Wise Ones, I am doing battle this week

I am both wanting to ride the momentum and high of a successful conference and go full Hermit to recharge. 
Create vs Integrate
Stillness vs Motion
In the push and the pull I find the freeze. 

Do you know the one I’m talking about?
It is not intentional stillness, not that delicious place where integration and absorption can arrive, but the frozen, stuck kind of feeling where nothing moves. 

What do you do when you can’t talk yourself out of the freeze?

I move my body. Coming back to the need of my muscle and bone, to unwind, release. 
Most of the time this requires some coaxing. A rhythm, a drum beat embedded in song. 
Unlocking the freeze with sensation. 

Simple Practice

Choose three songs. 
One that slowly awakens you, one that invites big movements and one that slows you down again. 
Play them in succession

This week I gathered paper and markers, thumbtacks and gourds and met up with Irisanya Moon, at a local cafe where we created a Community Altar of Remembrance. 
We hung lights and clips and left paper and pens for people to share the names of their beloved dead, or leave pictures or write a memory.
We decorated with tiny mirrors and the fruits of the season and scrawled the names of our own dead hanging them by tiny hooks as an invitation.

This simple yet sweet practice is an invocation to memory, to spirits, to our grief.
It is a reminder of the sacredness of life and the endlessness of love. 

During this Samhain season we remember in community. And cast this net wide, so that we need not be alone in our grief. So that we can remember together, and in the togetherness feel the preciousness of the love and the grief, for these two are nothing if not deeply intertwined. 

You are invited to share in remembering during the Leaves of Grief-a ritual. 
We will come together in a virtual circle to step into a ritual of acknowledging, remembering, honoring. We will make space for the griefs we carry, whatever they may be. 

Step from the mundane into the magical and into the sacredness of your grief.

With so much love,
Emily
10/10/22
Healer, Priestess, Witch
I saw these words at the top of my friend Erin LaFaive’s Facebook post yesterday and actually got chills. 

Say them to yourself. 
Say them aloud. 

How do you feel when you hear these words? 
How do they taste on your tongue? 

There is power in naming
And power in claiming. 

What are your gifts, Wise One?

In our Full Moon ritual yesterday we laid our gifts out under the energy of that abundant lunar light and really looked at them. 

When was the last time you truly took inventory of all the unique beauty you bring into the world?

After two days immersed in the gifts of magic that were at the heart of the Season of the Witch Conference, I am buzzing with all these energies. 

I am feeling deeply inspired, moved, humbled and transformed, by the work that was done and the invitations that were set forth. 

I am also reminded of the power we each carry in the belly of Self and the way we can weave amazing things together when we tap in. 

Do you ever know something, and then have an experience and you “know” it on a whole new level? 

That’s me today. Just integrating this knowing. 

I invite you to take some time to let this waning full moon energy illuminate your gifts. Explore those corners in your inner realms and dust off the pieces of Self you might have forgotten about or tucked away. 
Take inventory. 
Then give your gifts a name and claim them with an open heart. 

Simple Practice
Journal and or card pull prompts

1. What are my gifts?
   
2. What gifts am I comfortable with sharing?
   
3. What gifts do I hide or ignore?
   
4. What would it mean to bring my gifts into the light?
   

Once you name your gifts you might choose a talisman to represent these (or one of these) and carry it with you to help amplify the energy and encourage you to let it be seen. 


The Thinning Veil

Yesterday I was recording the Witch Next Door with Veronica and we were talking about mediumship and both of us were tapping into our grief. 
Grief is accessible any time, yet somehow for me when the veil is thinner it feels so much closer to the surface. 

Do you have this experience? 

With the dying away of the growing season, the falling of leaves, the decay of windfalls, there is a sense of loss, of ending and this makes it so much easier (I believe) to feel into edges of our grief and sadness. 

Grief is something that can bring an awkwardness or avoidance with it. But I want to remind you that grief is sacred. Whether you are grieving the loss of a human, a beloved pet, a tree, a relationship or an expectation, feeling into and honoring our grief is a profound and often transformative experience. 

On October 22nd at 4 pm,  Irisanya Moon and I are hosting “The Leaves on Grief” a Zoom based ritual where we will bring our grief into sacred space and make room for it, tend it and if you choose be witnessed in it. 

You can register here

As we deepen into the Season, I am sending you blessings for riding the winds of change. 

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