Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Guides and Planets, Temptations, Hermits, and a Cup

I did an exercise in which I tried to pair my spirit guides with the planets, and came up with this:

  • Odin: Mercury, possibly Saturn?
  • Bison: Earth, possibly Saturn? (Note: association between Bison & Odin, too.)
  • Dragon: Jupiter
  • Apollo, Great Bear: Sun
  • Buddha: Outer Planets
  • Anima/Bel: Moon, Venus (and Sun?)
  • Cernunnos: Mars

Interestingly, I had trouble placing Saturn. And I wonder if I should get a 'fetish' for Carnunnos? I have one for all the others (except technically Apollo, although theoretically someone is making us some symbols...)

I have an idea to ask a guide for their 'big message' once per night for the next six nights. Something I could perhaps repeat on a weekly basis.

I then decided to do two readings, one for Odin and one for the Anima. In both cases I did the reading last night, and the meditation this morning.

Odin

2 of Double-Vajras <- Mara -> The Middle Path (Temperance)

A tricky reading! Odin is shooting for the deeper lesson, since I already know he wants me to work on Mere America more. My first guess at this deeper lesson is this: fear can lead to two errors: dividing your time between too many projects, and trying to moderate and temporize your writing habits too much. Writing is something that you cultivate with daily practice, but when the inspiration starts flowing, you don't cut it off. Ok, and I think the plan I'm hatching (to work on different projects based on the moon phase) is a good shot at that.

The meditation: I spoke with the Old Man of the Delta; we sat on the top of his little tower and watched lights in the sky. His message essentially was: Don't allow your fear of not finishing the book interfere with your spiritual connection when writing & revising & marketing it. It WILL happen, in its time. Relax and allow it to do so.

Anima

9 Vajras <- Hermit -> Ace of Double-Vajras

Fascinating -- this is almost exactly the same reading as I got about a month ago, which led (in meditation) to associating the Hermit in the tower with the Old Man of the Delta. The Ace of Double Vajras is different (it was originally the Father). Interesting, since I'm specifically asking my Anima, not Odin, who I normally associate with the Hermit.

In meditation, I spoke with the Hermit in the Garden of the Anima. He showed, just as before, how allowing myself to try and bear the weight of the world would only lead to age and death. Instead, I need to let the gods bear the weight. The Ace of Double Vajras (Ace of Cups) was a huge chalice of water I drank from, and I felt the deep connection and love flowing between all of us there in the garden.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Garuda

I was doing a reading on relationships -- specifically with Emily, since she threw an email-fit this evening -- and setting boundaries. She asked me to do her a big favor, trying to downplay the size of the favor in her email; I refused (reasonably, I thought); she got snippy. Alison advised me not to answer again, or try to argue, or justify my position: I was in the right and I should simply act that way. I felt she was right. In doing the meditation, I felt called to think about what I really wanted from relationships in the future. Messages in the past have indicated that I have been too accommodating, self-esteem too low.

Cards:

Garuda of Double Vajras -> 10 Jewels (Cock) -> 9 Lotus (Sacrifice)

The Garuda is an animal guide of healing, destroying evil monsters and the like. The double vajras are water, but the Garuda is obviously a creature of the air. ... The 10 of Jewels is about the 'cockiness' or greed that comes from material satiety; and the Sacrifice is cutting away something that is of value.

In meditation, I felt drawn to the Forest of the Horned God. At the base of the World Tree, wooden steps rose in a spiral around the trunk and ended at a sort of tree house poised right above the tallest branches of the surrounding forest. The tree house -- the residence of the Garuda -- was semicircular, rather like one of those huge flat fungi you see growing out of the sides of trees. Structurally it was basically a big semicircular porch with a wooden home in the center of it. I didn't see much of the house (though it seemed to echo Odin's World Tree home in some ways -- wood and glass and brass, elegance and comfort, airiness. The porch appeared to be of some kind of stone, decorated with precious metals and stones in some kind of astrological pattern, like an astro chart carved into the porch.

The Garuda was tall and dressed elegantly in red, and looked like a man with vaguely animal features -- a beaklike nose, deep eyes, and a sense of profound comfort in his own skin. He offered me tea (a nod to the watery associations of the Double Vajra, he said). I asked him about my issues, and he said that as I get closer to my ideals of life and profession (10 Jewels), my relationships will change profoundly; and I'm going to have to give some of them up (9 Lotus). As in today's fracas, it's going to be a matter of me not acting the way I used to, and that rubbing some people the wrong way. There's going to be uncertainty about the right thing to do. But there is always a source of guidance: the Earth -- and in particular, calas, stone. He reminded me that when I first got the question from Emily about the favor, I immediately felt like it would be wrong to say yes. I wanted to help her, I wanted to help Fiona, but these desires were operating against my intuition. This intuition is my rock, my connection with the Earth.

When Mara cried to the Buddha and said, "What gives you the right? Who are you to claim this mantle of enlightenment?" the Buddha touched the Earth, his mother, and the Earth spoke up for him. In the same way, if I keep one hand on the Earth, I will not go wrong, even if my universe of friends is upended.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Novelist and Linguist

For this evening's meditation (April 4th), I wanted to know what I could do to make sure my two careers were on track. I have no strong ambitions for my linguist career right now, other than to make sure I continue to give Yap everything they need in the fastest and best way I can. I have a vague sense that my career track with Yap isn't all that secure -- after all, as a linguist I've been laid off twice now -- so I'm trying to ramp up the novelist career in the background, so that it will be there when / if I need it.

So tonight I did two readings & meditations:

The Novelist.

Where does it need to go? How can it get there?...

I feel definitely called to work on Mere America, and yet the sales are quite stubbornly failing to go anywhere -- it's not unrolling effortlessly. What needs to happen?...

I know how it feels when things unroll effortlessly. It happened with Alison. I've got so much stuff going on in the sky now, all this energy -- and I feel like perhaps I'm blocking it or something.

Reading:
9 of Vajras <- Hermit -> The Father (Heirophant)

In this deck, the Hermit is 2 figures, the Old Man and the Monk. The Old Man looks & comments towards the 9 Vaj, and the Monk towards the Heirophant.

9 Vajras (swords) is traditionally a nasty card, the dark night of the soul, the despair that comes from loss of all hope. The Old Man leans that way. I'm not sure what part of myself that represents, unless it's the part that is afraid to quit my job, or afraid that I will never be a successful author. I'll meditate there. The 9 vajras in this deck is a snake eating the sun and moon, which may echo the 'eclipse' imagery I got back in Feb.

Meanwhile the Monk is looking towards the Father. The feeling I get here is that the Father energy is something I'm very comfortable with, that I have no problem bringing to bear on the problem. Witness for example the email I wrote to KL this evening, in which I gave her 'fatherly' advice about her writing services. The question then is exactly what the Monk is up to. ...It seems like I might get to visit the Hermit again in meditation. :-)

So that's what I did. I returned to his tower in the Forest of Branching Paths (which I'd first visited last summer, when I was working on that whole 'deserving success' issue), and he introduced me to the old man first. The old man was old because his energy was spent moving from task to task, never setting his burden down or allowing the gods to carry it for a while. It ran him to age and thus to dust. Definitely a warning. :-) The alternative: the monk (who was a young man, dressed in red, with black eyes dotted with stars), who has infinite strength because the gods do his heavy lifting. It's a matter, he said, of taking the time to rest, recharge, and allow the gods space to work.

He showed me a doorway that led to a room where sunlight was falling from high, high above. This room was at the bottom of a tall tower. All up the sides of the tower spiraled a wooden staircase, and I started climbing it. I climbed forever and ever... Flying wasn't going to work. At last I arrived at the last place I expected -- the top of the tower mentioned in this meditation, the Man of the Delta. Everything was pretty much the same there, but now I understood it to be a very 'high vibration' place, at the same level as some of the other landscapes I've been visiting recently (more on that another time). My sense was that I should visit this area more often, and work with the two men here (who I now understand to be reflexes of the "two" hermits in the tower below).

My big take-away is to allow the father energy, Apollo's energy, to work through me. With rest, exercise, and meditation, the energy will flow and everything will unfold the way it should.

MAN I feel so much better after doing that!!

The Linguist.

Then I did the meditation on Yap. I expected the readings to be related, so I did nothing to wash the older energies away, but went directly to the new reading.

Buddha of Double Vajras <- 1st Sermon -> 5 Jewels

The pictures give an impression of the discerning teacher between two options -- the Buddha of Double Vajras, which is a watery father figure that I often instantiate, and the 5 Jewels, which I take to be myself dragged down by stress and toxins (as usually happens after a research conference). Yap's greatest purpose is for me to help people with my watery goodness, which I take to be linguistics here, while not allowing it to drag me down. The 1st Sermon (in which we talk about release from attachment and the 8fold path) helps us out here. It's a matter of discipline, but more deeply, a matter of breathing life / spirit into the work.

In meditation on this I was pulled immediately to the Bear's temple, which I felt moved to relocate: I realized that the place it was planted was basically unhealthy, and had too much rot and disease in the forest around it. Not sure what can be done to fix that, but in any case I felt a better place for the temple was directly over the Bear's original cave, on the grassy sward! So now the bear has her own temple right over her home. An excellent place to go and feel the Bear's energy there. Again, rather than getting action steps, by connecting with the energy I felt that the direction would be shown when the time comes. I just need to connect more. I can instantiate the Bear (especially in its fertile / protective aspect) for Yap by maintaining my connection to Spirit, and acting as Yap's connection when necessary.

As a result of these, I was definitely inspired to work on regularizing my daily schedule and doing more exercise and consistent sleep and meditation.