JOURNAL: Beltane take III

after long absence: reunion. The gift of a long spring night is a sweetly stolen moment with your fingers feeding me and then taking from me a little token of what I would feed you with.... danger and thrill both. So easy to unsettle you with one sentence and how I love to challenge you, to make you know that it is I before you and no other. Within your cottage I realise that it is so very like my own that they could have been crafted by the same dreaming mind. Omen or coincidence? do we believe in concidences at all, sweet friend? the herbs gathered at Litha at last safe within your hands, to nourish you and give you solace when despair comes near, to cleanse your spirit. Watered by my own hand, cut with my own hand and sacred knife and hung to dry under my roof, a roof you shall sleep under when the time is right. When you drink them sunshine and earth shall mingle on your tongue and mayhap you shall remember me, as I remembered you that day in a land far away. We have lived in so many lands you and I, yet none have managed to make us part for very long.

JOURNAL: Beltane by full moon

Yes, beltane by near full moon and by the light of stars. Sound of running water jumping over slate. Movement of trees near and owls far.

JOURNAL: watching time

Watching time go by, as the flames burn and shimmer on the water. Night long as absence, your absence.

JOURNAL: new moon in spring

10% full doesnt cover the delicate sliver against a deeply dark sky. No man in the moon tonight, the maiden barely beginning to glide across a cloudless sky like the barque of ages. Ready to be filled with events, emotions, surprises, everything that the full march towards a moon laden with fulness may bring.

JOURNAL: waiting for time to repeat itself

The cyclical nature of certain events –while not proven by science- is a given in certain circles (pun entirely intentional) and with good reason. What has happened before has a high probability of recurring. Not that the universe favours catching the same bug again and again as a survival characteristic, but a certain susceptibility to entropy is established once something which tends to disorder is allowed to happen.

In the realm of human emotions this becomes a pattern which is well known to star-crossed lovers. A fine example is where a relationship has a past unknown to the couple. I am of course referring to past lives. Certain seeds of time and experience are sown in the soul and carried into a particular incarnation, to be watered by the first glance exchanged. The phenomenon of love at first sight –or coup de foudre, as the |French so aptly describe it, (for it is indeed as if a bolt of lightning had descended from the heavens unto the hapless pair) is the most usual expression of this happening and can reliably be followed by all the symptoms of two souls with outstanding business to confront.

Not for nothing is the repeating of certain key meetings referred to loosely as karma, rather than allowing for the possibility of an encounter being a result of dharma. It is not a simple lack of technical exactitude on the part of the speaker, it is a term chosen because unconsciously it is felt that such meetings are usually to settle outstanding debts.

What would make us stride boldly into perilous waters other than the feelings associated with being in love? The urgent need to breathe the same air and eat from the same plate ensures ample opportunity for karma to unfold and ripen. A trick of destiny to ensure we repay our debts and so bring some balance back into the development and progress of our souls.

Now, how many lifetimes of refining and adjusting, of paying and creating new debt must come round on the wheel of life before a fortunate encounter happens between those two souls? They may be assumed to progress, in the main. Yet they have no mechanism to ensure that they meet each time they reincarnate as each acquires obligations with other souls which may take precedence over their personal link. Time is fleeting. And in a way immaterial, for no matter how many lifetimes go by, they will have their opportunity to meet on a plane of existence to continue or conclude their business. Yet to be within a particular lifetime and to have gained enough awareness of these processes of the soul and THEN meet a pair of eyes across a room while knowing that one has seen them before, maybe remembering when, how, even why, is an entirely different process.

The most fortunate of encounters is when both souls are in a state which allows them to know what is happening. Such an encounter is seldom indeed. How curious then that they should knowingly avoid each other, what matter may induce such a reaction? When one of the two avoids, it is usually to avoid the payment of karmic debt, a presentiment of pain, of loss perhaps. To avoid re-living past pain is not a reason, for if they know what happened they know if it is not so this time. At this level of development there is access to further knowledge, so surely it cannot be fear of the unknown. What else could cause such avoidance? What instinctual knowledge is there unfolding which causes avoidance of what would seem a great privilege?

JOURNAL: spring and cherry blossom

Today spring is all around my garden, the cherry tree is covered in pink blossom and hardly any petals are on the ground yet, many flowers are still tight little buds. I have looked carefully at the lilac bushes and their leaves are beginning to sprout, blossom in a few weeks. I can never decide whether I love more the intense scent of the white lilac or the gentle lavender colour of the lilac…lilac. In an ideal world, like so much else, one would choose a combination to make the perfect reality. Rather like love really, how does one choose between this sweetness or that scent or that intensity of shade when in fact one loves life in all its variety. There is so much opportunity to love when one has an open mind and a fine eye for subtleties of existence. In an ideal world, my little cottage would receive visitors galore, perhaps on a windy autumn night a dark stranger on horseback with a cloak buffeted by the wind and pale long fingered hands that would need defrosting by the fireside.

On a spring day such as today, perhaps two women walking up the path and sounding the copper bell by the gate to let me know they were to cross the perimeter into my garden. One holding a willow basket in her left hand and helping her partner over the cobbles of the stone path, which I leave purposefully to be taken over by moss, an old trick to make unaware strangers announce themselves by the sound of their falling. I walk on the grass, of course, not wishing a similar fate. The other wears a long skirt, woollen still at this season when one can never tell what weather the day will hold. Early risers come to surprise me with a mobile breakfast contained within the basket. A smile escapes me as I watch their demure clothing, clothing hiding legs and ankles, blouses long sleeved and shawls at the ready gathering on their bosoms. So proper a semblance of maidenhood, yet such different realities beneath. Part of the tapestry that life offers me, witches enough to accompany me when company is wanted. In that I grow more fortunate with every season.

This place attracts a discreet sort of guest, not every person who knows of it may enter it, and few know of it who are not witches. There is something to the energy of the place which defends itself from easy gaze or curious hand. Before ever I came into this part of the world it was already so, only after several visits did it unveil itself to my eyes and a path eluded me for some time. As it should be, for I had requested a place far from prying eyes and insensate hearts. Having gathered friends enough willing to help build in other realms, the path opened one day with the ease one experiences when permission has been granted in a higher place, no obstruction to mar the way nor to fool the unheeding. To watch stone gather and pile in shapes of its own will, cohesive and strong, is an experience which makes other realities pale. The art and toil of it is invisible, only the result is warm and tactile.

JOURNAL: full moon in Libra

The sign that rules over justice and equilibrium rises over the horizon and for a few astrological hours its influence is felt on the world, a place which has much need of it. Perhaps it is Ma’at’s influence which may be best tapped now, to find clarity within and without. For in clarity lies a path to justice, to better understanding. Although not all wrong doing is a sign of ignorance or confusion. Still, justice may be found in clarity even after great wrongdoing. For without seeing truly, there can be no regret.