Autumn Equinox

On Tuesday night, I celebrated the Autumn Equinox with a few of my dearest kindreds. Equinox is when the day and night are equally long, same as Spring Equinox. This is Harvest festival time, a rejoice for nature's bounty...I looked out my window last night and saw the Harvest Moon...did you see it? It was gloriously golden, like orange liquid had been poured into it...

It was my first Equinox celebration with Solara An-Ra and her tribe; it was so dear of them to welcome Jamie and I as they did.

In the most magificent garden you're ever likely to come across in South London, we grabbed musical instruments, sat around a fire pit and made magick and gave thanks and praise to Gaia. Bundles of Sage singed in the fire; causing a hypnotising smoke to dance around us. Affirmations were made to the elements and we gave away to the fire something we no longer wished to possess in ourselves.

As I sat there holding hands with kindreds, a guide of mine stroked my hair and made me feel like I was closer to knowing myself...I may return to my Witchy ways and get the old athame and wand out and invoke the elements and give praise to Goddess, all the while awakening the one within. I'm certainly closer to being able to connect with my guides, I hope they know how much I appreciate the gentle pats on my head and the tingling in my fingers.

Here's a pretty Goddess wheel I found when looking for paintings of goddesses. It's like a calender wheel; you turn it each season according to celebration: Summer Solstice, Spring Equinox etc...I may have to get one, just to remind myself to give thanks to the elements and mother nature.

Autumn leaves begin to fall, they are our old ways. We may kick them to one side or crunch them under our shoes. When the trees are stripped naked, ready to start again, we must aim to do the same...brave the cold and dark and begin growing anew.

Belle & Boo and the Connected Child Within

I've ordered this notebook from Belle & Boo after stumbling across the gorgeous artworks of Mandy Sutcliffe. Belle & her bunny Boo appear in a story board of outside play amongst other adorable characters...

The reason I decided to mention this was the thought that it prompted about children and their awareness of nature, their connnection to imagination and play, their observation of colour, animals and even other beings...not all imaginary friends are imaginary, I'm sure.

Perhaps children see what we really wouldn't like to. We were there once, didn't we sometimes insist to our parents that we were in the presence of something unusual?

I used to lay awake at night and watch the 'moving tv screens' float across my walls, the wardrobe and the door; like ten overhead projectors making animated pictures sail around me. They were transparent too; they would bend and curve in the grooves of my bedroom.

The floating pictures stopped by the time I was ten, roughly the age where we rationalise away our visions as 'make-believe', after our parents have been telling us that earth is dirty and we shouldn't stick our hands in soil, or that we shouldn't play with our baby toys anymore because we're becoming 'big boys and girls' and whenever we think we see something, it's not real.

I had a pet caterpillar once, I named it and claimed it as my own...it passed away two days later but the point is, I was more connected to the earth when I was small. There were things about it that I deemed special and they helped me understand growth and the beauty in everything.

I was sad to grow up without my 'moving tv screens' and it's something I still can't define. I'm not sure what those experiences were and why I experienced them but now I am trying to reconnect as much as possible to what I know as Gaia, and the wonders beyond her...the powers of our higher selves.

And so back to Belle & Boo...'Belle Hugs Boo' was my first print. I have framed it and shall put it up on my wall in the spot where I tend to work on my projects. Not only is it a pleasure to look at, it makes me want to crawl back into my childlike mind; my totally connected and creative self and explore and play.

And to remember what it was like to have absolute love for the things around me; the things I called my own and the things I swore I'd always care about.

Number One: Caduceus

So here we are, the first of the 20 esoteric spiritual books I recommend for enlightening reading.

Caduceus was given to me on my 25th birthday by my most beloved kindred Jamie. My hand buzzed and tingled with energy as I held it in my hands, I knew it carried information I had been seeking.

In the simplest terms, it covers everything! It makes a great reference book to esoteric subjects, it's great for rounding off a general interest in spirituality...I'd even recommend it to an atheist who wishes to know 'what we're all on about'; it has some compelling arguments may I add.

Caduceus is layed out wonderfully, sub categorised areas such as 'Stephen Hawking on God', 'Spiritual texts from the Middle East' and 'Astronomical anomalies in ancient times' are condensed into easy reading but very informative paragraphs. I particularly enjoyed the coverage on all sacred texts: the least tampered with and the most tampered with and the whole chapter dedicated to Science and its theories vs esoteric belief; revealing comments and claims by Darwin and Einstein themselves that were manipulated to make Scientific explanations sound 'concrete'.

Robert Hamilton introduces the reader to the fact that this book was the product of his own Kundalini experience (his awakening) and years of research and therefore concludes the book on the same note, it feels impossible to find any flaws and holes in his well studied discussions.

Caduceus covers only a little of each philosophy, theory, idea and experience but it lead me to think about what I wanted to explore next. You start to recognise what resonates with you, whether it's Taoism or Plato's Atlantis, you know what is right for your own path and where to look next.