A year ago, I was in a serious financial and spiritual rut and my good friend and spirit brother, Nick, helped me out. He thought it would be good for me to get out of my house in Colorado and visit him in Pasadena for a change of pace. So, I did and it was awesome and healing and everything I needed when I needed it. We took a long walk down Venice beach, rode down Sunset strip, jeered at the Scientology building, visited some awesome museums, bought Day of the Dead souvenirs on Olvera Street, picked up all the minerals and crystals in the metaphysical bookshops, and binge watched Rick & Morty and the Twin Peaks reboot while in altered states. He bought or made me dinner every night and boy did we drink!
We also engaged in a night of ceremony and I had a fascinating experience that has taken me some time to unpack. The experience gave me great insight into my own mind and even now I find at times I come to new realizations about myself and my perceptions.
On the road trip back we stopped in Quartzsite, AZ and touched all the crystals even though was 5 billion degrees and you could cook an egg on the big ones.
Nick was the perfect host. I have great gratitude for all that he did for me last summer. It was certainly what I needed and when I got back to Colorado (we road tripped it back), I was refreshed and able to start everything over. I started working on my magickal practices and getting my shit in gear. I started working with Venus again (I was working with her prior to my vacation) and she provided! By the end of September, I had a new job interview that came out of the blue in a field I never would have applied for on my own. By the end of October, I was working as a contractor making decent money after two years of bad adjunct teaching jobs.
The job unexpectedly took me to Memphis in January for a week, which was quite awesome. I had a chance to visit Beale Street, eat fabulous Memphis BBQ, visit the Civil Rights Museum, and learned how to conduct a 5-day training event for a group of middle-aged men than really just wanted to be at the bars.
The Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, part of the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
Then a few weeks after getting back, coronavirus hit. I’m currently working in one of the very few industries not rocked by the virus. I was still on the books to teach online classes in the summer and fall – all of those courses vanished. While things were drying up elsewhere, I was asked if I wanted to move from a contractor position to a full-time position with the company. Um, YES! I received a raise and a much better benefits package.
This journey is by no means over. I have so much more to do. This job I have now is nice. It pays my bills and keeps food on the table. I find it far more enjoyable than the endless grading of an adjunct. But I also know it’s not my life’s work. It’s what I have to keep my family and I afloat until I’m ready to move on to my life’s purpose work. I think it is coming in this next phase. It’s what I’m working toward now with my research and writing.
My alter to Venus and the Divine Feminine
But for right now in this moment, I am so grateful for everything! For my beautiful partner, Lisa, my brother Nick, and my family and friends who do so much to support me. I have so much when so many do not. I know this. I’m giving back what I can to my community in as many ways as I can think of to help.
I hope everyone reading this is well. If you are not well or if you are caring for someone who is ill, I wish you and yours a speedy recovery.
Sometimes, even in these uncertain times, a little sun shines down upon us. This happened for me last Tuesday evening when I conducted my Aries New Moon ceremony. The New Moon is an eclipse after all, so the Sun plays its part and for me it was the final revelation I needed to put everything together. Everything I’ve studies over the past twenty-five years, all conversations I’ve had, the gurus I’ve listen too, the countless books, the writing I’ve done and the inward journey – it all paid off in a five minute mystical experience where it all came together simultaneously in one magnificent cosmic knowing.
Mystics often state that the experience is ineffable. It cannot be sufficiently related or described in a way that helps others understand it. They are correct. I tried to relay the experience to my partner and found it fell flat. There was just too much to translate in a linear fashion. I know I need to work on the processing portion of the experience a lot longer, but here are the major highlights:
* Each individual is a microcosm of God consciousness. We hold an entire universe in our mind. This is the first principle of Hermeticism – All is Mind. But it was the unquestionable experience of that reality that occurred for me. I know this now, it’s not theory or a quaint view. I know it.
* I attained union with my Higher Self. Through this I understood things like how my intuition works, how magick works, what it really means to be an empath, why my tarot readings have been so accurate and why they go amuck when I freak out. It was like a download of information that happened so fast, I’m still unpacking it all.
* Perhaps the most beautiful part of the experience was the sudden realization of why Venus chose to work with me over the past few month – nearly a year now. It was something I never understood because I never had an affinity toward her before that moment when she stepped forward and made herself known to me. It was out of knowhere that I heard her voice telling me she was the one who could take me the furthest. That night I had sudden and fast revelations about myself that I had never understood before. I intuitively knew I was on the right path with her.
So, this New Moon, I finally realized that she represents the self-acceptance I was missing in my life. All the beauty and love and jealousy and envy and grace and femininity and wrathful anger and the proclivity towards getting in a snit over small things, and divine forgiveness, all these wonderous paradoxes that Venus represents that I refused to allow myself to acknowledge – that was the Great Lady simply reasserting herself in my personal pantheon. Venus is Self Love. She had long been telling me: Know Thyself. It finally all clicked.
I could now with total awareness incorporate these earthy aspects of sexuality, sensuality, beauty, the physical – these things I was taught to be ashamed through experience and hard lessons. All those years of internalization that I was trying to deprogram, just fell away in an instant!
* And finally, your truth is yours. If it gives you energy and helps you grow, then embrace it! If it causes you pain and suffering, then let it go. It’s not as easy at it seems. So many of us hold on to destructive beliefs because we’ve been told it’s the path to salvation. But if you aren’t thriving, you are still in pain, and you are not growing, it’s not be the right path. There is no right religion or belief. Some are more conducive to growth than others. Some are more restrictive. Some are downright harmful. Find something that brings you happiness and light. But most of all, find what helps you to grow in spirit. If it shuts you down, walk away. There’s something else out there that’s better suited for you.
One of the major discoveries I made about myself on my
journey over the past year, is that I’ve always been drawn to the mystical. This
may seem like a no-brainer, but I never thought about it deeply before. I am
aware of my interests while growing up, but I never bothered to follow all of
the crumbs to see where they could lead me. In retrospect, more self-awareness
at a younger age could have saved me a lot of heartache and pain, but I also
wouldn’t be where I am at today if I had made the connections then. The destination
is only a small part of the journey. The fun is in the road trip.
Our Lady of Medjugorje
As a kid, I was first fascinated by the religion I was born into, Roman Catholicism. I was the kid who knew all of the holy days of obligation, collected prayer cards like baseball cards, knew all of the mysteries of the rosary and prayed them obsessively, and I got into Marian apparitions. I even took a trip to Medjugorje, Yugoslavia when I was seventeen years old. The Virgin Mary is alleged to appear there to this day.
When I went to college I started to shift away from Catholicism, though I clung to it for a while. Much of the beliefs and dogma didn’t add up for me anymore. It was a difficult time as I was introduced to so many different religions and philosophies. I felt like I kept having the rug pulled out from under me. I found something that would make a little sense, but in the end, it would always leave me cold. You could say I became a temporary atheist then, though I’m not sure that is entirely accurate. I even called myself a non-practicing atheist because I didn’t know what else to call it. I had no idea what I really believed; I just knew what I didn’t believe any longer. But my spiritual life dwindled to occasionally playing Magic: The Gathering with friends. This mostly consisted of me creating my own decks and watching others play. I was more concerned with certain colors and spells that appealed to me than creating a competitive deck, so I lost a lot when I bothered to play.
Apparently, an entire deck of blue cards is pretty useless.
Philosophy of science and 20th century existentialism
where far more interesting to me than religion during my undergrad years. I
studied philosophy, cultural anthropology, archaeology, geology and paleontology.
These things resonated with me and they still do today. But something was
missing. Even then, I felt a soul-sucking hole in my life and it ached.
I would occasionally try to go back to Catholicism,
but I didn’t feel moved by it anymore and I felt guilty engaging it it. I
stopped going to church completely, which still upsets my mother. But if it’s
not there, it can’t be forced. I didn’t feel any connection with any other denomination
in Christianity either. And it felt like cheating. I didn’t have a beef with Catholicism
in terms of a bad experience, I just couldn’t connect with it anymore. I felt
nothing at all for Protestant Christianity or non-traditional forms of it. It
was the mysticism I felt an attachment for, and outside of Catholicism and
Orthodox Christianity, there’s not a lot of it in the other branches.
When I decided to go back for graduate school, I opted
for a religious studies program that focused on the academic study of religion
rather than a theological approach. It is during my tenure at grad school that
I began to slowly find my way back to a spiritual pursuit. I remember being
asked what I believed and I couldn’t answer the question. I pulled out the ole
non-practicing atheist spiel, which made people laugh, but left me feeling
rather empty.
I also noticed that I’d drift back and discuss my
Catholic upbringing when I would be asked about my religion. I had nothing to
offer in terms of what I believed, so I mined my past. But it said nothing of
what my current beliefs were.
Time went on, I graduated with a masters in religious studies and I procured a few jobs in academia. I still felt no real connection to any belief systems. I felt adrift. Students would occasionally ask me what I believed, and I still couldn’t tell what it was. I knew by then it wasn’t atheism. I started to embrace a form of pantheism, but I wouldn’t classify it as Hinduism or Buddhism. It was more of a scientific pantheism in which there was no real difference between God and the Universe. But for that matter, it might as well be atheism.
About two years ago or so, I woke up in the morning when a desire to find out about the Egyptian god Thoth. I’ve always been fascinated with mythology, particularly Celtic, Nordic and Greek mythology. As a child I was interested in Egyptology (I had a great love for Indiana Jones, I wanted to be an archaeologist), but not so much in the gods of Egypt. I knew them in passing only. So, it was out of the blue that I felt this urge one morning to look up the Egyptian deity of communications, magic, wisdom, the moon and invention. I did what most of us do, I looked up the Wikifile on him.
Thoth and the Crocodile Eater of the Souls sitting behind him.
Which led me to Hermeticism and all of the mythic stories surrounding Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus, the Emerald Tablet and the Kybalion and… here I am today. I quickly started to obsess over the hermetic tradition. I searched the internet for information, bought every book I could afford, bought tarot decks, took classes, and fell in love with everything I learned. Since I’ve been on this road, I’ve experienced magic through a series of synchronicities that I would never have believed if I hadn’t experienced it myself.
Hermeticism gave God back to me in a way I could understand and follow. All of the paradoxes I could never resolve were resolved under this ancient philosophical tradition. I could even reclaim bits of Christianity through the lenses of Gnosticism and alchemy. Divinity wasn’t outside of us, but within us. All religions, understood through the hermetic lens, blossomed with a new comprehension. The ancient symbols of the gods and goddesses, both east and west, revealed their power. The myths and legends from antiquity were — and remain — the magical alchemy that help people, then and now, to understand the divinity within the soul. These symbols, internalized, empower us if we are able to turn them from ideas into action.
Hermes Trismegistus
It’s been quite the road trip to get to this point. I
don’t think I would have gotten to this place right here, right now, had I not
gone through the badlands of confusion, and the climbed a few mountains to nowhere.
Most of us learn our lessons the hard way on a road paved with blood, sweat and
tears. I’ve stopped beating myself up for not understanding it all earlier. We
start to understand when we’re able to and not a moment before. The point is to
be open to that understanding when we are able to grasp it and act on it.
Thoth came to me in a dream and put me on this path. Here I am.
Road Trippin – Red Hot Chili Peppers
“These smiling eyes are just a mirror for the Sun…”
By Tarotmum13 ~ Just a Tarot-mad mum writing about the things she loves - might be Tarot and Oracle cards, might be my little girl, might be crystals or pendulums, might be my cat!
Awakening the Witch 