Blessed Be

Happy Magickal, Marvellous, Magnificent, Merry, Mad Monday delicious lovely!  Mercury Retrograde is done, whoot! (I am seriously doing a happy dance as this time round it really handed my arse to me and brought up lots of sticky things for me to work through!)  Huzzah!  

Okay, we have lots to talk about this week and a new ritual to learn, so make a cuppa come snuggle up and let’s natter!

To all my amazing American friends, Thanksgiving is coming up this week and I hope you take time to just BE, Play, be Thankful and Feel.  For some people family holiday celebrations can trigger all sorts of stuff, some great and some rather challenging. So do remember to breathe, set the intention (we talk about that in the ritual section) of enjoying yourself even if Uncle Tom is being a twat!   Okay, I do have to ask what’s with the Black Friday Sale thing? I appreciate a good deal, but I once went to a Nordstrom on Black Friday and it was insane! People were pushing, shoving, being rude all for $100 off of an item they wanted. In fact I had a little old lady elbow me in the ribs as she shoved past me as she obviously thought I was going for the perfume or whatever it was that she wanted!  Totally terrified me and have never gone to a Black Friday sale in person again. With that being said I do wish you all a marvelous Thanksgiving filled with family, gorgeous food, connection, joy and big laughter and remember Gratitude!

We have a glorious New Moon on Tuesday and I will say I love New Moon time as it allows us to plant the seeds of intention, desire and focus.  Also, remember the New Moon sets the energy for the month, yes? This New Moon is in Sagittarius and brings opportunities to start over, to reach further, and to rework areas of our lives that have grown stale or become unwelcome.  

As Forever Conscious shares: “Since the powerful and heavy October 27th New Moon last month, we have all been working hard to release and work through our fears. With Mercury in retrograde, things from our past may have also paid us a visit or we may have had to confront something that challenged and pushed us. Since this time, we have all been guided to reach deep and to rise into a new strength and a new power. 

Take a moment to identify what this has been for you. Take a moment to honor your lunar journey and think about all you have achieved and all you have accomplished. Whatever has come you have made it through, whatever has been is now in the past, and as we welcome the dark Sagittarius Moon, it is time for us to turn our attention to the next chapter.

The sign of Sagittarius is ruled by the Centaur aiming its arrow into the sky. The Centaur is half-horse, half-man and is a natural healer. It holds a wisdom that it has inherited across many lifetimes and across many realms of the galaxy. This wisdom allows it to aim its arrow in the direction that always supports its highest growth.

Under the Sagittarius New Moon, we can all tap into this energy with ease. We can all tap into the intuitive wisdom that lives within and know the right way to direct our arrow. The Sagittarius New Moon is also abundant and has the power to bring new opportunities or new information to the surface… if we pause, and tune into our own innate wisdom, we will always know which direction to aim our arrow.

While we may not have any control over where exactly our arrow will land, we do get to choose the direction we wish to send it in, and that choice is a power that we will all get to exercise as we begin this New Moon cycle. There are no wrong choices in this life, only lessons and only growth. And, just like the Moon, we too get the chance to begin again, to rise again, and to be reborn again.

There is a healing quality to this November New Moon that will also be our guide. This healing quality asks that we accept ourselves, love ourselves, but more importantly, forgive ourselves. We must forgive ourselves for all we have done or not done. We must forgive ourselves for our perceived failures, forgive ourselves for our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. You are worthy of this forgiveness and giving it to yourself, especially under this New Moon, can free you for the new opportunities that will follow.

It is never too late to change directions; it is never too late to try again. It is never too late to do things differently and to see where it may take you. 

Enjoy the November New Moon for all that it offers and all that it brings, for it is actually the last New Moon of the year.  So this is the perfect time to make your New Moon wishes, or I invite you to work with a different, more visual process for this lunar month.  Have you ever worked with a Moon Bowl? I have been doing this practice or ritual for the last few months and I love it. To find out what you need to do come explore the Moon Bowl with me.

The other week a few people talked to me about Ritual and what I found interesting was their thought that it was highly complex, time consuming and that you needed multiple “special” tools for it.  Hmmmm, I don’t agree with that. Sure you can make it that way if you would like, and there are certainly times that you really want to make it super duper special, but for the day to day it doesn’t have to be that way.  So let me share with you how I view and interpret the word “Ritual” and what it means to me.  

To me a ritual is intention made manifest, it’s that place of connection with the Divine, Universe, God/Goddess or however you chose to name it.  In other words, a ritual takes an idea, thought or emotion and gives it a physical form in the world. So for example when I invite or suggest that perhaps at certain times there are things that you might want to write down, release and burn – guess what?  That’s a ritual.  When you offer a Blessing or a Prayer before eating a meal – that’s a ritual.  When you sit down at New Moon and write your wishes/intentions out, guess what?  That’s a ritual.  All it took was a brief moment of time, paper, pen and something to light a candle or the paper with.  When you gather stones for your Moon Bowl. That’s a ritual.

To me ritual allows your body, your cells, you essence to understand your intention.  Does that make sense? So what makes a mundane activity into a ritual is your consciousness while doing it.  If you are smudging yourself or home, what is your intention? If you are having a salt water scrub shower or bath, what is your intention?  When you light a candle every day when you walk in the door, what is your intention? Remember energy follows intention and attention follows energy and actions follow attention.  Thus, a ritual can be a celebration such as the upcoming Thanksgiving in the States or it can be a practice which can be repeated daily, monthly or yearly. When ritual becomes a practice this allows us to go deeper, to explore all the various nuances and of course as we all know – repetition leads to mastery (think of that daily meditation, exercise, journaling etc).   I guess I am saying is ritual is easy.  Set the intention, let the energy follow it, then the attention, but the key piece is action!  

Try it this Thanksgiving (if you are in the States).  When you are sitting down to dinner offer up a Blessing, a Prayer, some words.  I found a lovely one from Danielle LaPorte that you might like. It’s called Light and Resilience – a holiday or anytime prayer.  

Okay, enough chuntering on.  When I went to the cards and asked who wanted to guide, support and teach this week I grinned like a maniac!  This is the second showing of the gorgeous Blessed Be cards.  How positively perfect!   Now if these cards are new to you (which they probably are), please let me introduce them (as it’s rather rude not to!)  “May these cards and guides offer you ways to enter into deeper appreciation of your life and its manifold blessings.  May you have hope, understanding and kindness. And most of all, may you know deep within your soul, that thou art blessed.”

The crystals that wiggled and jiggled to come and empower you are Amethyst – is a wonderful crystal of protection, prosperity and for helping you manage your emotions so that you can take right action. Morganite – cleanses the emotional body of stress and anxiety, old wounds and hidden traumas, and enkindles lightness within the spirit, as if a burden has been lifted and released.  Snowflake Black Obsidian – helps to draw emotions to the surface and to examine harmful thought patterns. A good choice for past life work, heals old karmic patterns and helps in examining harmful thought patterns.  Some delicious red carnations wanted to add a shock of colour! So there we are!

I do have a super easy and fun little visualisation for you if you want.  This will really help you tap into the energy of gratitude, thankfulness and ritual.  If that doesn’t resonate for you then just gift yourself with a few moments to breathe long and deep.  In through your nose and out through your mouth.  

Did you remember to pick?

Shall we go have a look?

A BLESSING FOR SOLACE AND HOPE

This is a blessing for solace, the comfort that comes in the form of good fortune, strange little moments that bring you back to the sense that the Universe is a place where you are cared for, considered and important, and that this solace bring you hope for the future, and anticipation of the fair things that life will continue to bring you.  

Solace is the balm and the antidote to the wounds that life can deliver.  It is not personal, for being here is a great gift, and we live in times where, in many ways, we are safer than we have ever been before.  But we are fed a diet of hopelessness from our cultures and media sources, until we become overwhelmed with the troubles that seem to surround us.  This blessing is for you to find your way back to sweetness. For the flower in bud to release its sweetness, for you to notice the shimmer of light upon water, the sheer pleasure of movement, the ease of a mind no longer racing over problems to be solved, but soft, intelligent, allowing the calm of life to steal back in to your soul.  

This is the solace that keeps our hopes alive, the gift of good fortune that reawakens the candle of optimism that is within us, and the delight in the sheer whimsy of being here, and being alive.  It is the understanding that there may be little control, but we are no mere pawns in this life – we have our place in the world, and simply with our breathing in and out, we matter, and we are doing enough.  

To find solace is to find peaceful moments, small connections, to notice the thousand gifts life has conferred upon us, and it is to again invoke the divinity of existence, without the fear of the future.  Let hope give you lightness, draw away the pain, and open you up again to the possibilities, until you begin once again to relish the simple voluptuous truth of being alive.

BLESSED BE.

A BLESSING ON YOUR INTUITION

A blessing to create a trusting relationship with your own inner guidance.

In this world, many will seek to guide you.  They will hold a torch aloft and show you a road that they promise you has a destination that is heavenly, or healing, or a home for the spirit in which you be loved, in which you will finally belong.  May this blessing light the torch of your own inner guide, who alone knows the truth of your soul. 

May you begin to sense out what is best for you – without pride, or vain public deliberating, may you just simply connect with a light within, and from that light shine out and with that light – the glowing radiance of your own intuition, the guide of your own spirit – may the road you take be softly illuminated.  May you trust when it takes place, but not force it on another. May your own intuition grow in its light, until it glows bright when needed, and softens when you feel ready to walk steadily into the direction of your own soul. May you trust that you are becoming who you were born to be, and never whom another would make you.  May this intuition not be shaken by mistakes, or misinterpretations, but may you open up the senses you were so gifted with by the Spirit that guides us all, and may your own inner wisdom that will be expressed through that innate gift of intuition be given room to blossom.

May you be taught well, but not attach to teachers of the intuitive gifts.  May you be guided, but never against your own intuitive will. And may you come to understand that the price of walking this way of truth to the self may sometimes be high, but never as high as the giving up of will and spirit and guidance to others.  Let yourself be open to the messages from within, first, and then, allow the world to speak to you, through the filter of your most pure intuitive gift.

BLESSED BE.

A BLESSING FOR GOOD MEN AND FATHERS

A blessing for the men, the good men, who do the essential work for themselves, for each other, for their families, for their communities. 

We need good men, loving fathers, fully flowered in their masculinity.  May you be blessed with the healing of any wounds you hold and hide within.  May you allow yourself to be vulnerable and tender in the care of the young. May you be blessed with the strength of your own untainted power, and open up to the great abilities that lie within you, beneath the muscle and sinew and grit and stoic face you show the world.  

May you be blessed, and be open-hearted in love, intelligent in your alliances, honourable in your agreements, and courageous when you must stand and resist the challenges that may come to you.  May you receive the blessings of opening yourself to your own immense internal beauties, refusing to identify only with the shadow, which swallows so many good men.

Instead, when you meet the darkness within, let it be understood, acknowledged and honoured, healed and transformed, and thus may you turn away from stereotypes and become your true self.  May all men be blessed as they do this sacred work. To every man, may you be a brother, and with every honourable act of care and compassion and protection and nurture, may you be most blessed.  For you are precious to us all, and you father us all. It is not through the bonds of biology, but through the strands of connection, for all men are our brothers. May you show the next men how to father themselves, and thus continue the evolution of our humanity.

To the good men and the good fathers, for showing the many possibilities of how a man can be good, in a very deep, real way, offering us all a well of wisdom from which to drink, a fire of protection and love by which to warm oneself, and the endless love of the sea in which we are reborn, may your gifts to the world return to you threefold.  

BLESSED BE

Well delicious lovely, wishing you a fantabulous week.  Play with Ritual, play with the energy of the New Moon (so gorgeous) and no matter if you are in the States or somewhere else give thanks and bless everything that is in your life.  In my morning practice I always say “ I bless everything I have and I bless my increasing good and good fortune” and then I start listing them. So I might say “I bless my bed and the cosiness of it and I bless my increasing good and good fortune, I bless the sun filtering through the autumn leaves and I bless my increasing good and good fortune.”  Yes? Give it a try and really think of everyone and everything that could do with a blessing. Sending you big hugs and squeezes and butterfly kisses! See you next week.