manifestation

Halloween – Day 1084

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Spooky House! – Photo: L. Weikel

Halloween

My family was in a pumpkin carving mood this year and I’m the richer for it! I adore the look these translucent gourds bring to our old house. We look the part of the spooky haunted house for Halloween. Bwahahahah!

I’m simply going to offer the bounty of carvings that were created this year to entertain you in your morning perusal of my post.

My Contribution

My job was roasting the seeds that we extricated from the pumpkins. Yum. It’s a simple task, actually. First, of course, separating the seeds from the stringy orange innards, then rinsing them in cold water. I then line a cookie pan with foil and spray it with olive oil. I spread the seeds out onto the pan and sprinkle either sea salt or Spike on the glistening seeds. I’ve occasionally been known to sprinkle cayenne pepper on them as well. I put them in the oven at 350 degrees and roast them for about 10-15 minutes. I then stir them and flip them and swirl them all around, and then pop them back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

While I know they’re absolute calorie bombs, I’ve been sneaking them nonetheless. There’s something inherently powerful in the act of ingesting something that’s filled with the potential for growth and new life. It feels especially powerful to both eat the seeds in a sacred manner (i.e., when not sneaking them), consciously focusing your awareness on the creative energy latent in that tiny package, and engaging in this deliberate ingestion of energy at the time of the new moon.

How powerful (and delicious) it will be to infuse whatever projects, ideas, or intentions you set at this new moon (arriving this Thursday, November 4th) with the power of Mother Earth’s pumpkin seeds.

One Other Thing

Finally, please don’t forget to join me in our one small act to counteract the effects of climate change. Yes, believe it or not, November will be upon us in the blink of an eye. Don’t forget to engage in the Essence of Perelandra (EoP) Biodiversity Process sometime during Monday, November 1st. It’s only five minutes (at the most) out of your life and yet it promotes our unique relationship with and awareness of the forces of Nature and manifests an intention to keep it all together and functioning in balance by counteracting the effects of climate change.

Wishing you all a sacred Samhain.

T’s Cauldron – All photos: L. Weikel

(T-27)

Pre-Full Moon Pick – Day 1039

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Three of Wands – Tarot of the Crone

Pre-Full Moon Pick

Even though I’m technically writing this on Wednesday night (15 September 2021), it won’t be read until Thursday. So I feel comfortable choosing a card for us to contemplate in this post in anticipation of navigating the last few days of our week and into the weekend. Let’s call it a ‘pre-full moon’ pick.

As we experience the energies building up to their fullest expression on Monday (the 20th), when the moon will be full in Pisces, we might want to bear in mind the counsel of the card that shows up.

Next Week

Actually, next week will have a lot of energy associated with it, even from a very basic astrological perspective. I don’t mean that to sound high falutin’. Trust me, I’m still wrapping my head around the new and full moons, equinoxes, solstices, and eclipses – which are all fairly big, bold, and obvious. My point is that there are lots of aspects taking place ‘up there’ (or is it out there?) and I’m just trying to alert us to the more obvious ones.

On Monday, as I mentioned above, the moon will be full in Pisces. If you gave yourself the gift of sitting down over Labor Day weekend (around the new moon) to contemplate the changes you wanted to make or the seeds of new ideas or directions you wanted to plant, well… two things.

First, there are few more days left to still take some steps, big or small, toward cultivating those seeds. And that’s only if you’re on a 30 day plan. If what you want to create has a bigger agenda, then perhaps you’re on the 2.5 year plan. It’s still a wise choice to take stock and assess whether you feel the pull to actively take a few action steps over the next few days to make your dream grow.

Besides the full moon, the second big energetic shift next week is the autumn equinox. This will occur at 3:21 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday the 22nd of September. The equinox is another time of powerful upshifts in energy. My suggestion is to continue cultivating those seeds, and if possible, pay them some extra attention that day. But until then, we have our work cut out for us. Let’s see what my beloved Tarot of the Crone suggests.

A Card For Now

Three of Wands ~ Magic

“I set my intention                   In sacred space

I touch Creation

Together we bring into Being

What has not Been                  Before now

Three glowing red snakes arise from a cauldron fired by three yellow flames. Spirit moving in the realm of creation is magic. Magic is the manifestation of intention and the infusion of energy into matter. Magic is recognizing what you have given in what is coming back to you. Now you see how it works. So take your tools, your intent, your ingredients and your container. Bring everything together as artfully as you can, weave and sing your best. Then let it go and sit back, for if you keep your focus up forever, it means you lack confidence, either in your power or the creativity of the universe. Give it time to give back and space to bring forth. But not before you’ve given all you have.”

Seems about right.

(T-72)

Major Impetus – Day 1000

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Prize for Reaching 1,000 – Photo: L. Weikel

Major Impetus

Is something magical going to descend from above and cover me like a blanket of feathers* after I hit the ‘publish’ button tonight? Will my attitude toward my 1111 Devotion – or my writing in general – undergo a transformation once I hit the 1,000 club? I ask these questions because a major impetus behind my decision to embark upon this Act of Power was a blog post I read by Seth Godin.

As the title of that particular post implies (“The first 1,000 are the most difficult”), Seth maintains that reaching the milestone of writing 1,000 blog posts can make a huge difference in how a person perceives themselves. Understandably, this shift in perception can also significantly impact how a person approaches their concept of themselves as a writer.

My Attitude

I will admit that hitting the 1,000 mark is a bit of a stunner. It’s amusing to me that 995 posts ago, I wrote an explanation how finding Seth’s post about ‘the first 1,000’ felt like a message to me. I’d asked how I could honor Karl’s life, and in particular his creativity, and this showed up in my face. The weird thing was, I hadn’t even read it when it first arrived in my email a week or two earlier. I only saw it that morning because I accidentally clicked on it in my email.

Suffice it to say, it seemed at the time that I was getting a major nudge to wake up and pay attention to what was (and wasn’t) ‘working’ in my life. And if I found my attitude or circumstances wanting, then I needed to change my story.

Celebrating 1,000

In reflecting upon the impetus behind choosing to write 1111 consecutive posts as my ‘devotional’ Act of Power, I looked up the entry in which I described how I arrived at that number. (I remembered the part about the power of 1,000.) What I forgot, though, was the appearance of the other Seth Godin post: the one that spoke of the power of changing your story.

I feel yet another change in my story approaching again. Perhaps I will plant that seed in some way tomorrow, both in honor of attaining the dramatic 1,000 mark and also to take advantage of the powerful new moon in Leo. This 8th day of August 2021 promises to be a powerful day of manifestation.

It might behoove us all to contemplate our stories. Do we wish to change them? Now might be a great time to begin.

A Prize From Above

Finally, as Spartacus and I walked this evening on the freshly macadamed road along our usual path, something beautiful caught my attention.

The way in which this feather was standing at attention in the midst of tall grasses, its shaft gently nestled amidst the new pavement was curious. I don’t know how I caught sight of it. But there it was.

I’ll take it as one of my beloved signs. I’ll trust that perhaps the time is coming to change my story yet again.

What a ‘Random’ Gift – Photo: L. Weikel

*I just realized: I DID receive a feather! Ha!

(T-111)

Best Easter Egg EVER – Day 160

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Karl’s egg 19 April 2014 – Photo: L. Weikel

Best Easter Egg EVER

I’ve always loved Easter.

The memories I have of Easters growing up are not whizz bang affairs. In fact, it’s funny – when I think back, as I sit here, trying to decide what memories I might share that could convey why my heart always seems to lift when I think about Easter, I realize how magical my thinking was…even back then. It wasn’t necessarily the literal stuff of Easter that I loved, it was what lived in my imagination.

I loved hunting for Easter eggs. Oh my goodness. Not the public hunts, put on by schools or churches. The hunts I cherish are the ones that took place in the living room of the farmhouse I grew up in.

My brother Henry is 16 years older than I. My mother would let him go out to see his girlfriend (and eventual wife), Diane, on the night before Easter only if he promised to come home and ‘help the Easter Bunny’ hide the hard boiled eggs I’d dyed that night.

The Hunt for the Eggs

I swear that was the best part about Easter. Finding the eggs that The Rabbit hid (as she came to be known in our household – Karl’s and mine – as our guys were growing up) was a challenge that had the potential to occupy me the whole day. Inevitably, there would be one or two eggs that were so well hidden that it would literally take me hours to find them. Sometimes my brother (if he could remember) would have to play that game of “warmer” to help me.

Truth be told, I think he probably had no recollection of where he’d hidden them and was only sending me on a wild goose chase anyway. At least a couple eggs over the years weren’t discovered until months (or perhaps years) later. They were completely desiccated by the time they were accidentally found, so who knows how long they’d excitedly waited to fulfill the dream of all true Easter eggs, of being reunited with their colorful siblings, only to wither away, forgotten and alone? Yeah. Sad.

The magical thinking that really made Easter special for me, though, is the image I’ve always carried in my head of the true Easter Rabbit. For the life of me, I don’t know why the thought of this creature didn’t scare me, especially since I cannot stand people in costumes or masks. I think it may be because I had such a sense that “she” was in fact a real Rabbit – just larger than normal – not a person dressed up as a bunny. But…wow.

The Reason for My Connection to ‘The Rabbit’

You’ll never believe it, but I just realized that on some level, my sense of and connection to the Easter Bunny was a precursor to the literal experiences with power animals that I would start having some 25 years later. (I’ve honestly never thought about it in this context before this moment. Wow.)

Another reason Easter is a favorite holiday is because I was born on Easter Sunday. So periodically, over the years, my birthday would again fall on Easter. But it always felt special, somehow, that I’d managed to arrive on that day (even if the day was nearly literally over by the time I arrived).

And I’ve always been partial to all the other babies (bunnies, chicks, lambs, pansies, robins, ducklings, piglets, daffodils) that abound in the springtime (hence, Easter-time), too. Indeed, even at church (raised Catholic), the concepts of death, rebirth and ascension appealed to me.

Anyway, it’s always felt like Easter was ‘my’ day – no matter when it fell on the calendar.

The Tradition – and Magic – Continued

Growing up, my kids knew my delight in Easter, and hopefully shared it, too. I’d even commandeered my eldest son, Karl, to help ‘The Rabbit’ hide the eggs for his younger brothers a couple of years, just like my mom had recruited my brother.

So imagine this: On April 19, 2014, my two adult sons (and Tiffany – who was meeting us for the first time!) were indulging me by coloring eggs on ‘Easter eve.’ I’d placed a pristine white egg in a cup of boiling water with red and blue food coloring and a dash of white vinegar (purple being my favorite color) and just let it sit. I wanted to see just how deep a hue of purple I could make this egg.

After it sat in the dye for quite a while, I dipped my tablespoon into the cup and raised it to the surface. The egg was covered with random bubbles, but it looked like it had ripened to a really deep and satisfying purple. I placed it carefully in the cardboard egg carton with all the rest.

We Could Feel His Presence

Mind you, this was two and a half years after Karl had died. He was, as he still is, thought about and talked about frequently. But we were especially reminiscing about prior Easters with him as we introduced Tiffany to our traditions. We could feel not only how much we missed Karl but how much Karl was missing us.

Imagine, then, our goosebumps and stunned expressions when I picked up my purple egg and looked at it carefully. Not only was his name clearly written on the egg, but it also looked like it was written on a background of stars. And even more amazing, the letters of his name actually look like his style of printing. Random bubbles?

As we’re fond of saying: YCMTSU.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Springtime, Happy Rebirth and Renewal.

Believe.

(T-951)

P.S.: We love you, Karl. And again, a hearty well done on that manifestation!