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Healing with words of gold: The Empress, Kintsugi and alchemy

March 24, 2017

kintsugi

When we draw the Empress, the time has come for change and renewal in the sense that it is the right moment to dare to come out with our ideas, plans and insights.

Tarot as a Way of Life: a Jungian Approach to Tarot, Karen Hamaker-Zondag

The Empress connects us with this new dimension of awareness; for is it through her intuitive understanding rather than through masculine logic that the spirit leaps forth into outer space to connect with celestial insights.

Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, Sallie Nichols

The Empress – Part II

This is the second in a two part series on The Empress tarot card which has been appearing lately in various guises. These posts explore The Empress, her powers and how she is showing up for me right now as a guide.

In the first post, The Empress: vision, creativity and patience, we explored her appearances recently in tarot spreads and the symbolism of The Empress in various tarot decks as an insight into her meaning.

In this post, I’ll be sharing thoughts and intuitive writing on the messages of the Empress to help channel growth in creativity and healing at this time.

Activating heart energy

I’ve been working with gifted channeller and intuitive healer, Amber Adrian for the past six months as part of a transition process to focus on creativity as a way of life. Amber’s Activate program is about switching on your wisdom, power and light more, especially (for me) around creativity.

It’s all about connecting with our higher selves, integrating what needs to be integrated and showing up with what we learn and experience. It’s powerful and healing work, hard to describe, but my role it seems is to put my experiences into words.

In a session recently, guides stepped through for each of us with a message. For me, the guide was a woman with red hair, goddess-like. She was there to help me connect with my heart. She put her hand over my heart. With gold from her palm, she filled in any wounds with gold, so it was like my heart was made new again. She released shadows and energies, removed cords from my heart and filled the holes left by my heart wounds.

And she gave me a special message:

 Your heart is ready, put it on the page.

I am not sure who this goddess or guide is, but I am feeling the energy of both The Empress and Pele, goddess of fire and irrepressible passion who is guiding me this year. I’m feeling the power of both as they appear around messages of vision, creativity and passion. They are a couple of mighty female consorts with transformative energy I can tap into and channel creatively.

The empress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My superpower – writing

The guides in this Activate session also came forward with messages around our superpowers: how we want to be seen as we truly are. This included messages around learning how to mother and care for ourselves.

When anyone has ever asked what my superpower is, I would (and will) always say it’s writing. It’s a strength I rely on for so much: in my work role, in my personal life, strategising ideas, processing pain, capturing beauty and sorrow to experience, move through and on. It’s helped me navigate so much and words are my life-blood and heart.

So it was with a smile of recognition that I heard the words from Amber that the guides were activating channelling gifts as they come through writing. The gift being activated, once I cycle through some layers of self-care, is an ability to sit down and receive writing as a divine conduit to words – “beautiful, entertaining, what’s needed in the world.”

I am blown away by this but it seems right. It means opening up through resistance and fear to this and I note also, requires actually sitting down to write. Important.

Later we are encouraged to let our guides show us where they would like to connect and how – for example, ceremoniously, through exercise, afterwards, when you sleep. Journalling is a way we can do this, asking guides to speak to us or come through as we sleep.

In this spirit work, we need to flex and move through our own paths. The guidance and support is to be accessed. It’s a gift we need to learn. We are reminded:

It’s a muscle like anything else.

Like a muscle, we need to use it.

light person fire

Message in a Bottle

The next day while all this is settling, I receive the ‘Message in a Bottle’ card from The Wisdom of the Oracle deck, in protection position (reversed). This card is all about communication and signs from spirit and guides pointing to your highest good. In protection position, it’s saying:

Don’t ignore the signs. Spirit always has your best interests at heart and will draw your attention to what you are overlooking.

With its image of a telephone in a bottle, there’s a sense of messages coming and not being able to get them or read them. The Wisdom of the Oracle guide book says this is also about allowing yourself to “become fluent in the language of symbols, oracles, and omens.” But in protection position, it’s about maybe not acknowledging signs because they don’t fit our world view. We are tending to want them as we want them. Or we are missing them altogether.

So I’m listening, opening up and working to become fluent in this language of guides, signs, symbols and intuitive writing. It’s natural ground in one way, but the signs are flagging a richer and deeper connection with spirit and channelling of words.

This is welcome but there’s that resistance I can feel around what this means. Channelling, for example, is a concept I am not entirely comfortable with and it seems a big step into an unknown world right now. In my mind, are the inevitable thoughts of “What will (insert anyone you like) think about this?” with all the dark power and shadow that such fruitless thinking can muster.

message in a bottle

Night thought visits

I head to bed with an open heart, inviting guides to speak to me in the night as this seems to be the way I am currently receiving information and inspiration.

In a wonderful interview on The High Priestess podcast, Julie Parker speaks with guide and psychic, Helen Jacobs, about intuition in the most down to earth of ways. This was such a balm for my soul at this time. They discuss how the way we access intuition and information from guides is different for everyone. And it can also change from time to time for each of us. Talk about keeping us on our toes!

The way my intuition and guides seem to be speaking to me now is through what I call night thoughts. They are words, symbols, signs or lines of songs that come through clear as a bell when I wake in the early hours of the morning.

So I wake in the night with wavy haint blue lines that I know from the Spirits card in Marcella Kroll’s Sacred Symbols deck. I know it means that spirits are calling offering wisdom and help. I draw the wavy lines with my finger in the air as I can feel them so strongly.

spirits

I look at the time and it’s 3:13am. Those numbers speak to me too – I’ve been noticing lots of number sequences lately especially 111, but this sequence 313 seems significant so I take note.

I know I will need to get up and write this down so I don’t forget. And I know I need to write. Here is an opportunity to harness the spirit of guides and channel any messages, despite my uncertainty about this. It’s a gift, a present, a presence and a guide. It’s there for me to access and it’s there to help me channel love and light. It’s not all about me it seems.

Journalling night thoughts

I have a Night Thoughts journal – I’ve had it for a while – and I capture all the thoughts that come in the night there. They are so rich. I open the journal and I write this message:

I’m waking you in the middle of the night to say I’m here, spirit, 313, helping you to see and hear the signs that come to you. Ask and you shall see. You need to ask.

(I then insert three of the Spirits wave symbols as in the card above)

The Empress, orange cloak, golden hair, is guiding you. Plant the seeds, heal the wounds, feel the gold inside the cracks, go there. It’s a gift you’ve always had from very young to see and feel the cracks and fill them with gold. The gold in your heart is what can help heal others’ cracks and wounds and your own.

You’re called to help heal, to hold the hands and hearts of those who hurt. In many ways, like a kindred soul, standing in healing, standing side by side, in the trenches of the heart. But healing with words of gold, from your pen and from your mouth.

Number 313

Afterwards I check about the number 313. And what I read again blows me away. Joanna Walmesley of Sacred Scribes explains in this post that it’s an angel number:

Angel Number 313 is a message from your angels that the strong connection you have with the angelic realm and the Ascended Masters is assisting you with staying positive, light and optimistic about your life…It is time to live your truths and express yourself with clarity, purpose, passion and love. Be a positive light to others.

I’m encouraged just like the ‘Message in the Bottle’ to pay close attention to intuition and inner wisdom, that guides are there helping me with the next steps along my path.

313 is made up of the attributes and vibrations of 3 appearing twice. Then I recall that 3 is The Empress’s number also, she who has appeared twice recently in my tarot readings, with 3 linked to creativity, self-expression, talents and skills. Number 1 is about self-leadership, intuition, fresh beginnings and approaches – all in line with The Empress and her messages of creativity, intention and patience. I love the term ‘self-leadership’ and this number emphasises that:

 we create our own experiences with our intentions, thoughts and beliefs. This makes 313 the number of optimism, enthusiasm, communication, creativity and expansion.

Kintsugi

After all this beautiful light and energy that has flowed from The Empress appearing in various guises, I keep reflecting on that palm of the hand holding my heart and filling it with gold. It feels so warm and positive. I know that sense from somewhere.

Then I remember the Japanese art of Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi). A representation of the idea of wabi-sabi, it’s a method for repairing broken ceramic pieces with a lacquer mixed with gold or other precious metals with the philosophy behind this:

to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful than the original.

In a piece on kintsugi, wabi-sabi, the beauty of scars and her son’s repaired heart, Amy Basken says:

kintsugi pieces are prized precisely because they have been broken. They are said to be more beautiful, more unique, and “stronger at the broken places” (to quote Ernest Hemingway)

I’m feeling like my heart is a vessel, a sacred object, cracked from wounds and hurts but healing. As I reflect, I realise there are 3 significant times in my life when my heart fractured and hurt intensely with deep grief, loss and pain.

I feel my heart wounds fill with gold and heal. I’ve had enough suffering from these wounds for now. I can move on. I can communicate the lessons and emotions to help others heal, to feel they are not alone or to acknowledge and honour these feelings as part of moving on.

How often do we hide these wounds and experiences with a sense of shame instead of realising they are what makes us strong, beautiful and able to support others with what we have learned.

Not that we would ask for these experiences. But if they happen to us, Kintsugi and The Empress remind us that breakage and repair, wounds and healing, are natural, not something to be concealed but there to be held up to the light with love. And love mostly for ourselves.

Seek and you shall find…one layer of Truth at a time. Every experience we have in life, even the missteps, and especially the bliss, is a step closer to that sacred radiance. We are all waking up in the same direction.

Danielle LaPorte White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another (forthcoming May 2017)

Alchemy: the power to transform things for the better

I leave the draft to this point overnight, asking for guidance to clarify and make sense. The words that come in the night are:

This is alchemy, you are experiencing alchemy.

Yes, I realise, that’s it. Alchemy: the power to transform things for the better – that would be a relief and something I can work with, a healing thing for me and others. I relax suddenly, snuggling into the warmth of my loved one and cuddling my little stuffed bear in the dark, smiling. I relax into this knowledge, this beauty, and lean into its wisdom, embracing whatever is to come.

Thought pieces

You can learn more about Amber Adrian and her brilliant work in activating creativity and healing at AmberAdrian.com – she is also a fan of stuffed animals and is the most beautiful writer.

Dee at Archangel Oracle – Divine Guidance explores The Message in a Bottle card in more detail. These thoughts resonate on becoming fluent in reading signs and symbols.

For more reading and beautiful visuals on kintsugi and its processes visit:

Kintsugi: the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery

Kintsugi: the art of broken pieces

Image acknowledgements:

  • The Empress card is from the Sakki Sakki tarot deck; others as noted in the text
  • Other images from pexels.com and used according to licence with thanks to the creators.

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The unique voice of what we love

November 30, 2016

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart.

Recently I drew the ‘Bone Collector’ card from Colette Baron-Reid’s The Enchanted Map Oracle Cards.

bone-collector

I don’t know about you but this image evokes lots of different reactions in me. It sounds a little grim and the bones hanging about are a bit confronting but there’s smiling and a sense of richness. My initial  feeling – there’s much to work through with this card.

The overall message of the card is positive and reminds us:

You are whole and have everything you need within.

However, there is a dark side about what is buried and casting shadows. The Bone Collector particularly focuses on life experiences when young and how we can become wounded and feel less than, damaged in some way. The wounds can dive deep beneath the surface. We may not talk about them or even be aware we are acting a certain way because of them. We may feel essentially flawed. There’s a message about the Bone Collector as an inner resource to help us to “reclaim lost or stolen power”.

Speaking up to let love live

Not long after, I was working with Alana Fairchild’s Sacred Rebels Oracle Deck, when this card came to light, developing that same theme:

release the dark wound

This card reminds us:

You are being asked to honour the path of your own love – what inspires you, what feels exciting, joyful and perhaps even rather different? Let that live! Release the dark wounding of false belief.

And a key way this ‘false belief’ plays out is as a tendency to perfectionism where our ideas and thoughts wither on the vine and do not even make it to formation or light. The dark wound especially “demands perfection and denies process”.

What a tragedy of spirit this is.

A way forward is to find the unique voice of what we love, whether it be through journals, poems, speeches, blog posts, conversations, novels or any scribbled piece of the heart. Every word, every piece, should be a fight back, a healing process, a spiritual journey to uncover our possibilities and potential.

And part of this is knowing it is all already within us if we can only be kinder and more trusting with ourselves and let our ideas live.

Discovering our unique voice

The New Moon in Sagittarius is gently beaming energy into these dark places too right now. Mystic Mamma has a fabulous New Moon post which brings together key messages about the moon energy and how to work with it.

The words that spoke to me, reflecting the spirit of Quiet Writing, are from Patricia Liles:

It may also be pushing you to take care of yourself in ways you never were able to see before. Speaking up for those parts of your self that have not had a voice before.

There’s a whole raft of reasons why these parts of ourselves have not had a voice before: time, distractions, pain, fear and dominant discourses where these voices just don’t seem to fit or be heard.

But as Colette Baron-Reid reminds us (via The Enchanted Map #47 Sacred Pool – reversed):

Dimming your light serves no-one

We need to value process and not silence ourselves with concerns about product and outcomes. We need to challenge that perfectionist part of us that won’t let ourselves shine and or even turn the light on in the first place. We need to quiet those voices that stem from ‘comparisonitis’ and feeling envious, less than or better than. You can easily see there is nothing to be gained from going there and there are no winners in this intellectual warfare. So why is it so compelling that we go there, allowing it to deny our unique abilities so savagely?

Time to collect the bones

It’s time to collect the bones and honour them. It’s time to release the dark wound, like returning a fish to water to enable it to swim, upstream if necessary, into the sacred pool where we accept what we love and find a voice for it.

With my natural creativity to guide me at this time, I’m digging deep into wounds and possibilities, knowing that I have so much to give, as we all do. This collecting of the bones is about not being afraid to go there and being able to speak out and not worry about what other people think. There’s been too much silence.

And a key part of this digging is hearing my voice now weaving spirit into words – finding the broken pieces to heal them, holding on to words like fins that can propel me and linking with other kindred souls also now speaking up.

The advice from the Bone Collector is:

Act as if you have what you need and you’ll find you have it after all. Anything is possible.

Even the strength and ability to collect those bones, to honour those wounds and to speak up and in doing so, find that unique voice that others may recognise.

unique voice of what you love

This image is from pexels

Thought pieces:

Reviving the Ancient Sisterhood is an excellent article that came to me via the sisterhood at The Mojo Lab’s Inner Circle. The article focuses on feminine wounding, women’s collaboration and community as a healing force, archetypes, traditions and sacred aspects of women’s connections including equality and mastery of expression.

Psychoanalyst Karen Horney wrote extensively on these issues many years ago including the impact of such dynamics on women’s sense of self. Marcia Westkott’s The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney offers an analysis of this work:

In breaking through the inner fear, in embracing what she has dreaded, the female hero shatters the internal form of her victimization. External shoulds are driven from their internal stronghold, and conscious choice rather than fearful compliance informs her actions. She experiences, finally the extraordinary power of her ordinary real self.

 

spirit-into-words-wings

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