a few stories out there that people have found relatable to this particular path; some of them you may have heard of or ready yourself. These are some of mine. I’m always discovering new stories that really make me take notice. I sometimes even find moral lessons and teaching moments imparted in these stories; after all, the Work reveals itself.dokebi bride 1

Dokebi Bride: This manwa series (Korean comics) follows Sunbi, a young woman born into a shamanic family. Raised away from the people who could teach her how to manage her gifts, she struggles to make sense of the spirit world on her own. Quite by accident she finds herself engaged to a dokebi, a mischievous goblin-like spirit who helps her in her work – in his own way, of course. Sadly, the English translation of the series halted several years ago. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the end of the story or even if it was ever finished up in Korean.

xxxHolic: This is also a comic series that was originally published in Japanese. Though the manga has some great spirit work elements to it, it’s really the anime that made me pay attention. Watanuki is a young man with the ability to see spirits and energy. He’s quite alone in this and struggles to live normally. He takes up an apprenticeship with Yuuko, a witch with power over time and space. Yuuko teaches Watanuki how his powers work and what they mean for the way his life operates. This title isn’t seriously heavy on the spirit work theme and adult viewers might find a show designed for teens a little dull or obnoxious but there are some exceptional moments that really get to the heart of this life. Watanuki helping a tree spirit, meeting the kitsune, and getting instructed to take fairy tales seriously are some of the moments that really stand out in my mind.

The Sybil: This book by Pär Lagerkvist fell into my hands very much by accident. My Lord tugged me over to a shelf of used books for sale at the public library serving the rural community I grew up in and told me to buy it. I might have gone an entirely lifetime never discovering this book but it was exactly what I needed at the time. Lagerkvist is a remarkable writer, even in translation, and the narrative really hit me. The story is about a young woman selected to serve Apollo at Delphi. As she is instructed in service, she falls in love with a young man. Their growing love threatens her sacred role and eventually leads to tragedy. It’s a strange, not altogether uplifting story for the pagan soul but it highlights the conflicted and ambiguous emotional relationship that we share with the Powers we serve and love.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Yeah, this is on the list. This is probably the spirit work story I’ve spent the most time with (possibly because it’s the longest of any I’ve listed here). I find I like stories about people trying very hard to cope with the demands of an otherworldly life and the complexities of a highly mundane one; I also like stories about people’s in/ability to manage a sudden intrusion of the Other into the familiar. Buffy is a superhero but one that has to cope with high school (and later college), employment (and lack thereof), family, friends, a never-really-happy love life, and oh yeah, coming back from the dead. I’d also add Angel to this list but mostly because the human characters are decidedly in the minority, which is a circumstance I’m rather familiar with.

Anyway, there are a handful of other spirit work stories that I keep coming back to. When I remember them I’ll do another entry on this topic.

Busy Making Art and Other Things

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I’ve been quite busy for several days now trying to get many different tasks taken care of. Things are busy at both my jobs so I’m not giving this blog much thought. I’ve also been busy making new blank books and trying to inject a little new life into my Etsy shop, Coffee At Midnight. If you’re interested in my handmade blank books and other items, I’d suggest checking out my other blog that’s specifically for arts and crafts related things.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAThis hand bound book has approximately 50 blank unlined pages. It has open-flat binding so it is comfortable to use whether you write with your right or left hand. These make great books for writing poetry, sketching, jotting down story ideas, or recording personal thoughts. I keep one on my altar and gradually add inspirational thoughts and ideas as they come to me. Another little blank book has become a sort of love journal where emotional notes are written down.

I’m quite excited to be working on a special art project involving some of these books. I’ll talk more about them as they develop.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me.

Who He Is

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A couple recent posts by friends (specifically Beth’s “What do you seek from the divine?” and Heather’s “The Pagan Experience: Gebo”) got me thinking about who Loki is to me. That’s a very complicated subject and is actually one that’s difficult to talk about. For all that He is the center of my emotional and spiritual life, He doesn’t really make an appearance in a blog that’s primarily about my emotional and spiritual life. That’s because He is part of my most private life and this blog is as public a face as I’m comfortable having – on many days it’s more public than I’m comfortable with. But as a recent tarot reading reminded me, I am not the hidden hermit scholar. Or at least, I’m not only that.

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Seeking Together (Pagan Experience Project March wk3)

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Though this week’s original prompt, “What do you seek from the divine?” has been switched to a prompt about the types of relationships shared with the divine, I’m actually choosing to write about the first one. I’m doing this because I think being honest about our motivations within relationship, whatever configuration that relationship might be, is part of what helps that relationship develop in a healthy and productive manner.

While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the magico-religious theory that holds a specific action or petition is going to have an automatic result simply for having asked (aka, the cosmic vending machine theory), I am a fairly ends-oriented practitioner in many regards. That is, various religious and magical practices are engaged in with a particular desire in mind. These practices are chosen, in part, because they seem to offer what I hope to achieve and because the process seems compatible with my magical skill, my style of practice, the web of commitments I’m part of, and so forth. It’s the second part that sometimes gets left out in ends-oriented planning.

There’s the cliché story about the teen girl who wants to do a love spell and so heads off to the local witch shop with a shopping list culled from a love spell printed in a book. The proprietor suggests simply making an apple pie instead since all the same ingredients are used (and when I tell the story, I like to add that even if the protagonist is rejected, she still has consolation pie). The girl throws up her hands – that’s too much work! Baking is hard! Can’t I just do a spell for love instead? Yes, this story is a cliché and yes this actually does happen from time to time (witch shop proprietors can certainly tell you a few stories), but there’s more than one lesson to take away from this. First, of course, is the lesson that magick is work and takes effort and skill, just like baking a pie.

The second lesson in this story is about choosing between two paths that lead (ostensibly) to the same outcome. The teenager in the story might be quite terrible at baking and so knows that her efforts are likely to fail and alienate the object of her affection. The teen might also have also engaged in some personal magickal practice and already has a little skill built up. The point is that you have to choose the processes that are most compatible with your skills, aptitudes, experiences, and so forth.

Of course, if I were in this situation, I’d do both. I’d make a love pie and do a love spell. There’s nothing wrong with addressing a problem with multiple strategies to best leverage their respective advantages. This is why I meditate *and* cultivate a consciously more compassionate mindset. This is why I live quietly *and* petition Santa Muerte for a peaceful life. And you know what? The Powers are much more willing to lend a hand if you’re actually making an effort on your own. You will find that their blessings flow more freely and obviously when you make an accounting of what you’re going to do with those blessings.

Like some other magicians, I was never very good at money magick. I could magick up an extra $20 now and then but my success was sporadic and not really dependable. Then a while back I hit on the idea of actually saying what I wanted the money for. What exactly am I doing with the prosperity I’m asking to receive? What are my precise monetary goals? Once I started included this information in my petitions, the magick started working better. I still struggle financially and I’m frequently on a real knife edge of need but when the money flows, it flows – and it flows from me to many other ends that help further the Powers’ presence in this world.

Ultimately I guess I seek a partnership with the Divine that helps me become a better person. I seek to be more capable of helping others and serving the world because thereby do I serve Them. If they are present, here, now, in this world (and they are!), then expanding my efforts towards improving and serving this world is going to help Them. And it does.

But past that ultimate desire is something else, an arching vault of emotional resonance that keeps pulling me up and up. Relationship is not outcome. Relationship is not ends-oriented. Relationship is process, experience, the present moment. Losing sight of that is losing sight of the real power of sacred relationship. Relationship should not be forced into a value-oriented paradigm; we should not have to prove our emotional priorities by holding up the outcomes of our divine relationships. Once again: we should not have to prove our emotional priorities by holding up the outcomes of our divine relationships.

Sometimes – not frequently, but occasionally – there’s an effort in greater pagan and polytheist dialogue to make devotional relationship mean something. And this is fine because devotional relationships can and do have very positive outcomes – but that’s not really the point. It is, however, a place to start. Srila Prapupada replied to a question about the appropriateness of praying to Krishna for money by replying that any prayer was good prayer (I summarize; I can’t recall the precise quote. I believe it’s from a little book called Perfect Answers to Perfect Questions).

Faith is not necessarily automatic. We don’t generally offer our whole hearts to the divine without some indication that they’re there and that they are responsive to us. (There are of, course, major exceptions to this but we’ll set those aside for a moment.) This happens through an exchange of attention, gifts, and so forth. We seek their attention and blessing, which is recognized as evidence of their love and affection. We celebrate their power and presence, which in turn helps endear us to them. Eventually this exchange of energy (rather nicely typified by the rune Gebo) is less about any possible future outcome and more about a present saturated by sharing.

A relationship with the Gods generally begins with desire. We seek something – proximity, affection, refined awareness, knowledge, aid in magick, or the satisfaction of curiosity. Being honest about the fact of desire and trying to identify precisely what is desired is a good thing, a very good thing. Many of Them desire something of us – proximity, affection, refined awareness, knowledge, aid in magick, or the satisfaction of curiosity. Relationship helps achieve these and many, many other desired outcomes. But sooner or later, at some point, all parties of the relationship are participating in something much, much more.

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Welcoming Dead Folks (Reblog of “Appealing to your ancestors”)

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I’m very glad Beth chose to share this post when she did. This subject has been on my mind for a little while and the words finally fell into place today.

For a long time, ancestor work simply wasn’t a big part of my practice. It was really almost non-existent. I knew it was important but I simply didn’t get any feeling from them. They didn’t seem present or accessible the way that other people seemed to experience their ancestors. When I graduated and finally moved out of the dorms, I had the space to set up an ancestor altar and so I did. I still didn’t have a strong sense of who my ancestors were but I figured that they did. I prepared a hospitable space and sent out an invitation.

The ancestors that showed up were a particular segment of the transsexual and gender variant dead and a handful of old women. The gender variant dead who settled in were all sex workers on what we’d now refer to as the MtF spectrum. They were quite responsive to the liquor and cigarettes I had on the altar. The old women were less distinct; I simply saw them sweeping a floor, endlessly. They were less responsive but always there.

These members of my ancestral altar are very dear to me but I suspect they’re part of my extended spiritual and cultural tribe rather than my blood relations (and whatever, I’m happy to offer hospitality; my ancestral altar is set up for that sort of thing). The idea of having a strong relationship with my ancestral forces was still complicated, no doubt because I don’t really have a firm idea of who I am. I don’t know how I fit into my greater family tree and I don’t know how they have brought me to the point I am today. I have no doubt that my ambivalence about ancestral work is related to my ambivalence about my ancestry and about how that ancestry shapes my place in the world today. This is a big subject and not really what I want to talk about right now.

Last fall my ancestral altar was a little more elaborate than usual and I made an extra effort to really call out. I still didn’t know exactly who might show up – but when I saw them, I knew who they were.

There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them, walking steadily together over the western mountains through the night sky towards me. Their long road opened up across my salt desert valley and they stepped into my home. I had so little and they were so many. I’m still quite speechless at the memory of that sight.

**

These experiences have helped me feel more connected to ancestor work but a connection to *them* still eludes me. The boozy sex workers are less present than they used to be and those who visited during their long walk moved on after just a few days. However, in the last little while I’ve gotten some very clear signals that my paternal grandmother is now a spiritual force in my life.

This is strange. To start with, I don’t expect her to be here. I expect her to be off in the blessed arms of Jesus. I don’t expect her to be hanging out with a failed transsexual spirit worker who gets itchy inside churches. I don’t expect her to be spending time with a pierced and tattooed weirdo who’s surrounded with chaos n death. I really don’t expect her to be taking an active and personal interest in me. I don’t get it; nothing about myself fits with what I know about her or her life or her faith.

And see, here’s where I make the same mistake that a lot of people seem to make when it comes to ancestors.mary17

I expect my grandmother’s spirit to be the same as her body. I expect her afterlife to be based entirely on her physical life. I expect her spiritual path to be fundamentally incompatible with mine. I expect her Powers to be at odds with mine. Above all, I expect that her Catholicism is bad, icky, gross, contaminate, and not-Pagan.

Most polytheists seem to be on board with the idea that our ancestors have the power to influence our lives. Further, there’s the frequent half-stated assumption that if they weren’t some variety of pagan/polytheist, then they wouldn’t want us praying with/to them. In any discussion of ancestor veneration there’s the question of “well, what if they were’t polytheist? What if they were some kind of icky Christian? Do we really have to venerate them, too?” Well, no, we don’t. You don’t have to do anything. There’s no polytheist pope or piety possum gonna bite your nose if you don’t. You’ll just be missing out, is all.

I had a long hot bath with myself and wondered – really, really wondered – what precise harm would be done by allowing my dead gramma’s Catholicism to influence my life. Because it is, no doubt about it. I’ve been bonked on the head with Blessed Virgin Mary stuff for, uh, long enough that I’m finally starting to pay attention and connect it with this particular relative. It’s really only been 10 months or so but the incidents are pointed enough that I kinda have to pay attention.

As a polytheist – and more importantly, as a spirit worker – I can’t really say that one Power’s influence is better than another. If anything, having a big team cheering you on and helping out is for the best. There are no doubt Powers that I get along better with, Powers who I find most compatible with my goals, and Powers who I find challenging to work with – but none of that actually has anything to do with them and their value. All of these judgment calls are about me.

So – What am I so afraid of? What about these new contacts is negative? Well, nothing really. Powers do not belong to the tradition(s) that honor them; traditions are built by humans (with the help of some divine inspiration). Traditions therefore are part of human-level concerns. I can’t really attribute the problems of dogma, theology, and practice to the deities themselves anymore than I can blame Loki for hanging out with people who are sometimes asshole troublemakers. Human-level problems.

This is what happens when you play with ancestors. Your shit is called in a very obvious, very direct way. You are forced to grow past the artificial limits you’ve created for yourself. You are offered relationships that require the release of prejudice, preconceptions, and assumptions. And all of these things are very good things.

Laurie Beth Dawe's avatarThe Blackberry Hag

In a recent Immersive Reading I did for a client regarding a problematic spirit relationship, one of the potential solutions that came up for dealing with her situation was to appeal to her ancestors and the gods of her bloodline for assistance. Since she had questions about this, I’m thinking other people out there might, too.

Yes, I know the topic of ancestor work can be a controversial one in the pagan community, because so many of us have deceased family members we wouldn’t call on if it was the last option open to us. For example, if your late Uncle Mort was a child molester, chances are you don’t really want to be inviting him into your home. Also, as many of us are first generation pagans in monotheistic families, we might feel alienated by some of our immediate ancestors, feeling that they can’t possibly share very much with…

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Why We Need Love Goddesses

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I’ve said plenty of times that the deities in my life are all chaos and death. Chaos n death, that’s the pattern.  It’s not a matter of me being especially chaotic or deadly, but something about the way I fit into the giant clockwork jigsaw of the universe makes me especially compatible with these Powers. We fit well together. It’s always been chaos n death.

Many polytheist and pagan types find themselves aligned with Powers that share very similar domains or characteristics. A person might find themselves surrounded by liminal characters, lots of gatekeepers and crossroads types; another might find frequent allies in watery deities, deities related to animals, or deities concerned with health and healing. And of course, some people find themselves surrounded by Love Goddesses(TM).

I never “got” love goddesses. (And yes, I know there are male-type Powers associated with love and the broad category of concerns that love goddesses are also concerned with, but this actually isn’t important to the point I’m going to be eventually making.) I didn’t understand these love emotions or the beauty, art, or luxury that typically went along with love. I knew it was important, I just didn’t understand it on a personal level. I didn’t see how these things related to me.

A lot of this was very likely because I had a rock-bottom opinion of myself. I have always thought of myself as a fundamentally unloveable person – despite any evidence to the contrary. Not that I wasn’t worthy of love; I just felt that at some point, eventually, without a doubt, the people who loved me would discover that underneath the good stuff was a whole lot of garbage that wasn’t worth the effort. I have done considerable work on this front but it is still a mental stumbling block that needs constantly negotiated.

I also didn’t like myself. I thought I was ugly. I thought I was unattractive. I thought that I was repellent to others. I thought that luxury and pleasure were a waste, that they were a pacifying comfort against the reality of entropy and pain. I thought beauty was a waste because everything crumbles to dust sooner or later. Freya-norse-mythology-21934274-300-427

Freya was the first Power to step in and start to change all this. She was my first ally, in a way. She was the first Power to just up and offer to help when I was struggling with the emerging realities of life as a spirit worker and maturing devotionalist. To my mind, She had nothing to gain from this. Her compassion went straight down into me and rattled my emotional basement like nothing else had. I started to understand, very vaguely, that love was beauty and that beauty was healing.

A couple years ago I came across a Power that shook me right down to the emotional basement all over again. At the time I had resumed some very old work with Kali (like, stuff that I had started when I was 16) and was feeling it struggle to resolve. It wasn’t the wrong work, but it wasn’t quite right on some level, either. I persisted, hoping it would level out. I was puzzling over a very direct encounter of Her in an unfamiliar form. I fell into the research rabbit hole and came out the other side staring into the eyes of Kamakhya.

Shakta theology and philosophy is distinctive in the context of subcontinent religious traditions and global religious traditions. Encountering a radically different form of Kali was not actually a problem in the way such a thing might be in a different tradition or context. It was merely unexpected. That Kamakhya was identified with the yoni Shakti pitha, with Sri Lalita, with Tripura Sundari, and with the very Earth Herself was more surprising.

Sri Lalita

Sri Lalita

Sri Lalita had fascinated me for a long time but I hadn’t really done much about it (chaos n death, remember? I was busy). In her hands She holds a noose and goad, two minuscule instruments capable of exerting force wildly disproportionate to their size; a goad is intended to move an elephant. One instrument propels while the other restrains. Her other two hands hold arrows made of flowers (or flowers used as arrows) and a bow made of sugarcane (or a stalk of sugarcane used as a bow). The sugarcane bow is said to be strung with a string of beads. Imagine!

 

 

 

I called this goddess of plenitude forms Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari Sodashi Kamakhya – because She was. She was all these things and all these things are the same entity (you know, more or less. That’s just how Shakta theology works). Through Her divine grace I learned about love. I learned about just how powerful love actually is and how it can accomplish things that other emotions simply cannot. Her grace accompanied me at every step as I dove deep back into the bhakti current that had nurtured me so long ago.  No longer content with redigesting the lessons I had absorbed as a teenager, I set about trying to learn the deeper truths of this path and She helped me gain a fuller understanding of the power of devotional practice. And this is finally the point I want to make.

Devotionalists need Love Goddesses(TM). We need the Powers associated with love, beauty, joy, compassion, and companionship. We need to have these things in our lives because our path is completely saturated in a very particular sort of love. Petitioning a beloved Power who’s already on our side *because they have chosen love and power and beauty and compassion as their domain* is one of the most effective and profound things you could ever do on this path.

Devotionalists need Love Deities. We are already in Their precious and sacred domain. They already care about us. They already love our relationships. They already love our love.

My work with Sri Kamakhya is done – at least, this stage of it is. I was going to gently put away Her blessed altar because there is another Power that I am resuming work with and I have used up the very last bit of available horizontal space currently accessible. My little heart broke. My cold nasty cynical Lokean heart just broke. My beautiful, compassionate, luminous Goddess – how could I remove her visage?

And there it was – permission. Permission to keep the altar in place, permission given by a Power who has no sentimentality, but who does have compassion. Even She has to acknowledge the most blessed patron of my spiritual love.

We need Love Deities, you guys. We already have them.

Things I Don’t Write About

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I don’t write about spirit work – except for the times when I do.

I don’t write about the excelcius moments that arise from divine proximity – except when I do.

I don’t write about the grinding sensation of failure, of inadequacy, of intrinsic inability.

I don’t write about the stress, anxiety, confusion, or despair.

I don’t write about the messages I hear.

I don’t  write about the People I meet.

I don’t write about the calling or the response.

I don’t write about the currents, winds, streams, or rivers.

I don’t write about the whispers.

I don’t write about the job.

I don’t write about the joy.

**

I’ve become a reasonably successful recluse. I’m not known for these things because I don’t talk about them. I don’t talk about them because they are a greater piece of my heart than I thought anything could be. I don’t talk about them because despite having been given a hard reboot and a new OS, despite having eyes that are a different color than I was born with, despite having to relearn the finer points of embodiment, despite having the physical, lived experience of divine intervention I don’t always believe in the reality of the context I’m caught up in.

I don’t talk about these things because I don’t want to.

I don’t talk about these things because I owe no one an accounting (least ways no one that has to read a blog in order to gain an accounting). I have always served the Powers first – before there was even an awareness that serving the Powers constituted spirit work, I served them and knew what I was. Even when people who should have known better tried to tell me what, exactly, I was and wasn’t.

Did you know there was a time when devotion and spirit work were all but mutually exclusive? It’s true. I argued the point more than once. Love, I was told, wasn’t compatible with service. Love, I argued, was the very fuel of service.

**

I don’t talk about spirit work because I don’t want to talk about failure. I’ve frequently reflected that I’m on the path of failure. I will never not fail. Failure is the condition of the manifest world. Failure is the trajectory of disintegration, the path that absolutely all of us are on. We will fail because this is not a path that will ever reach completion. We will always be inadequate to the task. It’s therefore cruel to pick at the practice of someone else, inexcusably mean to criticize the work another is engaged in. We can and should encourage improvement, can and should demand accountability, can and should require redress and apology – but the work that happens within the sphere of one’s own interaction with the numinous and the expression thereof insofar as it doesn’t interfere with another being’s intrinsic and sacred sovereignty – including their teleology – doesn’t require commentary. We must be free to fail – else the path itself remains only a potential.

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I don’t talk about my spirit work because I don’t want to talk about my failure. In defiance of everything I’ve learned about this path and everything the path has taught me, I got fired. Yes. That….that doesn’t really happen. It’s not supposed to. There are a very limited number of outcomes on a spirit work path, especially one that takes you further towards very specific ends. Getting fired is not one of those outcomes. But I am a Lokean and I will always be an exception.

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I don’t talk about spirit work because I don’t want to talk about how much I want to go back to  work. I don’t want to describe the very many tastes I’ve sampled of this life in an effort to find something that satisfied in quite the same way. I found nothing. When the Work itself has put you back in this world, your software is fundamentally incompatible with other functions. It’s like trying to make a spreadsheet in Photoshop. No one’s happy.

**

So why am I talking about all this if I don’t actually want to? I’m talking about it because I might, just might, be going back to work.

I am what I am and I am responsive to this path.

Big news! Tarot readings now offered

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I’m very happy to announce that I’m now offering tarot readings through my Etsy shop, Coffee At Midnight. I started reading tarot when I was twelve years old (yes, really!) and I have over twenty years of tarot study and practice. I began reading professionally at 18 and have read at Pagan Pride Festivals, psychic fairs, and metaphysical shops in addition to one-on-one private readings for clients. MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA I’m offering a five card reading for $25. Your reading will include a detailed interpretation speaking to directly to your concerns in addition to photographs of the cards drawn for you. The five card spreads I do are able to speak to a range of concerns touching on emotional, practical, and spiritual matters. An intersection of material and spiritual forces can be mapped out to clarify circumstances that you find yourself in. A spread arranged according to elemental influences can uncover imbalances of power regarding a particular situation. The five states of being – mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral can also be assessed with this direct reading.

I am currently reading with The Mermaid Tarot with art by the incomparable Dame Darcy. (Pictured at the top and to the right.) Dame Darcy’s art is deeply influenced by her magical lifestyle. This deck is full of powerful, watery imagery that deftly addresses concerns of an emotional, intuitive, and spiritual nature while also speaking to concrete, practical matters. It is a colorful, feminine deck that helps bring up the treasures of one’s spiritual and mental depths. Interested in a reading with a different deck? I also read with The Tarot of the Sweet Twilight, a darkly whimsical and intuitive deck based on the Rider-Waite-Smith system. You can see a sample of this deck below. It is filled with fae creatures and is ideal for readings regarding a range of liminal concerns. MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA