Carol of the Woods

Rocks are slow moving spirits and they are all Elders. Rocks may seem cold and unfriendly but they’re not. You just need to be patient until they speak. The most talkative Rock Elder I know lives next to Grandmother Ash and, when the light is just right, he has a human face. I often look at him when I sit under Grandmother and he gives advice occasionally. He tells me to work slowly to build what I want. Be steady and firm in the basics so that the imagination and intuition can wander wherever they want and always have a safe home to return to.

I often get so involved chasing one idea after another that I neglect the foundations of my life. I have to remind myself of the plans I’ve made and check to see if the current glittering idea that’s caught my imagination’s eye is part of the plan or a diversion. Diversions are important too, but they can be a lot like cotton candy; delicious and fun, but not very nourishing.

Rock Spirits are about stability, building foundations slowly, home, and safety. If you suddenly find yourself attracted to rocks, you may need to pay attention to these areas of your life. If you’ve always been a rock hound, then honor the Rock Elders by giving thanks for the guidance and balance they’ve brought to you throughout your life.

I’ve changed the name of my blog to match my domain name but the address is still the same. I added this blog as an afterthought to my main site, so I gave it a different name and tucked it away in its own directory thinking I wouldn’t give it much attention. To my surprise, the blog turned out to be the area of the site that I love the best and all my energy goes into it, so I’m rearranging things a bit. I’ll be slowly moving the content of the other part of my site into the blog so I’ll be able to take better care of everything.

I wanted to mention, too, that my old host was so awful that hardly anyone was able to leave comments and I’m delighted that so many of you are leaving them now, but I’m still figuring out how they work! So if you posted a comment and it never showed up it was probably stuck in the spam filter. I’ve just now noticed that some of them get caught there, so I’ve released them and will check it more frequently.

Our crazy neighbor has been very quiet since the shooting incident two weeks ago, but we heard more gun shots from his yard tonight. Our house is several hundred feet from his, so we’re safe enough here but it’s still unnerving after what happened. My husband is seeing about registering an old handgun that’s been in the family for so many years that it never had any paperwork.

Thank to you all for posting here throughout this mess. You reminded me that were sane people left in the world, and that was extremely important to me.

I’ve had The Animal-Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews for two years but never worked with it much. I’m not very good at Tarot card reading. It’s never clicked with me. I’m better at runes. Anyway, with all the excitement from last week still percolating through my mind, I’m doing a lot of Rune work and some Tarot work trying to get a better perspective on things, and the Animal-Wise deck is helpful.

I work with animal spirits a lot in my particular form of witchery. They speak to me very clearly and I have several totem animals. From working with them and the cards, I see that my Big Ally (who shouldn’t be called upon unless my life is in danger) has been on patrol. And I think he was an appropriate response to the situation, but now it’s time for my more rational Allies to take over.

Reading after reading has pointed out that I’m out of balance and that’s my real danger now. So, I’m working very hard to follow my old routines even if I don’t feel like doing them. I’d rather be out patrolling our property like a wolf, but I’m doing all the mundane things that keep my life on-course. It’s time to leave that extreme level of guarding to my helper spirits while I move on with my life.

One of the most comforting things about being a witch is the many different tendrils of reality that I’m now aware of. They give me a sense of expansion when I’m calm enough to feel them. When I’m frightened or angry, I lose touch with the tendrils, contract into a hard ball, and strike like a snake. I’m sure that’s a survival reflex and it’s awfully hard to uncurl from. I’m learning from this experience that calmness can be a form of defense, too, when all your senses are relaxed out to their farthest and most sensitive reach. This relaxed but alert mindfulness takes much more control than tightly focused protective postures do, but it makes you aware of so many more possible options in any situation that it’s worth the effort.

Here’s what Clarissa Pinkola Estes says about expanding our outward feeling senses in Women Who Run With the Wolves:

The Power of the Haunches

What constitutes a healthy body in the instinctual world? At the most basic level — the breast, the belly, anywhere there is skin, anywhere there are neurons to transmit feeling — the issue is not what shape, what size, what color, what age, but does it feel, does it work as it is meant to, can we respond, do we feel a range, a spectrum of feeling? Is it afraid, paralyzed by pain or fear, anesthetized by old trauma, or does it have its own music, it is listening, like Baubo through the belly, is it looking with its many ways of seeing?

This week I’m listening through my belly and looking with all parts of myself.

Just when I thought this thing couldn’t get any weirder, they dug up the dead horse. Our neighbors have a backhoe and buried the horse in the field right where it fell when they put it down Sunday. Tonight, four days later, they dug the poor thing back up and cut off the broken leg. I suspect they want some sort of proof of what happened.

We’ve lived here nearly twenty years and the neighbors with the horses were here when we moved in, but we’ve hardly ever talked. Everyone is like that around here. We wave to each other, but that’s all the socializing we do. So, I don’t know for sure what’s going on. I’m very curious, but this thing has been so stressful that I’m wary about what might come next.

I’m finally coming to terms with what happened sunday and why I felt such guilt over it. I was assertive and something bad happened, and that triggered all sorts of old programing from my childhood. My father and mother always required that I be “nice” no matter how I felt. If I was not nice, there was hell to pay. That was, in fact, not a very “nice” thing for them to do to me, but that never occurred to them.

For the last three days, while my rational mind told me that the horse’s death was not my fault, the very irrational five year old who still lives inside of me knew it was because I’d demanded my rights in a “not nice” way. Today something finally clicked back into place, though, and I’m making a slow recovery. I think it started with the biker’s key chain I found in the garage.

I’ve been cleaning out the garage as a form of physical therapy, hard work to take my mind off Sunday’s disaster, and I used the biker’s key chain I found to hang pepper spray from my belt loop. (The pepper spray is for the neighbor if he shows up again.) Then I attached my keys and they gave my walk a sassy jingle. Next I added a tool belt to hold my box cutter and other implements of destruction and garage maintenance, slipped on leather work gloves, and topped it all off with a cap. I caught a reflection in a window and I do think anyone would pause a bit before they approached that person. She looked so serious, and well armed, and butch. I like the look very much and think I’ll keep it. (It turns the husband on, too, as an added bonus.)

The dark gray dappled horse who lived across the street was killed yesterday, and it was my fault.

It started with an argument between another neighbor and me. Back in my woods, I was drawing wildflowers and the neighbor’s children were hunting mushrooms and disturbing my work and the flowers. I asked them to leave our property. Their father came at me screaming. This spot in the woods is my place of power, and I was sitting on the ground and very centered. His screaming didn’t move me or scare me and that made him more angry. Still I sat there, unmoved and this enraged him. He finally left, went home, and started shooting his shotgun.

No one knows exactly what happened next, but one of the big beautiful workhorses suddenly had a broken leg. The neighbor who owns the horses suspected the shots caused it somehow. That neighbor had to put down his beautiful horse. It was horrifying to see and hear. I had called the sheriff to report the angry confrontation that ended in shots fired, so the neighbor who owns the horses was able to confirm that part of my story and added his own.

I caused this chain of events to happen. There are oats and apple slices on my Epona altar today.

I suspect that the least used part of us is our most powerful tool. The crayon drawing in a scrapbook, the half forgotten rhyme, the steps to a dance that are left behind, these things are still part of us even if they are seldom remembered.

I sing my spells, and I sing them badly. My voice warbles, not in a good way, and, well, let’s just say that my singing clears the room of cats in a jiffy. I don’t talk well either. I have a slight stammer when I’m the least bit excited, and words and phrases come out backwards sometimes. My voice is the least used part of me, and I think that’s why it works so well for spell casting. My sound, my song, since it’s not extroverted, is introverted. It’s been buried deep within all my life, and that’s where it received power.

Like a river that’s been traveling underground, my voice picks up and carries along the deep mysteries of my inner self. Exposing these mysteries to air crystallizes them and sends them streaming, spinning and humming, out into the ‘Verse. I’m not sure what happens after that, but something always comes back and it’s always just what I need.

Standing tall and asking for what you need with your most hidden part is a very feminine approach to spell working. It calls upon buried resources that are only cultivated where there is no light. It’s a bit like learning to write with your left hand when you’re right handed. It might feel awkward, but using all of yourself bonds your consciousness into wholeness.

Seven horses are watching me type this. Well, not really, but our neighbor added four more to his herd and I can see them out my window right now. Three blacks, two dappled grays, a paint, and a red pony. Five of them are big thick work horses and the ground rumbles when they go for a run.

When my other neighbor came over to give me my misplaced mail yesterday, I asked him what he thought of our new neighbors. All seven of them were in a field about twenty feet away from us, and my neighbor looked over his shoulder and did a double take. He hadn’t noticed them. Seven huge colorful beasts that shake the earth when they go for a romp, and they do romp, and he hadn’t noticed them.

All my life, I’ve been trying to show people like my neighbor what is right over their shoulder, and it hasn’t been working. Like an insane person, I’ve been doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. So, sadly, it’s time to cut them loose.

After the callous remark made by one of these emotional flat liners that severely blocked my creative flow, I’ve been letting some people go from my life. It’s been difficult. They don’t want to go. But now I see that I’ve not been doing them any good by trying to drag them along beside me, and the time has come to let my own boat float as it will.

I want to thank all of you who responded to my last post. It was good medicine to hear from other sensitive souls who are also doing work of the heart. You are all rare and beautiful, as is your work. Bright blessings to you all.

If you work from your heart, the work you produce will be good. That’s always been my way of thinking, but someone made an insensitive suggestion about my creative ability that has me hesitating and stumbling over all of my artistic intentions.

Nothing brings a creative journey to a cold dead stop more than when someone you’ve let into your inner circle criticizes the work of your heart. Work that comes from the center of the soul is what it is. It might not be perfect to some ways of thinking, but if the intent is genuine, the work is worth creating and sharing with the world. Honor it for the truth it expresses. Never coldly critique and dismiss work of the heart, no matter who’s work it is.

The heart is like a child and will quickly befriend anyone and I need to be more mindful of who I let near mine. My intuition warned me about this insensitive soul, but yet I offered her friendship because I’m nice. Too nice. Here’s a wonderful quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

“Although the sweetness can fit into the wild, the wild cannot long fit into the sweetness.”

My wild self took one sniff of this person, snarled and bared its fangs. My too sweet and too civilized self ignored that inner warning growl, and a callous comment crippled me like a bird with a broken wing. I’ve healed a bit. I’m stretching my wings by expressing my innermost thoughts here, and wolf spirit now guards the gate to my heart.

I’ve moved my blog to a new host and lost my blogroll. I’m trying to get the links back but the old host is hard to work with, which is why I moved, so it’s not looking good that I’ll be able to retrieve them. If you were in my blogroll, or want to be there, please comment and I’ll add you back. :)