Crow Mother: Initiation (and a Tarot Spread)

I had to make a leadership decision at work recently that was as necessary as it was troubling. It threw me off balance for several days preceding and following the main event. And as supportive as everyone was about it, I still felt rather alone in the aftermath of the experience, when all was said and done. I didn't know how to process the residual moodiness I was experiencing, and I ended up designing a spread to help get my head and spirit around it all:

(In Case of Emergency) Spread:

1) How I'm feeling

2) Nurture this

3) Express this

Dark Goddess Tarot; Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

I decided to use the Dark Goddess Tarot, which had been calling my name for a few days. The cards were:

1) How I'm feeling: 2 of Air (inverted)

2) Nurture this: 8 of Air

3) Express this: 2 of Water (inverted)

The first thing that stood out to me was Crow Mother in the central position of the line of three cards. Crows have caught my attention quite a bit lately; everywhere I go I see them flying, hear them cawing, watch them calmly perched in treetops or on power lines. They have come to feel like patient and ever-present friends, and I find them comforting. Seeing the Crow Mother as the anchor card hit home the sense that the crow is passing through my life as a sort of "spirit bird," serving as an usher through a challenging time of change and uncertainty.

To move back to the first card, the 2 of Air in an inverted position (and especially with Athena ruling here) reflected my feeling of being at war with myself. I had a very divided mind, and rather than finding peace with it, I was feeling quite at odds with my own choice. Should I have done it? Did I act too soon? When I passed the previous month or so through my mind, recounting all of the contributing circumstances, I knew I'd made the right decision. And yet I found little comfort in that.

Crow Mother represents initiation, and in the position of "Embrace This," she encourages me to understand and accept the choice I made as an initiatory process, a necessary aspect of my new leadership role. Initiations are not supposed to be comfortable; they are often jarring, full of mystery, of the unknown. By living through them the initiate achieves new levels of understanding, is able - perhaps "invited" is the better word - to integrate new knowledge and perspectives. I hadn't previously thought of this as a rite of passage, but indeed it was, and there was some comfort in understanding it in that light.

Interestingly, as I was flipping through one of my gem and mineral books in search of an "initiation stone," another stone listing caught my eye: pallasite. This immediately connected me to Athena (Pallas Athena), and to the 2 of Air. Upon reading the entry for this meteorite, it turns out that one of its principal functions is that of helping to calm the emotional body. Very fitting, I'd say.

Unfortunately I didn't have any pallasite on hand, but I decided to pull out a new piece of one of my favorite stones - black tourmaline - that I'd just acquired the week before (you can never really have too much of this one!). Black tourmaline has a soothing, relieving energy that feels very good to me. And I realized, as I was gazing down at it in my hand, that it looked quite a bit like a crow's head.

Crow's head Black Tourmaline

The final card in the reading was Lorelei, the 2 of Water, and it had appeared inverted as the 2 of Air had. In the position of "Express This," it urged me to release the sorrow I was holding onto regarding the decision I'd had to make; to talk about it; to call on the ever present and all-abiding pool of universal love to help heal from its painful after-effects. A close friend to whom I've spoken about this has commented several times that it's very much like breaking up with someone. It's an astute observation. Lorelei was a siren whose beauty and hypnotic song was said to lure entranced sailors to their deaths against the jagged rocks. In a way, I could relate. I want to always help, honor, and nurture people, so coming to terms with having to make a decision that I knew would inevitably cause someone pain was (and still is) quite difficult to manage.

The sum of this line of three is 12, associated with the Hanged Man, a card that has appeared for me on a couple of occasions of late. Sacrifice, evolution, release, surrender.

In addition, I find the layout of numbers in this spread to be intriguing - 2 - 8 - 2. Twos relate to duality and choice, while eights correspond to change, strength, and personal power. The willingness to embrace difficult choices for the heart and mind provides great fertilizer for transformation.

Onward and upward.

A Breath of Sea Air

Saturday was a beautiful day. In the morning my husband and I stopped at our favorite local botanica for a few things. As usual, while there I ended up finding a number of extra goodies as well! The principal goal of our trip was for me to secure a few stones. I immediately located some precious finds: red coral, raw selenite, raw black tourmaline, desert rose, and snowflake obsidian.

While I was selecting my stones, Jorge was busy discussing important matters with Paula, the clerk and jeweler. As I approached the counter I realized that they were talking about azabaches - generally speaking, charms against the evil eye. "Good call," I thought, since I was supposed to get one months back and hadn't yet. In fact, we were planning to get one for each member of our family. Azabache is another word for jet (also called "black amber"), an ancient stone formed from the remains of decomposed wood, which has a high carbon content. It has been used through the ages and across many cultures to bring wisdom, protection, and healing. It is often combined with red coral, also widely used for protection. In Cuba, most babies don't leave the hospital without an azabache charm attached to their clothing. I myself used to own a silver and red coral bracelet, a gift from my mother from Italy for the purposes of deflecting unwanted attention.

We didn't see any in stock that were quite what we were looking for, so Paula went into the back room and returned with her beads and jewelry tools. In the end, we were able to make a custom order which she completed right in front of our eyes, which was a special treat. Our azabache beads were hand carved from California, and we chose naturally shaped red coral for the accent:

Custom-made azabache pendant

I gathered up a couple boxes of incense and a candle, and we were on our way. It was a really nice way to start the day.

We'd planned to take the kids out to the sea in the afternoon, so after lunch we gathered up chairs, a blanket, and some snacks, and we drove our new Fiat out to a beautiful, quiet, sparsely populated beach. We watched the pelicans fly overhead, and the little ones played in the surf for a while. We munched on cheese crackers and salted nori, and I pulled a few cards:

Wildwood Tarot and Earthbound Oracle at the sea

We drove back home under the setting sun, and settled in for the evening with good food, and some Antiques Roadshow. It's the little things. ;-)