In meditation, in my own personal inner landscape, Cernunnos most often finds me in the Forest of the Horned God; he emerges from a patch of dappled sunlight like something hidden in a puzzle-picture, his twisted horns reaching up among the tree branches, tall and dark, with twinkling eyes. Last October I begged him for guidance with my finances — I was at my wit’s end. Things were only getting worse and worse, with no end in sight.

“Are you expressing your will?” he asked.

I was caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what does money do?” he said. “It lets you do what you want, yes? It allows your will to be carried out. It allows your will to be expressed.”

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Do you believe in magic? Do you believe in the Law of Attraction?”

“I — well, yes,” I said. “Mostly.”

“Then you alone are responsible for the amount of money that you have. You’ve made yourself broke.”

“It wasn’t on purpose!”

“Nevertheless. You’ve effectively made it very difficult for your will to be expressed. You’ve prevented yourself from acting freely. You’ve hamstrung yourself.”

“I have?”

“Money can be thought of as a measure of the extent to which you believe your own will should be carried out. The more money you have, the more confidence you have that what you want should be manifested. If you don’t have much money, you must not believe that what you personally want is important. You’ve made it difficult to express your free will. You’re sabotaging yourself.”

“But why?…” Read the rest of this entry »

This post is going to be rather more controversial than most. I’ll be getting deep into politics. But this is at the forefront in my mind and conscience, and the shape of government and society is a spiritual issue for me.

The Fall of the Empire

The name of America tells a tale, as I outlined in this Word of the Day:

“The sounds in America seem to parallel the history of the United States. The first syllable, “a”, is pronounced “uh” and indicates both freedom and thoughtfulness, and is appropriate for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. Its primary syllable, “mer”, is similar to the Middle English mere of mermaid, and Latin mare of maritime – the sea – and suggests a manifestation of strength and power, appropriate for the military and economic strength of the United States as it extended its domain across the continent. The next syllable, “ric”, is similar to rich, reach, and Reich, and indicates solidification and containment of power, appropriate to America’s imperial ambitions. The final syllable, “a”, is pronounced “ah”, and indicates a return to Source energy. This corresponds to nothing in America’s history… so far. We can only hope.”

Something I didn’t mention is that each phase of America’s history above corresponds to about one hundred years. The short “a” syllable pairs up with the end of the 1700’s; “mer” is the 1800’s, and “ric” is the 1900’s. Now we’re at the beginning of the final “a”, which means the American Empire – by which I mean our dominance in the economic and geopolitical sphere, despite the fact that our borders haven’t changed much since the 1800’s – should be ending.

And it is – though this may not be obvious. Read the rest of this entry »

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down
And winter’s closing in

–Joni Mitchell

I have recently begun to have regular contact with a new spirit guide. I think he has been prowling around at the edges of my consciousness for a long time — maybe for years — but it seems that the time has finally come for me to get to know him better. Ever since my first trip as an adult to the American West in 1995, I’ve experienced an intense longing to go back, to experience it more deeply. This longing has waxed and waned over the years, and sometimes it has disappeared entirely. I got a chance to indulge this longing with a trip to South Dakota last summer; and I found myself particularly affected emotionally by the herds of bison in the Black Hills, and most especially by one poster of a bison standing in the snow that I chanced to see in the gift shop in the Badlands. Its eyes seemed incredibly human and terribly sad.

A month or so ago, I was clearing out my house clutter as part of my physical manifestation overhaul when I chanced on a small stone carving of a bison given to us by my in-laws, who lived in Denver for a while. It brought on a surge of longing that was visceral, almost painful. Then, finally, a few weeks ago, I was driving my son home from school, thinking about these feelings, thinking about the bison, musing about it, when I realized that the bison was talking back — I had slipped into a meditative state and made contact with the guide. Read the rest of this entry »