There are lots of things to share, as my Winter Year structure finally forms up.
The second of my Beautiful Questions for the Year of Asking was what it meant to live seasonally. The simple answer to that was, a little of the summer year had to be in the winter year and visa versa.
That meant my Summer Year needed stillness and some inwards facing time. The good thing about summer is the long days and the early dawns offer plenty of early morning quiet time to read and have tea. Plus time in my journal.
So what does a little bit of Summer look like in Winter?
Visibility, was the simple answer. (Believe me, an eye roll followed!)
In winter I have a terrible habit of going into my cave and not coming out for six months. It’s terrible for my mental health. As much as I love inward facing time, time that’s effectively isolation is not good.
This winter year I am maintaining my quest to do something new every month, with someone I wouldn’t normally hang out with.
This meant that in the first few days of my winter year, when I was absolutely slayed from the end of the summer year list of projects — I still went out to my first ever supper club.
And guess what — it filled me right up.
Huzzah for playdates.
Business-wise I still need visibility as well.
Not to be outdone by the choice of something new each months, I decided to do the thing I will usually avoid at all costs — getting on video.
Anyone who has had a remote reading might think this is weird and strange. Or anyone who has been part of a zoom group.
Sitting talking solo to a screen though — urgh, please no. Not when it’s not part of a wider conversation.
Every Wednesday (day of Mercury) I shall record a short video of me reading the first page of one of the stories from This Once Precious Life. (My beloved legacy collection kind of of overshadowed by other things the Summer year demanded.)
I was inspired by Luke Arnold’s First Page Pajama Party. (I won’t be doing it my PJs, well I maybe — maybe not, that’s not the intention, but it will eventually be proper winter and who is to say there won’t be sleep pants further on?)
Today I recorded “It Could Be”, one of the vignettes.
These videos are intended to be rough and ready. I am struggling with the freeze reflex at the moment and the fewer steps between me and what I want to do, the better.
There’s no make up, I made a vague effort with my hair and I was vaguely articulate.
I’ll be back next Wednesday with another of these, hopefully a little better with this who video gig.
The dark woods was the affectionate name one of the 2023 winter women dubbed my winter depth work and how the summer year was like arriving in a hut surrounded by a beautiful garden.
When we caught up last weekend we all agreed our summer year had been busier than anticipated and not quite as idyllic as the concept of that glorious garden may have been.
One thing missing from all our summer years was each other. I don’t think we realised how important journeying together was.
It is time return to the dark woods. I am hoping you will join me in Unseen for this year’s winter depth work.
The Dark Woods
I’ve been studying fairy tales with Carina Bisset since the middle of February. Her Season of the Wolf course is a rich and complex exploration of fairy tales and science.
Last week we dove into The Robber Bridegroom and Bluebeard.
Christina, my anam cara, commented that the girls in these fairy tales (and their adaptations) and so many others we have studied, are lead/coaxed/coerced/curioused into the dark woods or far-flung houses.
Often they arrive alone to find monstrous things awaiting them. Or they travel with the person who will become the perpetrator of ills at their destination.
All these locations have on thing in common — they’re isolated.
Isolation
A few weeks ago, I spoke to my friend who is a social worker, about isolation. We were talking about my novel. My friend highlighted isolation as one of the risk factors in domestic violence, and how the setting of my novel, in Western Queensland, is definitely isolated
I remember the way extreme rural living (so different from my life in the city) facilitated the kind of brainwashing my ex got away with in my mid 20’s. And how I let so many things happen, until it was a full-blown domestic violence situation, because I was repeatedly told: this is the way we do it in the country.
(Just to be clear, no, we don’t behave like that, anywhere, ever!)
For my main character, Lucy, the isolation of the far-flung township of Matilda, is meant to be a protective factor in her leaving her sanctuary in Hobart. And it is, until someone undermines the confidentiality clause of the dig she’s working on and invites the media to town.
Fairy-tale isolation means the girls are unseen and unheard. Alone they are vulnerable — not the Brené Brown good vulnerable. Here, being alone puts them at risk.
In that regard these stories are not just cautionary tales but also modern allegories of the risks of isolation and loneliness.
Isolation, Suffering and Human Scale
Beyond Human Scale is Brené Brown’s latest podcast topic for Unlocking Us.
In her conversation with Esther Perel at SXSW they spoke about the long-hand of isolation and the immensity of loneliness and disconnection in our hyper-connected world (On The New AI: Artificial Intimacy).
Brown says: Attention is such an undervalued form of love.
Perel replies: Attention is an amazing quality because much of the time when people suffer or struggle, they don’t need fixing because some things can’t be fixed and not in the moment. So all they need is a witness. Attention is witnessing.
People have suffered from the day human beings have existed. There’s nothing new. But they always knew that the suffering needs to take placein the company of others. And these days we do too much suffering alone.
The comment about suffering in company has stayed with me.
Transformation isn’t suffering, but it is often rough. Doing it alone makes it harder than it could be.
Doing it with others makes it bearable — and times, even funny.
In The Company of Others
I was lucky enough to join a support group when I was pregnant. Preparing for a homebirth should not be fundamentally different to preparing to birth in a hospital or birth centre, but it is.
It was there, in support group, through my pregnancy and early months of mothering, and what ended up being the first three years of my son’s life, I sat with other women — drawing strength and wisdom from them.
It was there I learned the power of storytelling.
I’ve been in many circles since — both as participant and facilitator.
Both Prosperity Consciousness and Replenish had group sharing as a core component of them.
Earlier this year I also ran the Between Years sessions. We all came away from those mornings in awe of the soul and heart nourishment that being in a shared wisdom space with other women was.
Unseen
Collective storytelling and wisdom sharing, and communal learning and unfurling is one of the most transformative spaces I know. It’s what my winter depth work is built around.
We go into the dark woods together. And me navigate them together. And that togetherness forms a vital and protective illumination. It lights up the path and makes the unknown less scary.
We become the Hermit’s lantern for each other, as we seek our underworld stars.
Together we are no longer isolated. We are not alone.
We are seen. We are heard.
Unseen is a container where your struggles, your joy, your sorrow and your triumphs are all witnessed.
Your unfurling is supported in a cooperative way.
Your strength and tenacity are celebrated, alongside your tenderness and vulnerability.
Go Together
I’ve done plenty of healing and soul work alone. It has its time and place. But since Christina came into my life, I haven’t had to do it alone.
I am better for that shared experience, both professionally and personally.
On the cusp of the solar eclipse tomorrow, astrologer and social activist Chani Nicholas writes:
(the) solar eclipse in Aries is no joke. It requires us to confront the discomfort of (metaphorically) burning away what isn’t meant to stay. Occurring at 11:20 am PT (Monday) conjunct the Chiron cazimi, this eclipse invites us to go deep into our shadowlands and transmute our wounds.
If you want to take the next step, a deep dive into yourself in the company of others Unseen is the six month gift from yourself to yourself.
If you haven’t worked with me before and would like a feel for me and my way of doing things organise a TOE DIP free session.
For everyone riding the eclipse energy, be gentle. Consider the first kindness to yourself and do it.
What if January was a liminal pause where you got to complete all the things you didn’t quite finish in the year before?
What if January was an opportunity for closure — to reconcile, resolve and let go of all you didn’t quite get to before the silly season was upon you?
What if January was space to consider what’s next and lay strong foundations for what you want with steady, determined vision and intention?
And what if in 2024, it wasn’t just January but a little bit of February as well?
The Pause Between
For almost two decades I have treated the space between the Calendar New Year (an arbitrary date) and Lunar New Year (the second new moon after winter solstice–which is always an Aquarius new moon) as a sacred portal.
I’ve used it to do practical business things and meaningful personal things. It has been both mundane and magickal. It’s often been both simultaneously.
This year, I want to offer the Pause Between Years to you. Especially if you are someone who may already consider themselves “behind” on the 2nd January (either because of what you didn’t complete in 2023 or for what you didn’t manage to initiate yesterday on the 1st!)
The Lunar New Year begins here in Australia on the 10th February (9th in other time zones).
The Pause in 2024 is just shy of 6 weeks.
The Tides Spread
Each year I create a spread to segue one calendar year into another. This year it is The Tides spread and I’ve created a mini workbook to go with it.
Jessa Crispin writes in The Creative Tarot:
“I always think of the Eights as being akin to the tide. Things are going out, things are coming in. The changes are subtle but real. What is important … is how you respond to the changes.”
The Tides Spread is what I call “a slow spread”, that is, it is intended to be done over several sittings. This year it spans the six weeks of The Pause: three weeks to unpack and release 2023 (a “7” year), and three weeks to inspire, envisage and lay foundations for 2024 (an “8” year).
This year is I am offering Between Years Sessions to support the tides spread for anyone who’d like to be in circle to discuss with others what’s come up for them in their solo work.
I’ll be there to offer additional support, perspective and ideas.
Sessions are as follows:
Saturday 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th January
Saturday 3rd and 10th February
All at 10am (AEST or +10UCT)
These sessions are $10 and you can book for all six sessions or come and go as you need.
Please note: To participate you will need your own deck of cards (tarot or oracle) and have completed the relevant section of the spread before you come to the call.
The journal is simple and is designed for tarot or oracle cards. It keeps track of monthly intentions, projects and ideals and is both prospective and reflective.
If you’d like to give it a whirl, please download and print off the pages for January.
It is one of my anchors in life, and nothing would bring me more joy, than it becoming an anchor in your life too.
Join the list for The Poetry of You (Mar-Sept depth container). The container is for 10 women and one place is already taken.Add you name here.
Each of us has a story when it comes to how we see ourselves in relation to abundance and prosperity. Have you ever stopped to explore yours?
For some, it is an empowering one that opens the doors to limitless possibilities. For others, it may feel like a prison where the scraps of life are barely enough to sustain oneself.
Interestingly enough, given perspective’s vantage point, both can be true at the same time. It depends on what side of the bars you stand on and how you see yourself in relation to what is around you.
Taking time to uncover what’s hidden in the depths of your mind, knowing what’s working for or against you, impacts the flow of money and generosity in your life.
Together, we will:
Understand the power of words to shape stories, how stories shape beliefs, behaviours and identity … and how they come together to shape reality.
Unearth your current money/currency* stories.
Trace the origins of those money/currency stories
Deconstruct those legacy stories, including identifying behavior patterns associated with them (and how they’ve shown up across your life).
Redefine success, wealth, prosperity and thriving, and any other words relevant to your experience.
Play with the “spirit” of money/currency.
Rewrite your money/currency story(ies).
Experiment with a new identity and new behaviors that anchor those new stories.
Leverage tools that expand and amplify the reach of your new stories and behaviors.
* All money is currency but not all currency is money.
Prosperity Consciousness is a 12-week co-facilitated group program that leverages the wisdom of Fredric Lehrman and the combined skills and experience of Jodi Cleghorn.
Registrations close Thursday 21st September (AEST).
About Your Hosts
Kate Wildrick
Using her unique gifts and talents, Kate retrieves helpful information, insight and guidance about the blocks and restrictions that are impacting your life. Oftentimes, issues build on one another’s qualities creating sophisticated energetic interdependencies. When one gets triggered, it will often initiate a domino effect that ultimately leads to one creating the same types of issues or experiences again and again. Knowing what to focus on and tackle becomes extremely challenging, because it is not always clear what is connected to what and how it affects certain outcomes.
Working collaboratively, Kate uses a proven technique and process to heal, shift and remove issues so they no longer have an energetic hold on you. When the root causes and energetic connections are dealt with properly, you are free to move the direction you truly desire. As a result, brand new possibilities become reality.
Kate is a gifted healer and paradigm shifter who is capable of clearing blocks that hold one back from being able to give and receive abundantly. Her unique perspective of how trauma, disempowering belief systems and even multigenerational stories provides another level of depth on what may be contributing to one’s money story(ies). To learn more about her, please visit her website at https://the-shifting-grounds.com.
Jodi Cleghorn
Jodi is a multi-passionate woman who works with people and words. She commands three voices: the word witch, the depth worker and wayshower.
She offers clientsa unique combination of storytelling, tarot, intuitive downloads and coaching to re-orientate them in their lives, opening doors out of intractable situations and inspiring practical forward momentum. Jodi leverages the quantum field of potential while holding the vulnerability of the human experience.
Her greatest joy is witnessing people move into congruence with their core desires, beliefs, values and feelings; to author personal narratives that open their hearts and the world to everything they thought impossible.
Jodi is an accomplished linguist and published author. Her strengths include being able to help other change their stories while offering a different narrative on past, present and future experiences.
Written for the week Monday 12th – Sunday 18th June
The Fifth Spirit Tarot (first edition) by Charlie Clare Burgess
✉️ Four as Missive
🌏 The four relates to physical limitations — the limits of our body, our personal resources, the physical world. The limits of reality.
💎 It is a pause to consider what you hold close in that space. What/who is treasured. Adored. And the degree to which this is supportive, nourishing and life affirming.
🤝 Here you observe your behaviour around holding. Do you clutch and cling and hoard? Are there roots of fear or lack driving this? Or do you cradle and embrace? Are there roots of confidence and connections underpinning this?
🙏🏻 Do you trust time? And life’s divine timing?
🧭 If your values are points of a compass, what anchors your heart, body, mind and spirit. Do you know your anchors?
🧮 The four offers a chance to stocktake your personal resources — especially the less tangible of them like time, energy, agency, and love.
🗼Foundations are required to build solid and enduring structures, but if we build on the wrong foundations, we risk the long term integrity of our hard work.
🌱 The seedling that grows in fertile, cultivated ground grows differently to the one in the harsh wildness.
🪨 In the four, healthy stability and security can calcify into stubbornness, rigidity and barrenness.
🦷Our roots connect past-present-future.
☠️ Sunk deep in the past, they connect to a rich source of learning and empowerment. They can also draw up the poison of wrong turns, missed opportunities, doubt and regret.
🪴The four reminds you, plants struggle to thrive when they are root bound. It offers you secateurs to cut away what holds you back.
📖 Journal Prompts
✍🏻 Who/what/where do you treasure?
✍🏻 What word anchors/defines your heart energy?
✍🏻 What word anchors/defines your physical energy?
✍🏻 What words anchors/defines your mental energy?
✍🏻 What words anchors/defined your soul energy?
✍🏻 When combined what kind of compass does this provide for navigating a life congruent with your values?
✍🏻 Where are the drains on your money, time, love and agency? How can you make one small change to redirect the flow?
✍🏻 Where do your roots bind you? What needs to be cut away?
✍🏻 How can time act as a friend, collaborator and instigator of possibilities? If you loosen your grip, what happens? Look for the synchronicities this week.
The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week. The Primer returns Monday, 1st May.
Written for Monday 31st October – Sunday 6th November (and shared here for the mirror week of six month ago, including Samhain here in the Southern Hemisphere)
The Fifth Spirit Tarot, by Charlie Claire Burgess
✉️ The Nine as Missive
🕯 As we pause for Samhain (juxtaposed with Beltane in the Northern Hemisphere) the 9 is an invitation to consider who or what you are lighting a candle for.
🔋 9 is the energy to mourn and remember, as well as dream and manifest. Both call something to us.
🙏🏻 The 9 explores what it means to hold a vigil — literally what you are holding onto and tending in reverence.
🔦 It casts a light in the dark as to who or what you are keeping close. It calls into question, and concurrently amplifies, your call to the other side.
🔬 It asks us to qualify and clarify what “the other side is” for us, on the everyday plane, as well as a higher spiritual.
⏳The 9 beckons and whispers to you: tell me who or what you are waiting for? How long has it been?
☠️ It gently and without judgement observes the candles you have lit. The ones doggedly tended. The ones you’ve been careless with. The ones that went out.
🧚♀️ The 9 reminds us, waiting and patience are not the same thing. They tap different timelines. Different congruencies. But as children we are told to wait; be patience and our restless spirits take this as punishment. It’s not.
🔥 In the element of fire, patience is wild.
👞 Hypervigilance is a heightened state of anticipation. Of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it was once adaptive. Is it now?
😬The 9 suggests modern life makes us worry what is coming at us. Makes us worry we are alone. Makes as though we are alone and unprotected.
🛡 We worry so much, we are perpetually prepared, carrying our armour everywhere. We miss the caress of the gentleness of life. Kindness. The afternoon breeze. We sleep in it and wonder why we wake unrested.
♀️ The nine makes room beside it and offers you a chance to light a candle for yourself.
📖 Journal Prompts
🕰 Who or what are you willing to wait for?
⏰ Who or what are you not willing to do this for?
🍽 Who is making you wait?
🦁 Where does fierceness and courage intersect patience?
❤️ What is your relationship with patience?
🪷If you could define wild patience for yourself, what would it look/sound/feel/taste/smell like?
🍂 What have you incepted and not tended?
🗡 What keeps you awake at night?
✨ What is the glorious other side of your biggest challenge right now? Describe it in detail.
🧨 How does trying to do it alone sabotage your best efforts?
Thank you so much for your patience. It’s good to be back. See you tomorrow.
🎯 9 of Wands in Action: The Quasi List Poem
I first came across the term “wild patience” in Women Who Run With the Wolves in 2016. The phrase was shaped by feminist and poet Adrienne Rich. It immediately seized my imagination.
What could wild patience be?
My then-boyfriend and I texted back and forth across an evening, what wild patience might be. It is one of my happiest memories of our time together.
So let’s write a list poem together….
(If you have a friend you can do this with, do it. If it’s just you and your notes app or journal that’s fine too.)
You start with the phrase:
Wild patience is… and you fill that in.
If words are not your jam, cap it at 3. Let it be a process of moving through.
If words are a happy playground aim for a higher number of iterations.
Hold this lightly. Have fun.
🪶 The 9 of Wands in Poetry
Wild patience is…
…tending a grieving heart knowing it will once-again be whole and love again.
…the anticipation of a summer storm building on the horizon (before there were weather apps)
…your soul choosing time-consuming creativity paths when your impetuous humanness needs spontaneity and immediacy down the trauma-bahn.
…festina lente: make haste slowly
…threading daisy chains, winding pom poms and constructing paper chains.
…cyclic stability and it’s ever-constant shifts and changes hardwired into the wax and wane, ebb and flow, growth and decay.
…how the people who love you hold space so you can to tend yourself in your perfect timing, not theirs.
🪞 The 9 in Reflection
I know the Primer rarely delivers messages I want. But they’re always the ones I need. This week was no different.
It’s the second week of mourning the loss of someone who meant everything to me. And it’s a warped grief tangled in an exceptionally non-conventional relationship that defied possibility. I find myself trying to work out how to hold space to honour the past, be present with myself now and continue to tend to the future when the “rules”/assumptions/expectations don’t m necessarily apply here.
🕯 Thanks to Christina I was able to light a candle on the Samhain/Beltane axis to: contradictions and the wholehearted devastation of being human. The unseasonal gusting wind blew it out before it got going. But I was able to let it burn out the following night.
Who are we to say what perfect timing is? The intersection of wild patience and time is probably our capacity to let go, let be and trust in the unfolding.
Also thank you to Anna Bellissimo who reminded me that if you search for evidence of magick you will find it. (And you know — for your amusement… as I was typing that the Cure’s “Close to Me” was playing and out the corner of my eye I spied a hand-sized spider crawl up the pillar beside where I was sitting. I don’t need to be that close. Thank you!!!)
Thoughts that popped up this week, the first is mine. The next two belong to astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat:
💭 It is not just identifying who or what, it’s about knowing how you tend the memories, when and where you do, and why. But of course all of that is meaningless unless you know the what or who.
💭 (Detectives) might be extra vigilant types who don’t know how to describe the things that only they see to someone else. They might (embody) and hold the important archetype of truth.
💭 The word remember is a bit of a misnomer. We never remember things. We always reconstruct memories. Memories are just stories.
My son tells a great story of being woken in the middle of the night to me belting this out, earphones in, hidden within the dark.
Without further ado, please dance yourself into the weekend with Blondie’s “The Tide is High”
I’ve shared for entry as the mirror week of six months ago — the middle week of the eclipse portal and to honour Samhain here in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week. The Primer returns Monday, 1st May.
I’m not sure exactly when I started to use Mercury Retrograde to return to the books I love. It probably was when I decided to more closely align with what Mercury Rx was excellent for to mitigate what it gets a bad rap for (miscommunication, travel disruptions, tech meltdowns, delays of all kinds). It worked. I found that as I fell down rabbit holes of favourite books, music and films, there were fewer disruptions and problems.
I hadn’t thought much about the old habit until Rus asked Adam and I last year ago if we’d read any book six times or more.
I have. (Have you?)
It’s entirely likely I’ve read The Book Thief and The Time Traveller’s Wife that many times. I’ve read more than three times The Passion and The Red Tent. In the past 18 months I’ve read The Idea of You four times, and I’m certain I’ll read it many more times.
For me, there is something special about returning to old stories, old friends and reliving their journeys again.
The second time I read The Time Traveller’s Wife it was like I was reading a totally different book. First time, I was so wrapped up in the tragedy of the love story, I missed the darker elements. They were unmissable the second time round.
What is Mercury Retrograde?
Mercury Retrograde happens three times a year (sometimes four). While Mercury doesn’t really go backward, it is an illusion from here, astrologically it is considered a disruption to Mercury’s modus operandi for three odd weeks (delays in communication, technology and travel to name a few things). But it’s a perfect time to stop and reflect (or many of the other ‘re’ words). Of which re-reading is a perfect fit.
Why would anyone re-read a book when so many books will go unread before we die?
The Return
” Re-reading can help form new perspectives and better self-understanding – much like talking to new people.”
Populus Omnibus Survey, 2021
In 2021, The Reading Agency (who run World Book Night) in conjunction with SpecSavers ran a survey on re-reading, which they released for World Book Night.
They found in the last 12 months:
53% of people had re-read a book
61% in the 18-14 age group had
46% aged over 65 had
This reflects research that people seek familiar and predictable enjoyment in activities durinng times of change.
The reasons people returned to books included:
for comfort
to relax
escaping reality
discovering aspects they hadn’t noticed before, and
re-reading feeling familiar
The most popular genres were:
crime
sci-fi (men)
romance (women) and
memoir
Good-bye, Hello!
I looked forward to my Mercury Rx re-reading schedule for years; of taking my favourite old reads down and making them new. It appears as people returned to old literary loves, I did the opposite.
I am determined to make the most of this transit – even if I only manage one re-read (because someone bought a massive pile of books home from the library last week!) Mercury Rx through Taurus is a call to return to pleasure pursuits and there is nothing more pleasurable that finding myself lost in a good book.
There are worse ways to spend April 24th – May 15th.
Perhaps it’s time to pick up an old book love? Or your favourite movie, music, game or any other kind of pop culture (which also has strong Mercury ties).
Drop a comment and let me know what you plan to rediscover this Mercury Rx.
Image: Cosmic Couch by Me
PS: From lived experience, I know editing is super-powered during Mercury and I’ll be embarking on rewrites of a secret project I’ve been working on with Rus and Adam since 2017 as well as finally compiling a collection of my previously published short fiction.
The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week.
Written Monday 30 January – Sunday 5 February 2023 (shared here for the eclipse / mercury rx week of 17/04-23/04/230
The Fifth Spirit (1st edition) , Charlie Clare Burgess
✉️ The Hierophant as Missive
🔨 The Hierophant is a committed dismantler of isms and ologies.
🙋🏻♀️ They are a questioner of the traditions that give foundations to systems and structures, and invite you to instead seek your own meaning maker.
❤️ They ask: is this meaningful to you? If not, why do you continue?
🧐 While the High Priestess invites you into a higher knowing, the Hierophant invites you into what you already know.
🏛️The Hierophant is your inner librarian. The trusted guardian and guide of all the knowledge you have amassed in this life time (and life times before). A gateway to your wisdom. Here everything you know has been catalogued and carefully tended, waiting for you to return.
🧬The wisdom of your lived experience. The wisdom carried in your body. The wisdom of eons encoded in your DNA. The sacred wisdom of your heart. And yes, the wisdom you have sought in books and in conventional (and unconventional) learning.
🪜 The Inner Librarian encourages you to honour your knowing. To step through the stacks and be awed and amazed at just what is there.
🛑 The Hierophant asks you to question any one need you to give away your power to sit at their feet. Whose wisdom seeks to override your own. They caution against anyone who refuses to enter into the synergy of knowledge as anything other than collaboration and wonder.
🏚️ For a truly wise soul will never ask you to abandon yourself to be with them. They will always offer their insights with humbleness and non-absoluteness. They will never insist they know they truth.
👉🏼 They point out all those you who position themselves as an Expert on You. They remind you, you are, and will always be, the Expert of You and your experience.
🚪 The Hierophant gestures to the massive doors you are standing at. They offer you keys to the Library of You, stepping aside so you might open the doors. Welcome, they say and you step inside.
📖 Journal Prompts
✍🏻 Describe your Inner Library, in as much or as little detail.
✍🏻 How do access your deeper knowing?
✍🏻 How would you define “tradition”? (If you didn’t have to think hard “intellectually” about it?
✍🏻What traditions do you in engage because they’re meaningful and resonant?
✍🏻What ones do you go along with to make other people happy?
✍🏻What is the cost of that to you?
✍🏻Which ism or ology feels most relevant/pressing in your life now? How does it show up in your life?
✍🏻What do you believe in that brings joy, perspective, understanding, anchoring and meaning to your life?
✍🏻 How do you create meaningful action from that place of belief?
✍🏻How will you honour your knowing this week?
🎯 The Hierophant in Action
This week I’m inviting you to observe your Inner Librarian. To see how she moves. What she does. And most of all, what frees her to do her job with ease.
🪶 The Hierophant in Poetry
From Shades of Paradox (2019)
🪞 The Hierophant in Reflection
The locus of “knowing” has been really interesting to explore this week.
The week started with a sense that my Inner Librarian needs movement. I felt her walking the stacks with her finger trailing along the spines of books, or getting around in a converted golf cart in a warehouse sized repository.
The weather hasn’t been great for walking in the afternoon, so I didn’t get a chance to test drive this further. To see if what drops into my head when I’m out walking, is actually an info dump from the Inner Librarian. Like she’s arrived with a pile of books and boom – down on the counter they go.
Then two days ago I got a “slam into a brick wall” kind of knowing that didn’t drop from above. It came from deep inside me as I observed the outer world and I saw it had shifted. My body, heart and soul were in total coherence, while my mind tried to bargain with the deeper truth. (It’s still trying to strike bargains the other three simply won’t underwrite!)
I know what it’s like to ask a question and get a High Priestess answer, and what happened on that footpath was not her sending down missives. This was pattern recognition at an intrinsic level of awareness.
I have a new (and humbled) appreciation of my Inner Librarian and her gifts. As well as the magickal knowing which resides in my body and heart, when my mind doesn’t scream down the house with its version of the house. (Even when I don’t like what that knowing tells me — and believe me, there’s been plenty of inner tantrumming!)
In the future, I want to cultivate more deeper knowing rather than defaulting to higher knowing. To source my wisdom rather than outsource it.
There was also this comment from Simone Seol on IG which fell within the parameters of The Hierophant as system whistleblower.
⁉️Were you able to tap into your Inner Librarian this week? I’d love to know what’s unpacked or revealed itself to you since Monday.
📻 Signal Boost
A repeat broadcast this week for Christina Hira and her 2023 Patreon.
She’s the dearest of my dear hearts, my fellow explorer of soul and shadows spaces plus my poetic bestie. Her depth year reflections blew me away. They helped me understand the changes I was undergoing.
We are embarking on a Year of Uncertainty together and her essays will be a must. Please consider diving in with your spare change (pun intended!) on the Uncertainty Essays tier.
🪩 The Hierophant as Outro
This week I offer you a little Paul Dempsey. I’m sure there were possibly better songs out there but there is something Hey History (Don’t Go Changin’) that nagged for inclusion.
(Maybe it’s been the week, maybe my Inner Librarian also has a wee crush on Mr Dempsey!)
So without further ado, a quiet jam to watch the sun go down (or come up) on this Saturday.
I’ve shared for Eclipse week / Mercury stationing direct 17/04-23/04/23
Happy Day of the Horizon — my latest nerd iteration of the plethora of new year variants.
Over the weekend, I commented to a friend who I met through astrological circles, that I was fascinated by the fact that I was literally running a week behind with everything. Deadlines I had set for the previous weekend, were finalising this weekend. I spent most of the week feeling disheartened, running a failure narrative, at my inability to finish everything I wanted to complete before the equinox.
You know, if I’d just tried harder. Been more focused.
If the energy of the equinox portal had fucked me up so completely.
And dozens of other opportunistic bullshit.
A few minutes later, my friend messaged to say the transiting sun wouldn’t hit my first house for a few days… and boom! I checked in with my chart and saw that the sun would cross the threshold of my first house on Tuesday (yes, exactly a week after equinox!)
I wasn’t running behind schedule at all.
I was powering along in perfect alignment with my own intrinsic energy, cycles and timing. Yet again I’d worked hard to undo myself with an arbitrary date (one of the fixations and self sabotaging behaviours I’ve ben unpicking since January).
And Breathe
The most remarkable thing happened next — the shifting of my timeline suddenly freed up all the stuck, shitty energy I’d been caught in. I mean, we never completely wipe clean the slate, but I was clear about the energetic ties I wanted to cut moving into this new year. And gifted a moment of insight, I received a powerful reframe (and you know, an extra 36 hours grace!)
I could breathe. I could move. My world suddenly bloomed with possibilities.
I relaxed into the final moments of finishing a two year ghost editing project with Leah.
I turned up with excitement for the final few poems of a poetry project with Christina (not un-ironically called “Thresholds”)… and just generally enjoyed the feeling of what I wanted: a new year that felt like it had a clean slate.
Happy New Year
Just before 5am today, the sun kissed my horizon and my new year begun.
I don’t think it’s a “thing” (not like solar return charts are) but I cast a chart to see what the moment of “emergence” offers for the coming year, and there is plenty there to excite me professionally and creatively.
Especially in a year where my debut solo novel comes out.
My client books are shut this week. I’m not doing the Poetry Primer.
I’m giving all of me, to me.
I also postponed the beginning of The Poetry of You to open the necessary space to download the shape and nuance of it (which I knew had been patiently lingering in the wings waiting for everything else to finish).
The Coming Week, Prelude to the Underworld
Over the next few days I will share more specific details of what The Poetry of You will have in terms of shape, concept, context and content as it comes through.
I downloaded several exciting pieces swimming this morning.
What I can say at this point, there will be strong elements of Underworld mythology via Inanna (who, if you’ve read Postmarked Pipers’ Reach, you’ll know Ella-Louise was obsessed her), Persephone (who is on the wall of the room I get network chiropractic) and Psyche (who is my current obsession — what’s not to love about a woman who takes the back door into the underworld with cake to fed the hell hound!).
These stories are symbolically rich.
Ripe for retellings that strip away the patriarchal bullshit (where women only excel at beauty — or running away, only to be turned into trees).
These stories are also gentle and empowering structures to write our stories within. I’m excited to use them as spaces reorientation for (re)discovering our selves past-present-future.
If this sounds like something you’re in for now … sign up here.
Or join me here this week, as it unfolds for both of us in real(ish) time.
My Favourite Superpower
Opening doors for people and helping them step across the threshold is my favourite superpower as a depth worker.
In the process of doing this with myself right now, as I kiss the horizon and face al the fears, as I prepare to descend, I’m readying myself to be the best companion for you on your journey into the depths.
PS: *deep breath* I am experimenting with writing more and holding less tightly to it … freeing my time from the constraints of perfectionism (which is the antithesis of what being a writer is often — but perhaps more attuned with the energy of a word witch?) Closer to “clean skin” wines … this is a one-and-done and beautifully imperfect. All grammatical and spelling errors are on me and this crazy first-pass effort.
Using her unique gifts and talents, Kate retrieves helpful information, insight and guidance about the blocks and restrictions that are impacting your life. Oftentimes, issues build on one another’s qualities creating sophisticated energetic interdependencies. When one gets triggered, it will often initiate a domino effect that ultimately leads to one creating the same types of issues or experiences again and again. Knowing what to focus on and tackle becomes extremely challenging, because it is not always clear what is connected to what and how it affects certain outcomes.
