What a Number – Day 999

Stars Through the Forest – Photo: L. Weikel

What a Number

What a number I just typed into the title line, above. Could I really be writing my last three-digit post tonight?

Numerologically speaking, this feels like an ending, even if I’ve not yet arrived at my goal of 1111 consecutive posts. Nines are completion. Three nines, no matter how you look at them, sort of hammer home the concept of completion. Beyond the simple fact of three nines comprising the number, if you add the nines, 9+9+9 = 27 and then 2+7=9. No matter which way you look at 999, it reduces to a 9, and thus it represents a wrapping up, a conclusion, an end to something.

Not My 1111 Devotion

The number 999 may signify completion of something, on some level, but it does not mean I intend to quit my Act of Power before I reach my goal. No; there remain 112 posts to write, and I intend to write them, Goddess willing.

It represents the end of three-digit posts. That’s pretty lame.

Honestly, I don’t know what – if anything – reaching this number signifies, other than I’m plugging along, doing my thing, honoring my word.

Day after day (technically night after night), I blow a quick kiss to my eldest son when I hit ‘publish’ and whisper, “I miss you so damn much. I remember you every single day. And I do this one little thing each night because I said I would. Because I love you.”

And although it’s a little thing, sometimes that’s the best I can do.

Fire Sprite Rising – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-112)

Expansion of My Yet Again – Day 661

XXI ~ World  – from Tarot of the Crone – Photo: L. Weikel

Expansion Of My Yet Again

A few days ago I wrote a post that described an additional message I received through two cards I chose from my Tarot of the Crone deck. As I was writing my post that night, sharing the astonishing synchronicity of the messages I received on my walk that night with the card I’d chosen for ‘all of us’ the night before, I started pushing up against my ‘witching time’ of having to post by 1:00 a.m. As a result, I chose to leave out a paragraph from one of the card descriptions, figuring it wasn’t as important as the paragraph I did include. Well, that card appeared again today, and in re-reading it, yet again, I feel it’s important for me to create this expansion of my Yet Again post.

I’m hoping you’re allowing my posts on Perception and Yet Again to percolate within your consciousness as this week unfolds. There’s a lot going on in our lives and in the world, and it’s important for us to be mindful of how we’re perceiving it all.

To that end, you may recall that the primary card I chose a few days ago was the World.

I’m getting the sense that it’s important for our contemplation to consider the entire reflection on this card, so I offer it here:

XXI ~ World

I am all you have been

And all you will become

 

I am the exercise

Of your power

 

And the key

To your future

In the World, a large black figure holds twenty-one smaller figures within her. Each of the smaller figures has a face colored to represent the special power she possesses. The face of the larger World, however, is transparent. Through it and haloed around her is the swirling blue and white of a beautiful brave new world. The overall shape evokes a keyhole, outlined in a glow of blue against rich black.

The entry to a new world and your ability to create it, is in giving all that you are a place, Devil and Empress and Fool. Forget none of their lessons. Give up none of your power. Within your World, all of them come together and create a whole more than the sum of any amount of parts. More than a balance, more than integration like some locking together of pieces, when you are all, you are on another scale entirely.”

My Perspective

As I read this card yet again today against the backdrop of so much that we see unfolding in our country right now, it was obvious to me that the highlighted paragraph, above, is an essential component of the process of shifting our perception that we’re being called to undertake. Not only must we claim and integrate the various and unique powers we hold within ourselves, we must also honor, claim, and integrate the unique powers and identities of those with whom we share this planet.

I hope this adds to the richness of your reflections this week.

(T-450)

Devotion

Marking an Anniversary

Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of my eldest son, Karl’s, very sudden and unexpected death. He drowned alone in a hot spring in the No-Man’s-Land of the California desert on the west side of the Chocolate Mountains. He was 30 years old.

I awakened yesterday to text messages from several amazing friends and a handful of family members, each reaching out and assuring me via electronic hugs and tender words that he is remembered. That Karl existed. That he mattered.

Half an hour later I read these kind wishes out loud as my husband Karl and I sipped coffee and looked at each other across the living room, sunlight refracting through cut-glass crystal ornaments hanging in our windows casting rainbow dogs throughout the room. Magic amid sorrow.

Yearning to Honor His Life

“How can we honor Karl’s life?” I asked his father, my husband of 38 years. The answer flashed in my awareness before the final word of my question made its way across the room.

“I don’t know?” his furrowed brow indicating he didn’t want to hazard a guess.

“Yeah, you do. We both do.” I searched his face, my eyes locking with his, knowing he, too, knew instantly. In that moment. As soon as I’d voiced the question.

“Our art?” he asked, doubt dusting the edges of his response.

“Yes,” I affirmed, my heart beating just a little bit faster because he really did know it, too. “Your painting. My writing.”

We just sat there. Looking at each other. “Creation. Creativity. It’s what he was all about. It’s what LIFE is all about,” I added. “And we need to do it without any regard for its ‘worth’ to others. We just need to do it.”

Minutes later, we picked our Medicine Cards© for the day, finished our coffee, and moved forward, silently contemplating what exactly this might mean for each of us.

1111 Devotion – An Act of Power

For me, the cards I chose reinforced the answer to my question. Indeed, they added a specificity that, along with other synchronous indicators I’d encountered within the past 12 days (but only put together yesterday afternoon), resulted in the blog post you are reading right now. My first blog post in 11 months.

Almost always, I choose cards each morning with Karl, over coffee, silently asking, “How can I be of highest service to my self today?” How I came to realize the importance of this question (and how unselfish it actually is, in spite of how it sounds) is perhaps something I’ll address another day. But yesterday, my question was different. It was, “How can I be of greatest service to Karl’s memory?”

I chose Dolphin reversed with Jaguar underneath.

As I will explain, this led me to realize that I am being called to engage in an Act of Power: an act of Devotion, if you will. According to the World Book Dictionary, a definition of devotion is “…3. The act of devoting or setting apart to a sacred use or purpose; solemn dedication; consecration.” Mmm, yes. That feels right.

This blog will be my visible devotion to my son’s memory. My Act of Power. For the next 1111 days, I will create a post. Some may only be a sentence long, for that may be all I can muster. Some may, and let’s face it, almost certainly will, be much longer. The topics may wander all over the map; there is no consistent theme to these future posts, at least from my perspective at this moment, at the outset of this journey. And considering that these posts will take me – us, if you join me – to November 26th, 2021, I probably cannot even imagine the topics that will arise for me to discuss.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am daunted by the discipline this will take.

But I will listen to the message. I will engage in this act of devotion to my son’s memory. And so, I begin.