Hope is the light of the world.

At Winter Solstice, or Yule, the seeds of hope are planted during this, the longest of nights. By dawn, the turning of the wheel of the year has marked this place of deep, eternal truth. The Goddess becomes the Great Mother who gives birth to that spark of fire we call the Sun. And the priestesses who walk among us are charged with carrying the light of the world out into the world, tending the hope it sparks in the hearts of humankind.

This hectic, uncertain year has required great faith and great hope from most of us. But despite it all, that small sacred fire of hope we carry in our hearts remains.

In the olden days in the British Isles and Scandinavia, that light of hope was carefully lit and tended at the heart of the home during the Yuletide season. If you would like to honor hope and offer light to the world, here is one way you can make this tradition your own.

On Solstice eve, Christmas eve, whichever feels right to you, light a large, beautiful ornamental candle. Traditionally, this candle would have been red, green, or blue, but a white, silver or gold candle would work as well.  

1. Place the candle on an appropriate, fire-safe holder at the center of your dining table.
2. Decorate with holly and ivy, evergreen boughs, glass baubles. Take a walk in nature and seek inspiration.
3. If you choose to do so, “dress” the candle by anointing its sides with your favorite essential oil.
4. Set your intention to receive the light of hope and its blessings.

At supper, light the candle and allow it to burn until bedtime. Then extinguish the flame. Or, choose instead to light the candle on the holiday morning, and allow it to burn all day. In either case, on each dark evening that follows until 12th Night  (Jan. 6) , make a ritual of re-igniting the light and extinguishing the candle. (Tradition dictates that you use tongs or a snuffer so as not to blow the blessings away from your hearth.)

As the candle is lit or extinguished, express gratitude for the blessings of hope and returning light which are shed upon the household. Lighting a candle in gratitude and hope is a wonderful, simple and meaningful way to celebrate the return of the light to the world. It’s a beautiful reminder of the divine spark within us all. A large taper candle remains a thoughtful, well-received gift in anyone’s household. Perhaps it’s a sweet reminder that each of us tends a divine spark within our hearts.

Bright blessings to you now and in the coming year.

Love,
Susan

Lately, like many of my generation, I’ve been having to watch my health. Things that didn’t faze me ten years ago, now sometimes wear me out.
I noticed this tendency with both resignation and recognition. I’m approaching 70. I still have a lot of work to do with the Medicine Woman tradition. But I’m learning that the days of being able to make a long drive, hold a circle all day, then drive home again… those days may be numbered.

Perhaps, just maybe, I may need to build in less movement and more rest. 
There are also stressors in my personal life. My grown son returned home due to COVID. My stepmother and my mother are both aging simultaneously. The effort to see that they are each get the support and care they need consumes my energy. Those long walks I used to enjoy are more of a luxury these days than I care to admit. 

My blood pressure sometimes goes up. I am stressed, which depletes the immune system. Though it’s true my spiritual work and practice sustain me and increase my resilience, there is another thing which helps me, too.
A gratitude practice.

You’ll recall that I’ve spoken about gratitude in the past. An attitude of gratitude goes a long way toward curing a whole lot of what ails you.

And while the priestess in me understand that what we focus on grows, and that a gratitude journal creates more Good in our lives, science agrees that its effects are both dramatic and lasting.

Here are some of the good effects of a gratitude practice when its’ used every day.

• Lower blood pressure
• Improved immune function
• Better sleep patterns
• Reduces lifetime risk of depression
• Reduces anxiety
• Reduces substance abuse disorders
• Improves resililency
• Decreases suicides
• Gratitude also helps us choose behaviors that benefit our lives.

When we practice gratitude, we tend to

• Exercise more
• Eat better
• Smoke/Drink Less
• Take better care of ourselves

Overall, we live happier and healthier with an active practice of gratitude.

What I have learned is that gratitude isn’t just for Thanksgiving. Gratitude helps me celebrate the present moment. Live isn’t something that just passes me by, but it’s something that I can appreciate. Gratitude helps me appreciate my friends and family. It brings new opportunities to shop up fully in my practice. It focuses me on the positives in any situation. Gratitude helps my heart.

One scientist, Robert Emmons, says that ““Gratitude blocks toxic emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret and depression, which can destroy our happiness.” 
Spiritual women know that toxicity is the enemy of our hearts and health. Other physical benefits of expressing gratitude include

• Increased good cholesterol and decreased bad cholesterol
• Reduced cortisol
• Lower blood pressure at rest and under stress
• A state of harmony in the nervous system and heart rate
• Mental clarity
• Improved kidney function
• Decreased cardiac inflammation and heart disease

Here are 4 ways to establish a simple, successful gratitude practice that can help you protect your mental, emotional and physical health.

1. Recognize what you’re grateful for, acknowledge it, and appreciate it
2. Start a daily gratitude journal and count your blessings
3. Set aside time daily to recall moments of gratitude
4. Write letters of gratitude and feel more optimistic
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This year, our second Thanksgiving since COVID changed the way we relate with others, may be difficult for some. I hope that you will join me in honoring the goodness in life with a simple gratitude practice that will help us find the light in the dark days ahead.
​
Happy Thanksgiving! 
With gratitude, 
Susan

​We all have a voice within that can guide us through life's challenges. It is our inner voice and we need to listen to it more often than we do. This article will explore the ways in which you can connect with your Spirit Within, as well as how you can use this connection to overcome any obstacle or problem that arises in your life.

Connecting with your inner voice, the Spirit within, can occur in several ways. First, you will need to quiet your mind and remove all distractions. By focusing on being present in the moment, we can tune into that inner voice within us that is a great source of wisdom and guidance. When our minds are cluttered with thoughts from yesterday or tomorrow, it becomes difficult for us to tap into this wellspring of knowledge inside ourselves.

Next, you can connect with your inner voice by paying attention to the messages that are being sent through our thoughts and emotions. If we learn how to work with thoughts and emotions as guidance tools, we remain in control of our responses. Thus, it becomes possible to make positive decisions in life, even in difficult situations.
Consider ways that connection with the Spirit within can offer guidance when you need to meet or overcome any obstacle or problem that arises in your life. You can use connection with Spirit as a source for both guidance and positive action when needed most.

Connecting with this higher power within ourselves offers many benefits at a time when those of us working with unity consciousness are meeting more challenges than ever before.

About this time in 2019, six months before COVID changed our world, I sat alone in an airport, clearing my mind and thoughts for the long journey ahead. In the waiting area, another women - also retirement aged - and I struck up a friendly conversation. She was also from Georgia, born and raised in Marietta. Both of us were close to our Daddys. Both reared in church families, communities. We had a lot in common. And there we were, in the same airport, booked on the same through flight to Glasgow, to visit the sacred sites of Scotland.
"Iona," she shared excitedly. "We're going to study ancient Christianity."

My life experiences as a priestess and a strong inner connection to Spirit had given me a deeper sense of what lay ahead in Scotland. "I'm also going to Iona," I offered. "We're going to study the times before Christianity."
She looks at me without speaking. Then quickly moves away and joins her group. When the time came to board the flight, I waved to wish her well. She acted as though the two of us had never met.

I'm not sharing this story because my feelings were hurt or because I am against religion. But because this exchange underscored my own belief that faith and Spirit and connection to the divine has very little to do with man-made doctrine.

Back in the 1970s, I gifted my devoutly Christian, Methodist minister father with a copy of National Geographic's "Great Religions of the World." That was about the same time that I was 1 of 40 chosen to be part of the United Nations delegation of the South Georgia Conference Youth Council. There, I learned about the ways other people engage with Spirit, through Buddhism or Hinduism, and other faiths. There is no doubt that it is from my father that I learned the power of an open mind and listening heart.

My listening heart and the voice within would point me in the direction of nature and the elements as my preferred way to connect directly with Spirit. In nature, I'm not distracted by other people's agendas or dogmas. Outside man-made doctrines, there is divine order, not rules, regulations, politics. Just the land and its elements where everything is interconnected with Spirit.

Back then in that airport lounge waiting to board our flight to Glasgow, my new friend was still caught up on the old ways of thinking about God and faith. And I, in exploring the old ways, came home with my connection to the Divine strengthened and renewed.
​
When you listen to the voice of Spirit that dwells within, what message does it have for you?

​Integrating Celestial and Shadow in the Earth Realm Gives Us the Rest of the Story

The Universe shows us its gifts and its powers if we take the time to notice. At a time when humans think they know so much, it can seem strange when we realize how much of what is happening around us is out of our control. 

Those moments, when the bigger picture collides with our humanness, can be humbling. It can feel like our world is on fire. So we continually regroup and reprocess and rework what we are given in new and different ways. 

We find ourselves going in circles, and the circles are within circles.

Recently, when Hurricane Ida made landfall, meteorologists noticed the tornados swirling inside the storm, which circled the hurricane’s eye, also a circle. Circles within a circle around a circle. The rest of the story.

When we feel like we are caught in a storm not of our own making, it may help to feel into it and see whether or not the way we are using our energy is working. 

In a turbulent sea of isolation, do we need to meet in circles and increase connection?

In a world fraught with worry, might we turn to the universal field of gratitude, both to fill our well and to facilitate the acceptance that’s needed to cope with rapid change.

My friend and Shamanic Astrology mentor Daniel Giamario sometimes talks about the need to understand there are three planes of existence that we can perceive. First, there is the celestial, or the above. Below, there is the shadowy underworld. Though some practitioners tend to work primarily with the celestial or the underworld energies, he explains that if we place our energies outside the Earthly realm, then we miss the rest of the story. This story is not of one, but three worlds that make up our awareness.

Treating these worlds as somehow separate from one another and ourselves is no longer working. Instead, our job at the present time is to integrate information from all three, the celestial, Earthly, and the shadow realms. We must pull together the shifting energies which move earth and sky and do our best to integrate those insights into our understanding.

The task sounds big. But we can start small: meditation and the breath; gratitude practice; conscious grounding of the energies, and giving back to the Earth as a form of integration. 

The rest of the story of the three worlds can only be told if we focus one each of the three worlds simultaneously, imbuing our next, physical steps on Earth with conscious awareness.

That awareness, then, allows us to merge our creative energies with the future we are co-creating with one another and the planet. Humanity, here on earth, in gratitude and awareness, that we are all connected, that all things connect..

How will we tell the rest of the story? 

​Right now, a lot of us don’t know where we’re headed, either individually or collectively. Sure, we’ve got ideas and plans. But a concrete sense of where we’re going and what we’re doing? That’s a lot less frequent these days. 

                                                We find ourselves in different times. 

In part, this is because our bodies, their electrical system, and our consciousness is shifting dimensionally. This shift is different, and it can be difficult. Our former 3-D awareness is giving way to a higher level of resonance and frequency identified as 5-D. At every level of our being, we are having to adjust, whether we are consciously working with this shift or not.

If you are new to thinking about personal vibration, this idea can seem pretty far-fetched. But on a basic level, scientists since Pythagoras have posited that everything is made up of types of energies. And these energies carry a vibration. The Universe and the Earth each have a vibration. Over time, these vibrations shift and change, like scales of music. We listen to these vibrations in a natural composition called “The Music of the Spheres.” 

Two years ago, I travelled to Scotland to study ancient times. While there, I came to see that in the old sacred places, that change is open to different levels of understanding and interpretation. Working with vibrations that rise to a to a higher frequency becomes possible. Within that possibility, we can directly experience changes holistically on all levels of our physical, mental, and spiritual awareness as humans. 

Over time, we can look back and see how far we have “progressed.” Technologically, we can see how we have harnessed “the light,” moving from candles to kerosene to electricity and now solar. Our progress, from flame to flare, has elevated our experience of the light on every level from the everyday to the spiritual.

Similarly, we are seeing a progression in other ways, too. Think about your own evolving understandings of time and space, astrology and archetype, and other tools that assist us with the management of our personal, internal energy sources.

This type of analogy shows how the “as within, as without” relates one thing to another so that all connect. If you have directly observed the sun and moon, then you have seen the universe in action. If you stand in the waves as the Earth’s tides go in and out, you have seen the universe in action. If you have marked the passages of the new moon, full moon, eclipses and the cycles of nature - then you have come to understand that all these universal actions are part of and related to nature and its necessary, healing role in our navigating these different times.

Yes, these may be different times, but the resilience they require is something our collective, ancient past has prepared us to survive. For we know - as nature shows us - that whatever does not grow or adapt is destined to die. 

In order to grow, survive, and ultimately thrive, we will find that we are unable to remain in the same paradigm we previously inhabited. Instead, we have to move forward, look ahead, and hope. We have to make different choices. We have to energize those choices with self-nurturance, flexibility, conscious movement and growth. 

These different times are our times. These different choices are our choices.

​Awareness about the need for a more holistic approach to our troubled world first surfaced about 60 years ago. In hindsight, that small group of voices has now been magnified. More people than ever are carrying that awareness than ever before in our collective past.

In my  experience, we’re each and all unique expressions of humanity. I look at the world now through many lenses: personal, as a registered nurse, and in my spiritual work. The collective experiences of the past are now being expressed differently in our culture. 

As we collectively heal the wounds of our past - whatever they may be - tending our mental health has become part of the dialogue. Certainly, my own mental health experiences are among the milestones of my life journey. Even though I was a Southern Methodist Minister’s daughter, or perhaps because of it, I was taught that each of us is equal even if we’re not the same. In those days, I didn’t understand hatred or violence except through television. I’ve come to understand that we’re each deeply influenced by what we’ve been taught in our formative years.

Still, there is one healing factor for a more holistic world. Each of our tribes, whether personal or cultural, all identify uniquely as humans. And it is our humanity that holds the key to healing the world.

Here are some of the ways we can choose to respond from our humanity.

1. Exercise choice, not judgment. 
Every time we look at a situation, we make a judgment. Judgment can be harsh. It sets up a negative power dynamic in any social exchange. Instead, I believe we each much tend to our own inner selves, and respond from a place of choice. 

This sounds deceptively simple, but the decision to choose instead of judge removes the potential for blaming and pointing fingers. It places the power of choice where it belongs, within ourselves.

2. Believe we are in a healing place.
When we believe we are in a healing place, we are able to move forward, in choice, despite chaos, war, or other types of systemic disruption or collapse. Accept that it all has to unravel, and that the unravelling is cathartic, part of the healing process. Once we have broken down and broken through in any healing process, it becomes possible to bring back a state of healthiness again.

3. Support the electrical system of the body.
Now is the time to work with your body’s innate electrical, or vibrational, system for healing.  Since 1990, I have worked with flower essences to directly provide this support. In my experience, they absolutely work! Today, flower essences remain in my toolbox when I work with private clients, especially if they’re working to enhance their practice or life, or improve their personal vibration and mindset.  In a time in which many of us feel harmed or distrustful of western allopathic medicine, a more holistic approach to healing, like that offered by flower essences, may offer more benefit to us during these troubled times. 

As we receive the new understandings that a more holistic view of healing on Earth brings, let us also accept responsibility for our own creation abilities. May each of us do our part to bring forth the healing visions, insights and actions needed for the good of all beings.

For some people, the energies of the present time include a lot of fear and despair. Some days, it’s really hard to navigate the choppy waters of our emotions. But right now, it’s also possible to see a larger perspective and tap into the discomfort that often comes with new awakenings. 

Here are some examples of new awakenings in our world.

Astrology
Right now, interest in astrology is blooming. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world, planets are planets. How those planets present themselves at this time are open to different interpretations, many of which are grounded in the notion of “free will.” The predictions of a higher octave and an Aquarian age are upon us, along with the chaos.

The Masculine/Feminine Dance
Patriarchal ideals of the masculine are being shed like an old skin. The masculine and feminine are engaged in the divine dance of connection, with the affect of owning our gifts in a different way.

Herbology 
The back to the earth movement of the 1960s and 1970s is gaining new ground, from kitchen gardens to deep discussions about cannabis as a healing plant and spirituality. Herbs - both culinary and medicinal - correspond to the planets, making this ancient study in the present a new incarnation of the Hermetic mysteries of “as above, so below; as within, so without.”

The Wheel of the Year
The Aries warrior fire energy may be thought to cause more fear and despair to surface, due to a unique positioning that only happens once in thousands of years. But, rather than fulfill greed, conquering, or destroying, we can focus on how the re-sowing of new “seeds” helps us to provide for the collective. In each ending is a new beginning. 

Beltane and Litha
As we leave behind Beltane (May 1) and approach Litha (June 21), we may consider that which we’ve laid waste as fertilizer for the land. Now, we might see how it has been returned to us in a new form. In the same way, the joy of personal sexuality has always affirmed the life force energy of an awakening Earth/Gaia/Nature. No matter our age, this time of awakening, no matter how difficult, is also one of great fertility for anything we wish to create, to bring into form, for the future. 

The promise of the light is upon us. Collectively, we are dying to the old to make room for the new. The waning is only one part of the process that occurs when more people are coming awake and turning toward the light.

What are you noticing about this time of awakening?

​As we shake off the vestiges of winter one layer at a time, I am reminded of the essential nature of deep healing. Deep healing is a process of awareness, and that includes our ancestors. For at our essence, in our cells, we carry their legacies.

If nothing else, we may tell stories of our ancestors. Tales of their lives, adventures, exploits or misdeeds keep them alive for ourselves and future generations. Within those stories may lie truths about ourselves and our families that we take for granted.

​Part of bringing awareness to our relationships with ancestors is understanding that those truths and assumptions may not serve us well today. We must give ourselves permission to allow our relationship with our ancestors to grow and change, even as we ourselves grow and change.

Many of our ancestors were decidedly imperfect in their humaning. Still others may best be described in plain language as bad people. They did bad things, often to others. Yet, we still have something to learn from them.

My priestess sister and dear friend Cherie Lyon distinguishes between three types of ancestral medicine. These are:

Familial ancestors (like those above)
Cultural ancestors (where our people are from)
Spiritual ancestors (where we get our inspiration)

When you allow spirit to work with you, alongside you, in the ancestral realm, it’s possible to receive the gifts the insights of each of these groups of ancestors have to offer.

One way to do this in a more formal, planned way is to set up ceremonial altars or “stations” for each type of ancestral group. As you allow each altar to help you form a connection to the ancestral realm, allow yourself to feel it, sense it, hear it. Create original writings or artworks that help you integrate what you learn. As both a participant and facilitator, I have found the results of working with our ancestor lineages to be quite amazing.

The energetic focal points do not have to be indoors or in a formal setting. For me, there is a place on the Coosawattee River near Ellijay that connects me to my familial, cultural, and spiritual lineages. Originally, the land was occupied by Native Americans, to whom I always  pay respect. This respect is part of my spiritual ancestry. 

Also, my familial ancestors bought land in both north and south Georgia. Though the food they grew on their family farms sustained them, there remained trees and land which were never developed. Their sustainable practices included homesteading and building communities. This places connect me to my cultural ancestors, as well. 

Finally, when I listen to the wind whisper through the pines, and inhale the deep scent of evergreen, I find that the land and water speak to me. 

In these ways, ancestral awareness offers me a deep personal and spiritual connection to the divine expressed through nature. As spring approaches, how are you redefining your essence through healing your relationship with the ancestors?