magical breadcrumbs

New Moon/New Beginnings – Day Twenty Five

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 4 Comments

New Moon/New Beginnings

Of necessity, I am not going to be able to write as much as I usually do this evening. But at the same time, I don’t want to leave you hanging on this whole ‘new moon’ thing that I started yesterday.

And I realize I may very well be talking about stuff you already know. If that’s the case, I hope you’ll forgive me.

Just from my dead giveaway ‘title’ to this post, yes, Virginia, when the moon is ‘new,’ which is also referred to as the ‘dark’ phase of the moon, it is generally thought to be a particularly auspicious time to embark upon new endeavors. New adventures, new jobs, new ideas, etc. It’s not that starting at other phases of the moon is ‘bad’ – it’s just generally thought to be most advantageous or giving the opportunity the greatest chance of success to begin it at a new moon.

And remember when I said last night that astrology is surprisingly complex? Well, just to give you a taste of that, beyond paying attention to the actual fact that the new moon is taking place today (be it December 6th or 7th, depending upon what time zone you live in), true astrologers also look to the sign in which the moon is hanging out, as well as the house of your particular natal chart. Yeah. I do not even pretend to have a rudimentary grasp of this. Yet. But it is intriguing to me and, after decades of relying on someone else to let me in on what all of this means, I’m actually starting to try to get a grip on it myself.

We’ll see. Who knows? By “talking about it out loud” here on my blog, maybe I’ll log the information into the appropriate folds of my brain and one day this stuff will start clicking.

I can tell you that the new moon tonight/tomorrow morning is occurring in Sagittarius, because that’s where the sun is right now – and a new moon is when the moon is lined up with (or ‘conjunct’) the sun and therefore not reflecting any of its light (hence it also being known as the ‘dark’ moon). While the sun moves through the 12 signs of the zodiac every 30 days (or so), the moon moves through each sign every 2.5 days (or so).

And yaaaaaaawn. That’s enough of that.

Some Favorite Astrology Links

So, here I’d like to give you links to two astrologers I enjoy following.

Kaypacha (Tom Lescher) publishes a weekly video called the Pele Report. He gives the technical aspects at the beginning (which still makes my eyes roll into the back of my head – but also makes me want to understand them better), and then he gives an entertaining and insightful explication on how the aspects occurring that week may play out or influence us in our daily lives (and on a global level, when and where appropriate). I find his personality endearing, and I relate to his goofiness all too easily. He knows his stuff, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Chani used to give reports on a weekly basis, but is now giving them on a monthly basis. In order to get the most of Chani’s interpretations of the celestial aspects, it is extremely helpful to not only know your sun sign, but also your ascendant. That’s why I suggested you might want to discover yours in yesterday’s post. I find these interpretations extremely insightful and uncanny at times.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these links. It’s really kind of neat to start paying attention to this information and noticing how it may or may not play out in what you see and feel unfolding in your life.

(T-1086)

 

Astrology and the New Moon – Day Twenty Four

Posted on by Lisa Weikel Leave a comment

 

Esoteric Means of Understanding Ourselves Better

As you’re all discovering day-by-day and post by post (thank you for hanging with me), I’m fascinated by a wide range of esoteric means we humans have developed to help us understand our place in the Universe. I’ve been on the quest to understand myself better since my earliest memories. And of course, the admonition 28 years ago by the Taos Pueblo elder to “know” myself, as I describe in my book Owl Medicine , only clinched that early urge to soul search and gave me permission to translate it into a life-long passion.

Numerology

There’s numerology, which, as I’ve only tangentially touched upon, uses numbers based on a Pythagorean system of 9 to set forth a roadmap of our lives and the various gifts and challenges that our souls have come into this particular lifetime to experience and hopefully learn from and use to evolve.

Astrology

Another system is astrology. I’ve been fascinated for decades by this means of cultivating self-awareness, which is incredibly complicated and is far and away so much more in-depth and rich than the trite paragraph we used to read in the newspaper about our ‘sun sign’ when I was a kid.

At its most basic, astrology takes into account your ‘natal’ chart, which is the exact position of a wide range of heavenly bodies at the minute of your birth, from the perspective of where your mother was at the moment you were born. From this snapshot of the solar system, you do indeed know your ‘sun sign’ – which is the sign of the zodiac in which the sun was located at the minute of your birth.

Discovering Your Rising Sign or “Ascendant”

What many people don’t realize is that, while one’s sun sign can be a somewhat prominent indicator of traits that you carry in this lifetime, an actually more intimate and accurate indicator of who you are is what’s called your ‘rising’ sign – or the sign that was ‘on the ascendant’ at the minute of your birth. So, if you have a chance, I strongly urge you to research and discover your ascendant or rising sign.

One way to do this is to access the free website Astrodienst. (There are many others. I just happen to use this one.) You can either set up an account (again, for free) or just log on as a guest. Either way (under the ‘Free horoscopes’ tab, go to the far right and click on ‘natal chart, ascendant’ under the heading ‘Drawings and Calculations’) you can input your birth information. You’ll need the date of your birth (obviously), as well as the time (and this is important, as some important shifts can take place within minutes), but you can always input a default time until you can secure your specific birth time from your mom (wink) or on the ‘long form’ of your birth certificate. You’ll also need to know your birthplace (city, state, country). All of this information will add up to giving you a much richer, deeper picture of the heavens at the moment you arrived.

The three easiest and most basic aspects for you to discover are (a) your sun sign, which you probably know already unless you live under a rock; (b) your ascendant or ‘rising’ sign; and (c) your moon sign. Just knowing and delving into those three aspects of your personal astrological makeup can bring you an incredible amount of insight into yourself and how you ‘tick.’

What I find fascinating is how every form of roadmap that our souls have created for us to discover and work with, if we choose, matches up. In other words, when Alison Baughman gave me a comprehensive numerological reading years ago, it dovetailed in truly eerie and profound ways with every astrological reading I’ve received. (All told, I think I’ve had three or four separate astrologers read my natal chart for me, cultivating decades-long relationships with two of them, which means I would go back to them periodically to have them read my ‘transits.’)

I’ll talk about transits another day.

Roadmaps of Our Souls

My point, though, is that no matter what roadmap you look at, they all pretty obviously chart the same unique challenges and gifts. So it is as if we (as souls) leave cosmic magical breadcrumbs for our ego-selves to discover, in order to help us understand our strengths, weaknesses, and potential destinies, should we have the desire to discover them.

I started this post intending to discuss the fact that we will be experiencing a ‘new moon’ tomorrow and what that might mean for each of us. And then I got sidetracked into writing what I wrote.

But! The good news (for me) is that I just now realized that the new moon actually won’t ‘arrive’ until 2:20 a.m. EST on Friday, December 7th.

So maybe I’ll save what I was going to say tonight until tomorrow!

(T-1087)

Day Nine (T-1102)

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 4 Comments

Moose, Moose, and More Moose

In my post yesterday, I described how I interpreted receiving “Moose2” the morning after publishing my “Devotion” post, the first of 1111 posts I’ve committed to writing as an Act of Power and devotion to my son Karl.

And I pretty much focused upon the words I shared yesterday as the essential point drawing Moose was telling me.

So that was Tuesday morning: Moose2 .

IMAGINE my surprise, then, when I made the following choices the rest of last week:

Wednesday:    Moose/Mouse. (Again, the way I’ve written that means I chose Moose as my main pick – and that can be the top card, from the middle, wherever – by ‘top’ card I always mean the main card I consciously felt was the one I wanted to turn or pull out and look at. And Mouse was on the bottom. Literally. The bottom card is always the bottom card.)

Thursday:       Moose/Mouse. (And again, I chose these cards in this specific configuration after Karl had shuffled and made a fresh pick of his own that morning!)

Friday:            Moose/Fox.

Coincidence? Naah

Seriously. Choosing it a second time (on Wednesday) was cool. I immediately just took it to mean Spirit was giving me the aforementioned ‘pat on the back’ for having slogged out a post Tuesday night and published it before the stroke of midnight, even after getting home close to 10:00 p.m. after a really long session at work.

I’m pretty sure I glossed right through the text that morning, possibly because Karl had to leave earlier than usual and I suggested he just get on the road without me having to read it to him again, especially since we’d read it just the day before. (Yeah, we cut corners sometimes.)

With Mouse underneath, I just sort of took it to mean that I was doing well keeping my commitment – and paying attention to the details. Or maybe it was writing about the details. I wasn’t sure, but I did somehow feel that the Mouse was pointing to the fact that the Moose was related to acknowledging the discipline I was exercising in getting the act of writing and posting done.

After choosing it for a third day in a row (on Thursday) we started joking that the card ‘must be bent.’ But it wasn’t.

I had chosen it as I ran out the door for a very early (i.e., crack of dawn) appointment with a loved one. So yet again, Karl and I didn’t ‘read’ our cards until later in the day, when we were safely home in the midst of that very surprising, slippery, and deep (!) snowstorm that hit us.

Reading It Again

Once we were home together again, though, we felt it important to read our cards out loud, paying special attention to my Moose, since it had made a third appearance.

It was only then that I realized Moose was not only giving me ‘atta-girls’ for following through with my commitment, but was also confirming those leanings I’ve started sensing within myself about changes that may be coming as far as my focus in life.

First of all, reading further into Moose, I felt I was being given additional specific confirmation that the whole blog commitment overall is on target:

“The wisdom woven throughout this scenario is that creation constantly brings forth new ideas and further creation.”

That seemed to me to confirm the initial ‘hit’ I’d received about both of us needing to actively engage our creative pursuits as a means of honoring Karl’s life.

More Breadcrumbs

Then I realized as I read further, that perhaps my recent musings on ‘elderhood’ were – again – breadcrumbs leading me forward:

“Moose medicine is often found in elders who have walked the Good Red Road and have seen many things in their Earth Walk. (…)

The elders are honored in tribal law for their gifts of wisdom, for their teaching abilities, and for the calmness they impart in Council. (…)

If you have chosen the Moose card, you have reason to feel good about something you have accomplished on your journey. This may be a habit you have broken, a completion of some sort, an insight on a goal, or a new sense of self that you have fought hard to earn. (…)”

And then the final paragraph of Moose ‘upright’:

“One good exercise in Moose medicine is to write down things that you can love about yourself and your progress in life. Then apply these same things to friends, family, coworkers, and life. Don’t forget to share the findings with others. They need the encouragement as much as you do.”

Spelling It Out

Wow.

Nothing like having it written out before me!  The encouragement to pursue this grand 1111 Devotion, and to realize that I might be starting to walk the path of an Elder. And best of all, that I would be doing it not for myself alone, but to share with each one of you who is choosing to share this journey with me.

Wow indeed. For then I received Moose yet one more time (on Friday). The appearance of Fox underneath emphasized, to me, that this is an act of creativity that is forcing me to allow myself to be noticed. I may seem like I’m cool with talking about all of this, but trust me, I feel naked.

Finally, I want to be clear: I do not think of myself as an “Elder.” If anything, I am on the cusp of Elderhood. I suspect those of you who keep reading may witness a transformation? I don’t know.  I hope so. I guess I feel like I’m a “Cuspy-Crone.” Mmm. Sounds delicious.

Following the Breadcrumbs – Day Five (T-1106)

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 4 Comments

Following the Breadcrumbs

Following is a glimpse into how I sometimes use my journal to put together the seemingly random pieces of information and messages that cross the threshold of my perception.

Last Sunday, shortly after choosing my “cards for the day,” I found myself writing in my journal about the epiphany I’d just had as to how I could honor the memory of my son Karl’s life by engaging in a creative devotional practice – in my case, writing blog posts – “for at least one year (but perhaps 1111 days?),” I wrote. Just the thought of that made my stomach drop.

Where in the world did that cockamamie idea come from? Turned out I’d happened to accidentally click on a post by Seth Godin earlier that morning that had something to do with doing “it” 1000 times. And “it” was writing a blog post.

Seth Godin’s Advice About 1000 Posts

The full title of the post? “The first 1000 are the most difficult.”

“For years I’ve been explaining to people that

daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful

habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the

act of writing It is clarifying, motivating,

and (eventually) fun.”

 

The date Seth’s blog landed in my inbox? October 31st. Why had I saved that post? And why had I just clicked on it that morning?

Yet Another Clue, Another Breadcrumb

As these connections gained clarity in my mind and I started writing them out in my journal, this happened:

“AND THEN – just NOW (I swear), I couldn’t remember Seth’s last name as I wrote the above paragraph, so I looked in my gmail. Couldn’t find what I’d accidentally clicked on this morning (about the 1000) and I wondered if I deleted it. So I searched “Seth” (to get his last name) and the blog post that appeared first and quite prominently (because its title was at the top of the page, and in bold, because I hadn’t read it) was from November 8th and was entitled “If What You’re Doing Isn’t Working.”

“No shit. Seth’s Blog:

“If what you’re doing isn’t working:

Perhaps it’s time to do something else.

 

Not a new job, or a new city,

but perhaps a different story.

 

A story about possibility and sufficiency.

A story about connection and trust.

A story about for and with

instead of at or to.

 

Bootstrapping your way to a new story about

the world around you is one of the most

difficult things you’ll ever do. Our current

story was built piecemeal, over time, the result

of vivid interactions and hard-fought lessons.

 

But if that story isn’t getting you where you

need to go, then what’s it for?

 

It’s entirely possible that the story we tell ourselves

all day every day is true and accurate and useful,

the very best representation of the world as it actually is.

 

It’s possible, but vanishingly unlikely.

 

What if we search for a useful story instead?

A story that helps us cause the change we seek

to make in the world, and to feel good doing it.

 

If you can’t solo bootstrap it, get some help

to install a new story.

It’s worth it.”

After writing this out in my journal just as I did above, I wrote: “Ummm, wow? And as I look back on the search results I see that the “1000” blog post was sent on October 31st. Why in the world did I just see that this morning?? And HOW DID I MISS THE ONE I JUST QUOTED VERBATIM?”

I Have to Give Karl Credit

“Yeah – maybe this is Karl’s way of getting through to me? Asking me to engage in a daily DEVOTION that, by honoring it and my devotion to him and HIS creative life, will open me up to honoring myself and my creative life.

Perhaps this is a new approach to MY story? Is it possible that I just followed some magical breadcrumbs?

If so, THANK YOU. Thank You, Karl, Spirit, my Guides and Guardians. Now please, please help me harness the discipline to engage in this devotion. Hmmm, maybe that’s why JAGUAR was underneath my contrary Dolphin this morning!?”

And that is the way I use journaling to help me follow the magical breadcrumbs in my life.

**It is 11:57 p.m., so please forgive this not being my best effort!