The Sacred Glen
Volume #1 Issue #9
December 2007
The Sacred Glen is a publication of Daughters of the Greening online school. All articles within this ezine are written by students of the school and are their own personal property, unless otherwise credited. Daughters of the Greening is dedicated to teaching about the sacredness of all life and offers classes in Sacred Ecology, Holistic Healing, Discovering Past Lives, Faery Magic and Women's Spirituality. The school is open to anyone who is 18 years of age or older
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The Sacred Glen Council
Morgana Ravenwings
Dryw
Stephanie Mayfield
Carole
Belou
Susan Allen
In this issue:
Sacred Days of the Ancestors
Animal Medicine
The Christmas Story Special Feature!
Yule Special Feature!
Gaia's Resources for Health
Sit a Spell
Garden of Eatin'
Songs of the Muse
Harvests from the Printing Press
Spider Woman's Web
December 2007
12/1: Mindfulness Day--Zen Buddhist day for mindfully seeing and acting with compassion for the poor and oppressed.
12/2 to 12/24 (OC 11/28 to 1/6): Advent/Festival of Lights--Christian vigil for the birth of the Cosmic Christ. Advent candles are lit.
12/4: Day for meditation on Tantric Bodhisattva Deities Manjusri and Prajna-Paramita, consciousness and empowerment of Wisdom. Prajna-Paramita is considered Mother of All Buddhas.
12/4: Yoruba/Santeria feast of Orisha Shango, Defender Against Evil.
12/4 eve to 12/12 eve: Hanukkah/Festival of Lights--Jewish festival commemorating their struggle for religious freedom and re-dedication of the Temple of Jerusalem to God-Goddess Yod-Heh-Vau-Heh (Father, Mother, Son & Daughter). Menorah candles are lit.
12/7 eve to 12/15 eve (12/14 peak): Geminid Meteor Showers.
12/8: Rohatsu--Zen Buddhist celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment.
12/8: Christian feast celebrating St. Anna's conception of Blessed Mary.
12/9 (12:40 p.m. EST): New Moon.
12/9 to 12/22: Hopi & Zuni Shalako Festival--welcoming back to the pueblos the Kachinas/Kokos - Spirits of Nature and the ancestors that provide protection, health, fertility, and food.
12/10 eve to 1/8 eve: Dhu al-Hijjah--Muslim month of pilgrimage to honor the one universal Deity at the Ka'bah Stone in Mecca (site of the Old Arabic shrine to God-Goddess Allah-Allat).
12/12: Baha'i feast honoring the one Deity as Masa'il - Mystery.
12/12: First Appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of God and Mother of the Oppressed, at the former shrine of Aztec Moon Goddess Coatlicue (Mexico 1531).
12/13: Feast of the Light-bringer--honoring Goddess as Juno Lucina (Old Roman) & Lucia (Old Swedish); merged with the Christian feast of St. Lucia.
12/16 (A 1/26): Old Egyptian festival of Neteret Amenet-Rait-Mut, the primordial Great Mother.
12/16 to 12/24: Christmas Novena/Las Posadas--Christian remembrance of the journey of Blessed Mary and St. Joseph to Bethlehem and their taking refuge in a cave-stable.
12/17: Day for meditation on Tantric Bodhisattva Goddess Red Tara, protector against evil and harm.
12/17: Yoruba/Santeria feast of Orisha Babalu Aye, Healer of Deadly Diseases.
12/17 to 12/23: Saturnalia/Opalia--Old Roman festival honoring God Saturn (the weak Sun) & Goddess Ops (the fallow Earth); celebrated with gift-giving, revelry, and abolishment of all class distinctions.
12/17 eve to 12/24 eve (12/22 peak): Ursid Meteor Showers.
12/21 to 12/22: Old European Festival of Evergreen Trees; merged into International Arbor Day. Celebrated by planting trees and hanging wreaths (symbols of eternal life). *
12/21 to 12/25: Old Romano-Egyptian festival of Goddess Isis giving birth to God Horus.
12/21 to 1/9: Hopi & Zuni Soyala New Year Festival of purification and renewal. Homes are cleaned, fires doused, and personal restraint is observed.
12/22 (1:08 a.m. EST): Winter Solstice/Solar New Year--Marks the beginning of Winter and the shortest day and longest night of the year; celebration of the darkness with dancing near the hearth fire.
12/22: Taoist festival honoring Wang-Mu/Empress Mother, Mother of Compassion and Wisdom, and manifestation of the Tao (Cosmic Power of Creation and Destruction). Also celebrates the peak of the feminine Yin half of the year and the Shen of Earth, North, and Winter; prayers are made for rest and renewal, and offerings are made to the Cosmos.
12/22: Tohji-Taisai--Shinto rite honoring Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Storm God Susano-o angered Her, and She withdrew into a cave until enticed out with music and dance.
12/22: Beginning of Capricorn (the Goat).
12/23 (8:16 p.m. EST): Full Moon (Black/Death-Crone Moon).
12/24 eve: Mother Night--Christian vigil for the laboring Blessed Mary.
12/25 (OC 1/7): Christmas--Christian celebration of Blessed Mother Mary giving birth to Child Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
12/25 to 1/5: Yule--Old Anglo-Teutonic festival honoring Freyr and Freyja (Deities of Fertility) and the new-born Balder (God of Light), son of Frigga and Odin. Celebrated with evergreens, fires, and feasting.
12/26: Day commemorating the death of Zoroastrian Prophet Zarathustra (551 BCE). Zoroastrians worship by making offerings to a sacred fire.
12/26 to 1/1: Kwanzaa--Festival celebrating positive African traditions; emphasizes unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
12/31: Oharai/Grand Purification Festival--Shinto rite exorcising evil from the world.
12/31: Yoruba/Santeria festival of Orisha Yemaya, Mother of the Sun and Moon.
12/31: Baha'i feast honoring the one Deity as Sharaf - Honor. * 12/31: Feast of Father Time, who ultimately overcomes us all.
12/31 eve: New Year's Eve--Vigil for the new year; night for self evaluation and resolving to better oneself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Permission to use and distribute these excerpts is granted for non-commercial purposes, provided the following information is included:
Excerpted in part from
THE MYSTIC'S WHEEL OF THE YEAR 2007
A Multifaith Calendar Reflecting Eco-Egalitarian Spirituality
© 2006 Page Two, Inc.
info@WheeloftheYear.com
www.WheeloftheYear.com
Animal Medicine
Polar Bear
By Morgana
Everyone is familiar with pictures of polar bears walking along the ice in the arctic, sometimes with a cub, blending in with the snow all around them. These bears are held as sacred by the Inuit people, who believe that they possess great supernatural powers. Their stories tell of how Polar Bear is a shaman, a keeper of the ancient wisdom, and a great teacher. It is Polar Bear who taught the people how to hunt and how to survive in a land that is forever harsh.
Bears teach us how to bring our subconscious to the forefront. Many many cultures held a great reverence for this animal, and in some cultures She was even considered a God. Stories abound of humans and bears living together, of humans turning into bears and of bears turning into humans.
Polar Bears are solitary animals, only coming together to mate or raise a cub. They have a powerful sense of smell, and are one of the few animals that are believed to see in color. They also move as well in the water as they do on land. They can run as fast as 40 mph on land, and can cover a 100 mile stretch in the water.
Because Polar Bears blend in so well with their environment, they can almost magically appear and disappear. For this reason, they are considered to be travelers between the worlds. They are often guides on shamanic journeys, and protectors. If Polar Bear is speaking to you today, a new spiritual journey is about to begin for you. Things will begin popping into your conscious mind that perhaps you have forgotten, or repressed. New insights will be gleaned, and your own personal truth will begin to call out to you. Enjoy the journey!
Christmas
The Christmas Story
Submitted by Morgana
Now it came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be taxed. This was when Quirinius
was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, each to his own
city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of
Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,
for he was of the house and lineage of David, with Mary, his espoused
wife, who was great with child. And it came to pass that while they
were there, the days were accomplished for her to be delivered. And
she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling
clothes and laid him in a manger, for there was no room for them in
the inn.
And in that same region there were shepherds tending their flocks by
night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the Glory of
the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the
angel said unto them, "Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is
Christ the Lord! And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find
the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." And
suddenly there was with the angel a heavenly host, singing and
praising God and saying:
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill to men!"
And it came about that when the angels had gone from them that the
shepherds said one to another "Let us go and see this thing that was
told to us, which the Lord hath made known unto us." And they went
and found Mary and Joseph and the babe, lying in a manger. And when
they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this
Child. And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told
the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in
her heart.
Luke 2: 1-19
Yule
Yule (December 21st)
By Belou
(Winter Solstice) Yule celebrates the rebirth of the God through the agency of the Goddess. The Holly King, the God in his aged aspect dies. The Oak King, the God in his youthful aspect is born. It is life amid the seeming death of winter. This isn't mockery of Christianity's holy day. The God is reborn of the virgin Goddess. The God is represented by the sun which "returns" after the darkest night of the year. The God returns to bring back warmth and fertility. A pagan used to light candles and fires in an attempt to lure the sun back to the land. This was a form of sympathetic magick that many (unknowingly) use today around Christmas by putting lights on their trees and homes!
The word "virgin" here does not mean "without sex" but without husband. A virgin in the early days was a woman who had not yet married and was free to be with any man she wished. The virgin Goddess gives birth to her son, which will be her lover at the spring Sabbat and the father of his next Yule incarnation.
The midwinter solstice marks the time of year when the day is at its shortest and the Sun is weak and low in the sky. In many cultures throughout the world this has been taken to symbolize a time of re-birth, for from this moment on the Sun can only rise and grow in strength. Wiccans are aware of, and draw on, a variety of pagan festivities and practices from this time of year that have been common throughout history. The first, and most ancient of these, seems to be a belief in the interplay between a masculine Sun and a female Earth.
Little is known about celebrations before history was written down and
because of this the importance of solstice festivities can only be conjectured from the archaeological record. There are a variety of ancient stone monuments and tombs that seem to have been built at least in part with the winter solstice in mind and a relationship between the Sun's light and our planet.
For example, at Maeshowe, in the Scottish Orkney Islands, there is an ancient chambered cairn that has been carbon dated to around 2,750 BCE. It has a long entry tunnel that appears to be aligned so that when the Sun rises at the midwinter solstice it shines along this passage into the interior of the megalith, where it illuminates the back of the structure. More famously at Newgrange, in Brugh-na-Boyne, situated in the Eastern Irish County of Meath, there is a huge burial mound dated to around 3,300 BCE. It has an entrance passage that is around 18 meters or 60 feet in length. Above its entrance is a stone box that allows the light of the midwinter solstice at dawn to shine all the way to the back of its central chamber. Both these structures were built by Neolithic peoples and one can only speculate as to the purpose of allowing the light to penetrate them at this time of year.
The nativity of a god-man/savior, born from a divine female is another consistent theme through many diverse cultures. In Ancient Egypt, for example, Osiris, the male productive force in nature, was said to die and was symbolically entombed on December the 21st surrounded by mourning priests. At midnight they would emerge from the inner temple and proclaim to the world that "The Virgin has given birth! The light is waxing" and would present a baby to worshipers who had gathered to witness the event. Surrounding priestesses mourned the closing of one phase and rejoiced at the start of another. The Roman Empire celebrated the birth of Mithra (also known as Mithras), the central figure of Mithraism, a Persian religion that had come to be adopted from its introduction around 68 BCE. Mithra was the slayer of the Divine Bull, from which all vegetation sprang. His birthday was December the 25th and celebrated as dies natalis solis invicti or the "Birthday of the Invincible Sun". Later of course, as the Empire was
Christianized, Jesus, the god-man born from a virgin, was to replace the bull-killer. As is well known he came into the world at Bethlehem, which translates as "the House of Bread". It is striking that his supposed birthday was the same as the Persian god's and that his place of birth was associated with corn; both facts seem to reveal that to some extent Jesus was yet another of a long line of dying and resurrected solar vegetation deities, linked to the midwinter solstice.
All these gods can be seen to be synonymous with the Sun and fertility to a greater or lesser degree, but there is another more primordial way that the Sun can be represented, and that is through fire.
In Europe, particularly amongst the English, French, German and Southern Slavic peoples the burning of a special Yule log was a popular part of festivities when the Sun was at its lowest. This had been much more of a domestic celebration than the midsummer events, presumably because of the desire to be indoors during the winter months. A log usually of oak would be burned for a little each day from Christmas Eve until Twelfth Night. In Britain large Christmas candles were lit as well and, along with the light from the Yule log, the whole house would be illuminated, symbolically bringing Sunlight into the depths of winter. Often the log would be kept until the following year for its magical properties. In many countries it was believed that it had the power to protect the house from fires or lightning strike, as well as cure cattle of illnesses. Others believed it would negate evil witchcraft and sorcery. Another common theme was that its ashes would ensure the fertility of the land echoing the ancient idea of the Sun as impregnating of the Earth.
Yule Correspondences
Herbs/Flowers: Bayberry, Blessed Thistle, Evergreen, Frankincense,
Mistletoe, Oak, Pine, Sage, Cedar, Moss, Ginger, Holly, Ivy, Juniper, Myrrh, Pine cones, Rosemary, Chamomile, Cinnamon, Valarion, Yarrow.
Incense/Oils: Pine, Cedar, Bayberry, Cinnamon, Ginger, Rosemary, Frankincense, Myrrh, Nutmeg, Wintergreen, Saffron.
Colors: Red, green, gold, white, silver, yellow, orange.
Stones: Ruby, Bloodstone, Garnet, Emerald, Diamond, Cat's Eye.
Foods: Nuts, apple, pear, caraway cakes soaked with cider, pork, orange, hibiscus or ginger tea, roasted turkey, nuts, fruitcake, dried
fruit, cookies, eggnog, mulled wine.
Tools/Symbols/Decorations: Bayberry candles, evergreens, holly, mistletoe, poinsettia, mistletoe, lights, gifts, Yule log, Yule tree. Spinning wheels, wreaths, bells, mother & child images.
Gods/Goddesses: Lucina (Roman goddess of lunar mysteries, Frey (Scandinavian God of fertility and a deity associated with peace and
prosperity), Attis (Phrygian fertility God), Dionysus (Greek God of
wine), Woden (the chief Teutonic God), and, of course, jolly old Kris
Kringle (the Pagan God of Yule and personification of the Yuletide
spirit).
Essence: Honor, rebirth, transformation, light out of darkness, creative inspiration, the mysteries, new life, regeneration, inner renewal, reflection/introspection.
Dynamics/Meaning: Death of the Holly (Winter) King; reign of the Oak
(Summer) King, begin the ordeal of the Green Man, death & rebirth of
the Sun God; night of greatest lunar imbalance; sun's rebirth; shortest day of year.
Purpose: Honor the Triple Goddess, welcome the Sun Child.
Rituals/Spells: Personal renewal, world peace, Festival of light, meditation, honoring family and friends.
Customs: Lights, gift-exchanging, singing, feasting, resolutions, new fires kindled, strengthening family & friend bonds, generosity, Yule log, hanging mistletoe, apple wassailing, burning candles, Yule tree decorating; kissing under mistletoe; need fire at dawn vigil; bell ringing/sleigh-bells; father Yule.
Element/Gender: Earth/Female
Threshold: Morning/Dawn
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Gaia's Resources for Health
Affirmations of the Month
Submitted by Belou
Practice one or all of the following affirmations 30 times a day for 30
days. These affirmations help to build up the energy around you and
within the Universe to manifest these desired changes in your life.
Every day, I make time for myself.
I will honor myself every day with my decisions.
My decisions are made from faith, not fear.
I forgive those who have wronged me, including myself.
Sit a Spell
Travel Spells
With the holidays quickly approaching, many of us are planning to do some traveling to visit relatives. Traveling today can sometimes be a scary affair with all the rigmarole the government has us going through at airports and all the propaganda that spews forth from our television sets and radios. To put your mind at rest, and to ease the minds of your loved ones, try one of the following as you go on your way:
1.Carry basil that has been charged with your love and blessings.
2.Place sprigs of mugwort in your shoes.
3.Have your family burn a candle for you and leave it burning in the window until you return.
4.Charge a moonstone under the full moon with protective blessings, and then carry it with you.
5.Carry a mountain lion figurine in your pocket.
6.Keep tigereye in your car.
7.Keep a braid of sweetgrass in your car.
8.Eat apples as you drive.
9.Hang wormwood from your rearview mirror.
May everyone have a safe and blessed holiday season!
By Morgana Ravenwings
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Garden of Eatin’
Hot Spiced Wassail (non-alcoholic)
4 cups cranberry juice
6 cinnamon sticks
5 cups apple cider
1 orange, studded with whole cloves
1 cup water
1 apple, cored and sliced
1/2 cup brown sugar
Mix juice, cider, and water in large saucepan or crock pot. Add
cinnamon sticks, clove studded orange, and apple slices. Simmer
mixture for 4 hours. Serve hot. Makes 12 servings.
Submitted by Belou
Humingbird Cake
3 cups Flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp. Baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 eggs, well beaten
1 1/4 cup salad oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 8 oz can crushed, drained pineapple
1 cup chopped pecans
2 cups chopped banana
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Sift flour, sugar, salt, soda, cinnamon, several times
Put in mixing bowl and add eggs and oil. Stir until moistened. NO mixer.
Stir in vanilla, pineapple, nuts and bananas.
Spoon into 3 well greased and floured (can use cooking spray instead)
9" round cake pans.
Bake 25 - 30 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool in pan for 10
minutes then onto cooling racks.
Cool completely before frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting:
mix together 2 8 oz pkgs cream cheese, softened, 1 cup butter, room
temp, 1 16 oz boxes powdered sugar, 2 tsp vanilla extract, andn 1 cup
chopped pecans
Submitted by Belou
Peanut Butter Fudge
Items Needed:
4 cups sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter
1 12oz can evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons coco (optional - this gives it a hint of chocolate flavor)
1 7oz jar of marsh mellow fluff (or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods)
Peanut butter 1/2 of a 18oz jar
A butter cookie sheet
First combine sugar, butter, and evaporated milk; heat over medium heat stirring constantly (this is important though out or the evaporated milk scorches) until butter is melted and then add vanilla and coco (if using it). Now continue stirring until it reaches
440 degrees or until it forms a softball when dropped into a glass of cold water.
*note* once it reaches this point you'll have to move as fast as possible so it doesn't harden on you in the pan.
Remove from heat and put in peanut butter and marsh mellow fluff and stir until blended then poor into buttered cookie sheet. You may need to use the spoon to spread it out evenly depending on how fast it starts to set for you.
Now this maybe slightly adjusted for different flavors (I think). I'm going to at least try doing so this year. Instead of using coco I'm going to try using an instant cappuccino to give it a hint of that flavoring.
Submitted by Venus Being
©Dianne Barskey 2007
Feel the breeze on your face
Moving you hair
Smell the flowers on the breeze
So fresh and wonderful
See the leaves rustled by the breeze
Nature doing its “hair”
Hear the whistle of the breeze
As it goes past the buildings
How amazing is that breeze
That can do so many things?
The breeze that makes us
Use almost every sense.
What else can you think of
That does all of this?
©Dianne Barskey 2007
The end of another day
Time to spend with family and friends
The sun goes down
Dusk begins
The moon rises
The stars twinkle
Constellations shine
The day comes to a close
Tomorrow is another day
You start over at sunrise
Book Review by Carole
Animal Dreams
by James Hillman
“Animal Dreams,” by Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman, is a provacative collection of essays on the animal images that inhabit our dreams and imagination, with beautifully rendered paintings by visual artist Margot McLean.
Hillman states that the goal of this book is to, “restore Adam’s eye.” Adam named the animals to reflect their divine origin. He was able to read the image of each animal as an expression of God in form. According to Hillman, Adam “read their names out of their natures. He was inside the animal. He knew the animals of his imagination. He and they were all in the same dream.”
Animals express themselves through the entirety of the complex display of their natures and being. They are revealed through their sounds, behaviors, colors, forms and interactions amongst their own kind, and with that of their environment and other species. According to Hillman, they speak in metaphor, and can as a consequence, display themselves as easily in physical habitats, as they can in the psychic landscapes of our dreams, myths and stories. He asserts that the psychic space of our cultural imagination is as much a part of an animal’s natural habitat as the physical spaces they occupy. Hillman notes that while tribal peoples would acknowledge the spirit of an animal as the source of the various manifestations of that animal’s image, “Our civilized mind makes a terrible mistake by contrasting ‘real’ animals and animal ‘images,’ as if the one standing in the zoo and the one you meet in a dream are two different beasts altogether.”
Hillman writes, “In our dreams, the animals come and go, theriomorphizing our human lives.” To Hillman, animal dreams are a kind of blessing, possibly even occasioned by the animals themselves. In an essay on the pig he says, “We cannot know whether we invented the tales and meanings of the pig, for instance, or whether they invented these tales themselves as expressions of their archetypal nature.”
He asks us to attend to these animal forms when they enter into our dreams, without attempting to reduce them to simple categories or symbols through interpretation. Hillman warns that, “interpretations may distort our sight, especially that degrading belief that they come for our subjective purposes, to compensate for our omissions.” He rejects the idea that the figures in our dreams are simply a product of our own subjective experience that can only be understood in terms of what they mean to us. Rather he regards the figures in our dreams as beings with their own conscious awareness, motives and ability to communicate.
In his essay on the snake, Hillman lists the various associations his students have had with the snake as a symbol, and the ways they would interpret it’s meaning in a dream. He asks, “Why must we exchange the living image for an interpretive concept? Are interpretations really psychological defenses against the presence of a God?”
To avoid, “banishing the image by interpretation,” Hillman encourages us to engage with these powerful forms when they appear, to enter into their images, to know them as Adam did and Shaman do. To facilitate this work of discovery with an animal image, Hillman suggests that, “It can be imagined as a felt presence and talked with, it may need to be fed and housed, painted and modeled. It can be honored by attentions, like recalling it several times during the day; by doing something for it, a physical gesture, lighting a candle, buying an amulet, discovering its name…”
The act of engaging with or “animating” the image, as Hillman descibes it, recognizes the sovereignty and soul of the animal, acknowledging its power and purpose in entering your dreams. Hillman suggests that you always consult with the animal before beginning to work with it, so that its reason for choosing you, its purpose in revealing itself, can be meaningfully understood. Hillman writes, “For its arrival is a summons to divert your intentions from yourself at least partially toward it.” Hillman does not regard the animal images in dreams as belonging exclusively to the dreamer. Although it is we who experience them, they come of their own accord, revealing themselves as an act of their own will, with intentions and a purpose which you as the dreamer must then divine.
The ability to apprehend the deeper nature of a living form, to engage with the metaphor that an animal embodies and expresses in physical space, or that its dream visitation represents is, to Hillman, “a momentary restoration of Eden.” It is the realization that in the psychic realm that we and they share, we do indeed inhabit the same dream. This larger dream in which we participate, this space of imagination, Hillman describes as “… itself a great animal or an ark of images that are all alive and move independently.”
Through the animal images in the dreams he has studied and about which he writes in this book, Hillman develops the idea of rediscovering the “animal eye of the caveman facing the cave wall…” As imagination is activated, the mind’s endless chasing after the tail of meaning is avoided, thus allowing the mind to yield to and be affected by the animal’s powerful presence. His objective for this work he has stated thusly, “We would like to see not only the animal restored to eminence in the human mind, but the human mind restored to its animal soul, to that shared and undivided level of being symbolized by Eden (the primordial mind.)”
The animals in our dreams are wild, mythic, totemic and divine. Hillman’s book uncovers an ancient truth that we know intuitively to be true.. He says, “Our dreams recover what the world forgets. Forgotten pagan polytheism breeds in animal forms. In those animals are the ancient Gods…alive and well and unforgotten in the icons of our dreams…”
Book Review By Dryw :
The Elemental Oracle
A tarot deck of Spiritual Ecology created by Katyanna Gabriel
"Earth my body,
water my blood,
air my breath and
fire my spirit"
" The Elemental Oracle is a tarot deck of spiritual ecology which is able to
provide insight and predictions regarding yourself, your relationships and
your environment. The photos are of the natural elements of earth, water,
air and fire and of the spirits within them. The guide book links the
elements to our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being. The
vision of this tarot deck honors the sacredness, wisdom and knowledge held
in the wild places of the Earth." K.G.
Just by chance, I ran into this deck when searching for something entirely
different, and fell in love with the photographs that were used to symbolize
the "majors". This deck has 48 cards, each one depicting an intense photo of
a natural element; sand dunes, the spiral in a tree's bark, a distant shot
of a mountain and meadow.
Katyanna used photos of Earth, Air, Fire and Water Elements as headings,
each with twelve subheadings such as a photo of a lovely river valley at
dusk, listed as "Mystery" under the element of Water.
This is a deck for those who wish to work on a deep intuitive level, out of
the "box" so to speak of regular tarot images. I find it to be very
satisfying, and it strongly enforces my leaning towards a shamanistic
worldview.
For more detailed information on this deck, its creator and its history
visit her web site at
www.KatyannaGabriel.com
Katyanna Gabriel has eighteen years experience as an environmentalist,
social worker, healer, spiritual counselor, tarot reader and clairvoyant.
Spider Woman's Web
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