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Did you know that your cornea – the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil and anterior chamber – is about 78% water? That means we are constantly looking through a very thin layer of, essentially, water. If water is all one, and holds and remembers everything like a record, that means this record sits right over our eyes at all times.

I have seen very strange and interesting things when I close my eyes, and I don’t mean visualizing them in my mind. I mean what looks like completely real, moving 3D images right in front of my eyes, like a hallucination, in glowing greens against a smoky black background. It looked only what I can describe as trippy.

For a long time now I have been playing with the strange and intriguing idea of “eye scrying”, which is just what it sounds like. No tools, no mirrors, no bowl of water, just your own closed eyes, intuition and all the strange shapes and colors that unfold there behind your eyelids.

You see things like the typical floaters, you see what is probably a tiny pulsing blood vessel. But if you focus, yet also at the same time sort of unfocus, if you set the intention and just look at the backs of your eyelids. It sounds strange, but I think there is a lot that can be seen and learned when scrying into the darkness and the water of your own eyes. If we scry into pools and bowls of water and the like, why not scry into our own eyes? There is no magic that can be worked with tools and bells and whistles that can’t be worked with the human body.

Imagine the liquid and the delicate, glassy cornea being encoded with the same visions and experiences of your ancestors. Their memories are in your DNA and their vision is now your vision. You’re really looking beyond the watery cornea, beyond the backs of your eyelids. The eye or the cornea create a kind of portal into quite literally seeing very differently, potentially into other dimensions.

We shouldn’t underestimate our own abilities and bodies and parts that are actually very mystical if you think about it, such as eyes. Eyes are an amazing organ and the amount of water that makes them up is intriguing to me. Doing this exercise in a watery environment enhances the experience. The more water, the more there is to be heard, felt and seen, I have found. It is also best to cover the eyes or otherwise block out as much light as possible.

Give it a try, see what you see. Have you ever done this or experienced anything similar? Have you now tried it and had any results?

Shells have been casting spells of fascination and enthrallment for arguably all of human history. The earliest known example of jewelry is a set of thirty-three sea snail shell beads uncovered in a cave in Morocco, dating back around 150,000 years. That’s quite a tenure for conchophilia, or the love of shells. Within that time, in different cultures around the globe, shells were valued for many uses, even currency.

A step beyond the love of shells, conchylomania is the madness for collecting sea shells. And deeper still are the mystic and esoteric uses of shells – conchomancy, or divination with shells, and a new term I have coined: conchomagia, or shell magic. Not that the use of shells in magic and ritual is new, simply this specific name that fits in nicely with the other Latin-root terms and uses.

Crystals are wildly popular across spiritual practices and more mainstream than ever, but their cousins, seashells, don’t get quite the attention in this context they deserve. As discussed previously in “Conchomancy: Messages From the Sea”,

“Just like the myriad spectral crystals that grow deep in Mother Earth’s flesh and bring us healing vibrations and messages, so too do the similarly composed shells that grow in her blood, the oceans…

Calcium carbonate, the primary compound in seashells and pearls, is also found in its more stable form, calcite, in rocks and crystals…

This scientific fact alone interestingly mirrors the nature and energies of these two different Earth treasures – the broader, original compound comprising the shells that move within the moving element, and its most stable polymorph making up the grounded, much-less-moving crystals.”

Essentially, seashells can be used in the all the same ways as crystals. But seashells have another element to them that crystals don’t; the fact that they are made and grown, almost magically, by living creatures. They have powerful life energy in this respect. I have been experimenting with shells in multiple ritualistic applications for some time and so far it seems that, like kyanite and citrine crystals, they are self-cleansing. In the case of shells, I attribute this to their inherent connection to water. Though literally rinsing them in water, more than smudging, is the best way to cleanse them if needed. This is one of many methods and practices that can be determined intuitively by the individual practitioner and might vary from person to person.


Read the full article here 

Water fountains are good feng shui and can enhance your prosperity quotient. Gather together:

A large green bowl or tall vase

Here is a personal ritual I recommend for the New Year, whether it is Samhain (October 31, All Hallow’s Eve) or Saturnalia (December 17-24). It can also be performed any time you feel the need for renewal or personal reinvention. Like a caterpillar, we can burst out of our old form and shed old skin. Old habits that no longer serve should be released. If drinking alcohol, for example, has become a problem for you, let go, find a Twelve-Step program, and let miracles happen in your life as you release the old and welcome the new. We must let go of the past in order to look to the future. A well-timed ritual can be the process by which you let go of that past. It formalizes the act and marks the time of entry into a new present and new future.

The Star of Tarot is a very watery, spiritual and high-vibration card, the only other one as supremely watery being the Ace of Cups. Predictably, both are among my top favorites.

It is also probably one of the most popular images of the Major Arcana, (particularly the Waite-Smith version, which I refer to) yet also one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted.

The Star is frequently interpreted with keywords like “hope”, “renewal” and “inspiration”. While inspiration may at least come closer than any other term to the true meaning, Arthur Edward Waite himself described the most commonly attributed interpretation of hope as “tawdry”.

Frankly, I have never understood how or where anyone ever got “hope” regarding the Star, even in my earliest days as a Tarot novice. It has been the repetitive insistence from countless Tarot teachers and “experts” that the Star means hope, combined with my repetitive intuitive suspicion that this can’t be correct, that led me into an extensive search and analysis of just what this card really means.

It was a great “I knew it!” moment when I finally read Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot and his explanation of the Star, especially his calling out of the old “hope trope”. It was an even more enthralling and enlightening moment when astronomy and chemistry played a part in validating what I understand to be the real meaning of this card. But we’ll get to that.

The Star, according to Waite, is Sephirah Binah of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life; the Great Mother who gives and who is supernal understanding. He says the mottoes of the card are “Waters of Life freely” and “Gifts of the Spirit”.

So, people very ironically misunderstand the card that is about understanding. A lot. Is there maybe a lesson or message here?

He describes the female figure in the card as expressing eternal youth and beauty. The number of the card is 17, which reduces to 8 - the symbol for infinity or, more poetically, eternity. There are also eight stars on the card, the large one in the middle being surrounded by seven others.

The number 8 – as a lemniscate or infinity symbol – appears on only two other cards of the Major Arcana: the Magician and Strength. I think there is a clue here and a relationship between these cards and the Star.

The Magician, who most basically represents manifestation, is pointing a wand towards the heavens and his finger down to Earth, representing “As Above, So Below”, as well as a conduit between the two planes.

“The suggestion throughout is therefore the possession and communication of the Power and Gifts of the Spirit,” Waite says of the posture and action of the Magician. So there is that key phrase that directly ties the Magician to the Star.

Supernal means “pertaining to heaven or the sky” or “celestial”…the stars. The Magician bears another symbol of eternity – the ouroboros, or the serpent around his waist eating its own tail.

“This is familiar to most as a conventional symbol of eternity, but here it indicates more especially the eternity of attainment in the spirit.” (A.E. Waite)

In Strength we see a young woman taming a lion with ease. The lemniscate floats above her head just as it does the Magician’s. What do these cards have in common that may be indicated by the presence of this symbol? She too has a similar additional symbol of eternity around her waist, like the Magician.

However, in Strength it is a vine of blossoming greenery tying her to the lion, at least in early printings of the deck. In later reproductions it is unfortunately not illustrated as joining her to the lion though this is significant. I believe it symbolizes, among other things, a natural link between humans and animals. Ultimately we are animals ourselves and Strength conveys the necessary control over certain baser animal instincts.

Waite elaborates however,

“[These higher meanings] are intimated in a concealed manner by the chain of flowers, which signifies, among other many other things, the sweet yoke and the light burden of Divine Law, when it has been taken into the heart of hearts.”

The flower chain around her waist very curiously resembles the flowering boughs over the Magicians head, perhaps a further representation of the feminine spirit and understanding being poured down on him from Above?