2022 Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Farewell to 2022

My intention as I write this post is that it will be read, or at least received, in the early morning hours of December 31, 2022. I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog lately and, more specifically, the relationship I feel with you, my (very cherished) readers. Some of you I know personally, but most I may never meet – face-to-face, at least. Yet in spite of that fact, I do in fact feel a bond with you. I miss the connection we cultivated over the years of writing (and you reading) my 1111 Devotion. Suddenly I felt an overwhelming urge to reach out and bid farewell to 2022 – and share it with you.

I was walking in the golden slant of late afternoon sunshine, drinking in the balmy temperatures, weirdly unsettling after last week’s hellacious deep-freeze, when a fox raced across a field right in front of me. A Great Horned Owl hooted twice in the forest to my right, just as the sun dipped below the horizon. A lone Screech Owl whimpered its forlorn call from its perch close to the cliffs, long after the light of dusk had darkened to midnight blue.

Each of these encounters felt intimate and sacred. I know, on the mundane level, that these creatures could not care less about me. Indeed, if they were even aware of me, they undoubtedly wanted to escape my gaze as quickly as possible. (At the very least, I know the Fox started hauling ass across that field as soon as it made eye contact with me – an electric moment that I must admit was palpable.) But living in the mundane world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Beyond the Mundane

And I guess that’s what made me think about this blog in that moment. In each of those moments of connection with the wild, to be honest. Sure, there’s the mundane way of approaching our lives. It’s rote and mechanistic and borders on tragic. When I contemplate how most people live lives utterly devoid of magic (and often deliberately so), I want to cry.

If you’ve read my posts for any length of time, you know I’m not referring to the hocus-pocus brand of magic, although there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, in my opinion. Rather, I’m referring to the ‘magic’ of imagining a deeper relationship with the Beings with whom we share this planet. Yes, I feel creatures might show up in my world to urge me to pay attention to something in my life. And yes, I like to think there are invisible threads of connection between all of us – and we all ‘show up’ for each other, one way or another, when we need each other the most.

Time to Show Up

So I decided it was time for me to show up in your in-box (or Facebook feed or whatever) again. It’s time for us all to prepare for another set of seasons, another round of planting intentions, nurturing them as they take root, cultivating their growth, and watching them flourish.

But before we can expect those intentions to thrive, we need to clear away the hucha (heavy, unrefined energy) we accumulated from last year. Even if we had a banner year of mostly wonderful experiences, there’s no escaping the energetic dross that’s circulating in our collective environment. From images (and personal experiences) of war and the atrocities being perpetrated in the Ukraine and elsewhere, to the everyday revulsion our souls feel when realizing how much hate, fear, misogyny, racism, and just plain awfulness is in plain view, right before our eyes, being inflicted on each other, every day. Sometimes it’s almost too much to bear.

A Sweet Ritual to Let Go

Here is something I’ve done with family and friends, and which I feel honored to share with you. If you’re so inclined, pick up some fresh rosemary at the grocery store today. A sprig for each person in your household is perfect. Tie a ribbon or piece of colorful yarn around each one if you seek a festive look.

Pair up (but you can always do this to yourself if you’re welcoming the new year in in solitude) and take turns gently caressing the rosemary from the top of your partner’s head to the tips of their toes. Your intention, which you set at the beginning of this exercise, is to ‘sweep’ all the hucha from their energetic field surrounding their body.

Once you’ve done this for each other, if you have the ability to do so, burn the rosemary and watch your hucha go up in smoke. You are now cleansed of the energetic detritus of the past year, ready to embrace 2023 clean, fresh, and eager for new beginnings.

If you can’t safely burn your rosemary, I suggest either burying it or, as a last resort, simply throwing it away or composting it.

What’s most important is your intention to lovingly sweep clean your partner – and equally important – for you to willingly release your hucha.

I bid you a fond farewell to 2022.

Sunset 30 Dec 2022 – Photo: L. Weikel

Ace of Swords – Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Clean Our Slates

2022 has arrived. We’re embarking upon an opportunity to clean our slates, begin anew, and re-set our internal aspiration-clocks.

So much has changed in our personal and collective worlds over the past two years. More, if you start counting at the 2016 election. But the last two years, dominated as they’ve been by a pandemic of the body and a pandemic of the mind, have brought us to the brink – right now – where many people are beginning to crack under the pressure.

I’m concerned that we’re on the precipice of experiencing a pandemic of the spirit.

Wasteland

I’m reminded of the foundational card I chose on our behalf last week from the Tarot of the Crone. I chose the Shadow of Wands – Wasteland. What could be more awful and feel more like we’re living in a wasteland than when we feel unheard, unseen, and misunderstood? Not much.

I look around and try to listen to what’s being said and the pervasive feeling that comes through is hopelessness. And when we lose hope, we lose our vitality.

As we enter this new year, how can we avoid lapsing into despair? Is there something we can focus upon or learn that can help us reclaim hope for ourselves and our world?

A New Perspective

Asking these very same questions of the tarot deck I used last week, I received the following answer: Ace of Swords/The World.

I have to smile when the cards seem so on point in responding to my query. I promise you, I let the questions in the paragraph above flow out of my fingertips onto the page. I then picked up my deck and shuffled with the essence of the questions filling my heart and reaching out for guidance. And as stated above, I chose the Ace of Swords – and the foundational card was The World.

This looked and felt familiar to me, so I did a search of all my posts and – lo and behold – I discovered that I actually chose both of these cards at the same time back on 31 August 2020. Two months before the election. The only difference was that The World was on top and the Ace of Wands was on the bottom. They’re switched now. But how incredibly fascinating that these cards have shown up for us – together – before?!

I was completely surprised when I read the prior post and saw that I’d chosen the word Perspective the day before! What are the chances that we’re revisiting all of these ‘issues’ again? Given the present state of affairs? The chances are huge. That it’s playing out for us all to see in the cards is especially affirming, and even more concerning.

For Your Contemplation

Perhaps we’re being shown the way to begin healing ourselves and our world (especially our country). Showing up as they have, together again, these cards are at least worthy of our contemplation:

Ace of Swords ~ Thought

“In my Sight/ In my Mind/ Is the Power to Perceive

The One or the Many/ Worlds of Creation

A great blue eye shines with stars within and reaches out to a piercing point. The Ace of Swords, the root power of the Mind is Thought. See now with fresh eyes. Hear with new ears. Perception is a power not to inhibit or to take lightly. Strive now for lucidity. Foresee what may be and speak your truth. Settle for nothing less than original thought. What is your vision? It is time to share what you see, what you know. Let the world not be diminished by the lack of your voice.”

XXI – The World – Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

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 fact of the larger World, however, is transparent. Through it and hallowed 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 Take

I didn’t initially intend – tonight – to choose another set of cards to help us answer those questions that arose spontaneously. Hence the hour has grown late.

But it bears noticing that the repetition of these cards together is certainly synchronistic.The approaching anniversary of the insurrection feels essential to observe as well. And the fact that we just entered into the year of the mid-term elections feels significant too.

We have to figure out a way to come together.

Here’s to 2022.

(T+24)