musings

A Persistent Page

Last Friday, I was doing intuitive Tarot and animal card readings at a local shop. Sometimes when you are doing readings you will notice that no matter how much you shuffle, one or two cards show up in most to every reading. I think of these “bad penny” cards that show up in multiple readings as being the theme, story, or energy that the collective human energy is experiencing right now. As I read for parts of the human collective, I get to see glimpses through these repeated cards of what is effecting the community.


The card that kept showing up in my readings was the Page of Cups. Many people have differing views on the court cards, but here I will only give my take on the Page of Cups. For years I have read with the late Robin Wood’s deck, and on the card there is a young blond girl by the sea shore. She holds a cup out, feeding a hummingbird water and at her hip is a pallet of paints. Over the years of growing my relationship with this representation, I have interpreted her as a person who creates art to express the feelings of the heart and a person who appreciates beauty in the simple. She feeds her heart through simple connection with nature through the hummingbird and stirs the flow of her heart in the expression of her art. She teaches us to look for the beauty around us and to connect to the simple joy in those moments.


Her pallet of paints brings the advice to create art. Now art is many things to many people. It can be cooking, painting, dancing, quilting, collage, poetry, or any type of creativity. You have to be the one who decides what you create as art. Art has this power to help us clear the mental and emotional air so we can see the true beauty of a situation. It doesn’t need to be great art to get the benefit of it, so let your inner critic take a break from berating you by taking away the importance and just let yourself play.


One story I tell when the Page of Cups comes up prominently in a reading is that I once had an art teacher who would have us do five minute warm ups before we got into our class work. One of the ones I remember was for five minutes we were to paint someone we were mad at or couldn’t stand. When we were done with the five minutes he told us to find release by either destroying the image or painting over it. This was an exercise to release what may be on our minds so we could dive deeper into our creativity. I have painted my inner critic and turned him to the wall while I create.


I think we as a collective need to be the Page of Cups, allowing ourselves time to appreciate beauty in simple moments, to express our hearts in art, and to renew ourselves in childlike play. Let this muse inspire you to create and get joy out of life.

musings, Uncategorized

A fallen leaf

I took time out from my Thanksgiving preparations to go on what I call fairy time. When I had gone outside to attend to one of my turkey day preparations the wind felt like it was calling me. Tugging at my senses and making me feel a call to the wild. In response I went about gathering what I would need for some fairy time. I put my trusty bottle of corn meal for offerings. Corn meal is a good offering to the land and with the wind it puffs from my hand spreading the blessing of it. I pulled my hunter orange hat that I use for hiking during hunting season and went off to the local town forest.

The night before I started Silver Ravenwolf’s new book The Witching HourShe goes over what she calls a “spirit walk” where you go out to connect to nature and the spirits to gain knowledge and some of the special gifts of nature. I call this faery time. I learned about faery time from my Friend Matooka. Faery time is when someone who is fey in essential nature goes out into nature to rebalance themselves after having too much busy human time. It is a time to reconnect and let go of the mundane.

I started my faery time like I usually do with an offering of corn meal at the beginning of the trail to the spirits of the land and fey of this place. I asked that in return they give me there guidance and protection on my journey. Moving through the woods with the November winds rattling the trees and shaking the leaves instantly calmed me. As I walked I mused about my year reading with Matooka Moonbear last night. How my focus was on connecting to the innocent childlike way I connect to the world. As I walked I tried to catch a leaf falling from a tree. Since I was little I knew that if you could catch one in the fall you would enjoy a illness free winter. Whether this is empirically true I have never investigated fully but it has always been something I try to do in the fall. I leaped and reached but the three times I tried I caught no leaf.

Disappointed I turned my eyes to the beauty of nature around me. I picked up a fallen pine bough bringing it to my nose to smell it’s scent. This brought me to think about Silver’s book since one of the things you would get from a spirit walk was things you could add to your herbal formularies and powders. Thinking of the book I asked spirit what it had to teach me right now. I reached again to smell the pine bough and a small oak leaf fell and stuck to my jacket. I laughed picking it off my jacket and knowing this was my message from spirit. The leaf meant to me that you don’t have to try so hard or push yourself so much, sometimes it is just about connecting, asking and letting yourself receive.