imagination
Divination And The Element Of Air
Various ancient cultures, metaphysical traditions and mystical teachings identify five elements that constitute the world we live in. In Western occult traditions, these elements are typically arranged in the hierarchical order of spirit (aether), fire, air, water, and earth.
Spirit or aether is the nonphysical element (or ‘fifth element’) that serves as a bridge between the physical and the metaphysical realms. Spirit is the bridge between the body and soul.
Fire is the masculine element representing inner strength, transformative power, courage, protection, purification, and assertive action.
Air is the element associated with creativity, knowledge, learning, mental intention and the universal life force.
Water is the feminine element of emotion, intuition, inner reflection and the subconscious.
Earth represents grounding, stability, fertility, family roots, and the cycles of death and rebirth.
Air is my favorite element in spiritual practice, as is associated with ideas, concepts, inspiration, and innovative thinking. It is also the element of wisdom and divination.
Working with the air element sharpens ideas, enhances experiments, and paves the way for new inventions. Musicians and artists are typically inspired by the element of air. Air is however a fickle element as it can come as a gale-force hurricane, or a calm, soothing breeze…just like our thoughts.
Seeing Colors In Music
When my dad became terminally ill in 2013, I turned to art and started painting. I had no ambition to become an artist; it was simply something I could do to take my mind off the stress of my father’s illness.
I started off blending and playing with colors, and eventually branched out to paint pictures that I soon discovered many people found appealing. When I became better at it, I started to incorporate music into what I was painting.
I would pick a song and play it on repeat to inspire me, until I was done with the painting. It was as if I was channeling the lyrics and melodies into the artwork. The music told the story of the art I was creating. I would then name the painting after that particular song and include the lyrics on the back of the canvas.
I also developed a new fascination with music and singing at that time. In time I began putting my art projects to one side, and instead began to focus on learning to sing. I continued the singing after my father passed away, and I found so much personal healing in it.
I didn’t realize how alive music really is and how intertwined my art would become with my singing. When I sing, I ‘see’ the lyrics as if they are being painted on a blank canvas in my mind’s eye. The main verses of the songs will often become large flowers, and the chorus and melodies will fill in the areas around the flowers with leaves and scrolled vines.
I learned recently that there is a scientific term for seeing colors and patterns when hearing music. It is a type of synesthesia known as chromaesthesia. Synesthesia is a perception phenomenon in which one experiences things through your senses in an unusual way. For example, a synesthete might experience a sound as a color, a word as a shape, or a number as a taste or smell. The person’s sensory perceptions are somehow combined or unified, almost like ‘wires that are crossed.’
Your Outer Life Reflects Your Inner Being
Living a fulfilling, abundant life can be one of the most difficult things to do for people who do not understand that they are the masters of their own destiny. We have much more control to design our future and shape our fate than many people realize.
Whatever we can think about, imagine, visualize, pray for, and believe is what we can make manifest in our lives. But I am not talking about passive daydreaming, wishful thinking, spending our days in laziness, and half-heartedly hoping for a better future, without taking any action.
To achieve what we want, we must not only dream it, we must also take action steps every day that will increasingly shift us towards our desired future.
Here are some practical guidelines you can follow to better master your life and destiny.
Gratitude
Gratitude is the main key to all manifestation. When we are grateful for what we have, we attract more of what we want. We can also not attract more of what we want, while we focus on, complain, and worry about what we do not want and do not have. Simple, right? Yet, we so often forget to be grateful for the small, yet important things we already have in our life, such as our health, waking up for one more day, and so on. Continue reading
Growing Your Spiritual Garden
Many people ask how it is possible to remain positive, fulfilled, and have our needs met during times of crisis, despair, and uneasiness. The answer lies in meditation, creative visualization, belief and the realization that each of us holds the power in our inner being to achieve whatever we set out to do.
Our lives are not only physical, and emotional, but each of us has a spirit within that can do so much if we allow it to be set free. Sometimes that is not always easy. We, as people, would like to be logical, scientific, have some proof, or have the outcome right away. It is only natural. We are not only brought up this way, taught this way, but also have the brain power to feel a need for logic.
The answer is to let our spiritual beingness loose, to let our inner guidance start working, to start flying over and above the reasonable. Think about your dreams, your ideas, your needs, your hopes as a flower bulb you planted last September. You saw no growth, no movement, no flower, until this month, when the beautiful tulips, hyacinths, lilacs have finally bloomed. This is true belief.
We have no logic to believe a flower will grow from a mere bulb, but it does. That little tomato seed planted in late March is now a leafy green plant, but by late May it should also have some big ripe red tomato fruit on it! Wow, what little miracles we see that have no logic, no reason – they just are.
Today I looked out into a garden where every plant, flower, vegetable I planted was there. Not one did not grow, but they only now started to show up with hope.
How To Work With Oracle Cards
I like to use oracle or angel cards when I do readings, because they provide the client with a visual element. This makes the process of reading seem more tangible, and less intimidating. In fact, these user-friendly cards are so accessible that they can be used by anyone in their daily spiritual practice.
My regular clients know that I use the terms ‘angel cards’ and ‘oracle cards’ interchangeably. They are basically decks of cartomancy cards similar to traditional Tarot, but they tend to have more positive messages, images and symbolism than the Tarot.
The many ways one can use oracle cards in your personal practice are only limited by your imagination. For example, you could pull a card and use it as a journal prompt, and then use freewriting or brainstorming to explore how you’re feeling about a certain topic or issue.
You can also ask a question, hold the cards to your heart, and then select the cards you feel most drawn to for the answer. Once you have selected the cards, I advise clients to truly ‘listen’ to the story the cards are telling you. What thoughts, feelings and intuitions do the images and words evoke? How do they correspond with the other cards you selected? What are the common themes?
If it’s helpful you can place cards in a divination spread, or you could pull just one at a time. A simple oracle spread you can try uses only three cards. The first card indicates the past, the second the present (the anchor card), and the third reveals the future.
Sometimes, when a particular card doesn’t seem to provide an instant, clear answer, take a closer look at the different visual elements of the card. For example, what is the person in the picture wearing? Are there any images in the background that provide additional insight or inspiration?
The Magic Of Living Your Truth
Where does magic come from? And, if we’re magical, can we lose our magic? We’re all born magical creatures. We also have integrity right from the moment we take our first breath. You may ask, what does integrity have to do with magic? Well, everything!
However, immediately upon emerging from the birth canal, mainstream society starts imprinting upon us its cultural view points, customs and traditions. Often, they become a kind of law that has been adopted over many generations, even entire epochs in our evolution as human beings, and due to ‘group think‘ we are discouraged from questioning their origin, much less their validity.
Group think happens when the desire for harmony or conformity dominates, leading to irrational and dysfunctional choices, decisions and behaviours simply for the sake of comforming.
An example that comes to mind is the statement that we have probably all used at one time or another: “Oh, I’ll just follow the rule of thumb.” However, we would never make such a statement if we were aware of its origins: this was what men used to say when they were using a stick to punish their wife! By law, the instrument for abuse could only be as big around as the husband’s thumb.
Another senseless tradition that comes to mind is why men wear neck ties. Before the advent of computers enabled us to Google our curiosities, I often thought about how glad I am to be a woman, if for no other reason than I don’t have to wear a necktie. Now, I have to admit that I’m “over the top” regarding many time-tested, and supposedly true forms of bondage. I don’t even like to wear shoes that make my feet feel closed in, so imagine my feelings about effectively placing a noose around my neck. Ay, ay, no way!
If Bumble Bees Can Fly, So Can We!
When my teenage son was only two years old, he was in the living room one day, jumping from the chair to the couch with a towel wrapped across his shoulders like a cape. He was joyfully singing that he was a superhero and that he could fly. His father looked at him sternly and told him humans cannot fly. I nudged his father, “Don’t tell him that!”
To salvage the situation, I then proceeded to tell my son about bumble bees. I explained that it is aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly. Their bodies are way too big, and their wings are way too small to carry their little bodies through the air. Yet, they still do manage to fly. This was probably so because their bumble bee ‘mommies and daddies’ never told them they couldn’t! So, bumble bees fly through the air, never knowing that it is by scientific standards technically impossible.
My husband was not impressed. He looked at me and said, ”If next time he jumps off the roof, thinking he can fly, and lands on his head and breaks his neck, I’m holding you personally responsible.” “Point taken,” I said. But it was too late to redact my ‘bumble bee life lesson,’ so I then had to make very sure my son understood that he was never to attempt any flying from high places!
But, it did get me to thinking: how often do we hinder and limit our children? Some of us have psychic children. How many parents are even interested in helping them to develop their abilities? A large part of society is not so open to this.
I wonder what would happen, for example, if I were to tell a psychiatrist that I talk to spirit? He would probably say something like, “It is my observation that you are deluded to the extent that your believe you see and communicate with ghosts. My diagnosis is psychotic disorder.” Then he is likely to put me on some sort of psychiatric medication, or worse have me admitted to a mental health care facility! If I further told the same hypothetical psychiatrist that I entertained the idea of my children also having psychic abilities, he might call child protection services, to have them removed from my care for their own protection. Continue reading