The Journey Oracle

What are sources for art?

2012-02-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

When I think of sources for my artistic inspiration, I sometimes discover a source for art in the middle of a painting, rather than at the beginning. I have been reading 101 Things to Learn in Art School, by Kit White, while at the same time working on this new painting named ker dupa, the giant fish of the Siberian folk legend whose action of waking up eons ago turned the world upside down and so brought the arctic cold to the high north. The 46^th thing Mr. White describes he names ‘the happy accident,’ and at the end of his paragraph he says, “If you see it, own it.”

I have been working to see the giant fish in this photo-based painting of twigs over a shallow fast-flowing stream, and for a time I saw a small dark eye—that I developed by emphasizing the shapes that looked ‘eye-like.’ Then I discovered a second much larger eye that made the first one seem a mistake. But are there mistakes in Art? Perhaps there are if we name them so. For a time I felt quite despairing of the giant fish having two eyes…and then I realized, “Of course! I see this and so I will own it. This fish has two eyes. One eye which sees the polar shift from tropical to arctic in the ancient past, and one eye that sees the next polar shift coming.”

When I was working on the Journey Oracle card deck this image was the second I painted, and I thought it was a mistake. I was going to discard the picture but then I tried scrubbing into the strong diagonal lines and in so doing, I discovered a way of creating a stone-like texture that fit exactly the source for my artistic inspiration, a small ammonite shell. It was during that experience that I decided that no oracle card image could be thrown away once begun—and so began my contract with the Oracle to own what I saw.

Finding my spiritual ancestors

2012-02-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

I imagine I am like many middle-aged white women who have spent years finding my spiritual ancestors. I have read books and taken workshops and attended schools and participated in all manner of guided and copied and invented rituals. I meditate but am not a Buddhist, I do trance drumming but am not First Nations, I divine with thrown sticks but am not African, I see lights in the Sastun but am not Mayan. Where is my place and who are my people? Now I think sampling all these cultural versions of relationship with the Spirit world looks a bit like my cat Meisa trying on boxes. There seems to be something very intriguing and also not quite right about each one. How do I recognize my goodness of fit within all these ancestor ways?

What does seem to fit my spiritual roots are ways of the Oracle. I can look into the hidden present as revealed in tree bark faces along a forest path. I can receive revelation in the flight of birds and the shifts of the wind. The way a candle flame bends brings messages. I can receive answers to someone else's questions in my dreams. I have long maintained that we all can learn to receive meaning from every moment, but I am also beginning to understand that we each have a gift of spirit connection that not everyone may be able to access. Some people have inner sight while others hear voices; some folks can smell unhealthy energies while others are guided by lucid dreams. To my eye Meisa’s boxes all look and smell the same, but clearly she is receiving richer information from her ancestor way for locating just the right place to be.

I have recently discovered that a branch of my Father’s family lived in ancient Scotland; this happened at same time that a friend recommended Manda Scott's series of novels about Boudica, set in tribal Britain in AD 37. The first book opens with a map listing the tribes of Scotland: the Caledonii, the Vacomagi, the Taexali, and the Venicones—these latter people positioned in Ross, the highlands that hold some of my ancestor’s bones. It is intensely exciting to discover that in my decades long search for my ancestor’s way of speaking with the Spirit world, I am finding my place and my people.

The Eightfold Path in a new drum

2012-01-21T18:08:00.000-08:00

This new drum from the Journey Oracle has an eightfold interlacement pattern woven into the cedar holding ring. Such patterns have long been popular magic charms because the endless line draws the eye around the figure without a break so that the design can be used for meditation or trance. The magical properties of this design focus on the central diamond around which the apexes of four larger triangles interlock. Therefore the pattern includes not only eight points but also references the mystic threes and fours.

The eightfold interlacement pattern is related to the Buddha’s concept of the Eightfold Path consisting of: right conduct, right contemplation, right effort, right faith, right occupation, right resolve, right self-awareness and right speech. There is also a connection to the Eight Precious Things: a book, coin, mirror, pearl, Artemisia leaf, jade gong, musical lozenge and rhinoceros horn.

Eightfold Path Drum

14" frame of spruce wood

blacktail deer hide

cedar fittings

eightfold interlacement pattern in raw hide thong

$300.00 cn

shipping additional

Email Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com to purchase

View more drums at www.journeyoracle.com

You can listen to this drum being played with a felted beater by clicking on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao1epPWIL_k

Selling my drums on Youtube

2012-01-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

This post is much more than just saying that you are now able to hear my Journey Oracle drums on Youtube. It is a story of how big a village it takes to help us, or at least me, learn something new. It all began several weeks ago when a fellow wrote to say he was interested in the Singing Child drum but could he hear it first? I suggested he listen to it over the phone but he replied, "get a good mic, record the sound and post it on Youtube. Easy."

Well. Perhaps if you are under 30 years of age but I am in my 60's and have never even visited Youtube. But I know where to begin. I asked help from my nephew who probably grew up clutching a computer along with his sippy cup in his crib. My nephew sent links to good mics and off I went to find a Canadian equivalent. Avid Pro Tools SE won but then the whole project went sideways down a vocal studio rabbit hole lined with compressors and equalizers and reverb. Back to my good nephew who joined me in a series of on line meetings so we (mostly he) could navigate through the labyrinth of audio files and media converters. Next my musician-neighbor was willing to get involved with translating the sound board dials for me—explaining what low shelves and high shelves are, as well as gains and gates. More hours were spent listening and movie making and deleting and un-movie making.

There were plenty of times when the whole project was tilting dangerously toward the wastebin, and yet I didn`t give up…mostly because the people helping me didn't give up on me. Much more than learn how to post a sound clip on Youtube to share the sound of a journey drum, I learned to just keep with the present moment—not thinking beyond the current step until I was indeed stepping off from it…sometimes out into confusion and frustration but also eventually up into accomplishment. Just do each step. I began to understand that the frustration was created by my thinking into the future with statements like,"this will never work", and,"no matter what I do I'm failing at this".

I know from working with intention that the universe gives me what I ask for. And when I was saying its not working and I'm failing…I received that. Someplace during the sound board lessons I started saying, "this is like a puzzle and I'm able to fit all the parts together into a beautiful sound." And this is what I received. Now, if I could only find the phrase of intention that would enable my headphones to work….

Preparing for change in 2012

2012-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

When I think about preparing for changes that are coming in 2012, I remember a chalk pastel I did titled, “feeding the homeless.” It has three symbols for welcoming change within its image. I think first we must find the natural parts of ourselves that are still living in the wild terrain of our possibly over tame and certainly over controlled lives. Maybe this is the feel of sunshine on a cold January morning, or the sound of rain rattled by the wind against the window, or the tenderness that comes spontaneously to our faces and hearts when we watch babies sleeping. This natural part of us has a sturdiness and vitality that lives with a simple grace beneath the fantasy stories of aggression, cynicism or fearful alarm we can tell ourselves. Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote so beautifully about this wild woman and man in each of us that I am reading Women Who Run With the Wolves again after these many years for insight about ways to be the change I want.

Once we find the tracks and traces of our natural self, no matter how faint or smudged, I think we need to leave food inside those footprints that will strengthen our wildish natures. I believe that food is our willingness to create; to dance, sing, paint, and tell stories, read Oracle cards, join drumming circles. I feel that when we do something that makes us afraid, that upsets our comfort with staying hidden, that lifts us out of our ruts and potholes—we discover we can fly. We discover we are capable of anything. The change that meets us is the wind that lifts us; it is the change that we ourselves create.

What is your goal for this New Year?

2012-01-04T17:26:00.000-08:00

I saw this question in the window of a shop in Campbell River today, and found myself asking, “What is my goal for this New Year?” I decided to watch myself during my interactions in town, and see if I was shown a goal through my experiences. Perhaps oddly enough, a trip into a lingerie store gave a good hint. Some months ago I had ordered an item but subsequently decided I did not like the fit and so did not want it. I felt too guilty to respond to the message saying my order had arrived; I guess I just hoped if I waited long enough the situation would go away. After the second call reminding me of my order I realized I could no longer ignore my responsibility, and so today I went into the store—determined to apologize for my lack of contact. I thought that the least painful way to begin was to just admit to the clerk that I no longer wanted the special order, rather than find some way of excusing my long silence. The shopkeeper was completely understanding and friendly about my change of mind. The anxiety and criticism was all in my mind.

So what is my goal for this New Year? To tell the truth--to myself first. Although this seems both self-evident and fairly simple, I am imagining for most of us it is not. In the short term it seems far easier to create a story or a context that gets us out of feeling bad about ourselves. And yet when we stay in that deception, it grows into feelings that have consequences out of proportion to the original situation.

This goal for the New Year reminds me of one of my favorite questions from the Journey Oracle Card Deck: “Is the nail straight that I am hammering?” When I think of this question in terms of my New Year’s resolution, I realize that the life structure I am daily building depends more on the quality and straightness of the nail—on the straightness of my words to myself, than on the hammer—the external pressures from others. This means that every situation, no matter how apparently trivial or momentary, has the power to guide my awareness toward inner truth.

Why make a new year's resolution?

2011-12-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

The reason I make a new year`s resolution has less to do with changing a bad habit or difficult pattern in my life, and more to do with focusing my unbending intent upon a situation that I want to manifest. This is a phrase used by Dr. Wayne Dyer in his book, The Power of Intention. This year I am especially working to manifest my intention for the Journey Oracle Deck: that the cards and stories of the oracle deck help people receive guidance from the unseen world of spirit in a clear and usable way.

If I focus on removing the obstacles that prevent the Journey Oracle cards from finding the people who will be helped by their unique way of sharing spirit-filled insight, I may find myself dwelling on low energy feelings of frustration and doubt, which helps create more frustration and doubt. The best way to remove these low energy pulsations, as described by Dr. David Hawkins in Power Vs. Force, is to raise my energy level by imagining the Journey Oracle cards fulfilling their destiny as a welcome and effective addition in the history of Oracles.

I ask the Oracle herself to show me how to manifest my intention for the Oracle cards and of course I draw the perfect card: the card representing the blue moon. I see a spiralling energy flowing toward the infinite eternal blue of spirit; the curling shell pattern of rose and deep wine red like a staircase lit by the sunrise of passionate resolve. The ink blots of doubt flow away from this turning wheel, becoming lace-edged feathers. The phrase: Returning to the source is also perfect. This year I resolve to let go of my individual will regarding the next steps that move the Journey Oracle out into the world, and surrender to the source that generated the Oracle in the first place. I place my petition before the Queen of all the Wise: the Blue Moon that was the first card imagined and the original name of the Journey Oracle deck. When I turn the card over I receive the only question worth asking about the power of my intention: Will I say yes or no.

Happy Winter Solstice from the Journey Oracle

2011-12-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

Happy Winter Solstice from the Journey Oracle. May the Sun always return in your life, and the fire of your soul's purpose continue to keep you warm.

Thank you for visiting the Oracle during this past year, and I hope you return to share in my weekly thoughts and readings. Next week I'll be writing about

Why make a New Year's resolution?

Every Blessing, Kristen

Why make a sacrifice on Winter Solstice?

2011-12-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

I have been writing about the meaning behind my solstice decorations, but more importantly for me, the meaning of this time of year is about sacrifice. This is a time of year when I take a pause from making drums and doing Journey Oracle readings, and so have been reading an illustrated history of the Aztec and Maya civilizations. I came to this beautiful passage about why make a sacrifice to the gods during this yearly celebration of transition from the dark to the light.

At the start of the fifth or current world age, the existing race of humankind was made from the bones of the men and women who had lived in the fourth world age. These bones had been languishing in the underworld, but the Feathered Serpent god Quetzalcoatl ventured into that dark realm to rescue them. However, the Feathered Serpent was tricked during his escape from the underworld and dropped the bones, which broke into many pieces. He carried the remains to the home of the gods, where all the divine lords and ladies agreed that the bones should be ground to a powder, then moistened with the gods' blood and mixed into a paste. From this paste the first people of the fifth world age were made. People suffered illness, old age and death because they were originally made from broken bones. However, they had a special calling to serve the gods because they were fashioned from the gods' blood.

This story has important teachings for me that I translate into gifts of sacrifice on Winter Solstice. My human fragility, illness and death is not something I have earned as punishment because of bad behavior--it is the core condition of being human. I translate this teaching by spending Solstice day in the woods, eating over an open fire without the comfort of a warm house or the convenience of a plate and fork. I sacrifice my warmth to honor my origin as broken bones. Before I begin my Solstice feast I make sacrifices of hand made beads and shavings of copal to the fire, in honor of remembering that all the gods agreed that the alchemy of transformation was required to create new life. I conclude my sacrifices on winter solstice by pricking my finger and offering my blood on a braid of sweetgrass that is laid on the coals, so that my life force will rise on the smokey breath of this blessing plant to honor the gods' blood that gives me life force.

Winter Solstice decorations

2011-12-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

When I begin preparing my winter solstice decorations, I look to nature for ideas. Here on Cortes Island the dominant outdoor color is a vivid green, usually enhanced by the sparkle of recent rain or mist. Many of our winter storms, which can be very dramatic in November, bring down lots of cedar and fir boughs, which make for easy gathering in this quiet of December before the cold and snow of January. I bring in cedar, fir and holly boughs because these trees hold special meaning for me. Cedars are considered the Grandmother / Grandfather trees along these north coasts, giving homes to many in their majestic heights and drawing up groundwater for the plants that live under their protection in times of drought. The Fir is a great helping tree in this place--the slowest burning deep winter firewood is fir; our houses and outbuildings are held up by fir, and dressed on floor and ceiling with its beauty.

The holly is a sacred tree in many mystical traditions. It was understood that the holly would shelter elves and fairies who could come into the homes of mortals during this time of year without doing them harm. It is considered a plant of good omen since its evergreen leaves appear invulnerable to the passage of time. It symbolizes the tenacity of life even in a time of death, which it keeps at bay with its strong protective powers.

I enjoy using representations of apples in my winter solstice decorations. In ancient myths the apple is symbolic of giving love, and of the goddesses of love. As Leigh Ann Hussey wrote, in Celtic times apples were the focus of the winter solstice wassailing ceremony in which prayers and blessings were said to trees. Cider was poured onto the roots to call back the sun to aid in the growth of blossoms and fruit, insuring a plentiful harvest for the next year.

As I gather my winter solstice decorations this year--I am asking trees to bless me with strength and protection, to provide shelter for the other-than-human creatures that visit my home, and to call back the sun, whose strengthening light brings love and prosperity to all beings. May the Journey Oracle bring you blessings.

Rituals for Winter Solstice

2011-11-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

As the light dims in these northern forests of Cortes Island, I begin planning rituals for Winter Solstice. I especially want to honor the old ways that have soaked into this land from long ago and so I go to the Journey Oracle card that was painted during the time of Winter Solstice and therefore contains in its images the energy of this time of darkness giving way to light.

This image is of old age, bent with weakness and cold. The colors are monochromatic and the application of ink looks like the surface is sparkled with frost. This oracle card gives me the idea to create a ritual for "longest night." I think of spending time with close friends, remembering the past year month by month. This occurs to me because I understand from the creatures and forces of the spirit world that what all want most from us is to be remembered. This evening of laughter and sadness with friends as we sit in circle telling each other the stories of our year will begin with this month of December, and wind slowly back through autumn, summer and spring to arrive at memories from days just like this one, with winter's cold breath against the windows and the kettle rocking gently in the rising heat from the wood stove.

The "shortest day" of winter solstice is for me a day spent out of doors--usually in the rain or maybe snow but hopefully sunshine, feeding the smaller birds by decorating trees with suet ornaments and sprinkled with popcorn; offering small twists of sweetgrass to the coals of the cooking fire to feed smoke prayers to all the other-than-human creatures that help me; leaving small chunks of salmon on the rocks by the ocean for the seagulls, ravens and eagles to find.
This other image from the Winter Solstice oracle card expresses my wanting to be part of the song of this special time, when the new sun is born and my northern world again turns toward the light.

Why have personal certainty about values?

2011-11-23T18:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why have personal certainty about values. My values reflect a shamanic awareness of the world in which everything is alive and has conscious intention for life. I believe my drums are alive and are able to affect the choice made by the humans attracted to them. Sometimes a drum will be ordered by a person who upon receipt says "this is not my drum." When this happens I do not react with a typically human-centered business notion of you ordered it--pay for it.

This is because what I hear is the drum saying, "this is not my person." So what happens? I understand this drum is awake is a different way and is actively going to choose its human companion. From this point on, when someone is attracted to the drum, I try to watch and listen for the energetic connection, and not to the making of a sale. The process becomes spirit journey work--in which I am just like this bird balancing on a large force that is directing its own way forward.

Of course most folks do not have the personal certainty that objects are alive, and are intending their own destiny, and do not want an object that has been rejected by someone else. Sometimes I find myself in a conversation about how something used has less worth. I might even find myself doubting my personal certainty about my values. When this happens I draw a Journey Oracle card for guidance from the Spirit world. I look at this image of a column of murky color rising and enveloping a face with a pleasant, detached expression--I see this is the column of doubt--pushing aside the strong yellow color of the third chakra of my personal power. I do not wish to be pleasant and detached from the values that express my personal power. The question on this oracle card is a good one when I reflect on my conversations that cause me to doubt my values: Why didn't I stop it?

Secrets for accomplishing a big project

2011-11-16T17:04:00.000-08:00

My best secret for successfully accomplishing a big project is to not think about the accomplishing. My shamanic paintings take many months to complete, and if I focus on the big, I feel too overwhelmed to get much done on the little. So each day that I paint, I choose a very modest area of effort: "draw to this branch; complete this area of underpainting; apply these two color washes." If more is able to be accomplished, this creates a wonderful feeling of satisfaction in full measure, but if working on a drum beater or beginning a Journey Oracle card reading for a client must come next, then the feeling of satisfaction from painting to my day's goal is still real.

My second secret is to always paint to my day's goal. This is an important aspect of artistic discipline for me. My time in the studio is potentially the most easily eroded part of the day; employment and chores and unexpected diversions all clammer to be seen as more significant. Yet when I honor my work by giving it consistent attention, I find a paint better, as if the brush were the effortless voice of an opera star, and I its conductor.

My third secret is to choose a day for painting that actually has time available in it to be devoted to art. Even twenty minutes--enough time to mix and apply one color wash--counts as success for me. But the frustration of thinking that I will be able to find time for painting, and then watch it be eaten by the vacuum cleaner and going to the bank and a longer dog walk than usual creates instead a vibration of frustration. Better for me to "develop a mind that inclines to abandoning" as Ajan Brahmavamso writes of the basic method of meditation--and let go of the burden of wanting what is not able to happen.

So as you see, my secrets for successfully accomplishing a big project are really quite small: stay in the now, find the time, show up.

A new drum for cosmic awakening

2011-11-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

Sometimes something small turns out to be huge. This new drum was made on October 28, 2011. According to Barbara Hand Clow, this is the date of the awakening of world mind, the completion of our ascension through the 9 underworlds and 13 heavens of the Mayan calendar.

This little drum carries the numerical significance of this climb in the 13 thongs that fasten the drum skin to the cedar ring, and in the 9 cords with spiral or French hitching that suspend the little smoke-tan medicine bag in the center of the ring. In fact, the leather bag looks like a little temple; it's easy to see the ridges made by the draw string as columns of stairs leading to the temple opening at the top. So what could be important enough, considering the acceleration of time and the dramatic events happening around the globe, to be inside the bag?

A pebble.

My choosing to place an ordinary pebble inside the medicine bag--found in the bottom of our boat when leaving the dock for a day of oyster work-- is a gesture about something not at all ordinary. I have long remembered a quote from His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman: "A single pebble can change the course of a river, if you know where to place it." I believe that we are each capable of shifting the river. We are each a seed of awareness, a pebble of awakened consciousness. The right timing is now, and all it takes is a little drum to make a huge sound.

Finding ideas for art

2011-11-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

My process for finding ideas for art often involves not an idea first, but some physical work with my hands first. When completing this new felted drum stick I used St Mary's hitching because I love how complicated it looks and how easy it is to do. As I worked I became interested in how the spiral wound itself visually down the driftwood stick. This winding staircase became the pattern I rediscovered when I decided to use the hitching lacing to fasten together the smoke-tan sheathing. This pattern of spiraling, repeating diagonals became the visual idea I used to hold all the parts of the drum stick together.

Using wool from sheep here on Cortes Island is another important material for my shamanic art, but making the join between the wool and the tanned hide can be visually challenging. My guiding art idea of a repeating diagonal caused me to choose two different colors of hide for making this beautiful four strand braid.

Most of my art initially begins with some kind of physical action; it is the action itself that starts the exploration for a guiding idea--like having a dialog with stone or paper or wood. This is the way I began each Journey Oracle card of the oracle deck I created. I gazed into the surface of one of three things--a slice of agate, an ammonite shell, or a dried disk of deer skin--and began painting with no notion of what or who would appear. The oracle card directed its own visual story, just like the physical wrapping of this new drum stick directed its unifying idea.

What to do with a lucky penny

2011-10-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

Recently my friend Ann Mortifee gave me a lucky penny. We were in a crowded restaurant at the end of the tourist season here on Cortes Island, and midst the beet salad and views of Desolation Sound, she dramatically reached across the table and placed a penny in my palm, declaring this was a lucky penny that would bring me good luck and good fortune. Ann pointed to a beautiful necklace of silver rings she was wearing, from which dangled a penny. The necklace was from her mother, she said, and the penny came from a friend who offered her in jest a penny he had just found. She chose to receive the penny with a full sense of honor and serious purpose. I could have thought her gesture was silly and the sentiment old-fashioned, but I chose to believe her statement: this is my lucky penny.

I asked my friend Irene Blueth of Silver Sea Jewelry to to honor my penny by setting it in silver so I could keep it close by wearing it. I also have a necklace my mother gave me, but instead of planished silver, it is a steel or tin chain hung with plastic circles that my mother brought back from a trip to India many years ago; the sort of token thrown by street performers during a festival. I could have accepted the necklace was cheap and undignified to wear, but I chose to believe this gift from my mother has been waiting a long time to be received.

In this time of great change, I can choose to be in fear and disappointment, or I can choose to be in love and generosity. I can believe that my work toward spiritual fulfillment is joy, or just work. I can believe that I am too small to help others, or I can believe that my artful effort is big enough to turn the tide. I am choosing to believe in my lucky penny, and I am wearing the Queen like the Queen that I am.

shamanic counseling fees

2011-10-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

How to set my shamanic counseling fees is always a dilemma of need vs. want. For both the client and myself, I want my oracle card readings, shamanic mentoring and dream work sessions to be accessible, yet I need a fee schedule that honors my skill in entering the spirit realms, enabling that world to do the work of this world. I also want those folks who most need spirit-filled guidance--young adults, parents, elders, those who are struggling with hard times and hard choices--to be empowered by this clarity without the limitations imposed by lack of financial resources. I asked the Journey Oracle for a reading about how to balance these needs and wants. This oracle card is of the Celtic tree month Birch, which encompasses the time from late December until mid-January. My first impression of the Oracle's answer is that this time is metaphorically the bones of the year. Bare branches rattle in the wind that sends achingly cold fingers into pockets and tucks chins into coat collars. This is the time when, if we live a rural life, we gather inside around a wood stove to visit, share stories, and eat apple crisp made from the fall harvest. This is the true time of the Oracle, and of looking deeply within. I therefore believe this image and its question applies to me more than those who come to me.

I see a woman swimming in a sea of yellow empowerment and blue seeking, carrying her heart before her head. Above her flows the red passion and orange attraction of the dreamtime snakes, swimming with her in a flowing stream toward the side of intuition and revelation. This image is confirming of my skills in helping others access through me the spirit guidance they seek.

But the question is also significant and provoking. When I am mostly giving away my skill--creating work trades that don't quite get finished, allowing sessions to go over time but only asking for the original rate, accommodating my energy to the schedules of others--I am making situations where I am not getting to finish my story.

I was recently told by a stone that they were "helping me compete against time for honoring." I don't yet know what that means, but I do think it means I must begin by honoring myself.

The spiritual meaning of doorknobs

2011-10-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

Several years ago a man gave me a doorknob as partial payment for some shamanic counseling I gave him. Although it is a very beautiful object, I didn't think deeply about the spiritual meaning of receiving a doorknob until I recently read this passage in Iron John, the book by Robert Bly that gave form and speech to the men's movement of the 1990's.

"Every adult or older sibling who wants to enter the child's psychic room does so, because it is as if there is no doorknob at all on the inside of the door. The door moves freely in, opening us to improper intimacies.... The door moves freely, we could say, because the doorknob is on the outside."

The receiving of a doorknob all at once felt like a gift of revelation to me, much like when an oracle card reading alerts me to something hidden and yet in plain view in a situation I am examining. I really looked at the doorknob. It is ceramic and brass of a very old design, not capable of operating an ordinary door, and therefore it must be able to operate a non-ordinary door. So what kinds of non-ordinary situations need a doorknob on the "inside" that I can control?

Two types of situation occur to me. One is when I want to shut a door on interaction and maintain silence. I don't mean the kind of not talking that originates in hurt or disinterest, but rather the wise silence that grows from insight and compassion. The other situation is when I want to open a door to speak my truth. This is not the speaking that originates in emotional drama, but the calm speaking that expands awareness in a quiet respectful way.

Sometimes I meet someone who is her or himself a doorknob to these ways of being. Perhaps a friend holds silence in a loving way while I rail away against some difficulty, or she speaks plainly about a commitment still to be met...and I can hear a doorknob turning, and feel the choice of moving.

What is a shamanic retreat?

2011-10-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a four day shamanic retreat, and while I had originally planned to write about the spiritual meaning of door knobs, the journey into the other realities ate all my time, as if I were serving to each minute a feast of giving blessings, re-committing to my spiritual teachers, and receiving blessings.

I cannot answer the question yet, "What is a shamanic retreat?" I am still waiting and not watching the pot that is my journal as it continues cooking. I know it took lots of letting go to get off the map. While it feels good to return to my Journey Oracle card readings, and painted frame drums, and shamanic art--I realize I have been in a landscape inhabited by the Other, the place where the torrents of ritual and sacrifice cut deep channels though my comfortable paths.
I wanted to be guided by these lines from Antonio Marchado:

Mankind owns four things
That are no good at sea--
Rudder, anchor, oars,
And a fear of going down.

Of course my cultural and personal version of these four: my anxieties, expectations, skills and fears accompanied me, yet I do think I mostly let the ship of the spirit world carry me. Turns out I got to sail on a beautiful boat.

Why give flowers?

2011-09-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

I always have a dilemma when I have an reason to give flowers. Although I too love their spectacular color and form, years ago I made a commitment to the spirits of place here on my property on Cortes Island. Because I made a mistake and allowed a special place to damaged, I said I would only give the flowers of this place to make beautiful the wound I had caused. I even wrote a story about my unwillingness to give flowers for other occasions as one of the oracle stories that correspond to each oracle card in my Journey Oracle card deck.

Yet now I am preparing for a series of rituals I am conducting at a shamanic retreat I have been planning, and I need flowers for the offerings. What to do? It doesn't seem right to go buy flowers, and of course I cannot pick the last ones still blooming in my early autumn garden because of my promise. I asked my spirit guidance to bring me a solution and a few days later, into our island cabin walked a friend carrying these!

We had been helping her through a difficult time, and she brought a perfectly spirit-directed thank you. But the ritual is still a week away and this extravagant beauty will not last until then. Again I am pondering what to do while another friend is helping me dismantle an old filing cabinet, and her solution for creating a drying rack feels equally spirit-directed.

The drying flowers are now like colored tissue paper, and the helpful effort of my friends will become delicious food for spirit in my bundles. So thanks to all you who do give flowers, you never know but that gesture may be the answer to a prayer.

How to read an Oracle card

2011-09-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have just finished conducting an oracle reading on line using this Journey Oracle card. When I first drew the card, according to my client's choice of # 41, I wrote:

I see a bird shape—lightly outlined in black with lost and found edges; its entire form is not visible. One leg and the lower part of the wing are not seen. This is a flightless bird, perhaps a turkey. The form is showered from above with yellow and cornflower blue. Also a sap green color and a deep teal blue are flowing down. The colors are most dense over the bird’s head and chest, and least present over the tail area. The colors are fainter in hue as they begin in the upper center of the card, and gain intensity and saturation as they reach the lower rim. In the upper portion, the brush strokes applying the color are laid on with considerable water to form a wash, while the strokes along the lower rim are applied with a dry brush.

I decided to share this description of an oracle card because I hope you will find something significant about it. There are no judgments or assumptions or statements of meaning in it. Although there are descriptive words that create an image--flightless, showered, considerable--these words describe a physical quality and not an interpretation. I believe writing a physical description with no personal meaning is a necessary first step when creating a successful oracle reading. This allows the reading to grow toward meaning, instead of beginning, perhaps unconsciously, with the assumptions we already have about the situation for which we want advice.

These unconsidered assumptions of meaning can cause us lots of confusion and difficulty. I recently found a copy of Iron John, by Robert Bly, at the Cortes Island free store and had a revelation when I read this passage:

Many women today say, "The earth is female." A man told me that when he hears that, he feels he has lost the right to breathe. And when a man says, "God is male," women have said that they feel they have no right to pray....Today when a man or woman dreams of a lake, the therapist assumes that the water refers to the feminine....For those who know Latin, mare (the sea) associates with Mary, and pretty soon the sea is female, and since the sea is the unconscious, the unconscious is female as well, and so on.

This describes exactly a great risk in doing Oracle readings for yourself or others. When we include value and feeling statements in our initial description, our unconsidered assumptions become embedded in the reading, and the Oracle cannot reach beyond our unconscious judgments to show us the revelation we are asking to receive.

How to release anger

2011-09-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

Most of us have moments when we need to release anger. I have just come home, late and tired from doing a Journey Oracle reading, to find our wwoofer watching Japanese comics on the internet and my partner meditating, apparently leaving me to begin preparing dinner at a time when we are usually sitting down to eat it. So how to release the anger of feeling unsupported? I decided since I was still thinking about the Journey Oracle cards I had just been working with, I would conduct my own oracle reading for insight.

I drew this card; one of my least favorite images in the entire deck. I guess anger feels like that, something we don't want to identify with, yet a thing that keeps us in its thrall. I see an anxious and distracted face, made unpleasant by a running nose and pinched features, surrounded by fractured lines of ice blue. Colorless, tight, self-absorbed. My perfect description of anger. So how to release this? I am drawn to the phrase, "Mother inside looking out." and immediately I remember my own mother. I think she felt oppressed by three children and all the usual family duties, at the same time that she was working full time as a high school literature and English teacher. I think my anger is my Mother inside looking out. This card is the full moon in January, and certainly I relate to the deep cold of that moon in this oracle card image.

I turned the card over and received a revelation. Again, the phrase from the Oracle sounded a truth: "Will the rim hold if the center falls out?" It is easier for me to pull together a meal in quick time that it is for our wwoofer from Japan, who is unfamiliar with our Canadian food. And of course my partner didn't just come home from the oyster farm to lie about, but had begun replacing the skylight panels before taking a moment to himself.

Anger is all a matter of perspective, and the Journey Oracle gives me a different view of my situation. This reading helped me shift my perspective to one containing more common sense and kindness. I hope it helped you too.

Shamanic lessons from a new painted drum

2011-09-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

I have been writing about this new shaman drum on a previous blog for my Journey Oracle website. I described this new direction for my drum back fastenings: interlacement patterns that form webs of protection because of the single flowing line of the thong. I wrote about how I was looking into the drum's surface to see what spirit would emerge. And this remarkable painting is what came.

I received many shamanic lessons gazing into this new painted drum. I now call it Estrella and understand that this is an image of a spirit guide, just like the shamanic frame drum is a guide to the alternate realities. The human and the animal share one eye: hers the left and the Other the right. This contains an important lesson for me. When I look through the eye of my spirit or 'mother' side, I see through the eye of my guide's action or 'father' side. So my intuitive non-linear vision in this reality is my active, communicating vision in the spirit realms.

The most significant feature for me of this painted drum is the woman's hand. This was the last feature of the painting to appear; before I found her gesture the drum felt potent but somehow incomplete. I notice that the woman's right hand is holding a finger to her lips in the global gesture that means, "Shhh. be quiet." This means to me to be quiet about our relationships with the Others in the spirit world. I feel it is important not to talk casually about who comes to visit us from that world, or how we are together in this world. I believe we create great consequence when we show off with words, and great alliance when we keep silence.

Receiving technology advice in an Oracle reading

2011-08-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

I have been considering buying a net book and besides comparing various models and features on line, I decided to do a Journey Oracle reading about my possible purchase. I especially wanted guidance about whether this technology would actually be useful in my business selling painted shamanic drums and oracle card decks on my website, or was I just wanting a new gadget?

I drew card #17, which represents the Path in the Journey suit of cards. Immediately I connected to the image and the question: Am I keeping all the parts? The image appears to me to be a caterpillar or some sort--all mouth and stomach--resting on a yellow-colored foot pointing to the right. A caterpillar is a symbol of imminent transformation for me, a creature whose only task is preparing for dramatic change. The yellow foot going right represents personal power moving into this ordinary, or "right hand" reality. The shapes made of black lines arching above the creature look like the outlines of net books to me.They begin in the clear white space but take on the color and shape of the catepilliar's head as they seem to join with its form.

The card feels like it is saying this purchase would be useful, but what are "all the parts" I am needing to keep track of? To answer this question I read the story aligned with the energy of this card. As I recommend to my clients who receive online oracle card readings from me--I read the story and then asked myself what "jumped" into my awareness. The last phrase, "meeting fellow travelers who revealed the next message" caught my full attention. I most want to keep connected with my Journey Oracle website, write my blogs and respond to emails when I travel, and a net book would enable this.

When I turned the card story over and read the 5 pieces of advice from the Journey Oracle, I smiled at the first two sentences:

The creative force is sure-footed.

The momentum is fed by self-generated struggle.

I recalled what a friend said earlier when I asked her advice about my planned purchase, "Why not buy it? Its never a struggle for you to find something interesting to do with a new tool."

Why admit a mistake?

2011-08-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

Most of us try to avoid making these, so why admit a mistake? I recently made a mistake that has been a good teacher for making sure I have more than my opinion before acting. I was contacted by a web designer who wanted to use images of my paintings on a website under construction. She wanted the use of my work in exchange for links to my Journey Oracle website and credit on the images. I was careful to ask permission from my other than human guidance because the images were of my painted frame drums and shamanic paintings. I also spent some time checking out the recommended royalties for the use of fixed images on the internet, as suggested by the Canadian Artist's Registration Copyright Collective.

I did a Journey Oracle card reading to receive advice about how to proceed. This card reading was most interesting because the question asks "Will I accept direct experience?" In this situation I don't have any direct experience. Besides, while the figure in the card image has lots of radiating colors that I associate with personal power and self-approval, she is not 'upright' in this energy. I sent my Yes and a copy of the recommended royalties anyway, without exploring further.

The web designer withdrew her interest because of my request for money, and when I spoke to Dianne Bersea, a fellow artist here on Cortes Island, she said that web-links and artist credit is currently a good offer. "The internet is not the same as exhibiting in a gallery. It's a whole different world out there." After all, she pointed out, until recently many sites just took whatever art images they found on the web, without any acknowledgment at all.

It seems that the Oracle card reading was trying to point me in the right direction all along. I literally needed to accept some direct experience with the situation, if not mine then from someone else. I did write back to the web designer asking for a reconsideration, and although I haven't received a response, I feel I have come upright in the energy of this story, by admitting to her I made a mistake.

Finding summer work

2011-08-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

Islands are beautiful places for finding summer work, and Cortes is one of the best. Lots of interesting things are happening on the water and in the gardens of this special place. We invite Wwoofers to come and learn about oysters on the rafts of our sea farm in Gorge Harbor. Our helpers this week are Kathy from Cobble Hill and Ito from Japan. The Wwoof program is a great way to travel, meet local people and do interesting summer work.

This is also a good time for me to be making new drums and giving Journey Oracle readings at the Friday Farmer's Market. With so much happening I only have time this week to wish you a Great Canadian Summer!

Time for art

2011-08-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

During most summer days it is a struggle to find time for art. I have been wanting to finish this new shamanic frame drum, but life seems to conspire to get in the way. The dog wants walking, the basil was mostly eaten by slugs last night and needs protecting, and the garden still must be watered. The paint brushes require cleaning to be ready for tomorrow's next coat of varnish on the sailboat, and I'm still hoping to bring up a bucket of gravel, left in the verge from the recent road work on Cortes, to put around the pond.

I recently finished reading Masters of the Living Energy, by Joan Parisi Wilcox, and discovered a new perspective about time for making art. One of the paqos (shaman) interviewed in this wonderful book about the mystical world of the Q'ero of Peru described time as a being. A completely new perspective to my north American mind! Seems this time person is a difficult one to have a relationship with. The being who is time for art is demanding that I enter a sort of "no time." How I find to do a thing is most often discovered by finding out how not to do the thing, over and over, until at last all the necessary elements of sturdiness and beauty come together in technique. And this requires being fully present with gererous time.

So how to make this time being a friend, instead of a stranger in my full summer days? Probably the same way we visit with any of our friends...by asking for their company, setting aside space to be together, maybe bringing a small gift or some food to share. I am imagining that the best food to share will be my full attention, and the gift to bring is my efforts to make beauty when we are together.

The art of making a drum beater

2011-08-03T18:30:00.000-07:00

I recently finished making a new drum beater, while at the same time beginning a new book by Stephen Harrod Buhner titled Ensouling Language. At first thought one might not expect a connection between making a drum beater and writing nonfiction, but art is art in its essence, no matter what its final form. Buhner writes how all craft must first enter a territory of spirit and lived experience, from which all else will come. The initial design comes from a conversation of feeling with the material, with its invisible essence, and all technique must flow from this core if the piece is to become inhabited by presence.

These drum beaters have presence. My opening conversation is with driftwood, and the essence of driftwood is that it has lost its skin to the sea. All my choices of covering and technique are a response to this essence, to give the wood a skin of art.

Some of my drum beaters are felted with wool from Cortes Island sheep, and fitted onto sticks polished by wind and tide and left along the ocean shore. The lacing and wrappings are made of traditional brain-tanned and smoked elk or deer leather. I name the forces of nature within each beater as I make them, asking that they bring the voices of grass and rain and smoke to join your drum song. The sound bursts from the drum at their glad striking, happy to be wearing such beautiful new skin.

felted drum beater...$80.00
with St Mary's hitching

doeskin beater ...$60.00
with French hitching

contact Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com for more information.

New shamanic drum

2011-07-26T17:51:00.001-07:00

This new drum has an unusual fastening in the back, and a wonderful story that spans two cultures. When I first made this frame drum with a Cortes Island deer skin stretched on a 17 " hoop of spruce wood, I called it the Star drum because I created the hand hold in the back with a Ninefold Goddess interlacement pattern. This star recalls the sacred feminine in European mythology and folklore, and because it is composed of a single unbroken line, it also represents spiritual protection.

When reading a new book about the mystical world of the Q'ero of Peru I discovered that this ancient shamanic culture believes that when a person is called to the sacred path of the Paqo, or shaman, he or she receives an Estrella, which is spanish for star. This estrella is the outward manifestation of an Apu, or spirit of a sacred mountain. The estrella commonly take the form of hummingbirds, pumas, bulls, and condors. In dreams, an estrella may appear as a glowing man or woman in white clothing.

I am now beginning to gaze into the new drum's surface to see who is coming for me to paint. If I am honored to receive an image, I will post a picture of the Estrella that comes to be the spirit of this painted drum.
You can purchase this drum, and see and read more drum stories by clicking on Purchase a Journey Drum on my website www.journeyoracle.com

Shamanic lessons from a child

2011-07-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I received shamanic lessons from a child when I attended Cortes Days, our annual community picnic here on Cortes Island. Even though I am a drum maker and creator of oracle cards, and do shamanic mentoring, I believe that my shamanic path is fully a part of my daily life, and not something I do only in a separate or special way. So while sitting on the beach I noticed this boy and asked to be shown some shamanic lessons.

#1: Have the courage to appear different.

A shamanic path requires a lack of concern for how we appear to others. Our choices of how we look and what we do becomes directed by our relationship with the other-than-human world, and not by social pressure or current style.

#2: Be willing to follow your own vision.

A shamanic path often directs us away from where the group is looking. Our teachers become the stones and plants and natural forces that surround us. Our willingness to turn toward nature opens the way for the spirit world to enchant us.
#3: Learn to go where no one else is going .

When we explore deeply into what surrounds and sustains us, we discover that everything is full of life force, and that each thing, even as small as a grain of sand, has its own story and purpose. We discover our story and purpose, not by beating our own drum, but by listening to spirit's drum.

Where is the spirit world in climate change?

2011-07-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

I was recently hitching a ride home in Pearl, the truck and trailer rig of Cortes Transport, and the driver asked me this question: Where is the spirit world in climate change? He knows I make frame drums and give oracle card readings, and so perhaps thought I would know about the relationship between what is happening to our weather, and the spirit presences whose living energy manifests as wind and rain; tempest and drought.

I have continued to think about this question. While we were sailing this past week in Desolation Sound I kept watching the flow of forces in this vast landscape. I believe that the world of nature is as conscious of us as we are of it, and I feel that while climate change may be a human-generated crisis, it is self-absorbed to the point of peril to think it is a human-solved one. Why are we not asking, in all our many forms of communion with nature, where is the spirit world in climate change?

Negotiating reproduction rights for original art

2011-07-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

I recently finished the original art for a series of tarot cards, and now I feel like my cat Meisa when she jumped into a place where she didn't fit very well. My friend and I, who asked me to join in his vision of making and marketing the cards, are in the difficult business of trying to mutually find the right words to both honor the original enthusiasm of our working together, and to create a business relationship. I think maybe we didn't think before we jumped in, or maybe we made assumptions about what we were going to do once we got there, only to discover that the "there" wasn't anywhere we knew.

Of course it would have been vastly preferable to have written a contract before we started the project, but it seems that us humans are like curious cats: with no pre-planning--into the cage we go.

On the advice of a sister artist here on Cortes Island who has recently created illustrations for a children's book, I contacted the Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective. What an education I have been receiving! I didn't explain to my friend that my wanting royalties meant I was retaining reproductions rights, and my friend didn't understand that reproduction rights are not automatically included in the sale of original art work. Hopefully we will be able to jump out of this situation together with the same good will we had when we jumped in--but in the meantime we are stuck sifting though words like bird seed, trying to find the ones that will nourish both of us equally.

Even though creating, publishing, and marketing my own Journey Oracle card deck has been at times frustrating, at least the place I jumped into had to only be a good fit for me.

Making a new spike fiddle

2011-06-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a new creation takes a long time to be born. Several years ago, when I was first posting this blog on my Journey Oracle website, I wrote about making a spike fiddle from my Grandmother's bed. In almost all the time between that experience and now, I have been making a new spike fiddle. Tonight I put the deer hide left over from making a frame drum onto the sound chest. Now there is only the fitting of the strings and the rosin on the bow.

During the making of this new spike fiddle, I learned about how to apply orange shellac, also called French Polish, to the wooden newel posts and head boards, mostly by learning how not to apply it. I also was shown by a young clerk at a local hardware store that sometimes something new joins with something old, and learned to seal the shellac with Show Car glaze. I even discovered that Barbecue gel lighter fluid is just the right kind of alcohol to thin the shellac.

I wonder what my great great Grandfather Samuel Webb, who built the bed in 1896, would think of that? I bet he would like knowing that his work is still being shaped and sanded and polished. And I'm pretty certain that this ancient wood from Russel County Virginia wants to sing with this young deer from Cortes Island, British Columbia. May the first song feed all my ancestors.

Learning about animal totems, allies, and helpers

2011-06-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

I was recently working with a student who is learning about animal totems, animal allies and animal helpers. Of course, as Loren Cruden says in Spirit of Place,all beings from the plant, mineral, animal and other realms who have helping and teaching relations with humans can be totems, allies or helpers. So what's the difference?

In my understanding, a totem is a being who is family to us on the other side. This is a long term and wide ranging relationship that also reflects the form we ourselves take on the other side. This Journey Oracle card is what I understand a totem energy to be like. I remember once as a small child seeing a man very far away on a golf course. He was much too distant to recognize any features at all, and yet I instantly knew it was my father because of the particular way he stood due to a childhood injury. A totem is like this; a remembered song that we always know how to sing.

For me, an animal ally is a being that has a relationship with me covering a specific range of purposes; the animal or bird and I have a contract to do work or learning together. An ally relationship for me begins with a formal request for connection and I understand that the being and I have the right to say yes or no to each other, without assumption or obligation.

In my shamanic experience, an animal helper comes unbidden to be a helper, teacher and protector; bringing challenge, confirmation and empowerment. I don't usually recognize an animal helper until the same being has shown up in the same circumstance several times, and I connect its presence to the situation I am in. I remember several times feeling particularly grateful at the success of an oracle card reading and then going for a walk to discover a snake that interacted with me in some significant way. Eventually I understood that Snake was a helper for the Oracle of the cards, and now I look to meet one as confirmation of the Oracle's presence during a session. Everything that is alive has the power to be a helper, and in my shaman's world, everything is alive.

What is an art installation?

2011-06-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

I am working this week with two other Cortes Island artists to create an art installation in the Old School House Gallery. The show is titled "The bottom of the Garden" and is a presentation of a new set of oracle cards that I have been painting for the past four years: a Faery Tarot Card deck. As we have been working together I have been noticing the interesting way in which an art installation comes together. The materials and art pieces find their way of being together mostly by not finding their way--over and over again. It seems each version must be taken to its full expression, and then comes the discovery that the space or selection or resulting impression is not right and so the entire construction must be reconfigured into a new arrangement.

It seems to me that much of art is like this. We discover what works only by discovering what does not work. And finally at some moment all the elements click, and the meaning of the art fits the shape created for it, like a well-made pair of shoes fits our way of walking.

The creating of my shamanic paintings and frame drums is like this. I feel my way toward the new work mostly by seeing what is momentarily not working. I have learned not to control or limit the versions that want trying, but instead to surrender to all the forms that ask to be seen. I am beginning to understand that the only path to power is surrender, even though this initially seems to make little sense. If I try and control the progress or the outcome of my artistic or spiritual path, I am only holding on to what I already know. Only when I truly surrender what I already know will the next learning have a place to grow and live in my art, and in my life with spirit.

Do I believe what I know?

2011-06-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I fired some micaceous clay masks, using a technique I learned from Felipe Ortega, an Apache potter in New Mexico. The process requires me to be fully present to the fire as a living being, a presence that wants to eat well and receive respect, just as we all do. First I must build a house for the fire where it can consume the feast of my clay masks. This clay is quite unusual; its mica content is naturally so high that it can be fired not in a kiln but a bonfire, producing a glittering finish that is spontaneously marked with the fire's tongue. Yet first the fire has to be invited with song and gifts into the house.

I learned that inviting a presence as big as fire to dinner means that I let go of my desire to control. Although it's true that before the fire is lit I must calculate the size of the house floor, walls and roof--so there is just enough hot-burning wood to cook the clay--but once I offer the gifts and light the protruding corners of paper I was taught to DO NOTHING ELSE. What happens next is up to the fire; its willingness to come and consume. If I have been skillful in my preparation and invitation, the house will spiral in upon itself, making a kiln that is just the right size and temperature for the clay pieces inside.

Yet this time I made a small interference. One of the little masks was near a corner and the spiral opened that area rather than covering it. I remembered what I was told--that the fire was in charge--and still I chose to move a piece of wood back over the opening. All looked well as the flames moved away from the feast; the fire had indeed danced over the shapes in beautiful ways.

But the lesson was there. The little face (center row far left) was only half cooked. Is this because I didn't control the fire better? Or because I tried to control the fire? Working with spirit guidance is like this. The correct understanding seems always a choice between the far ends of the continuum. Do I believe what I know of the science of matter, or do I believe what I know of fire as a living entity? What do I really know?

Attracting spirit helpers

2011-06-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

In my work as a shamanic counselor and drum maker, I am asked about how to attract spirit helpers. My first response is we have to taste good to what we are asking to come.

The other-than-human world loves what it finds to eat, but often avoids or challenges others of its kind. So if I want to attract eagle energy, I want to be more like a mouse instead of like another eagle. But how do I be a mouse to attract eagle as a spirit helper?

Many years ago I was giving a drum making workshop on the BC coast. Although the scenery was beautiful, the energy between the participants and myself was not. I understood from my shamanic guidance before the sessions began that this workshop was a lesson for me to "be a mouse" although at the time I didn't know what this meant. Because there were many issues of competition, judgment and self-promotion among the women and myself--I found myself rating my interactions at the end of each session according to "merits and demerits."

When I was annoyed at tardiness, or made veiled criticisms of someone's attitude, or required effort without a break--I gave myself a demerit for my lack of sensitivity. When I stayed detached and polite to another's self-promotion, watched for the best moment to share information rather than follow a schedule, felt kindness toward another's struggle--I gave myself a merit for being balanced in a sacred manner. Toward the end of the drum making workshop I had a revelation: this is how a mouse finds food. The mouse considers each seed for its nourishment or lack, it focuses on details as it moves along; the mouse builds a supply of what tastes good and knows what to avoid.

I believe my attention to detail and perseverance across the drum making workshop did attract spirit helpers who receive nourishment from these mice aspects. If you are wanting to attract spirit helpers, ask to be given experiences in which the energy of your actions will be good food for the spirit helper you are seeking. And then watch and learn from the experience.

How I begin a new shamanic painting

2011-05-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

Before I begin a new shamanic painting I often find myself in a place that makes a strong impression on me. This ancient tree was growing in the beach sand at a state park in Kauai. It seemed impossible to me that roots so washed by the tides and covered with barnacles could still be so fully alive. Of course many people passed by it each day--some left their belongings draped on the curved wood while they went for a swim; others perched on its ledges to put on swim fins, or fastened the dog leash around a wooden opening. Once back on Cortes Island I remembered the image of the old tree, and connected this with some family genealogy research I have been doing into my recently discovered Scottish ancestors.

This connection between a place and a lived experience is how I choose an image to be a shamanic painting--by wanting to return to that place in paint, and then to journey within the painting process to learn more about the experience I am associating with the image. In this way every part of the painting has meaning as metaphor and symbol: the ancient roots growing up through sand, the footprints passing by, the spreading green of the branches with the sun caught in their web. As I paint I will consider these colors and forms as they apply to my family, as I consider my family I will create emphasis and focus with color and form.

But like many significant journeys, this new shamanic painting called family tree will begin in a modest way--by choosing the acrylic colors for my palette. I sample many paint combinations to find just the right warmth or coolness, the right intensity or softness of color. And each of these decisions is also part of the dialog between the lived event and the painted image that teaches me how to see deeply into my feelings, and how also to feel into what I see in nature.

Life takes a holiday

2011-05-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes our regular life takes a holiday. This has been my experience this week organizing the Cortes Island Seafest 2011, the oyster festival. Although there are lots of little bits to remember--everything from emails about finding shrimp chips to arranging who is picking up the mussels--coordinating lunch for 400 people served less than 4 hours has been a joy. It has been a continuous opportunity to feel grateful to volunteers and strangers who make just the right contribution, to friends who step up year after year to help, to a community that shows up. So I'm taking this week off from writing about the new drum I just completed, or the Journey Oracle card reading a friend just shared, or a new exhibition at the Cortes Island Old School House Gallery in June that features my journey into the Land of Faerie. Lets check in next week. Love Kristen

How to buy a drum

2011-05-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

Shaman drums are called good horses, and I suggest someone looking to buy a drum approach the experience with this awareness. So what to consider when planning to buy a drum? Like with riding a horse--I want a drum that matches my way of going. Do I travel steadily, or is my shamanic drumming filled with bursts of energy and rapid beats? Do I want to buy a drum that like a good horse that can carry me across long distances of time, or do I want a drum companion that goes swift and deep in a short space of time.

Some drums, like some horses, move well with others by blending with and complimenting the flow of those moving nearby. Other drums, like wild stallions, overwhelm a group and are best ridden on a solitary journey. When someone comes to buy a drum, I suggest she go into a private space with all the possible drums and drum stick combinations, and go riding. Playing a drum and riding a horse cannot be understood through talking, but only through doing.

And just like some horses do, a drum can pick us. We may have our eye on a big, powerful shamanic painted drum--one with lots of vibration like rippling muscles across its surface--and a sturdy little Welsh pony of a drum keeps calling our attention back to its practical size and steady voice, indicating that our enthusiasm for drumming in sweat lodges or on backpacking trips will be well met.

Perhaps the best advice I can give if you are planning to buy a drum--is to know yourself honestly and well--and then to not have a plan. Whether you read oracle cards, work with dreams, meditate or contemplate--explore how you really want to be with a drum. Then just be open and trust that like good horses everywhere, your drum will sense your presence by the gate, and will come slowly toward you of its own accord. I believe all spirit companions come to us like that. Of course, it also helps to ask a cat.

Looking at Art

2011-05-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

As I am reviewing exhibition proposals to the Campbell River and District Public Art Gallery over these few days, and I found myself thinking about ways of looking at art. When I taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, I gave my art education students a four step method for looking at art that I still use. I'll demonstrate with one of my chalk pastel works that I offer as a shamanic art print on my Journey Oracle website.

The first step is to describe what I physically see, without using any art oriented vocabulary or psychological associations. I see a shape of crimson red in the lower left, above a white dome shape marked with facial features. The red shape transitions into white which further becomes bird and whale forms in the upper left. Vertical bands of ultramarine blue extend through the center of the picture plane and in the upper right transition into shapes of burnt sienna. A thin vertical band of lavender separates the blue from an emerald green shape that extends to the middle right margin. The lower right contains an area of visual details in which appear shapes of human faces. This first step often takes the longest. This first step is also what I do when first looking at an oracle card when conducting a Journey Oracle reading. I only describe what I see.

The second step involves using more formal art vocabulary to describe the visual elements that create relationships within the picture plane. Here I notice that all the colors are saturated--there are no pale or indistinct areas of color. I see that the white shapes draw the eye up the left side, across the top of the picture plane because of the center placement of a solitary bird form, and then down through the lightest green to a white area in the lower left. This creates a egg shaped circle which keeps the eye moving within the picture plane. I see strong diagonals ascending from the lower to the upper portion of the image, creating a visual flow that moves upward toward the bird and whale forms. When using this second step in a Journey card reading, I am noticing the color, shape and detail of the card image that stands out to my attention.

The third step is to let into my awareness any psychological, emotional or symbolic associations I am making. I particularly notice what I am feeling. I note that the intensity of color creates a feeling of drama. The addition of faces and animal / bird forms in unexpected locations creates a sensation of unreality--whether the scene is in the air or underwater or on earth is unclear. My overall impression is of looking into a place I do not understand where I cannot easily orient myself. During this step when reading an oracle card, I am noticing what general impression I have of the card. Am I feeling invited or unsettled; is there something requiring caution or surrender?

The fourth step is the inviting of meaning. When looking at art I finally now consider the artist's title and speculate on the intention. This piece is called Ode to Stones that Speak. The unreality and lack of orientation suddenly have a heightened sense of fit. This is not an ordinary reality. I now go back to my second step--of focusing on the art elements--and assign meaning to the relationships I see. The intense color saturation now connects to the density and mass of stones. The circular eye movement becomes a metaphor for the intensity of concentration required to enter an alternate reality. The visual flow upwards feels like going on a shamanic journey. In a Journey Oracle reading, this last step is also the inviting of meaning. How is this image from the Oracle an answer to my question?

Attracting hummingbirds to feeders

2011-04-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Beginning each April we have had a modest but steady number of hummingbirds attracted to the feeder in our garden here in the deep woods on the north end of Cortes Island. This spring they have been unexpectedly and then alarmingly missing. The story that has unfolded around my attracting hummingbirds has brought me a spiritual teaching from hummingbirds.

At first I just imagined they were late in their migration as our weather has seemed colder than usual, and so I thought little of their lack of appearance. When I heard neighbors reporting a few sightings in their gardens I became convinced that the feeder I was using--a small glass bottle and pipette--was not easy for them to eat from, and so I went hunting for another. I know it would be better if I didn't use an artificial feeder, but our forest setting is short on sunshine and flowers. Of course the only hummingbird feeder I found was of the same design, but I decided that maybe two feeding ports would do the trick. Although these feeders were very beautiful, they both unfortunately leaked, and I finally decided that although the little puddles made for happy ants, the red tips were not big enough for the birds to see. My prayers to hummingbirds seemed answered when I purchased the style of feeder that most of my friends have: lots of capacity, lots of red, lots of places to perch and eat--yet still no birds have come.

Someplace in this expensive quest I began to compare my wanting to be chosen by hummingbirds to my wanting to be chosen by spirit. This is an old story for me--being chosen by spirit--most visible in the process I used to create the Journey Oracle card deck. When I offer my prayers and ceremony for the spirit realms to eat, maybe I shouldn't but I guess I do expect something to show itself in return. What I discovered in this saga of attracting hummingbirds is that when nothing seems to come--I blame myself. I try harder and more frequently, thinking that if only my efforts, or words or attention were more worthy then I would be able to earn as blessing the arrival of the unseen. But I can't earn the hummingbird's arrival, as if several were just off in the trees nearby, waiting to see if my offerings are acceptable or lacking. The hummingbirds have their own story and will be here, or not, as time and spring unfolds. So if I know I can't earn the presence of hummingbirds, why do I think I have to earn the presence of spirit?

Why keep a secret

2011-04-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

I think it is very difficult for us humans to have a big experience or story come to us, especially if it is about us in some way, and not want to tell everyone of our good luck or misfortune. Maybe keeping quiet is even more difficult if we understand to keep the story a secret. So why keep a secret? I have recently had a shamanic experience with keeping a secret, and I think in the process of trying to understand the power of not telling what we know, I have found my own answer to why keep a secret.

Some weeks ago I inadvertently discovered a connection to family ancestors that felt like winning the family tree lottery. I told my partner and siblings, but no one else because the story just seemed too big, and I didn't know how to speak about it. That night I had a dream in which I'm walking a down-hill road. I step aside to allow a fuel truck go by. Instead, the truck pulls over on the right and falls over. I see a small fire has been started nearby. I'm aware the truck will explode. The driver is a young man who can't seem to speak although he is gesturing and making sounds. I interpreted the fuel truck to be the ancestor story, and how it would explode into my life from the small fire of awareness started nearby. I felt the driver was also me, not able to speak. I decided to ask my shamanic guidance how to be with this knowledge, and was quite surprised to receive this during a stone divination that I first learned to do from a friend who experienced it at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

Listen to your heart. No one is safe with this story.

Much trouble comes here, hidden in greatness.

Let go the knowing, resist the going.

Better to be Queen with us here.

As if this might not be clear enough, that night a dream came in which I am a maid of honor at a wedding. I am at the church wanting to choose a place to sit but all the spaces along a raised dais are already reserved with cushions. I see an empty space one level down and move to put my cushion there but don't think this will be enough to hold my place. I lament that the bride is my best friend and I won't be able to see the ceremony. Someone then ushers me up the stairs to the stage and gestures to two chairs saying "You are sitting here next to the bride."

From that height I look to my left and see a large black bear--glossy coat, well fed, healthy--I understand he is also attending the wedding. The bear looks at me with large liquid eyes that are incredibly sad. Out a small window I see two men with guns moving toward the bear. I know they are hunters and I feel a deep sadness knowing the bear cannot be here and cannot escape because there is no way for it to get out.

The bear in the dream looked very much like this painted oracle card image from the Journey Oracle deck. I awoke feeling quite shaken that telling the details of my discovery might hurt or even kill the spirit world creatures that have been with me for so many years. I believe I am to keep this story a secret so they remain safe, but why? And then I was reading an excerpt from Tom Brown's book, "The Vision" in a copy of Shaman's Drum Magazine and received a powerful insight. Stalking Wolf, the Grandfather is talking about what a true ceremony should be as he helps the boys understand their first experience in the sweatlodge. "In the lodge, you will find purity from all outside distractions. Without the distractions of man, you will touch the Great Mystery." I sense it is not so much the story of illustrious human ancestors but rather the distraction this creates, that keeps us from feeling the power and energy of all the other-than-human life around us. In turning toward our own importance we turn away from spirit, and then we forget how to turn back.

Following a spiritual path

2011-04-13T17:51:00.000-07:00

Several months ago when I was having a winter rest on the big island of Hawaii, I literally found myself following a spiritual path one evening. But to tell this story I must back up to the island of Kauai and a Divine Planet store where I discovered a string of lava beads. I considered the beads for several days--resisting their purchase because I understand it is unwise to take volcanic lava pieces of the Hawaiian Goddess Pele away from her home. And then an inspiration occurred to me. Perhaps I was being shown not to take these beads away, but rather to take them back. But to where, and how?When I'm on vacation I enjoy making prayer malas incorporating shells I find on the beaches. I leave gifts of my own handmade beads to thank the ocean and her creatures. When we first arrived on the big island of Hawaii, I restrung the lava beads with kahelelani shells, which I have been told were special to Hawaiian royalty. I began wearing the new necklace every day, waiting to be shown how to return it to Pele. Lots of lava flows were part of my daily walks and shoreline adventures, but nothing indicated a place special enough for this most ancient of Hawaiian royalty.

Just before our holiday ended, I found myself walking a path through a petroglyph site. I meandered along the winding trail and felt myself to be literally following a spiritual path into ancient wisdom. As the setting tropical sun created long spears of golden light and deepening shadow, I placed my gift to Pele briefly within a stone circle, and then dropped it into a crevice out of human sight.

This is my way of following a spiritual path. I notice what jumps into my awareness to notice; I look for insight that gives me a direction for action. I find some way of manifesting that action and then watch for a way that the resulting object (or words, gesture or song) can be given back to the Spirit world as food. This is the way the Journey Oracle cards were created. I had a dream of their creation which caught my full attention, I created the cards, stories and instructions from spirit direction, and now I give them back to the Holy as food, which is metabolized whenever someone calls on the Oracle for wisdom.

Making nettle wine

2011-04-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I had a dream in which I was told: learn to make wine. I knew as soon as I woke up that this was a shamanic teaching, and not an instruction for everyday reality. I already enjoy wine from Good Libations, a U Brew here on Cortes Island run by a dear friend who must have wine yeast as a spirit helper--his knowledge and sensitivity is that spirit-directed. I was lamenting that most wine-making fruits and berries appear much later in the year, and then I discovered a recipe for making nettle wine. My island home has lots of nettles in open areas where the ground has been disturbed and this seemed the perfect fit since I love their pay attention energy.

Yet how is this a shamanic teaching? I drew a Journey Oracle card asking for guidance and this image and phrase appeared. For me, it is a difficult picture from a difficult time of year: the January full moon. On the same day that I received this message of Mother inside looking out I read this passage in "Voices of the First Day" a book by Robert Lawlor that I loved many years ago and am rediscovering again: [Willy Whitefeather, a man of the Cherokee tribe, after playing a melody on his flute for the stones of a red canyon, said]..."the stones have silicone crystals inside them, through which they listen. They are like lonely old people, standing and waiting to be sung to. Our people have always sung songs of admiration to the qualities of strength, beauty and endurance that stones bring into the world....They are tired and lonely now because the white world has become so blind and selfish. Thy live in a hollow, unsung world."

I put these two messages together, and understood to bring to the plants what I learned from my years studying with Martin Prechtel: the gift of a bead made by my hands to the nettle patch, and the gift of eloquence made by my voice to all the plant tops before I cut them. So my first lesson about making nettle wine is to really see the nettles, and to really receive the enormity of what they are giving, that I might bring the seed of my dream into fruition in this reality.

Releasing self-doubt

2011-03-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

As I continue to read Michael J Roads' small book titled Talking with Nature, I continue to be impressed with the wisdom he shares about accepting our own experience, about believing that we know what we know. This seems such an obvious thought when I first consider it. Yet it seems our inability to believe our own experience is what causes us to doubt our actions and insights.

Self-doubt is the most toxic response we can have to situations that involve our interactions with the unseen intelligence of nature. The moment we say to ourselves, "Did I really receive that phrase, in answer to this difficult question I am pondering, from the rock I am holding...or did I just make up those words that popped into my head as I picked up the stone?" As soon as I wonder this, I limit my access to the universal consciousness that composes all matter. I diminish nature's vast knowing to the size of my human knowledge.

I decided to draw a Journey Oracle card and ask, "How do I release self-doubt?"

I drew #4--the card of the South--which for me represents the close up view of nature: trusting the information of small details like a mouse or squirrel does.The image immediately resonated with the choice I am posing about accepting our direct experience. When I focus on self-doubt it is like seeing the small black insect-like form on the left reaching out with its long legs or antennae, and therefore missing the small crimson-hearted seed growing from the red-violet curve in the center. Only I can choose where to put my gaze. The question on the card seems to underline this choice of perception. "Am I the one willing to undo it?" means to me I am the only one with the will to undo my self doubt--by accepting and believing my direct experience.

Talking with Nature

2011-03-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

These thoughts are prompted by finding a small book called Talking to Nature in the free store of the Cortes Island recycling center.

Most of us probably find ourselves talking to nature, but we don't usually receive back an answer, or at least we don't think we do. We say, "Wow, aren't you a beauty" to a sunset or a butterfly. We think, "Ah life is good" as we recline against a warm boulder on a sunny beach. Maybe it is not that we don't receive an answer so much as we don't know how to recognize the response when it comes. As I wrote this sentence, just as I placed the period at its end, a Pilliated woodpecker drummed a loud tattoo outside on a nearby tree. The sound was so dramatic and unexpected that I jumped into attention, just as if someone nearby had shouted, NO KIDDING! in agreement.

Of course the key to talking to nature is having certainty that my thought or action--and my attention being drawn to nature--is connected. The more I attend to this connection--the more direct experience of talking to nature do I have. This dance between unclear communication and direction experience is at the heart of the Journey Oracle card for the tree month Elder. Although the dates for this Celtic tree month are November 24 to December 22nd, as I look out my window I see a little elderberry bush just beginning to swell its buds--the tips of which are a green so fragile that the tone seems to hover like a mist more than be a color. I wonder how Elderberry and Elder tree are family. I think I'll go outside and ask.

Shamanic painting and print: Touching Trees

2011-03-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

In 2004 the 80 acre piece of forested land across the road from our property on Cortes Island went on the market. Although my friends and neighbors joined me in ceremonies to call a buyer who would respect the elemental big forces that lived there, no one answered but the loggers.

When the wreckage subsided, I climbed over the broken forest to a large cedar still standing by a small stream almost gone underground from the silt-covered drifts of branched across its flow. I asked, “What do you need that I can do?” and saw with my inner eye the jumbled remains of tree stumps stretching into the distance, and also a small jar of red paint. I understood to touch every tree, and spent a year climbing over branches and falling through brambles, touching my finger into a jar of red ochre and then touching every tree stump.

At the very beginning of my impossible task, I found a small chip of wood with a beautiful burled patterning on its reverse, and I kept this with the ochre in the pocket of my old coat. Each time I would complete my struggle for the day, I would wipe my finger clean on the cut side of the wood. One year later at the end of my not quite so impossible task I decided to create a shamanic painting of the clear cut to honor all the tiny shoots of green pushing up to soften the haul roads and cat tracks.

When I paint I begin along the upper edge and paint, finished as I go, to the bottom edge. The painting in progress looks like a completed work with a white film over portions of the image that is slowly being peeled off a few inches a day. After I had completed about 1/3 of the portrait of the clear cut, I became bored with where it might be going.

I remembered the little piece of wood still in my old coat, and when I spent time gazing into its ochre-stained surface—this is who I saw. I do not know who she is and what she is holding, but if you take some moments to meet her gaze, she might tell you.

An International Womens Day Celebration: Island-style

2011-03-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

Last night on Cortes Island there was a island-wide meeting asking the community to comment on the first draft of our Official Community Plan. I didn't remember that it was the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day when I decided to do an oracle card reading for guidance about the evening's meeting. Political events on our island can shade toward conflicting and sometimes slide right over into combative when residents have an emotional and financial investment in the discussion, and I wanted to be prepared with some spirit-directed insight into the event.

I drew this oracle card from the Journey Oracle deck and was somewhat puzzled by the image and its statement. Could it be that I was being asked to remember to speak about the other-than-human residents of the island that also need representation: the seals and eagles and wolves? Is it their spirit prayers that needed to be answered in our planning for future development and environmental management?

Moments later I was going down the driveway in the truck with the radio on and I heard about the origins of International Women's Day in the early 1900's. It emerged from the Suffragette movement to win women the vote, and this year some 1722 events of celebration were being planned. Suddenly I felt the oracle card was about our public meeting being on this auspicious day, and that the "spirit prayers answered" were those of our Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers who made such sacrifices to gain the power to participate politically their future. What better celebratory event could there be for International Women's Day than to gather as a community--women and men together--and participate in the messy, frustrating and extremely satisfying business of determining our shared future.

Understanding dream messages

2011-03-02T11:08:00.001-08:00

This shamanic painting titled I never dream I sing comes from literal experience. Although I consider my singing to be a core element in all my shamanic work--especially calling and feeding my helpers in the Spirit world with song--for a long time I noticed that I never sang in my dreams. I even spent time focussing my dream intention on singing before I went to sleep, but never did I succeed.

This chalk pastel work began as a scribble drawing on newsprint in an art mentoring class here on Cortes Island. I was demonstrating how our muse can inhabit anything of our making, if our intention is clear and our effort is honoring. I was gazing into the resulting pattern of scribbles to find a presence and saw the faint traces of what transformed into this haunting scene: youth and wisdom creating the breath of both worlds in song. Still, however beautiful, the finished piece also felt like a dream message of sadness because no singing came in my dreams.

And then one night after a community meeting in which I facilitated a discussion between Island Timberlands, a logging company, and island residents--using all my humble skills and attention to hold a space for the other-than-human wisdom of nature to also be present and to be included in the dialog--I had this dream.

A man who is sitting on my left asks me who I am--and then before I can answer he says "you are a shaman with a family." I begin to sing one of my medicine songs to the tune of Amazing Grace. While I am doing this I am aware that for the first time I am singing in my dream.

I think our ancestors and spirit guidance do not waste these precious moments, but save them until the dream sequence can be aligned to an important experience in ordinary reality, and so use these dream messages to be wayfinders along our path.

Risk in art

2011-02-22T16:02:00.000-08:00

Salman Rushdie wrote about the idea of risk in art in an article I recently found in Canadian Business magazine. He said that the "greatest art is always that art which pushes boundaries outwards and offers some new possibility that didn't previously exist." I agree that unless I go to the edges of what I know and do, and scare myself by jumping over the edge--the piece when finished seems tame and quiet. The work does not call to me from the space between what I just forgot and what I don't yet know.

Usually, when I take a risk in art and first gaze at the results, I almost always am in a muddled state between alarm and a sort of giddy attention. What was I thinking? I then usually discover that my risk in art succeeds when I stop thinking, and instead push away from all my ideas of what is attractive or accessible, and refuse to assess how others will see my effort, or what they will think of the result.

There were several Journey Oracle cards whose images required a sizable risk to include in the oracle card deck. These four images seemed too unpleasant and unskillful to keep, and yet now these cards are drawn again and again by people receiving a reading. They have a power that is not connected to being attractive, but rather to some other more shadowed aspect. Risk in art is like that--we go beyond what we can imagine, and meet what expands us.

Choosing a difficult path

2011-01-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

Following the instructions of spirit often means choosing a difficult path. I remember well the response of my teacher, Martin Prechtel to a student who said, "But, Martin, this homework is too hard." Martin replied, "That's good. It's supposed to be hard." I enjoy reading back issues of Shaman's Drum and recently came across this comment by Scott Frazier in an article by Tony Shiver in Number 52, Summer 1999 . In reference to Tony's question about smoking during a ceremony to help his niece Kate, Scott says "Tomorrow night, we will be fasting, and you can't smoke if you are fasting. Besides, a little suffering is what this is all about. Just keep Kate in mind--that's why you are here. A little suffering never hurts."

When I follow the instructions of my spirit guidance, a little suffering seems to be part of the process. The Journey Oracle cards had many restrictions in their creation that both limited and expanded my creativity, because I was not able to only do what I wanted. Sometimes the seeking of an image on a painted shamanic drum takes many days, and although I know it would be easier to just invent something, I keep looking for what spirit wants me to see. The reward when I finally do have that deliciously Aha! sensation of "There you are; so it was you all along" is a kind of stereoscopic access simultaneously to the world of spirit and of this earth. David Abram writes so eloquently about both the difficult path and the reward when "a medicine person renders himself vulnerable to another, non-human form of experience."

So why do we resist this little suffering that comes from following a difficult path? Maybe because we insist on clinging to the illusion of comfort. I once did a stone divination, after years of learning how to speak to stones based on an introductory experience from a friend who had taken a Michael Harner neo-shamanic workshop. I was trying to understand how to journey to the spirit world and so asked this question: "What do I need to know?" The stone told me:

love your magic life

live up yet perform with sorrow

best become free from much care

have trust in subtlety

love from us cumbersome

That's good. Its supposed to be hard.

Hawaiian holiday

2011-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I just have to let all the attention to Journey Oracle cards, and painted drums, and shamanic art go...and have a holiday in the sun and surf--swimming with the fishes of Kauai and the Kona coast of the big island of Hawaii.

Hawaiian Holiday

Understanding change

2011-01-21T13:29:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I had a friendship with a woman who left Cortes Island and moved to Kauai. Although we thought well of each other, our time together was often strained with complex feelings, at least it seemed so to me. Even though I have traveled to Kauai on previous vacations I have never tried to find her, or made an effort at understanding the difficult feelings.

One morning my partner asked me if I was planning to find my former friend, and just a few hours later at the Princeville shopping center--there she was! I had a wonderful opportunity for understanding change during our reunion--spending time on a beach picnic and at her stand selling native seed jewelry at the craft markets that happen along the north shore. In attempting to understand the change in our relationship, I drew this card from the Journey Oracle. All the parts of the reading: the image of confusion, the question about how to act, and the card story were helpful for understanding change.

BREATHING UNDER WATER
A mottled gray green form moved through the pond water. Its surging pausing progress came to rest on a submerged twig protruding from a floating island. A woman sitting on the rim of the pond, with a mental chaos of many tasks to do, watched as the form resolved itself into a frog with the stump of its tadpole tail still visible. “The head could use a rest” she thought, and so she focused on the frog that had now extended its legs out into a resting position, as if it were a child holding onto the rim of a pool. “This is a child” the woman thought, “even though this face has many stories already.”
The frog gathered its angular legs and blunt toed feet beneath its body. It began to crawl slowly up an accidental ladder of twigs and sticks from the underside of the island to its top layer of mossy mud. The frog kept climbing until it clung to a green stem in the thin morning sunshine, blinking calmly into the enormity of its first breath of air.
“Now there is also long life in this face,” the woman thought, “at the end of this particular journey underwater.” The woman thought of the news she had received: a call from far away saying her father had died. As she sat in the strengthening sun, watching the frog feel its radiance for the first time on its slowly drying body, she thought that maybe this is how it is for everyone. “Maybe this life on earth is the time we spend breathing under water, and then we discover the sun.”

Although these passages are about understanding change because of death, the dramatic transformation from one perspective to another certainly applies in this story of rediscovering a friend. At one moment I was uncertain and confused, and in the next we were laughing in the Hawaiian sun. Maybe understanding change is not so much the task, as is just accepting the change that comes, and basking in the sun of its new perspective.

Maintaining spiritual practice

2011-01-21T13:26:00.001-08:00

When traveling on holiday for a winter break from our oyster farm on Cortes Island, I want to take my spiritual practice with me. This often is much harder than it sounds. The powerful presence of nature in our northern Canadian forests makes saying prayers to spirits of place very easy. There certainly are powerful spiritual forces here on the island of Kauai, but these energies do not recognize me or the spirit language I speak or the spirit food I offer. Perhaps my gestures are not appropriate and I am putting my practice at risk. I drew a Journey Oracle card before I left on this Hawaiian holiday, and really took heart from the damage and perserverance in the card's story.

REFUSING TO LET GO

A drum maker was giving a demonstration. She showed the fitting of skin, and the weaving of thongs to make a handle. She was joining all the parts together when in came an elderly woman. "I am unfortunately in a hurry," the old woman said. "I brought you a drum to repair. It came from my travels in Russia. Thirty years ago my niece put her foot though the skin, and it has been stored in my shed ever since.” With that the old woman handed over the broken drum and left.
The drum seemed irreparable. Its square nails had rusted heads that broke off at a finger
touch. The skin was rotted away from the hoop edges, whose wood had separated and buckled. The rim of the drum was fitted with brass jingles whose pins were broken or bent. The drum maker thought “there are so many difficulties here, yet there must also be something to learn.” The drum maker slowly took the drum apart. Even though every step was a challenge she refused to let go of the project. Nails were remade, wood was reshaped, and brass was straightened and cleaned.
As the frame neared completion, the drum maker received a call from a friend. “A yearling deer has died. I found its arched body trapped in my shed. Would you like to come and take the skin?” The drum maker had never skinned a deer before. There were many difficulties, but she refused to let go because there was also something to learn.
The hide was very fragile but at last the drum maker reassembled the drum with its new skin. The wood gleamed with coats of fine oil. The brass shone like firelight. The transformation was complete.
Years later the old woman called. The drum maker felt a blood rush at the sound of her voice. “Yes. I have finished it,” she said, “but I am refusing to let go. I know I am making difficulties here, but there is still something to learn.”

I am certain that beneath the adventure tour packages and artificial lava rock waterfalls, there is great damage and perserverance in this place. Most of my efforts to maintain my spiritual practice while traveling were feeling strained and false, until yesterday I tried whistling back to a bird. I could not see it in the dense tropical foliage, but in response to its cascading melody I whistled back the greeting I exchange with my cockatiel. There was a pause, and then a shorter bird call that felt full of curiosity. I whistled a longer series and to my delight and humbling surprise, the bird copied part of it. I in turn tried to copy its call. We whistled back and forth until my unskilled mouth was no longer able to keep the tone clear and strong. As I turned away I was dismayed to hear the bird continuing to speak, wanting to maintain contact. I realized that I did not know the whistle for "goodbye and every blessing to you for being willing to speak with me."

But I am refusing to let go. I will probably make difficulty for the birds who a willing to join into a conversation with me and then are disappointed at my lack of manners, but there is lots for me to learn in this, and so for these two weeks I will maintain my spiritual practice by asking the birds to talk to me, and hopefully learning the songs of Aloha and Mahalo.

Advice for beginning to do shamanic journeys

2011-01-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have been recently asked if I would give advice about beginning to do shamanic journeys. I have been creating shamanic drums and doing journey work for 26 years and so agreed I do have some experiences to share. But where to start? Conducting shamanic journeys into the more-than-human realms is a complex and many layered process that doesn't follow human assumptions of time, morality and how to be treated politely.

I was pondering this request for shamanic advice while returning from a week of skiing at Whistler and suddenly received inspiration from seeing a new road sign on the Inland Island Highway. The sign read: SLOW DOWN / MOVE OVER. I felt like BC Highways was speaking in my head about doing shamanic journey work: slow down everything--your enthusiasm, your apprehension, your assumptions, your expectations. Human time is not spirit time. There is a vast intimacy to nature, and to our journeys into nature's spirit, that does not respond to human time. If we want to be fully awake in these other than human realms, we have to move with the speed of raindrops, frog song and morning mist, and not at the speed of 4G.

I realized that in doing shamanic journey work we move over--to our animal wisdom from our human intellect. We are asked to be in our body sensations and heart knowing more than our mental images, explanations and calculations. This is a hard move, because our modern culture does not teach how to listen to our heart perceptions as valid knowledge for awareness and action. So sometimes we are shown, when we first begin to journey, that before we can even enter into these alternate realities, we must learn to become quiet and still, like the fiddle is quiet and still--waiting for the song to give voice to its spirit, as both are waiting for the musician to give her body to the song. If I have learned anything in these 26 years, it is that in the shamanic realms, I am--and am not--the fiddle, the song, and the musician.

Connecting with nature

2011-01-05T18:14:00.000-08:00

I have recently been learning a way of connecting with nature by using my heart wisdom rather than my brain intelligence. This new insight began when I re-discovered a book by Stephen Harrod Buhner called, The Secret Teachings of Plants. Buhner is one of my favorite authors and I purchased this book years ago before I began this journey of the oracle, but apparently was not ready then to learn about connecting with nature through my heart.

Now when I go for my daily walk, I stop near some part of the forest that calls my attention: a cedar giant, a clump of moss sparkling with rain, a twisty community of salal. I wait in meditative quiet, focusing my awareness in my heart as well as on the place in nature, until I feel a warm sensation of opening, of permission to be present with the life here. I "come to my senses" in my heart awareness and then ask myself "How am I feeling at this moment?" I understand that this feeling tone is flowing from this place in nature, and connecting me to its "ensparkedness" through my heart as an organ of perception. I don't ask for anything, or intend to take anything, I just stand in the dripping January forest and feel the deep down freshness in our shared aliveness.

I offer my breath as thank you to the place for letting me be present with it and often as I walk on I remember one of my favorite quotes from John Muir: "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."

Oracle reading for 2011

2011-01-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

I asked the question: "What do I most need to pay attention to in 2011?" Here is the Journey Oracle card I drew. This image is one of my favorite paintings in the oracle deck, but I felt dismayed that the elegant creature seemed to be lying on its side. I wanted to turn the card upright but realized the question has an even stronger impact because of my discomfort with the orientation. There seems to be so many messages telling us who we are these days. We are the ones who have ruined everything; we are the ones who need to fix everything; we are the cause of every problem and the hopeful version of every solution. But do we realize who we are?

I then asked, "What do I least need to pay attention to in 2011." I drew this oracle card. For me this image is about the hunger of desiring something more or different beyond the blessings of health, home, service, kindness and community that I already enjoy. May I remember these blessings in every year.

I did turn the first card upright and immediately saw the creature made of the red matter of this earth, surrounded by the cascading blue flow of the spirit realm. I will try and remember this question throughout the year; remembering that these red and blue realms are not separate, but are the mix in all life that makes the power of purple. May we who have so much work free from the hunger of craving more, and in the peace that comes when this inner wanting is quiet, may be realize who we truly are.

What is wearable art?

2010-12-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

As someone who has always made things, whether paintings or objects, art for me is in the details. When I remember that "every part, and every part between the part is whole," I realize that anything created with complete focus is art. Usually for me that focus comes in the form of a limitation. By this I mean something in the work's materials or construction takes on the status of a requirement; everything in the creation of the piece must be a result of conforming to this requirement. This coat, commissioned by a member of the Klahoose First Nation here on Cortes Island, became more than performance regalia, it transformed into wearable art.

The coat is made from three smoke tanned deer skins, embellished with hawk and one eagle feather, plus tuffs of mountain goat hair. As I began working on the basic construction, I understood to use no knots. This became the focus that transformed the coat into wearable art, into a medicine coat whose art could protect the wearer from any negative projections. Tangling, heavy energy--such as envy or jealousy--can stick to knots because these stop the flow of the vibrations constantly moving around and through us. From the moment I realized this limitation, the coat became a mysterious puzzle: How to fasten the skins, and also the ornaments to the skins, without knots? I discovered the Solomon Bar knot, a decorative square that isn't really a knot, because if the central cord is pulled through, the entire length just unravels itself. This, combined with a running X stitch and the use of rabbit skin glue created my art-filled focus.

The Journey Oracle cards that I created are a kind of "wearable art." The cards and stories had mysterious spirit world limitations for how they were painted and written, and learning how to read oracle cards for revelation creates protection from the vagaries of time and personal fate.

Spiritual meaning of winter solstice

2010-12-22T16:52:00.001-08:00

Although for many years I have celebrated winter solstice as the returning of the light with the rebirth of the solar king, this year I had a profound experience that revealed another aspect to the spiritual meaning of winter solstice. The stoy began with a buck deer that entangled his antlers in our garden net fence. I could not imagine how I could rescue him by myself and so I went looking for some "man help." When I asked my nearest neighbor if her man was at home and explained my need, she replied with, "Is he really necessary?"

We decided not and so armed with wire cutters and scissors we approached the frightened and understandably aggressive two year old deer. As we tried to get close enough to cut the fencing, and he tried more frantically to escape, he became more horribly tangled in wire and net. My neighbor did manage to get one side of the fencing cut free, which gave the buck much more mobility--making it impossible for us to get close enough to cut the other side. After he charged me while I was holding a piece of plywood as a shield for my wire cutting attempt, and fortunately hit the wood before knocking me several feet back into the salal, we decided release was not going to work. There has been increased wolf activity in our Cortes neighborhood again, and leaving him snarled to become easy wolf food seemed unacceptably cruel.

Thank Goddess for young country women who have guns and know how to use them. My neighbor returned with a 22 and after exhausting, again, all the other versions we could think of, killed the deer with one shot. What tragic and intensly spiritual moments passed as we witnessed his death. With great care we cut him free in death from what we could not help him escape in life. We skinned and field dressed the body, proceeding slowly and offering gifts of sweetgrass and hand-made beads to his spirit to please forgive us for not being able to save him. I held his still warm heart in my hands and offered prayers of thankyou for this opportunity to receive this understanding of sacrifice as the deeper meaning of winter solstice.

It seemed inappropriate for us to take any part of the deer as food for ourselves and so yesterday, on the solstice, we took the carcass by boat to one of the islands outside Gorge Harbour so that the eagles and vultures could have a winter feast--maybe the wolves would also swim over from Cortes and Marina Island and be able to eat well without being drawn near human habitation. As my neighbor and I stood on that rocky outcropping, looking back into the now unseeing eyes of the young deer, its forehead covered with unbraided strands of sweetgrass and tears, I thought about how the deer's death was useful sacrifice, so that like the sun, it will be reborn in many life forms.

The three days of winter solstice 2010 also encompassed the three days of the December full moon. This experience happened on the first, or Maiden day. The full moon day of the Mother was the time of taking the deer to all the wild creatures trying to find food in this dark time. This third day of the Crone belongs to the Oracle, and here I tell this story as an oracle speaking of the sacrifice of death that feeds life--the spiritual meaning of winter solstice.

Meaning of winter solstice decorations

2010-12-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

It usually takes me some time to get the holiday decorations underway; yet when I do I especially love watching the birds feeding outside, seen through the lights circling the window. This year I spent some time researching the meaning of my winter solstice decorations and discovered many interesting correspondences.

I use golden garlands twined around colored lights because this holiday is originally the birth of the solar king, who brings the growing light to a new year. In the Greek Myths the present year king must die to make way for the new, and the Moon-Queen offers him an apple, which is his passport to Paradise. And also present as a counter-charm to the apple is the holy egg of rebirth. Therefore I hang in the upper space of my solstice decorations the red apples of death in life, and place bird nests containing the eggs of life in death in the lower space.

Hanging in the center of my solstice decorations is a silver coated pine cone. I discovered that the pine is dedicated to Dionysus / Bacchus and its cone is a phallic symbol of the god's fecundity. I also found that in Europe druids burned great fires of pine at the Winter Solstice to draw back the sun. It also interests me that the Bach flower Remedies recommend pine to treat despondency and despair--which often seem to be associated with the winter and Christmas season.

In the left corner of my winter solstice decorations is my Genius Loci, or spirit of place. This is my beaded representation of the year king who grows and fruits and sacrifices himself for our well being, and knowingly serves the Moon Queen in life and death and life again. So from the home of the Journey Oracle, every blessing to you as the light grows into life, again.

Finding a balance between work and play

2010-12-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

The wind has been roaring all morning and I am not working on the oyster rafts but inside cleaning house. No matter how much I try to think of vacuuming and dusting as Buddhist meditations or energy repairs, I still don't like doing them. I want to be in that right brain trance I so enjoy when I create shamanistic paintings, or musing about how to expand the Journey Oracle deck instructions into a larger book of correspondences for deepening oracle card readings, or just watching the juncos outside the window scratching for seeds.

I know that "naming it makes it so," and when I resent the time spent keeping my space orderly, this spills over into resentment about all kinds of things that keep me from having what I think I want. Certainly many spiritual paths teach the importance of letting go of wanting, but maybe my Mother's advice, from many years ago, is the most practical--"Make time for what you do not want to do, instead of the other way around, this way you will always have time for doing what you do want."

I decided to draw an oracle card to show me what's most important to consider in my complaint about housework. This card fell from the deck. I find the image looks quite like my mind feels when I am telling myself grumpy stories about having to do something less than magical. Lots of blurry, aggressive thought forms that feel like a weight against my forehead. The question seems right on the mark as well. I'm understanding to stop complaining about the results of my choices. If I don't like what I'm doing, I'm blessed in my life with the ability to choose something else, and that's maybe the most magical state of all: having choices.

Finding truth in an Oracle

2010-12-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a small book by Colin Mallard titled Something to Ponder: Reflections from Lao Tzu's 'Tao Te Ching'. It contains many beautiful passages to contemplate which speak into the quiet stillness of heart knowing, rather than to the chattering mind. I have also recently been puzzling about next steps for bringing the Journey Oracle into prosperity;about how to create the links that bring those who are curious and the oracle cards together. And the book opened to this page titled Truth:

A bowl filled to the brim soon spills

An over sharpened knife soon dulls.

When money and security are sought

The heart is ill at ease.

When wealth and strength are flaunted

Disaster soon follows.

Care for the approval of others

And you become their prisoner.

When work is done without concern for results

Peace of mind is at hand.

What amazing truth there often is in a spontaneous oracle found in a casually opened book. I suspect we have all had the experience of working and reworking something precious until Mystery escaped out through the last polished detail and only something overdone and dull remained. When I try to detail the many layers of possible insight found between the cards and their elemental and calendar correspondences, there is no room for the reader to research and construct her own correspondences.

I also believe that when we listen for others approval, instead of hear our inner guidance--we dampen our creative fires with the ashes of uncertainty. Creating something never before seen--like the Journey Oracle--means being able to let go of what is already known, and find certainty in what is at hand.

Perhaps the better question is not "Can I take my fire to the group" but "Am I dressed for the weather?" Can I wear courage and perseverance like a good coat with a hood that keeps out the winds of doubt.

A Thanksgiving prayer

2010-11-24T17:47:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, when I was a student in Bolad's Kitchen, I heard a beautiful prayer offered in thanksgiving, and I want to share the story of how it touched all of us who were present. About twenty of us students had gathered for a potluck one night during the school session. Most of us were new to studying with Martin Prechtel and only knew a few of our fellow students. Martin had been shocking many of us awake by requiring eloquence as well as attention in our responses in class.

Two men from the eastern US were last to arrive, and as we all stood awkwardly about the dining table, one of the men turned to the other, named Joseph, and asked him to say a prayer before we began eating. Joseph began, "I am thankful that for now my body is without pain or illness. I am thankful I am wearing these shoes that fit my feet, and keep out the water. I am grateful to be wearing these clothes that keep me dry and warm. I am thankful I am under a roof tonight, and have a place inside to sleep where I can relax and not be fearful. I am grateful I have this food to eat this evening, and that it is cooked and warm...."

Joseph continued on for some moments, offering thanks on behalf of all of us for having what really matters: warm food, safe shelter, dry clothing, health. I know that for myself, before he began, I was expecting something filled with lofty thoughts and beautiful phrasing. I was startled and then deeply moved by his profound gratitude for the most simple of his needs being met.

Throughout the Pacific Northwest, many people have been struggling with snow and cold, power outages and roadway nightmares. As you read this, if you are warm and fed and safe at home--please say Joseph's prayer. May your gratitude for your good fortune bless those who are without tonight.

These two images are the cards of fate in the Journey Oracle deck, the only two cards that have no phrases or questions and are not numbered. Drawing either of these two cards stops the oracle reading--we see either that our situation is filled with food, as reflected in the seasons of spring and summer, or that our situation has no food, reflected in the seasons of fall and winter. May you always have the blessings of enough food.

Receiving a drum honoring ceremony

2010-11-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

While I was in Edmonton this last week to present a Journey Oracle card workshop I had an opportunity to meet Jay Saka, a man of Japanese ancestry who has been building drums and teaching others how to make and honor the drum. He first telephoned me some months ago because he saw my segment on the Vision TV series Guides and Gurus. At first we spoke tentatively because I am uncomfortable sharing my drum making experience in a 'pick your brain' request. I have spent many years gathering my direct experience with drums and drum making, and feel that effort is dishonored when given away with no corresponding effort from the person making the request. However, Jay offered to send me a gift for my knowing, and began calling me periodically to share stories and experiences from his drum making workshops. Just before I left for Edmonton I received a large box of prairie sage bundles from him, one tied with prayer flags to honor my teaching.

Jay and I almost missed each other, since I was calling and calling a telephone number that I had copied incorrectly. We connected just one night before my leaving. Jay brought drums and beaters, smudge, tobacco, photos of his ceremonies at several Alberta medicine wheels, and a workbook of his teachings that he shares with his students. He began by offering me a smudge and praying with tobacco to the four directions, then by singing an honor song for the Directions. He sang me many songs from the Cherokee, Blackfoot and Ute Nations, and finished our time by asking me to autograph his copy of the Journey Oracle cards.

I felt very honored to receive such a blessing from someone who considers me their teacher. I I found myself thinking about special teachers I have had, and wondering if I ever thanked them for shaping the directions my life has taken. The Journey Oracle has been such a teacher, so thanks to the Oracle, and thanks to you, Jay, for reminding me to always be grateful for learning.

The history of Oracles

2010-11-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

I have recently been reading The Greek Myths, collected and commented upon by Robert Graves. I had previously known Graves' work from reading The White Goddess, and it has been a revelation to discover his commentary on the stories of my deep cultural past. I was delighted to discover a chapter titled The Oracles, which presents myths about how the Oracles of Greece began and came to be taken over by the patriarchal invaders.

All oracles were originally delivered by the Earth Goddess, whose authority was so great that successive waves of invasion make a practice of seizing the shrines and either appointing priests or retaining the priestesses in their own service. Thus Zeus took over at Dodona, and King Ammon took over the Oasis of Siwa, both oracles sacred to the dove and oak cult of Dia or Dione. Later Apollo captured the oracle at Delphi. Besides these, there were numerous other oracular shrines: those in the Lycaeum and on the Acropolis at Argos, at Boeotian Ismenium, at Clarus and at Telmessus. The sick received oracles at Pharae, Hera was consulted near Pagae, and Mother Earth spoke through her priestesses at Aegeira in Achaea. Dice were thrown at the oracle of Heracles at Achaean Bura; dreams were consulted at the oracles of Asclepius and Laconian Thalamae.

Perhaps Graves' most provocative statement, for me, is his comment that prophesy was the only skill not taken from women in the transition from a Goddess-centered to a God-centered culture. This first card I painted for the Journey Oracle seems in its image and phrase to be an echo of this unbroken tradition of women as soothsayers.

How to interpret fairy tales using oracle cards

2010-11-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

I use my Journey Oracle deck for many more tasks than seeking advice about troubling or unclear situations. Interpreting fairy tales becomes a journey into layers of personal meaning and insight when I ask the cards to make connections between the story and my personal situation. Here's an example of what I do.

Last week I chose a fairy tale from the Red Fairy Book to help me gain insight about a group of new shamanic students with whom I am going to be working. I opened the book to the tale: the Death of Koshchei the Deathless. Here is my brief summary. Prince Ivan, on the instruction of his dying parents, helps his three sisters each marry a bird and then fly away to their kingdoms. The Prince then finds his own beloved, who tells him he can do anything but open the locked closet. Of course Prince Ivan does and discovers Koshchei the Deathless who is begging for a drink of water. After he drinks three buckets full he bursts his chains and carries away the beloved of Ivan. The Prince goes after her and is met by the Falcon, the Eagle and the Raven brothers-in-law and his sisters. Each couple asks for a token of silver by which to remember Ivan, and after these meetings at last he comes to his beloved. The royal couple flee three times from Koshchei who forgives the first two but on the third escape cuts Prince Ivan into pieces and seals these in a barrel flung into the sea. The bird relatives rescue Ivan and rebuild him, telling him to find out where Koshchei obtained such a fine horse that is always able to catch the runaway lovers. The beloved Marya finds out that the horse came from a Baba Yaga as a reward for caring for her mares. On his way to the Baba Yaga, Prince Ivan meets and agrees not to eat a chicken, honey from a bee hive, or a lion cub. The Baba Yaga tries to trick Prince Ivan for three days into losing some of her mares, but each day one of the animals he spared rounds up the wayward mares and drives them home. The prince then steals from the Baba Yaga a sorry colt who becomes a wondrous steed. He returns to his beloved Marya and carries her off. When Koshchei catches up to the pair, Ivan's magical horse smotes Koshchei with a kick from his hoof. The Prince then makes an end of him with a club, then burns him on a pyre, and then scatters his ashes to the wind. And of course at the death of the Deathless the couple live happily ever after.

I am naming myself Ivan, the three sisters my new students, and the bird husbands are the shamanic paths each must choose. But who is Koshchei? In the Russian fairytale Koshchei cannot be killed by conventional means because his soul lives outside his body. I drew this card number 47 to show me who is this deathless energy in my own story. What a surprise to see the card that most represents to me the Mystery; the card that represents the deepest water of Spirit. Certainly the water that brings Koshchei back to strength is the most fundamental of food. Is what I struggle against, and my love of the Mystery, the same thing? Perhaps my struggle against what I think keeps me from what I love will die with the help of those I help. Maybe this means that my new students are with me because it is I that must receive from them. Prince Ivan seems to have a kind heart, and doesn't give up trying to be with what he loves . I'm hoping naming it makes it so.

The path of effort as shamanic initiation

2010-10-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

I enjoy reading back issues of Shaman's Drum, reading articles that did not hold my attention initially, but now give me new learning, because I have changed in my spiritual awareness since my first meeting of their authors and ideas. An article called Beautiful Painted Arrow's Sun Moon Dance, by Marsha Scarbrough, in number 79, 2009, contained such a teaching. I came upon this quote:

[Joseph Rael] talked about the importance of the path of effort. To achieve supernatural power, you must choose to do things the most difficult way. Once you've achieved it, Spirit takes care of you, and things become effortless.

I think I am very good at choosing the path of effort. I do not think this means choosing difficulty with human relationships, or indulging in the drama that makes situations difficult; I think this means choosing to do what one is told by spiritual guidance, no matter how arduous or cumbersome the task. Creating the Journey Oracle was such a path of effort. Painting the cards , writing the stories, and determining how to use the two together for revelation took 16 years. And of course such a statement says very little about the frustration, and elation, and determination involved in such an enterprise.

What I realize now, about this path of effort that leads to effortlessness, is that it mostly requires trust and perserverance. This is just like the fairy tale: The Death of Koschei the Deathless, in the Red Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang. Prince Ivan keeps returning to steal away his sweetheart, the Princess Marya Morevna, even though he knows Koschei intends to cut him to pieces, and the Baba Yaga intends to put his head on a spike. It only matters to be with his beloved, now that he has found her. This is the path of effort: to choose the most difficult way. And so to be initiated into beauty.

Becoming a shamanic student

2010-10-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

When I first asked to become a student of the spirit world, I was given a sort of a riddle to answer. I was on a high plateau looking out at an immense sweep of land stretching away into blue haze; I called out to everything, saying, "Please teach me. Please be my teacher. " I received this answer in a dream: "You must ask three times." The full story of this experience became the story corresponding to card #39 in my Journey Oracle card deck.

This was very puzzling to me. It felt then just like the experience I had today trying to see through fog as we returned to Gorge Harbour from a sailing trip. I knew the presence of land, of spirit, was all around me, I could feel it but I could not see it. And so like many of us who are impatient and also not paying close attention--when I awoke I immediately asked again, "Please be my teacher." The next night I woke up remembering someone saying to me, "This time the answer is no."

Of course I did not notice the significance of the phrase 'this time.' I only heard the no. I first felt dismayed and then abandoned. Was I not worthy? Was I not a child of this spirit world also? And then I remembered the first answer. The sensation was just like seeing a form in the fog, and for a moment not understanding it, and then suddenly recognizing where you are.Then, and today, I felt courage was the ability to keep moving forward on faith. I am remembering a quote in The Very Air, by Douglas Bauer: "Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1. And so I asked a third time, "Will you be my teacher?" I brought humility and respect instead of self-centered impatience, and the answer was yes. This entire asking of spirit was a first lesson--pay attention, listen, remember. And just like today, the fog cleared, and I knew where I was.

Making a shamanic drum

2010-10-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

This new shamanic drum is called many families. It is a clear deep gold, so transparent that whatever is near the drum becomes part of its face--part of its family. This 14" hoop drum was recently made at a drum workshop here on Cortes Island where two deer hides from a local hunter and several hoops made from local spruce were equally prepared by everyone. It is interesting to me that as all of us worked on both skins without having preferences or prejudices for what hide would eventually belong to which drum maker--the two hides became more and more clear, as if not claiming ownership caused the drum skins to keep releasing what would muffle the voices that were coming.

Throughout the three days it took us to prepare the skins to be stretched across the frames we were each careful to keep taking turns with every task on each skin. When it was time to cut out the drum heads we let the hides choose the drums they would become, because of course each drum pattern fit best in one area of the skin but not in others. In this way we never imposed our desires on the process of making the drum, but let the process reveal each drum's best fit to us. I feel this is why this shamanic drum has such a generosity of clarity. It has only ever had to be itself, and therefore we can each see ourselves in its face.

Why make art?

2010-10-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

In all the writings about why artists make art--to create commentary, documentation, revolution, revelation, truth and beauty--it seems to me that a core reason is not often mentioned: to work with our hands.

In our modern world, hand work is both reviled and revered. Those of us who value mass production and expanding growth view hand work as unreasonable and inefficient. Those of us that equate value with what is original and effort-full see hand work as precious. In a strange spiral, at the very core of mass production are copies of what was once unique. Much of our resistance to hand work comes from our dependence on machinery that helps us worship what David Suzuki called the Great God Relief From Inconvenience: relief from the inconvenience of giving our time and effort to what keeps us alive.

Martin Prechtel teaches that the two most significant gifts we can make to the Gods, to the Spirits, are the eloquence made with our words and the work made with our hands. He said that art first belongs to the Holy, and I believe that when we sit within that timeless, wordless right-brain knowing as we create with our hands, we know this to be true. When I help someone make a drum, we both are giving our effort to feed a voice that can carry our prayers. I believe that it is our hands that are able to lift the voice of a drum to true eloquence.

The meaning of death in drum making

2010-09-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Every drum begins with a death. Something must stop moving, in order for something else to begin moving. The hide and hoop from the deer and tree must pass through formlessness before they come together as the skin and bones of the drum. The sound of the drum must pass through stillness before it has a voice.

Everything wants to live. No matter how seemingly insignificant to us humans, the smallest speck of crawling, creeping, flying life wants to keep living, to keep moving. This force that keeps wanting to move is the consciousness of vibration. This consciousness of vibration accumulates layers of harmonics and dissonances; layers of joy and grief. All the sound stays present. Everything moving is a song.

The wood holds the pressure of clamps and the stretch of it's fibre as sound. The hide holds the memory of the lime water soak and the pull of the knife as sound. We hold the sound of our many lives in the vibration of our voices and movement of our gestures. All these songs stay present.I recently had a dream in which I was running along a wide white sand delta with ribbons of sparking turquoise water on every side. The sparkles turned into wheeling white birds and suddenly I flew with them high above the figure of a woman walking away, far below me in this vast woven land of white and blue. I was singing a beautiful song, and kept singing it over and over until I awoke, saying to myself, this is a karma song.

Dreams about past lives

2010-09-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

Several nights ago I had a dream in which a phychic offered me a reading about my past lives. She only glanced at me before announcing that I had caused suffering for others, apparently able to do so because I did not have feelings for their misery. I'm sure most of us think we were the ones being killed and sacrificed in the mayhem of ancient cultures--but what if we were the ones wielding the sword and the knife?

How do we believe our dreams about past lives? What signals their truth in our waking moments? Jeremy Taylor teaches about the Aha! moment in dream reflection, the sensation of feeling rather than knowing the truth about a dream's meaning or symbolism. Robert Moss suggests returning to the location and feeling of a dream image in order to re-enter its story with conscious intent. Certainly when I woke from this dream my feelings told me there was something to pay attention to in the psychic's appraisal.

I went into my dreams the next night asking for help about what to do next with this knowing. I received a dream in which one of my meditation teachers appears and asks me to his house for dinner. Once there I meet other people as I pass from room to room, moving ever deeper into the spaces of the house. Since this teacher was himself a student of Ken McLeod, who has written much about releasing karmic patterns, I believe this dream is giving me a clear next step to begin a meditation practice specific to this topic.

I also drew a Journey Oracle card, asking what the Oracle had to tell me and show me of my beginning focus in this work of karmic repair. I saw card # 34, which represents this time of year: the autumn equinox. The phrase Called to witness feels very strong. The image seems to really be seeing me, not as I would like to appear but as I really am. I understand that I must truly witness the pain of others in order to begin to connect with my own.

Why exhibit art?

2010-09-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago I had a show of my painted shamanic drums and journey art on Cortes Island. It was not until yesterday that I understood why I exhibited this particular kind of my art. It was not, I discovered, for the more obvious reasons of sharing my work, or making sales, or finding new connections--however valuable these reasons are. It was so I could show myself the collected history of this work and by so doing, see the meaning embedded in their context and effort.
When I returned to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design from a one year sabbatical spent in the Canadian Rockies and west coast of BC, I attended a weekend workshop held by a recent participant in a session at the Institute for Shamanic Studies in New York. I was very frustrated by that experience because I could not visualize an entrance to the Spirit world and therefore did not 'journey.' During the second day I was told by another participant who was journeying to his helpers on my behalf that "it's the wrong drum, she has to make her own."

This story is known by all who visit my website and read about my journey drums, but what is not known is that for the next four years I conducted 5 stone divinations--talking with stones by asking a question and then gazing into their patterned surfaces to see creatures whose presences are an answer to the question. From these divinations I made journey sketches which later became wheels of spirit-filled drawings.

These five questions were: How can I journey to the Spirit world if I cannot find the entrance? How will I recover missing sight? How can I follow this way? Who are my people? and How will dreams come true? What I realized during the drum exhibit is that these five questions tracked my transition from being a university teacher oriented to urban life and values--to a person living away from the art scene on a remote island where everything is alive and always talking. I discovered that what I was presenting through my art to my community was how, 22 years ago, I came here as the result of a spiritual journey with stones.

New Shamanic Drums for sale

2010-09-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

The Night Drum
This 14" hoop drum of Cortes Island deer and spruce wood was made during a demonstration at my recent shamanic journey art and drum exhibition: Staying Awake in the Spirit World. Although I thought I had several skins to choose from, only this one, with both the bullet entry and exit holes, was available to me. A drum containing the hole of death for the deer, and the hole of life as food for the hunter, is destined for special work. I do not try and arrange such magic--it naturally happens when the drum head can only be fitted onto the skin in such a way that includes this.

The Singing Child Drum
This large drum of island deer hide and spruce wood has a remarkable voice. The beat has a deep, resonant tone, while the drone--the continuous sound upon which one journeys to the Spirit world or does healing work, is a clear high tone like a bell. I have never heard anything quite like it. I imagine this is because the drum is a rare combination of a very thin skin from a young deer stretched onto a large frame, giving an unusual amount of surface to support the drum's harmonics.

Read more about these two new drums for sale by going to purchase a journey drum on my website: www.journeyoracle.com.

What is the Spirit world?

2010-09-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

My art exhibition at the Old School House Gallery here on Cortes Island opened last weekend to lots of interest and questions, but oddly to my view, no one asked me "What is the Spirit world?" I think this would be a most important question to ponder, since how can we be awake in someplace we cannot find? Maybe everyone already knows what this is...certainly I did not when I first experienced shamanic journeying in a Michael Harner style workshop in 1984.

I have come to understand the the Spirit world is this world--nature--with the veils removed--our veils that is. The stones still speak, and do so to us, if only we could hear beyond the noise of our thinking; beyond our veils of science and religion and culture. This drawing is a stone divination; a conversation with an oracle even older than our history with divination cards.

In this Spirit world I have learned that everything is made of vibration. Sometimes I take a drum out into nature, and sit upon the ground, and hum and sing into the painted deer hide while ever so lightly passing my fingertips over the surface. Birds come near, a snake might pause to taste the moving air with its tongue, a breeze ripples the surface of the pond in the same rhythm as my breathing...we are all made of the same sound.

Meaning of the full moon in August

2010-08-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

The full moon in August is a special time that feels like the early beginnings of rest and renewal for the earth, and for ourselves. Of course, the beginning of something usually happens because something else has just ended, and this time in August feels the most full of intense activity, which must slow to quiet, even if the slowing is from exhaustion.

The card readings at my Journey Oracle table at the Market here on Cortes Island have reached the peak when no more will fit into the allotted time, the planning for my art show of shamanic journey art and painted drums have gone as far as preparations and setting up will allow, there is no more time to take on art commissions until the leaves are turning color, and harvesting and canning are beginning to reach the limit of freezer space and jars. It must be time to go sailing.

We came back last night from a holiday on the water--where it is very difficult to be in intense activity of the earth-based sort. We participated instead in a Full Moon Regatta which gave us the opportunity to watch sunsets and join in cruising races, visit over potluck suppers,and especially, lie in our bunks in the shimmer of moon light on water and feel the slow rise and fall of Mother Ocean. Even now--if I close my eyes and go very still, I can feel her breathing echo through my water body.

Preparing an art show

2010-08-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

I am preparing for an art show of my shamanic drums and journey art, to open at the Old School House Gallery here on Cortes Island August 27th. Almost a year ago, during the Gallery selection process to determine the 2010 calender, the exhibition offer was a compliment and also felt easy to envision. Of course I would have lots of drums by then--or certainly I would have plenty of time to make them. And I remembered that I had a number of graphite and watercolour images in my shamanic journey notebooks that had not yet been seen on the island. This would be easy.

Now the exhibition of my shamanic art is little more than a week away, and I have a sore back and feet from standing over the cutting table, reformatting and mounting pages of journal sketches. There is a line of drums on the swing chair in the living room, hoping for the attention of my altered gaze as I seek their paintings, and a number of half dressed drum sticks that look like soldiers fallen out of dicipline for want of receiving the rest of their uniforms.

I did make a list this morning, because I read somewhere that this helps you feel better, and I do, I think. I managed to cross off five items in the two colums of tasks, so maybe the list is just helping me focus on the details of the tidal wave overwhelming me. I remember Martin Prechtel teaching about how our relationship with spirit is in the details, and this certianly is true. When the idea was general...just an idea--everything seemed easy. Now that it's physical action...effort following effort--everything must be constantly negotiated and adjusted then renegotiated. Just like life. Just like art. Still, it did feel better to make a list.

Where to find shamanic teachings

2010-08-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

For me, shamanism means having a direct experience with the more-than-human world. It is being awake to messages coming all our teachers, whether they an oracle speaking through divination cards , the flash of a bird swooping close by that accents a sudden insight, or a shift in the wind just as we are thinking about changing the direction of our thinking.

I had just finished wrapping a shaman drum for mailing and had left the room for a moment. When I returned my cat Meisa had found a perfect new place from which to survey the room, and suddenly, I saw the shamanic teaching she was giving me. Us humans try and control most everything--especially those forces and events we cannot keep within our sight. When we instead let go and surrender to trust, we are given an opportunity to experience what the natural world is constantly showing us: that all will be well when we are able to stay awake to its messages of support and warning.

The interesting thing about these shamanic teachings is that they do not respond to the scientific demand to "show the evidence." They only respond to the felt experience of revelation in the moment. Like this moment of insight from my cat: everything can stand a little weight on top.

When is art finished?

2010-08-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems we need an oracle to tell us when to stop working on a piece of art. Whether this be a painted drum or a special sauce for our salad, when do we stop adding and adjusting?

My paintings on deer hide are created much like I painted the images on the Journey Oracle cards--I gaze into the surface of the dried drum skin and wait for something to appear. I usually look first for the eyes, and suddenly, out of a mottled but unmarked surface, someone is looking back at me. And yet the greatest skill seems to be knowing when to stop working.

Before I painted this drum I call "Keeper," the creature I saw was quite haunting and undefinable. Maybe it was a bear but also maybe a wolf or dog. Each of these has its own power and as I painted the creature came to be a bear to my eyes. And yet I was never satisfied with the eyes in the drum painting. They actually seemed to not be there. As if what I was seeing couldn't see me. This drum was even sold and then came back to me--as I have written about several of my other blogs. So I tried painting the eyes again and the creature became a wolf, yet this didn't fit either. And so in a moment of inspired risk, I took a damp cloth and started wiping off everything. Of course these raw earth pigments stain into the deer skin like a tattoo so only a little of the color moved--and suddenly there was that haunting, undefinable creature again--appearing when I stopped trying to make it appear. I believe all our work with the spirit world has this quality. When we stop trying to make something appear according to our vision--we are able to see with different eyes.

go on holiday

2010-07-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's good to just take some time away from the Oracle cards and shamanic paintings and journey drums. Let's connect next Wednesday August 4th.

The meaning of rose quartz

2010-07-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

I recently mounted a rose quartz inside the cedar ring of this beautiful 14" drum. The delicacy of the mounting seemed to enhance the soft pink crystal structure of the stone and I wondered about the meaning, uses and history of rose quartz. The entry for rose quartz in Love is in the Earth, by Melody, describes its emitting a "calming, cooling energy which can work on all the chakras to gently remove negativity and to reinstate the loving, gentle forces of self-love." This sounds good of course, but how did such qualities come to be associated with this stone? Is this something in its crystal structure or mineral composition?

This search became more interesting as I explored the physical properities of rose quartz and found that how rose quartz becomes pink is a bit of a mystery. I read that the possibility of a totally new and as yet unknown fibrous mineral could be causing the color in massive rose quartz. I also discovered that "some rose quartz contains microscopic rutile crystals which are oriented at right angles to the c-axis of the rose quartz in three directions, each 120 degrees apart. When viewed at a specific angle with a source of light a star-effect is visible. This is known as asterism. I further discovered that "masks cut from rose quartz were used to beautify skin in ancient Egypt." I wondered if this use was in any way connected to the finds of crystal skulls; there has even been a rose quartz skull found on the border between Honduras and Guatemala.

And then I discovered this mystery. "Scientifically, there is no reason why Rose Quartz does not occur more commonly in crystals. This remains a scientific mystery. Because quartz crystallizes into well formed crystals in all its other macroscopic varieties. Brazil is also the only source of true well formed crystals of rose quartz. Rose Quartz crystals are thus extremely valuable. I think maybe the metaphysical uses of rose quartz should emphasize its association with mystery. And maybe the new owner of this drum holds a bigger mystery than she realizes, when she plays her new rose quartz drum.

Who is your Oracle?

2010-07-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

When I do a Journey Oracle reading, I am aware I am communicating with a presence from this reality with the veils removed; the more than human reality I call the spirit world. This presence might have any of the physical forms found in this world, as all have conscious awareness. I am describing what Ralph Metzner calls "an animistic worldview, which is explicit in shamanism, [that] recognizes that all natural forms are animated by living, spiritual intelligence."

When I am doing an oracle reading for a client, I listen carefully for anecdotes shared during the oracle session that might indicate who is the Oracle for this person at this time? Perhaps a person is listening to the Journey Oracle story corresponding to the card she drew, and suddenly thinks of a carved staff brought back from a holiday in Peru. Something about the story of obtaining the staff fits the situation being explored in the oracle reading. Is the spiritual intelligence in the wood and art of the staff the Oracle in this moment?

When I conduct Journey Oracle workshops, my participants spend time experiencing a shamanic journey into the spirit world to meet the Oracle of their cards. For some this Oracle is a force--like rain or smoke-filled wind, sometimes the Oracle is a voice rising from a meadow or sounding within a seashell. Others see figures not of this human world, or sometimes from the animal or plant kingdoms. I ask each person who purchases a Journey Oracle deck from me to spend some time meeting the Oracle of their cards. I suggest they ask this presence what gift to give, to thank and feed them for bringing revelation from the natural wold into our ordinary reality.

How to choose a drum

2010-07-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

For me a drum is a spiritual companion, a sacred voice that accompanies me on my soul's progress through many realities. A drum is also an oracle; the strength and flow of its voice brings me messages, intuitions and warnings about the energies I am working with. But especially for me a drum is a story; a story whose hearing is like reading what cannot be written. Its physical story tells of the deer and trees that lived within the dappled sun and slanting rain of our northern forests. Its spiritual story tells of its purpose as a guide and oracle in the other realms. Its paintings tell the stories of the creatures or forces whose characteristics or energies are coming through the drum as vibration.

Sometimes I draw a Journy Oracle card to help a client choose a drum, noting that the image or text on the oracle card will help her make a felt connection to one of my shaman's drums. But mostly I tell the story of the drum. This drum is named "Pushkin" and was painted with the portrait of a rabbit that I sometimes bunny-sit when his humans are traveling. Of course most of us think of rabbits as soft, timid creatures--good at hiding and for petting. But clearly Pushkin does not think of himself in these terms. When I gazed into the drum, asking to be shown how Pushkin wanted to be seen, this fierce and powerful creature was staring back at me. The woman who purchased this drum for her daughter made the connection between this not so timid bunny and her quiet but not timid daughter. In art and life, it is the stories we tell ourselves that give meaning to our choices.

How to be brave

2010-06-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

This is Sadie, our first wwoofer of the summer season. With her permission, I want to tell you what I learned about being brave from this young musician from England. Sadie came to live with us and work on our oyster lease for a week, and no matter what opportunity our rural island life presented to her, her response was, "I'll try that."

Working on an oyster farm is not easy but not hard either. Sadie said maybe it was harder to sit in an office all day than to be out in the sun and wind. I marveled at her youthful ability to keep saying yes to new experiences. We went sailing on our Bristol 29.9 named Pearl and whether she was being the foredeck hand when tacking, or taking the wheel, she always was willing to try. On our last night with us we all went to a Zazen meditation, even though Sadie had only a little experience with sitting. I think I would have balked at two 40 minutes sessions separated by a 10 minute walking meditation but she was had a smile and a yes for this new opportunity.

I said several times that I thought she was brave, and now that she is on her way back to England, I have been wondering what I meant by that. I think being brave is greeting something new with an open, rising-up feeling of possibility, rather than pulling back into timidity and apprehension of change. I think greeting the unknown as a friend instantly shifts the energy we can draw upon when we begin to enter its territory. We can feel this energy like warm sunshine when we say, "I'll try that."

The Journey Oracle cards are like a new territory. We can feel apprehensive and uncertain, or we can step out on this new path, willing to say yes to the experience of guidance from the more-than-human world.

A new way of reading Oracle cards

2010-06-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

While giving readings every Friday at the Market on Cortes Island, I have been discovering a new way of reading the Journey Oracle cards that I call the Journey Reading. Imagine that you are sitting across from me and I tell you to think about a situation for which you want some advice, and then to tell me only a one word indicator of the topic. You think of this question, "Where are I and .........going together?" And you summarize this topic by saying "relationship" to me. (Of course the blank doesn't have to be a person, it could be a place, or a dream, or even an awareness.) I ask you to hold the oracle cards between your palms in the prayer pose for a few moments and then you select this card.

First I ask you to notice that this oracle card is from the Journey suit because of its lavender rim. The larger themes of this group of cards are these: Boundaries, Desire, Work. I ask you to feel into these words and choose the one that seems a good fit to your situation. I next gaze into the image on the card and describe it using ordinary language, asking you to notice what phrases or words have an emotional charge for you.

I see a rushing of power to the right, which is the direction of action in this world. I see blue flower-like forms being propelled in this stream of purple, flying out before a flow of yellow like sunlight, held on thin stems of warm earth brown. There are some dark reflections below the stream but these are not involved in the flow .

I next ask you to share what phrases or words had a charge for you. I ask how is this question, "Am I creating a hollow space?" a comment on what these phrases mean to your situation. Next on this journey to the Oracle for advice I read you the story corresponding to this card, asking you to hear it like a dream...noticing within its details a feeling, or phrase, or description that resonates with your situation.

HAVING WHAT IS NEEDED
A man and a woman were hiking. They had been doing long, hard walking along a steep slant of terrain that dropped through trees and brush to a glitter of mother energy by water far below the trail. A cold wind and occasional spitting shower of rain moved through the forest like shaman power. After many hours, the couple came out onto a narrow delta of uneven ground near the inflow to the lake. The hummocks and gouges in the land made the expanse look like an overgrown garden, with patches of gorse and willow atop islands created by trenches in designs made as if by watery creatures of art.

The woman thought “I can barely take in the eye and what it is seeing in this place. How will we ever make a comfortable bed here for the night?” Still, the man seemed cheerful as he created a cache line for their food and wandered the soggy meadow looking for a tent site. As they considered possible locations the man reported finding a fresh pile of bear scat near the cache tree. As if to add to her alarm about a bear in the area, it began to rain in earnest, driven by the wind against their already cold faces and hands.

A wide hummock was found whose steep sides acted like drainage ditches for the rising gurgle of water moving to the lake. The tent was staked securely in the willow brush; its rain fly stretched to include shelter for packs and gear. The man fixed a hot meal a distance away under a spruce tree, and heated water for washing. Though all this was about really seeing something, the woman found herself staying with her feelings of unhappiness. Never had she been so miserable! At last the man and the woman were inside the tent in their sleeping bags. The woman was curled into her struggle with the bear and the sound of the rain when the man said “This is great! I’m warm and dry and fed. I have all I need.”

Finally we arrive at the Oracle's wisdom and I read you each of these five statements, asking you to respond spontaneously with what each means for your situation.

The origin of the situation is an unfolding.
The color of my perception is black and white.
I am influenced by light.
I will recognize change as something appalling.
The answer is in the experience of wave energy.

Although most seem evident, we spend some time discussing what the word "appalling" means in your specific circumstance. We discuss lots of different meanings of wave energy. We finish by relooking at the larger themes of the oracle card suit that began our reading, checking to see if another theme is now more insightful for your situation, or confirming your first intuition as still true.

Creating a shamanic portal

2010-06-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult aspects of my journey with the Journey Oracle cards has been learning how to let go of my expectations about how they are to be out in the world. My first notion was that they were somehow like a book, even though their 'book cover' was a box, like many of the boxed sets of tarot cards found in book stores today. I next imagined the cards as a specialty item in a metaphysical store and thought to say yes to the interest shown them from Banyen Books last summer. Although this invitation was very interesting, somehow the box with the bar code has not materialized, and maybe nowt this opening has closed. I also thought of posting them on shamanic web stores but the energy doesn't feel right.

My web master has suggested I consider Facebook and YouTube as appropriate ways to call attention to the oracle cards, and while I have been considering this, something interesting happened at the Friday Market on Cortes Island last week. A young woman came to my table considering a birthday present for her man who had commented about his interest on my cards. I began to tell her something about them, showing the new custom printed version...and suddenly she began to cry. She said," These are a shamanic portal; I can feel myself going there. I can feel the truth in them." Her declaration moved me to reconsider my ongoing calculation for how to attract attention in the larger world. Some things are meant to stay small, and potent, and only be discovered by those who are ready to go there.

Receiving a spring blessing

2010-06-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Finally the sun is out; bees drone over the scotch broom out by the road and on the Spiderwort in the garden. Tiny baby spiders create a dancing filagree across the arms of the deck chairs while bird song floods the forest like a halejuela chorus. Of course the forecast is for more rain and wind at the end of the week but in this moment, soft green beauty shimmers from every view.

Some days ago my friends and I motor-sailed to Mitlenatch Island in the Georgia Strait. The day was not what we had hoped for, as bands of heavy-laden clouds filed across a dramatic sky; the pewter sea only dimpled by a wind insufficient for sailing. Upon arriving we walked in search of wildflowers in the seabird sanctuary and although we found a few, the spectacular display of early spring was over. How different that day felt, from today, because of my expectation for it. I understand with my intellect the value of "living in the now" but when I am filled with expectations and anticipations for how I want something to be, my head is too full of the future to open my heart to the present.

My readings with the Journey Oracle cards are also like these two days. When I try and hold to a certain expectation for conducting a reading I am limited by the form I have built from past experiences. When I sit quietly for a moment with the client and just let the beauty of the moment together present itself, new ways of accessing the Oracle unfold. Just recently, I have discovered to begin an oracle reading by working first with the larger themes represented by the colored rims of the cards chosen, as if these were the quality of sun, wind and sea holding the sailboat of the questioner's seeking.

Ways to have a relationship with Death

2010-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Death is something most of us do not want to think about; of course everything wants to live. But many years ago I heard a record by Bill Cosby in which he talked about how he was "making an old person." I kept thinking about this and I started paying attention to what kind of old person I was making. This was the beginning of my conscious relationship with Death. Later, in the books of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada I read, "Death is the only friend that never leaves you." For many years I pondered how Death is a friend. I came closer to understanding this when I received a spirit song for my Mother's death which contained the line, "loving comes Death to make us whole."

Shakespeare gave me a great teaching in the quote:

If it be not now, let it come. Readiness is all.

When I find myself in times of stress about Death, I remember these words and they help me feel calm.

One of the ways I have learned to be ready is to greet Death each day in my morning prayers. I say, "If it is so that I die today, thank you for the beauty of this day" and I pay a few moments special attention to something small and precious: raindrops on fern brackets or the graceful sweep of a rhododendron flower. In my evening prayers I acknowledge my joy at being alive by saying, "thank you for this beautiful day of life."

In the Journey Oracle cards, there is no representation of Death, except possibly in the Fate card, the most dramatic of all the oracle cards. This card has a white and a black side showing the seasons of growth and abundance, and showing the seasons of decline and decay. This is the only card in the oracle deck that can stop a reading, because just like Death, there is no further reference, or teaching, or question; no way to continue the story we have been telling ourselves.

Creating a Journey Oracle reading online

2010-05-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

When I create an oracle reading online for a client using the Journey Oracle cards, I separate the reading into three parts. After drawing the card, according to my client's instructions, my first step is to describe the card in everyday language, as if the person was sitting next to me. I say whatever ordinary expressions occur to me, without trying to be eloquent or dramatic. This is important because often a common turn of phrase, for example, saying "the head is to the right" takes on new meaning when the client ponders this in the context of the situation. I also try not to give my interpretation of a color, gesture or expression, because often this choice of meaning points to the heart of the dilemma; for example, is the hand reaching or blocking?

The second part of the reading is composed of my notes of interpretation, often given in the form of questions. For example, only the client can connect the way the figure is dressed to personal insight about "lack of covering" so I may ask, "In this situation what is the lack of covering?" In this way everything is allowed be become a symbol of something else. In this second step I also focus on the card's statement or question. Now my questions and thoughts begin to reflect my interpretation, built on the descriptions from the first step, and the feeling created by the questions that begin this second step. However, I never tell a client what something means or says ; I have too much respect for the inner wisdom and intuitive skills we all have, which sometimes just need a little coax to come to the surface of our awareness.

I conclude a reading by commenting on the colored rim of the card, as these represent the four suits of the Journey Oracle. This card is #10, which is the tree month Ash, from February 18 to March 17. I share thoughts about the meaning of Ash, usually from one of my favorite tree books, especially The Witch's Book of Days by Kozocari et al, or Tree Wisdom by Paterson. I speculate about what is happening in nature during this time, as this might reflect a feeling or energy that is surrounding the situation. I conclude by sharing the large themes that are part of the tree month suit: connection, exchange, intuition, and power, and ask how these might be some of the deep forces that are shaping the client's situation.

Ways to read Oracle cards

2010-05-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I do a reading with the Journey Oracle cards, I don't read the images or the messages--I read the colored rims which relate to the four suits of the Oracle.
I drew these three oracle cards to receive advice about how to help a shamanic student of mine who is struggling with a large homework assignment. I understand I am not to contact her until she takes the initiative to contact me, but what if she looses heart and gives up the work?

All three of these Journey Oracle cards are in the full moon suit, which tells me that this situation has to do with discipline and trust. This feels just right as I seek a balance between helping my student but trying not to meddle in her process. Oracle card # 2 represents the January full moon, which I call the ice moon. Perhaps my lack of contact with my student feels cold and uncaring to her, but I must trust that this is the discipline called for, so she is able to make decisions without my influence. Card #18 is the May full moon, which I know is a time of struggle for life in nature's calendar. Many creatures and plants die in the spring, when life is new and fragile. This message seems to say that for my student to actually succeed, she must have a real opportunity to fail. Oracle card # 47 represents the Blue Moon, a rare and little understood occurrence. If my student succeeds in completing her homework, her shamanic abilities and wisdom will become like the blue moon, and this is worth waiting for.

How to live a shamanic life

2010-05-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

I recently began reading a new book by Paulo Coelho titled The Winner Stands Alone. Right at the beginning I discovered this quote from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass:

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,

You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect
to be your sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives
around you would have to be abandon'd,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further,
let go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.

Although the quote illustrates Mr. Coelho's story, I felt a profound resonance in the words to my experience of living a shamanic life. Every line is a refection of my lessons. In these 35 years of asking to be taught by the Spiritworld, the way has always been suspicious, the results uncertain and the procedure often dangerous. I have understood to give up all other loyalties, paths and teachers. Even so, the more the years pass, the more I realize the modesty of my knowledge. I understand the isolation that comes from my never being able to truly share my direct experience, nor receive a clear sense of any one else's journey on the other side.

And yet I have not released my hands, I have not put down this remarkable contract. Just like the starlets in Mr. Coelho's story, I am still willing to "agree to anything" in order to stay in this shamanic life.

Symbolism of colors

2010-04-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

When I paint a journey drum with raw earth pigments, I choose the colors according to their meanings as well as for their appropriateness to the image. In this way each painted drum has a hidden message threaded into the colors of its painted deer skin. These symbolic meanings of natural colors came to me many years ago when I first started building and painting shamanic drums in Nova Scotia at NSCAD.

Yellow Oxide . . . spirit manifest

Mexico Yellow . . . power to remember

Raw Sienna . . . power to know

Red Ochre . . . power to will

Burnt Sienna . . . power to act

Van Dyke Brown . . . power to dare

Raw Umber . . . that which supports

Burnt Umber . . . strength

Cassel Earth . . . power to create

Vegetable Black . . . ancient ancient

Black Iron Oxide . . .power to keep silent

Chromium Oxide . . . life force manifest

Veridian Green . . . power to move

Ultramarine Blue . . . power to change

Cobalt Blue . . . deep knowing

Cobalt Violet . . . precious one

(fire clay) Cobalt . . . power to go

Magnesium Zirconium Silicate . . . desire attained

Zinc White . . . power to protect

Silver Pearl . . . knowing the Mystery

Copper Metallic . . . original wisdom

Gold Metallic . . . power of happiness

This drum painting was made using Mexico yellow and burnt sienna for the seals' bodies and black iron oxide for their eyes. These spirit creatures are swimming in ultramarine blue, among bubble-like areas of natural white on the drum hide, which have been highlighted with silver pearl. How do you understand the message woven from these earth pigments? How would the message of this painted drum be an oracle to guide your journey drumming?

Oracle from a spiny oyster

2010-04-28T18:08:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity yesterday to give a gift to the Chief of the Klahoose First Nation here on Cortes Island. Included within the hand made pouch was a spiny oyster shell, and as I described something about this unusual oyster-like scallop found in the Sea of Cortez, I realized that it is an oracle for all of us who are trying to repair damage from past practices between our communities, and wanting to go forward with positive regard for each other. The inner lip of the spiny oyster is variously colored in red, purple, or orange. The color changes according to the depth at which the oyster is growing. I presented an orange rimed oyster, which is found at depths of more than 90 feet. This means to me that the giving and receiving of this gift is from a very deep place. Like the scallop, the spiny oyster has a rim of eyes along the mantle of the shell, which means to me that this exchange is to honor our seeing with many different views. A spiny oyster fresh from the sea has long spines growing from the outer shell. These are part of the worth of the shell for making bead jewelry. The spines of this gift oyster had all been broken off, which is an oracle of both loss and hope. Something beautiful and complete has been damaged, yet something new and also beautiful can be made with skillful work and attention.

When I read the Journey Oracle cards I do something similar with the images and colors as these make connections to my reason for drawing a card. I start looking for metaphors and analogies, not expecting an answer to obviously and immediately present itself. I asked the Journey Oracle deck, "What is the teaching of this spiny oyster gift?" This is the card I drew. The white-skinned figure is diving down into blue swirls of deep water. Although she is wearing some covering for modesty, she is also vulnerable in her nakedness. A dramatically foreshortened arm holds a hand palm up, as if waiting to receive something into its grasp. Or maybe the hand has just opened to release a gift of movement. The question is provoking. For all my valuing of new friendships and appreciation of the positive change economic growth has brought to the First Nations, "Am I willing to trade places?"

Find balance with nature

2010-04-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Do you carefully carry a spider outside in a cup for mutual protection, and then throw dirty water on the ferns outside the back door? Do you care about how puppies are raised before coming to pet stores, but not care about how the mussels you had for dinner are raised before coming to market? We seem more and more out of balance with nature. We want to save the forest but don’t ponder our actions when nailing a tree house into living branches. How can we begin to re-tune our awareness to all of life, and not just to those forms of it that impinge or promote our wants?

Everything wants to live. Even when the circumstances are challenging and the potential is minimal. When we remember this deep truth: that everything that is, is alive, then we begin to wake up to finding balance with nature. When we realize that all matter feels we recognize everything is sharing one core consciousness, yet expressing that consciousness each in its own way. Now it becomes easy to acknowledge the rock before sitting on it, or to make an offering to the tree before limbing it to open the view.

The Journey Oracle cards are a door into conscious nature for me, and I often ask to be shown about how or if my actions in the world are in balance with nature. I drew this card when I asked, "How can we get to this other way of seeing that everything is alive?" The card image feels like clarity is emerging after passing through an area of tangled confusion. The phrase is perfect. We know this with our inner truth.

Understanding messages from spirit

2010-04-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

There's a significant moment in a phone call and suddenly a bird swoops into the window, narrowly missing a collision. A difficult decision is being pondered while driving and just when you think, “What am I going to do about this?" a cat runs from left to right in front of the car. At the moment an insight is realized, a favorite bowl is knocked from its shelf and breaks.
How do I know if these are messages from the more-than-human world, or just startling coincidences?

When these moments happen to me, there is a fraction of time within the experience when I know with utter certainty that these connections are true and purposeful. I can see with altered awareness, for just a moment, the goodness of fit of the bird or cat or bowl to the situation I am experiencing. To keep this awareness clear, I work at training myself to next ask immediately, "How is this an answer?" I take a deep cleansing breath, without analysis, judgment or doubt, and hold it for a few counts as I ask the answer to come.

There are two ways I practice the skill of being prepared to receive the message. I meditate regularly. My intention is not particularly to follow a Buddhist path, so much as it is to train my awareness to be present without words. I also read the Journey Oracle cards to heighten my ability to be conscious of my first impressions. In this way of using the cards, I am not answering a question so much as I am training my attention. I draw a card with my eyes closed, allow my mind to become quiet, and then look at the card--noticing what first attracts me--without analysis, judgment and doubt. What did you first notice about this card? How is this an answer to what just happened before you began to read these words?

The meaning of the rising tide

2010-03-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Now begins the season of daylight low tides, and as an oyster farmer on Cortes Island, I look forward to again watching for the moment when the dry beach welcomes the rising tide. I wrote this story for card #1 of the Journey Oracle cards, about this pause and shift in the earth’s breathing.

WAITING FOR THE TIDE TO TURN

When the tide begins to recede the surface of the water flattens slightly, as if the earth were holding these messages of coming loss close to her heart. Forms become distinct first as watery hummocks and then as shells and stones spangled with liquid shimmer. Periwinkles and crabs trail lines of wanderlust in the slowly drying sand. In high summer one feels like the beach becomes abandoned to torture by a sun that is no longer a guardian in this place. In the raking light of a moon bright night in deepest winter the whole surface of the beach is moving. The tiniest of creatures have their power sparkling like the largest, glittering with a longing of memory for the water that had been there before, but now is gone.

When the tide begins to turn there is a swelling along the leading edge, as if the water has grown plump with waiting. In the sullen heat of a golden-edged afternoon, the returning water hisses slightly as it bubbles around pebbles and fills up the depressions that are the front doors to the hideouts of ghost shrimp and clams. What was a mottled grey strip of sand suddenly becomes a sculpin, www.encyclopedia.com/topic/sculpin.aspx flashing out to meet the flowing in tide. Starfish clinging in the shadowed underside of beach rocks seem to soften their grip slightly when the water meets their pitted purple skins, as if the rising tide were a signal to let go a little in a life whose main skill is holding on.

Only when the tide is several inches deep will the barnacles venture out with their feathered arms beckoning, only when the certainty of deep water arrives will the oysters open their frilly edged homes to greet what is coming to be the break in their fast.

No creature on the beach expects delays; waiting for the tide to turn is not empty hoping, but inner certainty.

When I reflect on the meaning of the rising tide, I am drawn to the phrase on the card that corresponds to this story. When the rising tide appears as an image in dream interpretation or emotional healing, I think it is always about going deeper. Only then does the food come; only then can we let go into the flow.

What makes a shaman drum?

2010-03-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

This new drum is called giving voice to spirit, and while its painted face is startlingly beautiful and it has a rich tone, these are not criteria for a shaman drum. It has been my experience that someone, or something, must be born twice to enter into shaman knowing. The voices drum has a black tail deer antler handle, and mounting this drum handle while keeping the thongs very tight required three separate attempts. Each redo meant that all of the previous lacings had to be cut off and therefore could not be used again, so each time the drum was reborn to its purpose. This is because to me a drum without a way to hold it suspended away from the body so its voice rings clear is not really a drum.

In my experience the second criteria for creating a shaman drum is effort. By effort I do not mean just hard work, although this was certainly present. I instead mean the kind of effort that requires a risk. This is the risk of not being able to guarantee a successful outcome, or maybe of not having an outcome at all, and still being willing to stay in the work with attention and care.

For me the third criterion for making a shaman drum is the most elusive and necessary. This is the receiving of help from the more-than-human-world, whose creatures and forces are ultimately who will empower, direct and receive the voice of the shaman drum.

Understanding dream animals

2010-03-10T10:36:00.001-08:00

I was looking for something else when I found a book called Dream Animals by James Hillman. This was a gift of long ago that I found so beautiful I saved it in a special place, and then forgot it was there. I think our relationship with animals is like this. I see an owl beside the pond in the early evening; a wolf howls on the ridge beyond the road and my senses become hyper-alert. For a moment I am really awake. And then my instincts go back to sleep and I forget that I am able to be this alive all the time.

Dream animals also bring us into contact with our deep nature. The horse that was running away with me in last night’s dream, on closer notice, is a draft horse trailing the lines of traces and harness. So while a dream dictionary may interpret this image as my passion about something running away with me, if I am alert to the detail, the dream horse is really showing me I have broken free from something binding or limiting.

I sometimes use the Journey Oracle cards to interpret dreams. The images on the double-sided cards are like dream animals that flicker in and out of my awareness. Just like the moment of extreme attention caused by the wolf howl or the runaway dream horse, parts of my shamanic paintings on the oracle cards catch in the net of my heightened awareness, and make metaphoric connections between parts of a dream, and my ordinary reality understanding of its message.

Name symbolism or Naming it makes it so

2010-03-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

My partner and I are in the process of buying a sailboat, and discovered that in 32 years on the planet, the boat of our choice never bore a name. While she must have had at least a casual name by the previous owners who took such good care of her, no name appeared on the stern or in the pages of her marine survey. Sound symbolism, or meaning derived from the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, suggests that there is significance in the very shape of the vibrations we make. So what is the situation of not having a name? Presumably this means that there is no vibration which would link to our unique form; in other words, without a name the world would not be able to find us or know us.

I drew a Journey Oracle card while asking “What do you have to show me about why this boat has no name?” I drew card #11 which represents the Sun in the Journey suit. I was immediately struck by the small figure that is both leaning against, and part of, the larger sad face with one eye looking out and the other looking up. If this is our new boat and me, then feeling the truth of her will bring her name.

Our boat’s name came quite easily--as oyster farmers who work on the sea, of course her name will be Pearl. This name reduces to the number 7 which has special symbolism for me. Seven is the number of the Universe. It is the three of the heavens (soul) combined with the four (body) of the earth; being the first number containing both the spiritual and the temporal. In looking over the list of meanings it doesn't take long to figure out why the seven has become significant in metaphysical, religious and other spiritual doctrines - as seven represents the virginity of the Great Mother - feminine archetype - She who creates.