An Oracular Practice.

Revival, reflection and revelation through writing.

Writing helps me ‘see’.

That is one of the reasons why writing is such a powerful practice for me. It opens my psyche, attunes my senses to my inner world, and to the paths of the Unseen.

I have been remiss in my practice… with myself, with you. With the delicate dance between fingers and keys.

It feels awkward at first. Not only the attempt to collect cohesive thoughts from the dusty corners of my mind, but the act itself: placing myself before my sliver-stickered Mac, hands hovering over the keypad awaiting that magic moment where thoughts become concrete.

Practices—be they mental, emotional, or spiritual—must also be physical. Our bodies are required to act as intermediaries between the Unseen and the seen. Whether that is being a bridge for mystical forces to move through us, a specific personal commitment of mine, or if we want to change or establish a new pattern or habit between brain and body.

Neurology, biology, biochemistry all come into play as the mechanics of human magic when we set our souls out to engage in life, to create.

We are the alchemy! The transubstantiation of confusion to clarity, pain into poetry, trauma into skillful means, and love into action. That is the philosopher’s stone sought by magicians through antiquity. How we live, move, love, and the impressions we leave on those we love, and those who are loved by them. Therein lies our immortality.

This is literally why I write, why I think our stories matter. They are not self-indulgent whims. Our stories are nothing more and nothing less than the fabric that weaves our humanity into the tapestry of time. Though we may be here for what feels like an interminable blink, the slow unfolding of our story roots us into this reality.

So, what do I do when I am not writing?

In my mind—when I am being less than gracious to myself—I am wasting time. Time in which I could be engaging my purpose, and telling stories. In reality I have been engaged in important construction projects for my home, projects that increase not only its beauty (reason enough), but will also make it more energy efficient when winter inevitably assaults us in what will likely be mere weeks from now.

I sense storms coming. They gather on the horizon as I sit ensconced in my little tin sanctuary. Thunder rumbles as I type, but I sense another sort of rumbling as well. Winds portending uprisings and upsets.

What do they call a prophet in her own home? A loss. Only I don’t feel lost. I feel like I have found something fundamental to myself in recent months. Motherhood and its deep unbreakable meaning for me, yes, but something else. My senses.

Not only am I anticipating a long cold winter season, but my spidey sense says certain family dynamics are being bestirred, though on the surface things appear rather calm. This calm concerns me, and no longer in a ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ kind of way. It is the concern born from paying attention.

On the collective front, part of me wants to be an ostrich, bury my head in the sand, and check out entirely for the next few months. But I feel the hand of the Mother guiding me here, too, and she says: “Do not be afraid to look, to feel, or speak about what you see.” I see chicanery and psychological warfare being played out by a government on its own people. I see a great wounded bird attacking itself unaware that it is fully attached to both of its wings which seem only able to drive it in maddening circles.

I see a snake eating Her tail. She writhes free of a skin too tight, She coils flexing powerfully, sinuously, sensually. Visceral.

I see buildings cracking and institutions crumbling. The great bird is careening towards the earth—locked in a deathly tailspin.

They say that a bald eagle arrives at a point in its life when its beak becomes too long for it to eat. If it is to live, it must bash off its own beak against a rock, tear its tattered feathers from its body with its own claws, rake off the long and curling claws, then patiently wait to grow new ones, so it can live another life. Maybe that is about me, about you, about us. I don’t know. I don’t know if it is even factual, but it feels real in this moment and allegory and myth matter.

I know we, as a collective, are at a transition. We need to do something different. We are careening and the crash will be spectacular. But that does not mean that we also cannot grow a new life. I know we can. I can feel it!

That is Her message in regards to every facet of my life, “Look, see, feel, and know what you know”. It frightens me. I have always ‘seen’ and‘felt’, and like many an oracle I have suffered for it. As my own trust in my body and Her presence has grown stronger, it is easier to feel into the innate goodness of life and trust in that gnosis. But as my psychic clarity becomes simultaneously sharper, the things I ‘see’ are at first, second, and even third glance often deeply unsettling.

Allowing unsettling feelings to surface is part of the process, personally and collectively. Often writing clarifies this for me, but at times that clarity comes with a sharpness that I am not ready for and once the fingers have connected the synapses to it and the optic nerve has been engaged there is no taking it back. Now I know. And though part of my own instinctual healing has been coming into deep alignment with “Knowing what I know is safe”. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss or at the very least, it is comfortably numbing.

As I type in this self-revelatory fashion to you what do I know?

I know that endings hurt. I know that fantasy prolongs the more real state of grief until we are able to hold ourselves through the terrible shaking that pulling down certain veils will inevitably initiate. I know that initiations require sacrifice and nothing is magically birthed from the void without labor pains.

I know birth is also ecstatic. That the physical process of opening ourselves to new life is all at once anchoring and yet deeply destabilizing. We lose sight of shore, of who we were for a time. We feel unmoored. Like Prospero, tossed into the sea, we are left in a swirling Darkness that could consume or recreate us and at times we do not know which will occur.

I know looking up to the stars for guidance is looking inward. It is feeling the places where my breath catches, and catching my breath. It is putting aside my massive intellect and holding my trembling inner child who just wants to eat strawberries and play with the puppy. But who also wants to cling to a love that cannot be—whose tender fingers must be pried from the coattails of someone who is incapable of showing reciprocity. Ouch.

The truth can be a slap in the face or a warm embrace and there is no shame in seeing which ‘medicine’ we are more aligned with at any moment. Writing can reveal both. The practice is to embrace the nature of the dichotomy, the holy paradox if you will. And to will ourselves into an even deeper place of surrender letting ourselves be taken by the current and pulled into life’s stream.

Thank you for joining me for this little ramble. The fingers feel a bit more flexible. The synapses are firing! The Mother is nudging me from the nest.

Words into sentences, into paragraphs, into pages into stories. Stories that want to be shared. This is how I reorient myself when I have been feeling stagnant. I would love to know what do you do to reset?

Lotsa love,

~Justice