The Scarf Witch

I haven’t written anything on this blog for a while  – in no small part due to the absolute tornado of insight and synchronicities and guideposts to what I’ll just call “home”.   Actually, quite recently, I realized I don’t have this lingering feeling of a “half remembered truth”.  For so much of my life, I thought I’ve always felt that there was knowledge I was missing – like a fuzzy memory of a dream that you wake up knowing you touched something so core to your being and yet none of the details form in your mind.   

I don’t know exactly when it happened, I just remember realizing and feeling so much gratitude that I have aligned with my journey. 

So how to start describing what’s been happening?

In May, I signed up for and went to a weekly “Modern Shaman” class from a healer a friend recommended.   By this point, I had started to shave down some of my fear and start to see what I can only describe as a “5D vision” – that space of non-judgmental presence and surrendering to the lived experience of this precise moment of “now,” while feeling safe in understanding that I am not attached to the moment.  An incredible ecstasy started to exist in being able to fully exist in the moment and yet be non-attached to any component or outcome.  I had also been diving deeply into the I Ching, knowing at the time that I was going to use it as a cornerstone of my magical practice.   I would understand the trigrams and how they worked together as agents of change so deeply, that I could start to use them not only to divine but to manifest.   I was elated when I found an author (William Douglas Horden) who has spent his life studying the I Ching and references shamanism and magic, even dedicating a book to understanding the hexagrams as talismans. 

So back to May – when I knew I really needed to do this Modern Shaman class – the only thing really stopping me was some strange idea I had in my head about the word Shaman and thinking it was specifically related to some closed practices I did not belong in.   The universe was sending me a different message, though, and I needed to proceed.   I went in allowing myself to experience each of the moments void of judgement – and boy do I have a connection to the divine.  It is humbling.  I, personally, would get very vivid visions through the journeying.  It helped so much to understand that I could go with where my mind took me.  So often in the past, I would listen to guided meditations and I would end up skipping ahead before the person on the recording would guide me somewhere.  There was something about what this teacher said that made me relax into where ever I was in whatever moment.  It is the active of flowing that allows it to continue to flow (that’s what I’m finding, at least).  It almost doesn’t matter – the discerning can happen later.

In fact, I realized, I was opening myself up so much that it was time – it was time to think through some serious protection.  Protection for me before was too attached to the fear, and now that I was taking the leap, I knew that I need to at least protect myself.  It was caution, not fear. 

Coming up on one of the classes, I envisioned this (what I called) the “Oak Tree” – something where I could employ a 4 part process of: clearing what does not belong to me, protecting me from that which is not meant for me, grounding me to the world of matter, so that I may open to the world of spirit.  I have developed this further and may make a separate post about it – but the important part here is that especially after that, I was seeing this “shamanic tree”/”tree of life” everywhere.    I was even getting signs pointing towards Norse mythology and spirituality, but I just had a block there because (quite frankly) I was associating it with Marvel Comics. 

The universe is persistent, though, and skip forward a bit, and while I was researching deity work, along with a little bit of an obsession with Etsy – I came across two readers who caught my eye.  Both of them identified 3 goddesses that they received I should work with (each received more – but there were 3 in common).  Now, I can explain this away in all sorts of ways, but I am also committed to living the “symbolic life,” and chose to see the synchronicities in it.    Turns out two of these goddesses have asteroids that line up in my birth chart in a spectacular way (one on my moon, which is also where my south node is, and one on my Sun).    I am still getting to know both of these goddesses, and what is worth at least mentioning now that they (the goddesses) agreed on which one I needed to work with more closely right now.

And that goddess is Freya.   And oh my gosh how I am finding how much she has been in my life.

I knew I had a lot of Venusian influence (I am a Taurus after all), but my Venus resides in Aries, which is where I always thought I got some of my fire.   The goddess of love and beauty but also war and death – this makes a lot of sense.  I need to flow more into my “feminine” energy, though – for some reason, for me, it takes me deeper into a connection with the divine, and starting to get to know and work with Freya is really helping me to do that.    And it all seems like it has aligned to this moment (I love moments like this) – within Freya’s story, there is witchcraft and shamanism – a world tree and from what I am finding about Seidr magic so far – well, nothing has aligned so much with how I understand the universe since I studied Buddhist principles for a bit. 

Very shortly after my formal introduction to Freya in this lifetime, I realized I needed to learn runes.    I started it like I normally start anything I’m gobbling up – I created a spreadsheet. When I saw that there were 24 runes, in 3 groups of 8, I also was convinced that I would learn their meanings and line them up with the trigrams (8 images, each consisting of 3 lines).    I quickly learned that this is not the way to learn the runes (at least not for me).  For as much as the I Ching images are very much archetypes of the universe, and there are scholars who have translated and interpreted the texts, the runes seem much more “essence” driven. To put it in I Ching terms, the I Ching itself is yang and the Runes are yin.   The I Ching are the agents of change – the potential of movement, and the Runes are what is – the material.

So – here I am – with 5 tabs of different rune books on my kindle reader in chrome – going through each rune to pull the essence.  When I did this with Fehu – it really started to form together – where I understood why each of the books was forming seemingly different conclusions about the same symbol.  I was forming a ‘Name’,’Phrase’,’3D Esscence’, ‘Wisdom/5D essence’,’Shadow’,and ‘Shadow Fear’.

I’m sure my thoughts and assumptions will change as I make my way through the 24 runes.  Uruz was harder to come by, but I got something, then I’m still not quite clear on Thurisaz.  So this morning, I decided to pull one to see what I should contemplate today, and it was Raidho.  When I pulled it, I immediately heard “enjoy the ride.” So here I am, contemplating my journey.  Understanding that I am traveling through a symbolic life – constantly surprised at how much I can dance to each and every moment when I listen and align with the rhythm of now.