February 29th, 2024
During the next 22 weeks, I will do my best to share how I notice the forces of love and light around me as they appear as archetypes. I will note how these forces nudge me toward what is best for my own cosmic evolution. I hope by doing this you will notice the signs all around you that you are not alone but being guided all the time.
The Magician I Week 2
A few days ago, I spent the day fasting, not the spiritual fasting from my yogic training days, nor the trendy fasting popular now to stimulate fat to burn and detoxify the system. No, this fast was the dreaded colonoscopy prep fast. Now I know nobody wants to hear nor read about my colonoscopy but if you are in your 50s’s you will find that people tend to talk more openly than you would expect. This ordeal feels a bit like a secret initiation into a fraternity your friend made you join. During your 50th turn around the sun you usually have a party or travel somewhere on your bucket list. After opening your presents or emptying your suitcase you get back to life and schedule your colonoscopy. There are not too many things we all have to go through and go through the same way but the ritual of preparing for this ordeal seems to trigger a need to share. So, bear with me. Hopefully, you will be amazed about how this connects to the magician.
At precisely 6 pm, after fasting all day, I chugged the unbearable sugary drink required for a promised epic clearing. One can expect that by 10 pm or so you are done with the hard part. But for some reason, this did not happen for me. Despite the rumbling in my belly, and my normally regular system, all was quiet. Unfortunately, nearing midnight, my husband Scott woke up a medical colleague in the gastroenterology field and was advised to head out across town to an all-night pharmacy and get something to ‘help things along.” Our modern-day pharmacies were once apothecaries holding the great alchemic mysteries of tinctures & teas made from herbs, mushrooms, and even treasured dried bits of animals. What we now call doctors, nurses, midwives, and integrative therapists we once called wizards, wise women, midwives, sages, healers. These people were often apprenticed over years and years and learned by experience how to ease everyday suffering, battled for quick and easy births and assist the dying. In all kinds of weather, they walked the line between life and death and worked tirelessly through perilous nights into the early hours of the morning.
After my second intervention, things finally started to move along, unfortunately, it all started much later than planned. Due to this, I spent all night in the god-awful “prep” stage. The magician knows how to work with dense matter and will take you into the dark to show you the light. Magic often happens at night. A Magician knows that you cannot rush nature but instead must work with natural cycles and rhythms. A magician has watched the caterpillar morph into the chrysalis, knows that to puncture the cocoon and try and assist the caterpillar will cause its death. The very act of feeling its budding wings outgrow its messy safe sack and the ritual of shedding the old body while feeding off the nutrients from its old life gives the caterpillar the strength to push and wiggle its new wings against the world it has outgrown. This is what transforms a caterpillar into a butterfly strong enough to fly.
Somewhere around 3:30AM, I found myself finally tucked into my warm bed. I turned the cold pillow a few times, breathed deep, and out of nowhere stumbled upon some real magic. Magic can visit us unexpectedly, arrive when we least expect it. Curled up on my side, I felt relieved for the break. Then this calmness washed over me. Something was clearing and cleansing and nurturing all at the same time. Suddenly I felt very safe and grateful for the simplest things. I felt blanketed in grace. I felt a deep respect for my body. I marveled at it. I could feel the loyalty of my beating heart, the ceaseless pumping of oxygen in and out of my lungs, the round-the-clock, round-the-body dedication of my blood feeding every cell. I noted how my body was responding over and over, hour after hour to the invasion of the sugary substance I gulped. How it fought all through the night to rid itself of the toxin to be clear and free. In between slow breaths, a part of me had separated and was observing myself in a new way. Magic goes deep and has an unforgettable impact on our perception. The detached part of me respectfully said, “Thank you.” Quietly it said, “I really love you.” Then again is said with a conviction “I love you more than anyone or anything.” The deepest magic we hold is love. Deeper still is a love for ourselves. Magic changes the way we see things and thus changes our world.
Have you ever looked in on your children when they were asleep and felt hot burning love and devotion wash over you? I used to seek this out before bed, quietly standing on their thresholds to witness the glory of them. In the stillness, their unanimated bodies glowed in the dark. Often, I found them lying sideways or turned around, a little opened hand or foot flopped off the side of the bed. Wide open in innocent trust, their bodies told me how safe they felt. I knew that a deep love watched over them even when I was not nearby. I trusted that part of Scott and I that woke in the middle of the night in a sprint to the sound of a certain kind of “Mommy!” This is the kind of magic that washed over me. The deep knowing from a higher part made itself known on my own threshold. My body responded by not just feeling light and free, I felt it shift. My wings broke through the membrane of an old world I had outgrown. It felt like a decision, a knowing, not just an experience. It was a breakthrough. The magician often works telepathically, holding a truth with such concentration and conviction until it plants itself deep in the psyche of those ready for the healing. I slept deeply in this state of bliss for a solid hour before my body woke to clear more and more, relentlessly trying to save me.
In the moment of our birth, the first energy we experience is magic. We go from the feminine watery world of the womb into a cool steel and sterile labor room. We go from muffled sounds and timelessness to our first epic breath. Our first act is to fight for our lives. It is a masculine act of courage to be born. Finally, we gasp our first breath. The yogis believe we are given a certain number of breaths not days. This first breath is joylessly noted. A stranger types into a computer the arrival of our soul, types the address, which gives us the exact point of latitude and longitude and then the exact second and date of our birth. These notations explain to the Akashic fields of knowing, “Here! Right here in the entire universe of possibilities, this soul is born has arrived!” Then we are given a name. In this epic moment, our astrological and numerological inheritance is ensured.
The first sense we develop in the womb is our sense of smell. When we are born we have a completely developed sense of smell. We breathe in and smell the world. Just beyond the on slot of latex, metal, blood, and placenta, we smell our mother in the distance, turn our head toward her making our first physical decision: the desire to make our way back. The second sense we fully develop is our hearing. Now instead of soft vowel sounds like “ooshh”, “aa” and “ion” our ears dial into words for the first time. There is a P in “PUSH”. “Sa” and “On” now are fast joined by a hard Caa and Taa for “SUCTION”. These sounds cut through and click into our ears jarring our brain to learn. We slowly open our membraned eyes to a world of matter, density, separateness, protocol, and concern. The clock begins to tick. The date and year is edged on a distant tombstone with an open dash.
After all this, we are finally placed back in the loving sphere of our parents. We listen for something familiar out of the chaos. We hear a distant and familiar heartbeat. We listen and turn, nuzzle and burrow in search of the original beat, the pulse and sound of union. The exact tone of our father is now clear and full. We dial in again. We know the mother but now, free of the cocoon we outgrew, we know the world, we know the father. The world around us opens for the first time and the magic of being alive begins. We are claimed, we are named. The energy of the magician is our first experience of life as we move into 3rd dimensional reality. After 6 million years this moment is still pure magic.
Now I have done a lot of inner healing work, inner child work, past life work, women’s circle work, and interpersonal work and still do. I know what it is to look in the mirror deep into my eyes and be kind and affirm and mean it. Once I sat in a room full of mirrors with candles and was guided to stare into my own eyes for a very long time. My face began to morph and there before me my lifetimes marched by as easily as channel surfing with the remote. Like little trailers, my various plots in consciousness were revealed. The last face that appeared was an ancient Mayan woman. She looked right at me with a twinkle and then we began to laugh! The facilitator guided us to call back to all we needed to claim, and integrate the great wisdom of each lifetime. And with this act, love and even forgive our interdimensional psyche back into wholeness. The magician often shows up to us as a therapist, a mentor or a facilitator and can be found hanging out quietly by the coffee pot as a sponsor in a 12 step room. Magicians can help take pieces of your psyche that are scattered and call them back as in a soul retrieval. I have learned to rub my body with soap and lotion and thank each organ and each cell a little bit each day. Once in a workshop I even wrote myself a love letter and sealed it. The facilitator mailed it months later and I opened it to read with fresh and tearful eyes my vows of love and self-care. All those experiences helped me to be a kinder person to myself and others. I can honestly say, have at last given myself a break. But this in-between world found myself in during my prep was a new place. A place where certain harmful thoughts were now forever unthinkable. Magicians are inter-dimensional beings and can orchestrate experiences that impact people and help them break out of unconscious and often even deep dogmatic thinking. The magician can cast illusions and be deceptive and dangerous if not properly trained. However, because of his time spent in darkness, he can also break spells and can track down the evil culprit and pinpoint where the curse began. We often walk around caught in the wake of bad spells cast upon us by our traumatic inheritance and indoctrinations. The magician often sees right through the bullshit to the truth of our being and can help free us from these invisible bonds, thus breaking the generational spells that haunt us. (A good book about this is “Leaving The Saints” by Martha Beck and Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima who is famous for saying, “You are not crazy, you are just first.”)
I woke up and showered. Scott and I drove silently to the clinic careful to not talk of food. In the waiting room, he looked over my shoulder and corrected the form I was filling out, then tucked me into the crook of his strong arm. Gently he said, “You will be fine honey.” Although he had to head to work, he promised he would not leave until my dad showed up to take me home. The magician represents the sacred masculine. The steady practical “I have my eye on you” love that keeps us safe in the world. Like Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings, who always had his eye on the hobbit Bilbo, and Dumbledore who had an eye on Harry Potter in the nick of time, the magician is tapped in, lets us work out the small stuff but does not miss the big stuff. The procedure went very well. All clear! When I come fully out of my Michael Jackson slumber, I realize that a considerate person put my glasses back on. After dressing slowly, I am escorted back to the waiting room and call out quietly, “Dad?” To this, he jumps up short of a sprint. With a happy “Boops!”, he takes my hand in his. The magician knows our secret names, our spirit’s name. The magician knows when to send us forth and how to bring us home. When we get in the car my father hands me a bag my mother prepared with a thermos of chamomile tea with just a little honey. A pottery mug dubbed “the Reiki mug” is in the bag along with a little Christmas tin with a few of my favorite homemade almond cookies to break my fast. The magician knows that food is medicine. It is careful to acknowledge the beginning and the end of an initiation and often does so with a sacrament, blessing, an offering. You may have experienced the magician’s energy while at the home of someone who can really cook and cooks with love and clear intention, one who cooks to celebrate beginnings, ends and initiations. The magician say’s “We must not miss this moment. I insist on a toast!” The glasses are raised. Blessings are made that last a lifetime.
When I get home, I put on a movie and doze into a long nap. I wake to the sound of my front door being blown open by a sudden storm. I leave it open for a while so I can watch the wild sky, hear the wind blow through, and give the house time to breathe the fresh air. The magician is the element of air. It knows how to guide water to the stream and back to the ocean. He knows the wind can open the earth by drying it into a deep canyon. The magician can stoke embers with a deep exhale for tea or flatten the land with lava. His discerning nature can work with any element to create balance or use any element to dismantle or deconstruct something that no longer works. After a few hours I gain enough energy to make a big pot of ramen with leftover pork, lots of funny-shaped mushrooms, shallots, herbs, and fresh bock choy. As I cook, I make a mental note of the little changes I made to the recipe. Maya comes in from school and I point out to her how I made this batch. I make a tiple batch so I can freeze if to give to others or take it out on a day I need nurturing. I then spend the last part of the afternoon lightly drafting this essay. The magician is careful to keep notes to pass on to his protégé to ensure sacred knowledge is not lost. The character of Clare in the beautiful books and TV series “Outlander” is a nurse from the 1940s who stumbles upon a portal back in time. She arrives in the 1700s and must find a way to survive. She naturally becomes what they call a “healer”. Her advanced knowledge of medicine makes her to some a suspicious witch. She is capable of great miracles to others but really she is a scientist and not a magician at all. She keeps careful notes of all her patients just like your nurses and doctors. Magic is not mysterious; it is a science from the future that we simply do not understand. A science from the past that we failed to respect. The tarot is a system designed to help us heal on a spiritual level. It is the origin of our present-day psychology and even sociology. There is a great deal of science embedded in the symbols and archetypes. It is a science from a long time ago while also being a science that we have yet to discover.
To wrap it up I leave you with this blessing. Or cast this spell if you wish…
May you find clues to open the magic all around you.
May your life lead you to the one truth, that you are deeply loved.
May you feel safe in your own quiet company in the middle of a dark night.
May you learn to love yourself.
May you allow your magic to visit you as it has me.
May you read this and decipher the formula to break any spell.
Notice and love the small things.
Practice seeing each little miracle, until your days fill with them.
Know this…
Every breath you take is noted,
nothing that has ever been done,
& nothing you ever do is ever missed.
Something very strong is watching and waiting to send you on your way,
& something even stronger and unimaginably loving is waiting and watching
to bring you home.
One more note…
A spell is simply a belief that you have that is unconscious and has not been deconstructed or examined. A curse is anything that was said to you that halted your growth. A curse is also anything that you say that is unkind or cruel about others behind their back. One of the best present-day magicians for breaking spells and curses is Byron Katie. Type her name into YouTube and listen to her take people through “The Work”. This is one of the teachers I have trained with and the technique of “the work” helps me to help others unthink thoughts that their butterfly wings can no longer stand. Start the work on your own by getting on her website https://thework.com or call for a session to “work” it out with me and let us free you from the ancient and false bonds that you have outgrown. Welcome to your own inner magician. Time to fly.
