Ten of Pentacles/King of Cups reversed. Today I may be thinking about the gifts that I have, and what I would like to do with those gifts. I have learned from Crowley that wealth has a tendency to gain inertia as it is compiled and socked away. If we hoard too much of it, or if we don’t force ourselves to create something else with this wealth, the same way that fertile soil sprouts new life whether we seed it ourselves or allow it to sprout naturally, stagnation ensues. I need to allow myself to listen to the needs of others and I need to prevent myself to become ambivalent towards the energy flows around me, and to my own Inner Voice; with connection to and awareness of the world around me, stagnation will never happen.

My Thoth Card is the Five of Swords. Crowley calls this card Defeat because the energies associated with this Five of Swords is not sufficient to maintain the truce attained by a balance of power that is the Four of Swords. There is the potential for a quarrel today of some kind, but perhaps if I keep in mind the messages of the other cards, I will be able to use the energy of the conflict to clear the air and allow new balance to appear.

My Legacy card is the Ten of Swords. This card actually shows what happens when we allow the complete victory of the intellect that is represented by the Nine of Swords. All has been killed, and with way more than enough application of Will. This could be my own fault, and I need to be certain that I am not focusing so much on challenges that I loose sight of the calm and peace that are also present.

What an interesting 24 hours I have had. I spent yesterday connected with the energies around the Sacred Mists First Degree Initiation Ritual, which took place yesterday afternoon, and connected to the thoughts and ideas that are always the manifestation of the union of separate and complete beings that is a Pagan Brain Trust meeting. All this came to a head as I crossed over the Driscall Bridge and headed into the salt marshes around the Raritan River. I put on some nice drum meditation music, and allowed myself to connect with my subconscious as I drove past the greens and yellows and oranges and browns and blues along the Parkway.

Almost instantly, Danu appeared to me; she hugged me and kissed my brow in welcome. She had a message for me, a topic to ponder: fear. She explained to me that I needed to think about fear, because it was fear alone that would hold me back in this life. Not inability, not lack of skills, not insufficient power, but fear. Danu explained that she was not encouraging me to be foolhearty by any means, but rather She was encouraging me to overcome fear and to not allow fear to prevent me from experiencing whatever this life presents to me.

I understood exactly what Danu was referring to, for I was driving down to Cape May to spend the rest of the weekend alone in our cottage, planning to sleep in the back bedroom to see if Miss Pauline joined me again, without the reassurance of knowing that there were other live, physical people also in the house. To add to the Halloween-like atmosphere of the weekend, we are in the middle of a nor’easter storm, with wind-driven rain, stormy gusts that will be pelting the windows with leaves and twigs at unexpected moments throughout the night. LOL, not an issue in broad daylight, but I find that I am easily freaked out during the depths of night when I hear strange noises. Danu was encouraging me to trust myself, and to trust my ability to protect myself.

She then leaned Her face close to mine, and for a moment I was lost in Her intense blue eyes; then She leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. A jolt of power shot through me, as if there was a live electrical wire along the inside of my spine. This was the second time Danu had kissed me on the mouth, the first being during a Full Moon Esbat. This was not a sexual kiss, and neither was the first one, although part of my response both times was sexual because the energy She gave to me woke up all of my senses, every one. Then, she was gone; leaving me to my thoughts.

As I drove, I thought about that jolt of energy, and I thought about the fact that I sensed Her energy from deep within me. I realized that what She had sent through me was energy of the Sacred Feminine, and the energy that I felt from Cernunnos (who has never kissed me) seemed to affect me more toward the surface of my skin, with manifestations that were more “of the senses” and represented the Sacred Masculine. Not only did I have both energies within me along with the ability to sense them both, but I could access either or both, if I chose to. At this point, I knew that I was going to be emailing a copy of this journal entry to Mystery, for Mystery has an uncanny ability to connect with and manifest the energies that are Sacred Masculine, not male energies in a gender sense, but active and outer, and she easily manifests her Will through the Sacred Masculine.

I thought for a while about these equal yet opposite forces that I see as sacred. It was only natural, as I drove along and viewed the glory and beauty that is the Pine Barrens and salt marshes of the East coast of New Jersey and the effects of the Fall and the cycle of the year upon Nature, that I brought my thoughts less toward my specific issues and more toward the dynamic balance of equal yet opposite energies that is Deity. It was then that I had an “Aha!” moment, one of those earth shattering awarenesses that one of the Pagan Brain Trust members calls an “information download from the Cosmic interface” and that I see as a momentary awareness of the Machinery of the Universe.

For about an hour, it seemed as if all was clear. The Universe was made of energy, and that energy was either male or female, yin or yang, active or passive, outer or inner, emitting or receiving. Whenever those opposing forces connected, the resulting burst of energy, exploding like the effect of uniting matter and anti-matter, created the seeds of life. All life. All kinds of life, from rocks and stones and crystals to the higher entities we know as angels and guides and Goddess and God. Nothing stupendously new here, folks, but all of a sudden I felt the rightness of these ideas down to my core. I understood how they work, and why they work.

The next step was a natural one for me today. I began to think about those opposing forces and the concepts of “good” and “evil.” Yes, I understand very well the concept of power being neutral, and of the power of intent to shape power towards good or evil, but today I really understood that any entity who uses power for good or evil is just that, an entity, not a god. That means evil entities can be overcome, as can good entities of course. But somehow understanding with my core that it is not the energy or the life force of the entity that is good or evil, but instead it is the intentions that are infused into the energy by the Will of the entity that are good or evil is empowering. Typing that here, crystallizing the concept enough to memorialize it here, is empowering.

My words are not coming close to describing what I experienced, for I experienced these concepts not in words or even images, but rather I experienced them in feelings within me, through dissonances that shifted slightly to become harmonies and thus made connections within me. I feel as if I have tapped into something here. LOL, J, I may end up emailing you and asking you to read this blog entry, too.

Knowledge is power, fer sher, but we can’t just have the knowledge. We have to wear it, like a new pair of shoes, until the knowledge conforms to our individual mind, body and spirit, so that our “astral antibodies” don’t reject the information or destroy it or see it as dangerous. I think I am being told that I must once again face my fears; it is only by facing them that I can defeat them. And LOL, my Shadow Work with Mystery tells me this as well.

“Astral antibodies” . . . hmmmm, J, what do you think?

One of the things I planned on doing when I got here was my yearly clean-and-protect spell, which I do every year at some point just before or just after Samhain. Especially because I plan on sleeping in the back bedroom tonight to see if Miss Pauline is still in the mood for company, and as I am alone in the house (and I am needing to deal with my fears), I decided this was the weekend to spiritually cleanse any negativity and protect the house.

My spell was simple, but I think the simplicity added to the fact that it was not choreographed makes it powerful. I got a cup, put some kosher salt into it, and blessed the salt in the name of Earth. I then lit some incense and allowed the fragrance to move into the cup and blessed the spell in the name of Air. I then lit a sunflower scented tealight and allowed the heat and fragrance to fill the cup and blessed the spell in the name of Fire. I then poured water into the cup and blessed the spell in the name of Water. On the way out of the house in Hackensack, I broke off a small sprig of the nightshade that grows inside the yew by the door (the one on the right side, power); I dropped this sprig into the cup and declared that this brew would repulse negativity. Then, I broke off a small piece of the sap you sent me, and declared my authority to perform this cleansing and protecting ritual.

I blessed the brew in the name of the Goddess and God, and then stirred it 9 times in a clockwise direction to attract the good, 9 times in a counterclockwise direction to repel the not-so-good, and 9 times clockwise to empower the brew.

I then went to each room in the house, starting with the attic. I sprinkled some of the brew into each corner, starting with the North, saying each direction out loud and connecting with my Elemental Guardians, plus sprinkled above and below (saying the words). Then I said out loud something similar to "In the names of the Goddess and God, I declare that all entities who are negative or who have ill intent must leave now! All who are here in the name of love and with harm to none may stay. This house is attractive to love, and repulsive to harm, and protected. So mote it be!"

I repeated this in each room, and then I went outside and walked around the house, sprinkling the brew along the perimeter of the house. Again I stated my intentions out loud. I finished the working by lighting several more sunflower scented tealights, and in honor of Miss Pauline and all who lived in this house before, I put some "African Spa" oil into my simmerer.

The whole house is toasty warm because I have the fireplace lit, and the fragrance of the candles and the oil are throughout the house as well.

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