For a few weeks, some friends and I have been talking about a money spell. We’ve been looking ahead to last night's full moon. That is, two of us really wanted to get something going and other two were supportive, but we hadn’t come up with a plan. And then yesterday someone on the thread opened up and told the truth about money, about their struggles and discomforts about it, and it was a revelation because I have been feeling really uncomfortable with the spell and I didn't know why.
There’s something so amazing about that moment, when one person’s vulnerability opens up the truth for all.
I believe so strongly in this as a force for good in the world.
So, unlike the last spell that I did, the love spell, there was no formula this time. Just each of us facing all of that root chakra stuff: Survival and safety and deservedness and scarcity. Facing it alone, together. Telling the truth…
I wasn’t sure how to go about this spell, though. Why wasn’t somebody giving me the answers?!? But then, I happened to talk to my friend Ravyn, who is wise and beautiful and totally opposed to the idea of giving people the answers. However, she did look up the meaning of last night's Taurean full moon while we were on the phone. This is one of the cool things I have learned recently: that the full moon is in the sign opposite of the current sun sign. This makes sense: the bright moon is reflecting the sun... I love this! The full moon is a time of magical polarity, a tight thread strung between two opposites, the spine of a new web. So now, we are in the sign of Scorpio: mystery and secrets and death and transformation. It's opposite is Taurus: the garden, the slow growth of new things, the hidden taking form, the thing in your hand.
"Form versus transformation, collecting vs sharing." Ravyn said to me when we talked.
So I got off the phone, all worked up about how I was going to make a collage for the spell! And it would be a circle divided into four quarters!! Form and transformation, sharing and collecting. This is a way to totally work out ALL my issues about money and nail that shit down.
This was a fun plan for about 15 minutes.
And only because I started by getting my out all my old copies of Elle Decor magazine, which is totally my guilty pleasure. I tore out pictures that popped and made me happy. And then I got out my nature magazines and did them. And then I had a pile, pictures of faux (I hope) fur footstools and beautiful beautiful rooms (lots of exposed brick and big, old windows, which apparently I love) and also pictures of burrowing owls and sand dunes and a nest full of pale blue eggs…
But then I started to try to think about how to put it into a quartered collage, and it was totally overwhelming and not fun at all.
Just like how I feel about money.
So I said “Fuck it. I have a wretched fucking cold (WFC) and the full moon lasts three days. I’ll do it tomorrow.” And I got up and made some soup.
But as I chopped the carrots, and emptied all the orphan vegetables from my refrigerator into the pot, I remembered what I understood, when my friend was brave enough to open her heart...
I know how to make money. I just don't know how to make money and stay healthy. And I'm scared of getting hurt again, by my own choices.
I am not alone in this. That helps a little. On Sunday, a dear friend looked me in the eye and said “If it’s my life or politics, politics has to go.”
Today, another dear friend told me about the culture of never taking breaks at the hospital where she works, though the shifts are twelve hours long, and how hard it was for her to stand up to it.
Goddess, it has been such a privilege to rebuild my body for the last ten months, and to build the strength to go forward, not back.
And last night, I realized that the heart of the spell for me is not making money, but staying connected to my source while I try. So I started doodling about the things that keep me connected and I got down on the floor and did my physical therapy exercises, which are about deep connection to my core, right around my root chakra. (Surprise.)
At bedtime, I sat down to do my daily practice, still intending to finish the spell later. But the magic didn't want to wait. I started my regular thing: grounding and connecting, and lighting candles to my goddesses and sitting for a moment and taking stock. I did all that. And was getting ready for the next thing, when suddenly, the ancestors were there, and – I 'd forgotten about this until just now –there was someone new, sort of freaky, white eyes whooshing around me…
It kind of scared me, so I called on my goddesses; I asked Freya and Brigid and Kali to come around me and hold me and they drove my root grounding cord straight down into the earth, like the biggest strongest most fiercely forged sword ever. Which was also new. And whatever the white-eyes-thing was, it still circled me and I thought "bone magic" so I asked for help from the ancestors who love me to make my bones strong and to anchor me fast.
But I still thought I was going to do the spell later.
Usually, at this point, I do this little tea ceremony called “Kala.” It’s a Huna tradition that I learned from Dawn Isadora at BC Witch Camp. The short version is that you blow your worries into your hands, drop them into a cup of water and then charge the water with the grounding power of the earth and stars, transforming your worries into medicine. Sort homeopathy-y. But last night when I started to blow into my hands, what came out was all of the magic that I had been working on as I let my mind wander that night. Not beautiful rooms and birds nests, but the thing underneath them that came from paying attention to myself whether it makes sense or not… A kind of deep calming that went into my hands and glowed and made my palms vibrate, and finally, finally I woke the fuck up and thought "Oh… we're doing this now, huh?" So, I blew into my hands everything I know about staying connected to the magic, including beauty and the creek, art and animals and stories and singing and the unexpected intelligence of the wild and the willingness to shine and the willingness to not know. I blew all that into my hands along with all the things I can’t name but can feel, until I thought my hands would fly apart and I stood and drew down that big beautiful earthy growing-things moon into the spell, because that’s what this was, and then I coaxed it into my little white porcelain tea cup and I drank it.
And then I just breathed for a bit. The candles were almost burned down. The incense was making me cough because of the WFC. But I was in that quiet space, the in-between space where the night is like still water all around. I could feel my new ally, gift of the redwoods, the dark. It was at my back. I picked up the Raven feather on my altar and brushed it over me to seal in the magic. I said “Thank you.”
And I took 3,000 mg of Vitamin C and I went to bed.
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