The Oracle of the Swamp brings messages of awareness, warning, transformation and hidden beauty but also hidden danger. It is intricate interconnection and a delicate balance of so many forms of life. The Swamp invites you to confront obstacles and to examine and hold space in the darker realms of your existence.

This may be a time for shadow work. Like the tangled, interwoven roots beneath the surface, we are often in turmoil that is hidden beneath our own surfaces and conscious minds. It can be unpleasant, but it might be time to submerge like a stealthy crocodile and confront and untangle the messes within.

Swamps are also places of unexpected and subtle beauty that may not be obvious at first. They are as crucial to the environment as our shadow sides are to our existence. They are part of us and cannot be ignored or toxic stagnation may ensue.

Physically, the Swamp represents awareness and adaptability. Its appearance may suggest that very real, day-to-day physical challenges are present or approaching, for instance health or money matters. Something unseen may be having a profound impact and must be addressed. If it’s been a while since a check-up or other health maintenance, a visit to the doctor may be in order.

For some time there was no real certainty as to what causes the otherwordly phenomenon of the aurora borealis. In 2021 scientists finally confirmed that the natural light show starts when disturbances on the sun pull on Earth’s magnetic field. This creates cosmic undulations known as Alfvén waves that launch electrons at high speeds into Earth’s atmosphere where they create the aurora.

Have you ever wondered what our ancestors must have thought and felt when they saw the northern lights? How magical and surreal it must have been for them, almost as much as it is for us even now, despite knowing the exact cause. The lack of mystery does not dampen the wondrous impact the aurora has on the imagination and the soul.

One especially interesting feature that has been discovered is that electrons essentially surf on the Alfvén waves. If they move with the right speed relative to the wave, they get picked up and accelerated much like surfers catch a building wave.

This brings at least one watery allegory into the mix. Yet the aurora and water are more closely related than you might think. All the water on Earth is of interstellar origins and the northern lights undulate in very watery waves and colors. As I often say, we are made of water and starlight, so the convergence of the aurora and of flowing water is not only perfectly harmonious, it creates a powerful visualization tool for grounding, protection, inspiration and manifestation. I call this the Aurora Cascade.

A long, purple and electric blue-green curtain of dancing aurora pours itself out of the sky in a cascade that becomes indistinguishable from a singing, rushing waterfall as it falls closer to the ground. Water and light meld and shimmer in the gentle torrent. Step into the glowing falls and feel it mingle with the waters and the energy in your cells. This is the source, this is what we are made of. It is renewing and it is an ongoing cosmic blessing.

Grounding

We are the center in between the above and below. When sitting or standing within the Aurora Cascade, you are the nexus in this liminal space, the point of origin. All work – meditating, journeying, spell work, manifestation or shamanic work – ideally begins with grounding; rooting and establishing a link, but not just to the below. To the medieval alchemists, water and light were in the same symbolic family, and indeed are two of the main and most essential components to almost all life. The grounding unfolds through a conscious integration of these elemental energies, rooting the individual firmly in the earth’s embrace but also providing a tether to higher cosmic realms.

Keywords: Clarity, Refreshment, Newness, Renewal, Fleeting Opportunity

Dew is a very fleeting form of water. While the morning heralds a new day and fresh opportunities, the dew declares that these opportunities are fleeting. Dew is frost’s warmer sister; when temperatures are low enough dew freezes to become frost. But on cool, misty mornings the dew is scattered like tiny diamonds across delicate spider webs and thin rose petals. It is nature’s tears of joy for another golden opportunity to begin again.

Dew represents a gentle rejuvenation of the body, like the refreshed feeling you have after a great night’s sleep. What could be better to wake up to than beautiful nature bedazzled by countless watery jewels? Just as dew is a gentle strength renewing the earth, embrace a renewed focus on your physical well-being. This might involve simple daily rituals to improve your overall health and vitality. Early morning could be the best time for you to have an invigorating walk to start your day right. Dew reminds that small, consistent efforts can lead to significant physical changes.

When it comes to the emotions, dew suggests a tender, peaceful renewal of the heart. Allow the drops of a clear, new day to cleanse and revitalize your heavy feelings. This is a time to release negative, burdensome feelings in order to refresh your relationships and personal perspective and well-being. Perhaps certain feelings have been muddled and confused, but now will be made clear in the pale morning light. There may also be current or approaching relationships and connections that are as brief as the morning dew, but they are no less profound.

Dew whispers of the quiet insights that come with a peaceful mind. Every new days starts us with a clean slate where we can choose to think better and more helpful thoughts. The water in our bodies is affected by the frequencies of our thoughts and words, so make sure you are kind and gentle with yourself as well as with others. Dew seeks to refresh and enlighten your thoughts and mental pursuits. Not only is a calm mind more clear and productive, but more able to embrace the happiness of starting over and dew reminds us that we get to start over every single day.

Spiritually, dew brings renewal and clear understanding just as it does to all the realms of our being. As dew forms through the union of air and earth, the seeker is encouraged to explore the subtle but powerful interplay between the material and spiritual aspects of existence. So many spiritual and magical experiences are very fleeting and brief, and this lends all the more importance to them.

Dew invites you to stillness and contemplation, and to purification. It also invites you to find the magic of spirit in small and unexpected places and things. The most profound spiritual insights and evolutions often come as quietly and go as swiftly as the dew. Be aware of the discreet, finer things that are all around you and can connect you to nature and your higher self. There may be much that you are overlooking and that is leading to beliefs that do not serve you.

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 

The first new moon of fall (this Wednesday, October 6^th) couldn’t be a better time to begin a good, cleansing detox both inside and out. The artifices and general busy-ness of modern life make it easy to forget sometimes that our inner and outer worlds reflect each other and often need the same amount of care and attention.

As we move through the cycle of the year we accumulate a lot of “stuff”; both physical stuff and emotional stuff. Time for us to change with the season! Time to clear things out, heal, purify and nourish, release, let go and start fresh. All you need are my favorite cosmic twins, Fire and Water.

As I discuss in an earlier post, it’s an awesome, curious fact of physics that water is essentially created by fire. The combination of oxygen and hydrogen requires combustion to transform those gases into liquid water. Inseparable, they make a great polar pairing on many levels and in many workings and even cosmologies, for instance the Norse Ginnunga Gap: the primordial void where fire and ice came together to form the world, the elemental giants and then the gods.

My current favorite way, and such a perfect way for the fall season, to combine the two elements to do a multi-level detox is to brew up a spicy, delicious, Moon-charged fire cider.

If you haven’t heard about the fire cider craze or at least haven’t gotten around to trying it, I highly recommend doing so and especially right now as we move into the chilly, sniffle-riddled seasons. Not only is it a potent immunity-boosting tonic, it’s a delicious seasoning/sauce that’s great to have on hand for sauces, soups, salads, marinades, pickling and anything else you can think of. I’ve been using it regularly for about a year now and I’m hooked.

Read the full article with recipe and ritual

It is no secret or surprise that fall is probably most people’s favorite season, and it’s easy to see why: the beautiful changing colors of trees and falling leaves, the relief of cooler weather (in many regions), seasonal treats made from pumpkins and apples and, definitely not least of all, the ubiquitously popular holiday of Halloween. Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, originated as the pagan Irish holiday Samhain (SOW-in), which occurs when the veil between this world and the world of the dead is thinnest, and the spirits roam freely. Keeping unwanted spirits away resulted in enduring customs such as costumes and lanterns carved out of turnips (which would evolve into carved pumpkins, which Irish immigrants found much more readily available in the New World in the 19^th century), as well as leaving out treats to placate the wandering souls.

There is certainly something in the autumn air itself that seems to testify to the inherent magic and mystery of the season. I know I’m not alone among worshipers of nature and practitioners of magic in feeling like I come back to life in the fall and have much more energy and motivation for journeying, rituals, meditation and magic. Summer stifles and suppresses me on every level, and just makes me cranky. Being fair-skinned and blue-eyed (descended almost exclusively from peoples of the far north) makes me physically sensitive to heat and bright light, and everything else about my personality means that darker, quieter, mystical surroundings are much more conducive to my magic and creativity.

I am especially and unsurprisingly appreciative of and tuned in to the watery energies of fall. Anyone who practices the more common forms of western magic or is familiar with classical occult correspondences knows that the element of water is assigned to the season of fall and the western quarter. While water in her myriad forms is obviously applicable to any direction or time of year, fall does seem to be the most fitting to water in her most common and basic forms.

I’ve come to see the Underworld as the main bridge between the element and the season. One of the more popular and detailed underworld concepts is that of Greek mythology, the realm of Hades which contains five rivers. One of those rivers (Styx or Acheron) is crossed by newly dead souls with the help of Charon, the ferryman. Each of the rivers’ names is based on an emotion associated with death. This is consistent with water being symbolic of emotions, and death is a very emotional thing.

An even more watery underworld is that of Adlivun, the realm of the Inuit goddess Sedna. She dwells in a whale bone palace at the bottom of the sea, to which she sank and transformed into a goddess and the mother of all warm-blooded marine creatures. There is no shortage of emotion in her dark tale or in the sea itself.

I recently discovered a poet named Adrienne Rich. I did so by stumbling upon one of her books on Ebay while searching for something completely different. I was characteristically attracted to the title of the book - “Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972”, a winner of the National Book Award. I looked up the poem and read it online, loved it, and then ordered the book. I’d like to use this poem and the analogy it presents as a foundation for the kind of personal shadow work and other rituals of self-healing and discovery that are ideal to do this time of year.



First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber