Full moon last night. Gorgeous.
I do wishings on the full and new moons. No folks – not baying at the moon. Just focusing my will and wishes very very clearly. And do all my wishes come true? You’d be surprised – very surprised.
Focusing my intent – making clear wishes – they are a core part of who I am and how I am in the world. I’m not too fussed about what you want to call it. Basically, it’s part of how I manifest my values and dreams and intent. A really good wishing requires a lot of work. You need to know what’s important for you. You need to have a clear sense of why you want something or someone in your life. You need to really bring heart, head and spirit into the equation.
And then you need to write it down and speak it. There are no set rituals. I choose the changing moon because it keeps me connected to seasons and cycles. I do wishing every 2 weeks or so with the moon – you could do it on the football schedules or random dates. It focuses me back to what I feel is important in my life right now.
My clear wishings have found me all the lovely homes I’ve lived in over the past 10 years. They’ve attracted the amazing clients and work I do. You could be thinking ‘but that’s just a load of crap’ or ‘that’s just good focused planning’. I leave you to your own thoughts and beliefs. My job in this life is not to convert the masses. All I know is that it’s one of the things I do in my life that works.
Of course, I don’t just sit and wait for someone to knock on my door and hand me the house; contracts; interesting people. You gotta help the old universe along. Having said that – I did a wishing a few moons ago for a creative IT geek to add value to my ideas and challenge me – there was a knock on the door last week and I was told to come to the shop next door and meet a guy who they thought I’d find interesting. Yup -he’s an IT geek! And I use geek in the best possible way – he knows his stuff.
Synchronicity and serendipity (along with paradox and inner power) are some of my fave words and reality constructs. Every day I see/feel the connections around me that make real what I want to attract and invite into my life. I don’t know how it works but then again I’ve no idea how this computer works – it all feels like magic (and don’t get me started on electricity and radio waves and quantum physics).
As a child I loved the idea of magic – something beyond what we can see and touch. For a while as an adult I thought I had to let go of that wish and belief in magic – and for a range of life reasons – some harsh life lessons – I just stopped believing.
In my early thirties I was invited to be part of a travelling group of women who were presenting seminars in 3 mining towns in Western Australia. The seminars covered all aspects of a woman’s health – emotional, physical, creative, sexual and spiritual. I was asked to do a presentation and workshop on women’s spirituality.
Now dear reader, I was about as spiritual as a rock at that time. I tended to be very practical and creative and kind in the work I did – but not how I would define spiritual. I rang the organisers to tell them they had the wrong woman. I’d done a lot of work with many women in these mining towns around organising and planning and personal development and – just having fun. They told me that they thought the way I lived my life and spoke about values and just the way I treated people was spiritual. You could have knocked me down with a wet fish.
Anyway, I said yes and was shit scared. What did I have to say? What did I know about bloody spiritual practice?
So, I did what I always do when faced with a new challenge – I research it to death. I also asked women friends to introduce me to women who were on very spiritual journeys. I met nuns and witches and women of all sorts of spiritual practices. I was deeply honoured to hear their stories.
At around the same time my Mum’s mother died. A magic Irish woman of immense power.
Anyway, there I was in the first mining town with my well written and well prepared speech – a crowd of women of all ages keenly awaiting my pearls. At the back of the room was a dear friend of mine (same name and same age) who was deeply spiritual and highly intuitive. She’d said that I should do what I did well – speak from the heart. No way says I – I’m reading the speech – it was like the last life raft in the ocean.
I faced the women and started my presentation. I spoke of how over the ages women’s spiritual and healing power had often meant death or at the least a diminishing of their power as doctors and priests took the power and institutionalised it. I spoke of the stories that women had told me … and as I went to turn to page 6 … all I saw was page 9 and 14 and 7. All the pages had gotten mixed up. I laughed and looked to the ceiling and said ‘thanks Gran, could you re sort the papers’. I sorted the papers and started again. Turned a page and they were mixed up! No idea how that all happened.
What I then did was put the paper down … and spoke from my heart and head. I spoke of the courage needed to explore and define what gave life meaning. To follow a path that meant the people we love sometimes reject us or are confused and afraid for and by us. To truly live and speak your passion and purpose is an act of courage & daring … and makes us alive. To begin to define what magic and spirit and heart mean to each of us – to explore how we live it day to day. Well, that’s the pursuit and purpose of this and maybe many lifetimes. I spoke of how I honoured the people that challenged within their own spiritual communities – that asked questions -that didn’t just accept everything as gospel.
I spoke of how people will use language as a tool of fear. How witch and feminist were/are used in the same way and tone as whore and bitch. How I called myself a feminist because I was sick and tired of women feeling ashamed or afraid of being called one. In one of the mining towns women who had created the learning and neighbourhood centres that we held the workshops in told me how they were called feminists because they were holding these women’s health workshops. I said ‘call me feminist … call me banana. It won’t stop me or you from being powerful and working with other people to create great communities.’ (funny aside – that afternoon as I walked down the grocery aisle I heard one woman say to another ‘call me feminist, call me banana… I’m still going to work in the neighbourhood centre.).
By the third workshop in the third mining town I didn’t use my notes. I couldn’t because they just kept mixing up – and by then I didn’t need to. I was being as brave as I could and speaking kinda naked – in a spiritual and mind sense. I remember on that particular day the room was filled with women of all ages – babies,children, teenagers, and women from 20 to 70’s. It was a glorious and powerful sight. And sitting in the group were aboriginal women elders – now there were some powerful spiritual women.
Funny thing happened along the way. At each presentation of my speech I noticed that a few women left the room. Me being me I thought they were going to the loo. No – they were doing a silent protest at my speech. They were part of a religious group that believed their spiritual practice was the one true one and that I was spouting feminist, witchy, spiritual blasphemy. They also came to my workshops and sat and stared at me and refused to participate in the activities. I welcomed them. I said that I respected their right to protest and disapprove of my speech. I also said that if they thought their protest intimidated me or would somehow change me – then they were really wasting their time but that they were welcome to stay in the workshop in any way they wanted. One woman left and the other stayed and had a great time painting.C’est la vie.
Sometimes I attract events that mean I have to explore new understandings in very public ways. And that trip to the 3 mining towns was about the most public way I have ever had to explore something I felt I knew nothing about.
My form of spirituality does not manifest in connection with any particular form of communal practice. I honour and respect my dear friends who are part of a range of spiritual communities. I love to talk with them about the place and power of their practice in their lives. I honour them.
And as my life progresses I believe in magic again.
All of this musing has come from a deeply interesting conversation I had with a new friend last night. There’s a wonderful lightness of being when you can talk openly about the core of what engages your life … and know that you are heard.
Yo banana!
You did wish for it 😉 Yes, our chat on the full moon was most refreshing and nourishing.
And remember, there’s one thing you should always remember when you talk about magick…
It rhymes with tragick! That said, bring on more serendipity, synchronicity and anything that rhymes…
permakulchy the ungeek 🙂