*Victoria~Retrograde*

West Coast Butterfly Maiden (@ Home, 7/13

First, a wee bit of explanation...
In the movement of the planets through the heavens, a planet is considered to be "retrograde" if it seems to be moving backwards in respect to the motion of the other planets. When it's moving forward again with the other planets, it is said to have gone "direct." This is very helpful in various astrological forecasts if you're trying to figure out why the sam-hill your computer has frozen a dozen times today, or if you're love-life suddenly smells like an egg salad left a wee too long in the sun, or some other little quirk.

I provide the explanation because I feel like I've finally going direct after a personal retrograde phase that stretched from just after last year's dynamic Winter Solstice to this year's (not quite so dynamic) Autumn Equinox. Finally, I feel like I can move forward again without my efforts turning to dust after a few steps!

Being that Bear Medicine runs strong within me, I can see this is really the start of a conclusion to a major two-year cycle of shapeshifting for me. It began on 11/11/11, and the Eye of the Needle initiations which I've written about before. To sum: layers and layers of stuck ego and clogged Shadow were stripped out of me as I felt like I was passing through increasingly-smaller "needle-eyes," which I now suspect were really energetic portals. I thought that once the Transitional period reached its conclusion at last year's Winter Solstice, I would be in the clear and ready to Go Forth and Heal Everyone!
HAHAHAHA! No.

Instead - I entered what I shall call the Time of Tempering, where I was shaped in Fire, then quenched in Water, back into the Fire, once more to the Water, again and again and again. Special High Intensity Transformation writ Large in my life; External Change this year to complement the Internal Change I underwent last year.
Much of the external change came at my muggle job, with a near-total overhaul at the upper levels. What WAS at the start of the year is no longer here and what now IS is still emerging, slowly, gently. I helped to hold the space as my workplace went though a death cycle; I am continuing to hold the space as the rebirthing micro-moves its way forward. As much as I have kvetched about my muggle job to certain parties IRL, it has been THE main thing keeping me centered and grounded in This Reality as I've gone through some of the most intense parts of my shapeshifting and transmuting, since I'd be probably be hanging out around Neptune by now if I didn't have the responsibility to suit up, show up, and Lead the Troops!
A lot of the external change, if I'm going to be totally honest about it, has also stemmed from the simple fact that I'm no longer "single." ME has become WE, and I'm still sifting and sorting through that. There are days when I have very much missed just going out somewhere, by myself, or quietly staying at home, by myself, and interacting with my environs as simply ME. It's been a bit more than a year, and my new partner*ship is definitely a work still in process!
Having said the above, would I go back to being just ME? Oh-Hell-No! Being part of a WE has brought me stability and security in deep places that longed to feel stability and security. Being part of a WE has probably saved my sanity and kept me from going completely out of synch with Reality!


Out of synch. Yes.
I felt very out of synch between the equinoxes, when my work schedule was shifted. My Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays were free, and I was working Wednesday through Saturday. The only problem was, many of my friends' get-togethers were scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays! Many times in those six months (or so), I felt very isolated and cut off from the Flow of Life. Fortunately, my work schedule has changed back, and I'm happy as a clam as I feel the possibilities to commune opening up for me once more! 
There was a gift in the "isolation" experience, though: I really got to know my Core Shadows and what was causing Resistance within me. I tracked the sticky bits of Resistance back to three main sources...
~There were times when I really embodied the Over-Giving Mother. I would feel totally drained, and would become really pissy and resentful if I was asked to do One More Thing, for anyone. (Can we say Delegation! I'm still in the process of learning that lesson, now that I'm part of a WE.)
~I realized that a part of me regarded going back to a muggle job (to start off 2012) as the ultimate act of giving up, and had chosen to shut down and withdraw into herself. "Fine!" she yelled, pouting, "I'll just stay in her until (my) Mom dies! Then maybe I'll come out and play!" Basically, I'll-be-able-to-fulfill-my-dreams-when-my-mother-dies had taken the place of -when-I-move-to-Asheville (North Carolina). My Inner Dragon didn't like hearing that. I called bullshit! immediately on myself. What sort of piss-poor excuse is THAT! she roared. I AM sharing my magick, no matter what!

~Several times I hit Deep Fear of Retribution, and Punishment, and Pain. Several times my newly amped empathic awareness would see something horrid on TV/in a magazine or a newspaper, and I would have to disengage immediately. A few times I would be in front of a mirror in the middle of the night and not want to turn on the light, because I Did Not Want to See the Horror of My Reflection. These were sure signs that I was doing some major Trans-Personal work - in my case, embodying and transmuting the energies inherent in the Collective Feminine Wounding. (Somewhere along the line, I have become a Master Grounder, Anchor, and Space-Holder. All righty then!)
These are the times when I regard the Goddess and wonder aloud, "Do you think you could have warned me?" Always the response comes, "Would you have done the Work if you had known?" Probably not...so I don't get warned, and I'm not the only one.


The key to bypassing the obstacles, for me, is Awareness. I basically distilled the first two obstacles and came up with this wee character flaw: Sometimes, I am a Selfish Diva who believes herself to be the Center of the Universe - and who gets mighty pissy when she is Proven Wrong! If I'm feeling hesitant or cranky, I can just say, ah, Diva Moment! and realize I'm getting stuck, and unstick myself. If I have an outsized reaction to something rather minor, I can similarly think to myself, ah, Trans-Personal Shift! and tune in to what needs to be moved through/out of my system.

I am also choosing to invest some time and money into myself and my Work. Pre-Transition, I had a fairly clear idea of what the Work looked like and what I was going to be doing in the Work. Now that the stuck-ego bits have been cleared out (in the main), I need to go back to the beginning and figure out the Work again. What will it look like? What will I be doing to fulfill it? What is my Voice saying this time to lead the way? This is where my focus will be during the Winter months, as I begin anew in the New Reality.
I have a feeling that I'll be going direct big-time pretty soon... :-)

Micromoving in the New Reality

The Tricksters have been having fun with me! (Poway, 10/12)

 So I'm down to posting just before the big Equinox or Solstice, eh? LOL. Maybe I'll work on that...

Every single Gods-blessed time I think I get how much has changed, or how much has been swept away in this place I'm calling the New Reality, I get another reminder and I'm gobsmacked all over again.

I saw how I wrote last time that I was putting the Priestess aside momentarily, "just for now." Well, not quite.
What I later realized was that my Inner Creative had fired my Inner CEO and sacked the whole Sacred Employment team!
Yup, I was done. I had renounced that part of my calling. I was quite content to just let the whole world flail away and I was going to retire into my Artist's Cave with my mom and my husband (to be) and whichever cats wanted to join us and just create for myself, maybe sell an object or two here and there.
Then came the Scorpio full moon and the bombing in Boston and the hysterical response amongst my Lightworker soul-siblings - and the Dragon Within woke up and ROARED at the masses: What the Sam-Hill are y'all doing messing around in the Old Reality that is dissolving Anyway?!?
(okay, this is the somewhat paraphrased version. The original version had a few f-bombs and a few f-bomb-related words in it.)
So, yah, the Priestess is back. The Priestess is watching everything that is unfolding in the world, and is totally not surprised by what is being revealed (hasn't anyone else ever read any science-fiction? HELLO!) because everything that has been built in the age of Power-Over Domination is coming crashing down! The Priestess is mainly annoyed, and sometimes outright pissed, at how much energy is still being poured in all of these Old Reality constructs where there's a whole bunch of New Reality waiting and needing to be (co-) created! Forget about thinking outside the box; it's time to think about spheres and drop-kick the boxes back into the last millennium! However, I will choose to expound on this train of thought on my other blog.

Yes, about that New Reality waiting and needing to be co-created...it's been a most interesting 2013, so far. I will take a step or two in what I think is going to be a good direction - and the path dissolves, and I don't (can't?) go any farther forward. At first I thought it was because my energies had been too scattered by all of the work I've been putting in to my muggle job (a year as a supervising operator - wow!) to gather myself together. A few personal rituals disproved that hypothesis, though; I can still get the mojo working when I need to. Then I saw that it was the Reality I was in that is not quite solid enough for me to do the Work that is needful, post-Transition. Like a lake where the ice is forming, but not entirely ready to have folks skating atop it - this was the image I was shown. So I asked the question: what can I do to help "solidify" the New Reality a bit more, besides continuing to be the bridge between the worlds?
Focus Your Intentions, came one answer. Examine Your Boundaries, came another. Use the Knowledge You Have Within, came a third.
It's up to me to set up the times of Ceremony and Stillness that I need to nurture myself. It's up to me to examine my "yes" and "no" responses and deploy them wisely. It's up to me to listen to the soft voice within and act accordingly...and the rest will fall into place, and the ice upon the lake will solidify.
The soft voice within is an excellent guide, especially since I'm starting practically from scratch in certain respects. Old ceremonies aren't coming together, so I allow myself to be guided in fashioning new ones. I am also reassembling Sacred Space in my room; as Jonathan is now part of the casita, the bedrooms were switched around, and order is still arising from chaos! (Well, when you have two night owls working and trying to remake a home, it can take a while, eh!) ;-)

Yah, there's a bit of what's up in my neck of the woods at the moment...

Beginning to Hear the New Rhythms

Blooming in Beauty. (@ Home, 1/12)

I am happily enjoying the first Post-Transition spring season, as Days of Beauty unfold around me. The image above seems to exemplify what is going on in my life now...

My Winter was bracketed with some physical adjustments: a bout of the Creeping Crud at the start of the season, and a bout at the end of the season. In between coughing and sneezing and blowing snot out of my nose by the gallon (so it seemed both times!), the remainder of the Old Reality left my system.
I come from a family of fundamentalists; they who see "only one way" to walk through life, and if you're not walking the path that they are, well, it doesn't matter what you do or how you do it, it's "all wrong" because it's not "their" way. Even after all of the shapeshifting I did in 2012 - on top of everything that has changed in my life since I began to walk the Path of Spirit in 1998 - the fundamentalism was still there...and I didn't like it. I asked for it to be removed from me, and the illnesses that I experienced, I believe, did just that.

A funny thing happened with that removal process: I lost my life-purpose.
Especially toward the end of 2012, I felt a sense of urgency in my life, to get Information out into the world "right now," or it would be "too late." Anything that got in the way of doing that (like my muggle job) would contribute to my time anxiety, especially after I detached from moving in linear time pretty well completely! After the Winter Solstice, and the conclusion of the Time of Transition, the urgency was gone - and so was the need to get Information out into the world!
It didn't occur to me until recently...the urgency was attached to a need to get out and "fix" everyone by unsticking them from their Shadows. I saw the world as broken and I needed to save it; if that's not a fundamentalist ideal, I don't know what is! When I released the Old Reality within me, I released the need to save the world by fixing everyone...and now there's a lot of Empty Space within me. This is a Very Good Thing. :-)

In losing my life-purpose, I was able to start reconnecting to my soul-purpose: To Create and Share My Creations.
I've known my soul purpose all along, but it got shoved to the back of my mind while my book, my teaching/ceremonial circles, my muggle job, and my juicy new relationship all jostled for the top spot on my to-be-and-do list. Many rigid boundaries I had been holding onto were also dissolved in the massive amount of shapeshifting I went through last year, particularly between the Summer and Winter Solstices. I arrived in the Springtime way more amorphous and open than I have been in the past - and the still soft voices have been easier to hear.
I want to Create. I want to get my Craft on. I want to make things with my hands. I can hear my inside child knocking on the door of my mind, wanting to know if she can come in and play. PLAY! I could use a lot more Play in my life, since I still have the nasty habit of taking things Way Too Seriously. (It's a Puritanical thing. I'm working on clearing that out next.)

I'm not releasing the Priestess part of me forever - you know, She Who Will Heal the World with Her Magick. She is stepping aside to take a break. Many people are being dragged kicking and screaming into the New Reality right now, and very few are wanting to hear advice on how to proceed. Fewer still are willing to act upon said advice. When the time is right, the Priestess will resurface...in the meantime, I will be in my little casita in the West, wielding my hot glue gun and making funky-cool objects d'art, my Beloved by my side and my posse of cats at my door.

Oh yes, ze kitties - I currently entertain a crew of four part-time cats who drop by for the apparently superior munchies we dole out. One of these four cats may become the next full time cat. I'll update that part of my story once I actually get some pix of the kittehs, then actually upload them onto my computer!

I am moving out the In-Between phase and finally starting to hear the New Rhythms. Soon I shall be moving to them. In the meantime, the Divine scent of Jasmine is filling the air... :-)

Sweet Perfume (@ Home, 3/10)

...and I return...

Most interesting cloud formation. (Joshua Tree, 12/12)

Funny what happens when you start living outside of linear time - concepts like days, weeks, and even months cease to have meaning...and suddenly you find yourself in a completely new era, the old one having been left behind in an amazing shifting of shape! I come back to my personal blog and pick up the threads of narrative once more, intending not to have such a large gap between entries next time. ;-)

Rather than devote an entry to each month, I'm going to summarize the final months of 2012 in a single swoop, bringing The Year of the Unexpected to a graceful conclusion...

September was represented by Zhi-Nu, the Weaving Woman of Heaven. Her message was: Let the stars inspire you. Find an original way to surmount an obstacle. For me, the "original way" was to step out of my normal reaction to life's challenges - resistance - and embrace a new reaction - acceptance. Everything began to work for me. Granted, not all of the situations I found myself in were agreeable, or even enjoyable, but by taking situations as they came, and seeing what I could get out of each situation, a certain grace entered my life, and suddenly the challenges didn't seem to be such large pains in my tuchis. Of course, having someone sharing the journey with me helped quite a bit... :-)

Happy Couple. (San Diego, 9/12)

October was represented by Anuket, The Embracer. Your life will overflow with blessings was her message; considering this was my natal month, I was ready and willing to receive all the blessings the Universe saw fit to send my way! They included an awesome weekend in Poway with my (new) sister VisionKeepers, and this yummy gluten-free birthday cake my beloved gifted me with:

A cake fit for a Goddess (@ Home, 10/16)

November's Goddess was, appropriately enough, was Lalita, the Amorous. Love is a playful act to take joy in, She assured me. Love was one of the things I took joy in, when I could. It was a busy month and it was a month of Gratitude as well, even when some of the changes that unfolded before me weren't the most pleasant ones. I engaged in some very intense purging, along with receiving the lessons that the "creeping crud" gave to me and I continued the process of releasing Old Reality that had begun in October. Through the fierce and the felicitous, Jonathan was there every step of the way, loving me and holding space for me when I most needed it.

Ascending the Ladder. (San Diego, 10/12)

December, the final pivotal month of 2012, was represented by Hathor, The Golden One. She advised: Prosperity awaits you. Look for examples of it in action. I didn't have to look very far; between my job situation and a lovely pre-Yule ceremony, I found prosperity active and very present in my life. To ensure future prosperity, and to allow the new patters to begin unfolding in my life, I made a bold choice: I invited Jonathan to move in with me. My mother not only approves, she was the one who insisted that he move in, as his assistance proved very timely after a nasty fall she took towards the end of last month.

Bidding 2012 adieu. (Joshua Tree 12/12)

The new patterns are settling into place this month, as the shifting of rooms and the shifting of energies progress slowly but steadily. Perhaps I shall speak a bit more about 2012 later, as Winter comes to a close and Spring begins to bloom. In the meantime, I hope this helps bring my cyberspace peeps up to speed... :-)