Feather Redfox & HeartPath Studio

Magic....and......Altars: Why do we so often see these two things as adversaries?

Is this an acculturated heritage from established religion, which is, in this life time, completely patriarchal?

In the earliest information that we have found thru archeology and cultural anthropology, humans have created and used altars to create magic, alchemy, changes that go beyond their understanding of how those changes may be manifested.  When we live beyond-the-possible, think and act beyond-the-possible,  we have lives that are open to magic as, I understand it, in the most profound ways.

Our society teaches us that all issues, problems and situations may be solved only by rational thinking, scientific method, and proposes the most familiar but seldom effective solutions we hear over and over, or simply states that a thing is "Not Possible".  Religions all offer the option to "pray for miracles", to call on the particular Supreme Being who is honored in each, yet they generally view magic as nonexistent, an evil thing  or childish trickery..

 What is Magic, Magik, Magi? Perhaps earliest traditions  would say it refers to a specialized wisdom, a wise person,  traditions of healing and  energy work that were passed down from healer to healer.   That is how I understand it yet, the modern descriptions of magic usually show us images of hideous, pointy-hatted female on brooms , or the same stirring  cauldrons with a black cat by their side. These beings were always treacherous and dedicated mostly to evil.  Many scholars say this is all part of a patriarchal attempt to wipe out the images of a natural and nature integrated Goddess, worshiped by the common people.  Their religion was one that honored the growing seasons of the earth, the natural rhythms of women and the magic of seasons and a growing seed or a child born.  They were connected to the land and one another. 

For too long healers and women in particular have had to hide their Knowing as it was not safe to claim it.  Today many of us create altars in our homes to work with.  Sometimes it is a religious altar or one for healing work for others and sometimes it is asking for direction in our own lives.  There are many ways of using a personal altar but I will only speak of my own practices.    As a Christian , I have had small "worship centers" that I used to focus and pray  or simply read and consider what teachings that held for me.  As a post Christian and a shaman I am perhaps even more deeply rooted in prayer, though not to just one god, and my altars are different. I don't consider myself a witch but I do believe in magic......MAGIC......It exists and I experience it all the time, sometimes in large unusual events,  gifts that come to me unexpectedly, the guidance I receive when I do healing work that tells me exactly what to do and how to be of help to those who ask. Other times  is in the small gifts of every day, a rose blooming in all its beauty or our extraordinary New Mexican sunsets and my own heightened awareness and gratitude for them.  The more deeply I am aware of the multiple levels of my life and this reality, the more I am able to recognize my guidance and  the real magic that surrounds me every day.....some would say I simply make up things or that I delude myself.  But in sharing with a friend tonight I told her what I have come to know and believe: There is a point when one has to choose to accept, believe in  and use the gifts we have been given by the Universe, or to deny them.  We all have them but often we are afraid to give voice to and claim them.  It makes us different and very visible, and for eons, that has been dangerous.  Today what I am suggesting that you too may benefit greatly from creating a personal altar focused on whatever you choose, either religious or nonreligious. It might be to call in the muses for your art projects or to create a new life direction for yourself. I feel so strongly about the importance of each of us establishing our connection to that guidance that  I've decided to offer a series of teleworkshops that can help you to establish a connection with your guidance, with Source, God or Goddess as you perceive that energy.....  I am creating  workshops on Connecting to our individual Visions of Source and how that guides us to new versions of ourselves and birthing them as I did in my reacent Nu Birth Photoshoot.  Everyone will be able to do that in their own way but it's so important for us to make that connection to Source and do that work.  It is what feeds that part of us that we know is hungry but are not sure just why.  It is the way we can heal our world by healing ourselves

The first of these workshops will focus on creating a personal altar and your own special practice of using it as a tool in living your life in a guided way.   If this calls to you on any level, I would be happy to talk more with you about it. I will be posting  more information on the workshop soon and will send a notice to all on this mailing list.

Altars then can be used by any of us even if in somewhat different ways, including understanding how to use our gifts to create and experience magical things.  And MAGIC,  let it become part of your  vocabulary in a new and beautiful way.  Whether or not you feel drawn to create your own personal altar, begin to see the unexplained, the large and small special events of your life and really look more closely at them on different levels and you may begin to SEE in new  ways.  Your seeing may include new wonder at the inexplicability of so much  of this life, and perhaps add another layer of gratitude for you

May magical vision and awareness come to gift you.

With Many Blessings and Much Gratitude,

               Feather

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OJOURN STUDIO'S OPPORTUNITIES~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dreaming With Source

Feather Redfox - copyright 2012

One of the ways that Sojourn Studio can strengthen your feeling of knowing your personal truth and authority is to help you create and strengthen your inner Connection to Source or your Inner Truth, your HeartPath. I offer a selection of handsomely matted affordable Healing Art prints as well as original paintings which are available on my website.  These can be used as a Dreaming focus, to shift your energy into more positive levels or just to add that energy to your living and working spaces.  The Rose Mandala is a print of a larger painting and is available as a special order by reply to this newsletter:

Healing Prints

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There are many ways to create that connection  to Source and strengthen it.  You may wish to explore a personal card reading with me as another way to receive information at this link below:

Personal Card Reading
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You may also consider doing individual study with me to help you be more clear about your own HeartPath and how to proceed on that.

Personal Study

My intent and my true pleasure really is to be of service to you in any way I am able.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions at:

labyrinthdoor@gmail.com

    All rights entire content reserved by Feather Redfox 2014

January 2013 Newsletter

HOLDING-- in the West direction

Embrace with support.

Our calendar has just ended, along with the year, and perhaps an era, as a new one begins.  I find I want my future self to be more true to the unfettered, pure, wild being I am, less hesitant, less....."not Me".  But what shall I write to help us all release, open, pour out, the real, extremely beautiful, most empowered, mystical us?  You may  have no desire for these things but I do and I share that with you.  So I hold a still expectant, space for us all,  It is a space open to what keys the lock which will release us from the preconceived, the acceptable, into more of who we really are....dancing new steps, learning to play a different drum, being a hermit for a while so that we can write what we feel driven to write, going to a new country by ourselves where we don't speak the language.....  Come to the West direction on the Medicine Wheel now and enter into this dreaming place with me.  It is a dreaming space as we talked about that last month  (LINK) and it is yours to design and create. Visualize it! There, let us just BE, each resting in their own personal, dreaming space as they see it.   In that BE-ing, we support possibilities, like still seeds in dark soil, waiting for the warm sun and the rain....being with and holding them into their new and complete growth thru their death into transformation. First we visualize what needs to be, then we use our empowerment to create it.

One of the driving forces of change we can choose for our  empowerment is the power of water in a metaphysical sense.  Water holds the qualities of both HARD and SOFT.  When water is hardened into ice, we can use it as a bludgeon.  It brings change by breaking and fracturing things, splintering or piercing them. The ice mode of human existence is hardness of heart and creates the same effects on both physical and emotional levels with other living things whether animal, plant or human.  It most often has no room for soft feelings and helpful actions toward others. We live today within a huge pool of energy that believes only a HARD  approach can create charge or be empowered...it uses terminology such as hard ball, hard sell, hard game, hard on, etc.  Our culture is satiated with images and sounds of power used as something hard.  It is about "Power Over" others.  This is how our culture uses Water Power today

To create change for the good in our lives, our world, we must learn about the power of SOFTNESS  now, as in FLOWING  water. quieter words, gentle, graceful actions and the power of beauty which can silence us to a hush or bring us to tears.  These are the powers of SOFTNESS we need to learn and use now.  This is the Water Way , the way of Flowing Water and requires us to be both, extremely tenacious and have great fluidity.  The powers of HARDNESS are rigid, demand one certain outcome and break up all that resists them if possible.  The Water Way uses its energy to find the path and flow around that block of resistance.  Tenacious fluidity creates the ability to slip around or thru the blocks we encounter.  Beauty, of many kinds,  can melt the ice in one's heart till the dripping energy clears and creates a path, leading the way for different action. 

Binding tenacity to soft, loving, beautiful action creates positive results.  It also requires more patience than our cultural need for immediate gratification is comfortable with!  We are a very impatient people;    I speak from witnessing my own behaviours!  Yet even small consistently, tenacious prayers, exercises, requests, positive mantras, can penetrate rocky resistance.  These actions mirror the effects of dripping water on stone and the soft piles of snow that down trees.  They do bring change but in a slower and softer way.

Yes there are times when change needs to be immediate and  may require HARD force.  For that change to be permanent however, there must also be SOFTNESS which attends to the healing of all brokeness created by HARD FORCE.  So consider with me yet again.  How is it you want your world, our world to change?  Choose and area of personal change and global change then choose some soft action that encourages that change.  Think in terms of doing a series of things like a pile of small snowflakes perhaps, instead of one grand scheme.  Try creating a  series of short writings or pictures or photographs about the changes you hope to see come to be and post them on a public venue like Face Book or talk about them in a Meet Up or community group as a means of owning your ideas and work publically.  Many of you do that already.  Social media makes that very accessible to us all.  Dedicate 15-20 minutes a day to studying, prayer and energy work or meditation or volunteering in some way that is working for the changes you wish to see.  Collaborate and work to create a dreaming center in your area where people go just to BE and to access information about who they are.  None of these suggestions are either new or startling but you, as your more aware authentic self can approach them in your specific, individual way which might just be very "new". 

Have you ever worked with Mantras, in this case, little sayings based on changes you wish to bring about for yourself?  I create and use new ones all the time and I feel they contribute to changes on the cellular level that we often don't even recognize until they are completed.  Recently I badly injured my shoulder .  As a result, I must help my body re-learn certain motions in order to have that shoulder again function well without pain.  First it takes healing of damaged tissue.  Next it requires a series of motions that I must practice to re-educate my shoulder about what it can and cannot do.  Doing all of this there are still many times when I forget and move too quickly or too far or without using my muscles correctly.  I never had to think about that before so it is a new thing for me.  To help train both my body and my mind, I create simple sayings that move in rhythm to my walking and repeat them over and over along with any requires physical action as I go for walks or hikes.  Simple things like:
          "Back and down my shoulder goes” or

          "My shoulder is completely healed; completely functional, with no more pain."

I know this repetition helps retrain all parts of me and gives my mind and body a map of what is to happen...positive reinforcement  par excellence.

This can also work in troubled situations that trigger you.  For these you can create an appropriate saying and repeat it to yourself  a number of times for every instance when you are triggered.  Not only does it make you feel better, it literally puts positive energy into the surrounding area and can create huge changes.  I have personally experienced this many times.  If there is someone I feel is not happy with me or perhaps holds me in ill will,  I say when I see them or think of them, " I am sending love, sending love, sending love" and visualize loving energy wrapping around them.  There are so many ways to use these very SOFT and simple actions to bring better energy to your immediate environment as well as the world at large.

Each of us has a personal FLOW of energy thru our lives.  It is my own belief that it is guided for each of us specifically with our name on it so we can actually relax into it more than we realize, and ride the tides of whatever life brings us. It is like a Water Way, and like the Water Way, it holds more than one type of energy.  Consider using SOFT  Energy as often as you can and let your actions be like water dripping on a resistant rock, or snowflakes on a tree bough with their power to bring about change. Use many soft, yet tenaciously repeated actions.  Look for the actions that flow around the dams in our lives that keep us stuck. Live in the Flow between times, between the now and the future, between your realities and dreams.  What keys the lock which will release us from the preconceived, the acceptable, into more of who we really are and allow us to FLOW in this energy stream of our truest self?  Consider who you really are or want to be then SOFT actions can help you bring about your true self and your hopes for the world, one little bit after another little bit, one step at a time.  It's worth the wait!

And so it is, and so it is, and so it, and so it is!

Tenacious belief in Soft Water Power and the power of your dreams with a snow storm of many small actions to bring them about.

Heart Blessings Beautiful People,

 Feather 

Endurance
 All rights entire content reserved by Feather Redfox 2014