All posts by tasara

0 Fallow

Once a Muggle, Twice a Witch

Leave a comment

Hello friends. Instead of waiting for the Big Spiritual Passion to return before writing, I thought I’d share what it’s like waking up from a long stretch in the mundane. We all have fallow seasons. Why not honor them?

Much love,

Tasara

The waiter at the 24-hour diner is in a good mood. He is chipper. It’s too early in the morning to have any customers yet he’s waiting for me at the door, menu in hand with a smile on his face like he’s got a secret. This makes me happy.

I hope it’s because he woke up next to the right person this morning. But now I’ve heard him giggle. He might be on the spectrum. The wonderful spectrum where the stars are brighter and innocence is somehow ever-present. 

I tell him that it seems he really likes it here.

He says, “I sure do! It’s like my second home.” 

I tell him I am looking for another job and he says, “You should apply here.”

I half laugh, then cut the knee-jerk condescension I sensed in myself, hoping I did it before he noticed and say, “Maybe I will.”

The cook is bitching about another one of the cooks that doesn’t show up. His campadre, an older woman, is trying to remind him to be grateful for having a job. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Each time she cuts in with advice, he says, “I know. I know. I know.”

But he’s really mad.

She says, “You have to focus on your own work because if you don’t, someone else will take those hours. They’ll take that money.

He says, “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.”

The waiter yells under the heat lamps, “She just doesn’t want to work here!” And he laughs. I’ve been having my meal and he’s come over with the check because his shift is almost through.

“Ohhh! ” I say. “You’re tired!” I was trying not to assume that a waiter at a diner is taking drugs.

The morning crew is showing up and the rhythm of the diner is kicking in. The cooks have switched from English to Spanish.

I get my to-go container and it’s the most horrific thick plastic. I tell the waiter I think I might be going to the third circle of hell for it. He tells me I’ll be okay.

I’m stalling inside my car because he’s come out of the store and I want to know more. He gets in his car and I resist the urge to follow him. I’m behind him at the driveway. He turns left and I just miss his bumper sticker. It has the words We are witches.. but I can’t get the end part so I don’t know if it’s a joke or if he’s really a witch. I could go back tonight when he’s back at work and read it. I don’t think he’s autistic. He might not even be on drugs. He’s just a really incredible person. 

It’s easier to say these things without knowing the details so we can enjoy the story – without getting so deep into it that we run into trouble. 

There is a lesson here for me in how fucking condescending I can be. I should take an example from my elder. He never gives advice to me even when I’m trying to pry it out of him. One should never give advice unless solicited, is what they say. If he wrote it (which he would not), it would sound like One should never give advice. He even joked about it yesterday and said to me , “If you’re ever looking for advice again, now you know the person not to call.”

In case you’ve wondered why I’m up so unspeakably early, it’s because the Spirits told me to go watch the crows this morning. It’s two days before Summer Solstice and I’ve been saying again and again that I gotta go out and see the crows because it’s off-season and I want to know how many there are. I tried to go back to bed, but I got a kick. I said out loud “Really?”

And then I hightailed it to the roost. 

As I was getting into my car, I was noticing that it was my gut that was directing my decisions. It wasn’t a mental projection I needed to manifest like everybody’s yelling at you to do. It was instinct – and this is the first time I’ve enjoyed writing in over a year.

I love the edges of things. Twilight, back roads, off-hours. Lots of people stay up late for the same reasons, thinking they’re special but us morning people, we get it. It’s not just wildlife that becomes more pronounced. All creatures come out. Human personalities reveal themselves. There’s more magic, more to discover. 

I’m at the beach and it’s practically raining, just the way I like it. Now that I’ve watched all the crows disappear from their roost, I’m back closer to the city and there they are, yelling, continuing on their morning. These surfer shoes from Hawaii are perfect for walking on Pacific Northwest rocky beaches and getting your feet wet.

“It doesn’t have to hurt to be good, Jen.” 

I had a manager tell me that over twenty years ago and it’s still there like a billboard in my mind revealing more layers of the same truth. I think when things are hard, it makes me feel more proud when I accomplish them. But the same things that I worked so hard on before, I can just do. Life without drama is some kind of peace.

Progress Note #1:  There are some things that I just do now, instead of making it a big deal and having to win a victory, so I can tell myself I did a good job.

I might be too hard on myself with this one. It may have truly hurt before. What’s missing now is the passion in the completion. My notion is that I will have passion about different things and these will become menial tasks. I’m mostly talking about work but I also noticed this in the house. For instance, cleaning the kitchen.

Progress Note #2:  When I have a new thought or meaningful experience, I don’t assume I’m the only one having it. I think of all the other people thinking the same thing. This is important not only because I feel less alone but because it takes me out of that special club of people that think they are better than everyone else.

Progress Note #3:  There is a new glimmering shiny revelation that has arrived. I can even touch it. It might be possible that instead of either being attracted to or running like hell from addicts, I am merely not triggered. Perhaps I could even appreciate them and love them in a different way and not be pulled underwater.

People are starting to show up in the park. Meaning that there are eight cars here now and the parks department guy is finishing his chores. Time to go. Time to go back into the house. It’s true. I’m driving out. But still, there’s an older couple waltzing in the parking lot. I’m not kidding.

I’m home now, 9am, drinking the rest of my glass of wine from last night, and my wet jeans are warming by the fire. When I was at the beach, I was seeing dragons and I wanted to fall on my knees and weep to feel the magic again.

You see, the Spirits of Kindness beached me in the mundane a few years ago and left me there. I accepted the mission and I’ve learned things about myself and behaving in the world that was a long time coming but I was starting to feel a little bit abandoned. The long haul is not over, I know. I can’t jump into the flow of a passionate vocation just because I’ve completed my studies, because that flow is no longer there. I don’t even know what the vocation is anymore. I’ll have to walk a little further.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s about the long game. In the meantime, I’ll treasure every speck of magic that comes my way.

Tasara

Spiritual Activism

We Are Born With Fire

2 Comments

[Martin Luther King Day]

We are born with a passion that, when allowed to fuel our dreams, takes us out of the mundane, grants us exponential energy and creativity.

At the same time, there is the necessity of a paycheck. The complications of life. The unhealed trauma. The abusive relationships, be they close to home, in the workplace or engineered through society.

There are the blankets we wrap around ourselves to comfort ourselves with: binge-watching, self-medication and the comfort knowing that “everyone else is doing it, too”.

We try to engage in activities we know are ‘good for us’. We experience moments of clarity, small embodiments of perfect balance, of knowing the path we see before us, this plan we dreamed of cycles ago. Back then, it opened a deep hunger in our every pore. Where is the ecstasy now?

My friends. It has been so long since I’ve written, I thought I had nothing else to say. Now I realize I was drowning. Or was I was preparing?

My master plan never changed, but life causes me to forget it, even while I work in its service. Always, I have wanted to be a catalyst for others to come into their own fire, fire that will open them to their calling, to shine with their gifts.

For decades, I focused on this dream. I placed little value on my day job. And then, as it happens, I got older and began to panic. I can’t give so much of myself that I am risking homelessness when I am elderly! So I have been trying to catching up.

I still have a plan. I have never stopped working the plan. There are pieces that need to come into place.

I am asking you, if you have read this far, if you have seen the spark in me, if you have witnessed my passionate fire, to mirror it back to me. It will fill me and hold me accountable. Don’t let me slip under the heavy waters. I want to be here for you, or if not for you, for someone else. I want to hold the torch again, not because I think I can make global change but because I will never feel right in myself if I don’t. I am not myself if I am not in the revolutionary fire that was opened to me. I was not born to be a person that goes to work and comes home to the mundane every day. This can be pleasurable but for me, it is a denial of my purpose.

Remind me of my fire and I promise you, I will remind you of yours. There are forces greater than us that wish to keep us drowning. What is your master plan? Tell me your master plan.

Blessed Be.

Tasara

[Thanks to the movie Rebel in the Rye to encourage me to write again
and Martin Luther King for the contagious fire in his speeches: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/17/mlk_day_special_2022 ]

1 Awakening, Healing, Spiritual Activism

Bow Down to the Power Within You

2 Comments

“Ah, yes. This one,” I said as I bent over the wide rim of my cauldron, bubbling in cool, thick liquid.

For months, I’d been charging myself with intention,
reaching into the goop, and pulling out instruments of power,
with voices of the age, crying, “Find your power!” at my back.

I took a good look at the fiery sword of righteous anger,
remembering the times we’d spent together.
My stomach felt dead. I couldn’t even pick it up.

For a few days, I held a sacred feather. It smelled of elder wisdom but eventually, I let it slip back under the surface. It wasn’t meant to invoke power. Wisdom doesn’t work that way.

I pulled out a full loom, so familiar! I gazed at the threads of community which stretched across the beams– but there was something missing in it. And then I saw something I had been entangled in, so I let the loom go too, and watched it dissolve into a primordial state.

The sword of charismatic ego rose out of the liquid,
hilt towering over the bubbling surface.
It was infused with a power of societal expectation.
It was sparkling and it hummed.

But I wasn’t moved.
Time stood between us, me and charisma – a desert of isolation and contemplation.

I told it, “I am no longer tempted or even angry with your presence, you old saber.”

I was safe. I have ridden the storms that raged inside me. I have turned my back on battles and building, to cultivate the precious seeds of goodness.

How will I be called to serve next?
What will it be?
What kind of power is my song calling for?

Finding the answer elusive, I passed my hand into the cool and felt something brush against it, falling towards the bottom of the cauldron. Instinctively, I reached and caught a strong humming thing, a rod, a staff, a wand covered in pearl sheen.

Yes, of course it would be pearl.

Kindness.
Subtle, permeated with a gentle power,
quick to shift if I grasped too hard,
or slip if I held too loose,
this benign quiet force.

My heart ached with need-fire.
How can I feel passion for a power that will not be mastered?

Because there is no other power, no other path.
I can learn to hold my spirit just so,
not let kindness fall through a grip too tight or too loose.

To Enter the Power of Kindness.

There are many teachers,
mountains to listen to.

We span these distances together.

Tasara Jen Stone https://littlelight.info

Spiritual Activism

Magic, Tattoos, Hate and Transformation

1 Comment

Let’s unpack the spiritual potency of a tattoo. It may be a symbol, a colorful depiction or it may be just words, but its form, resting endlessly on that body has an active meaning which imprints itself deep into the psyche and plays into the subconscious. It also changes and evolves over time as the wearer changes through their life experiences. They are homemade archetypes, always there, always speaking, always.

Tattoos are a form of blood magic. A person has to cross a threshold of pain and shed their blood in order to receive it. It is a life commitment made in a pain-induced state of elevated consciousness. One enters this ceremony knowing that a tattoos are permanent, and that even if they try to erase it in later years, their body will always show some mark. Most of us are thinking about the symbol or words throughout the entire process which binds us to it and gives the tattoo spiritual power. It becomes a talisman made of one’s own living flesh.

There is no going back. Only transformation.

So imagine what it would be like to have a tattoo of hate emblazoned on your body that you didn’t want anymore.

WHITE PRIDE. A swastika. Perhaps it felt right at one time. Perhaps it never did, but actually was a mistake from long ago. Imagine the dissonance of having to live with an active archetype on your body that does not stand for who you are anymore, and still be able to feel its power, moving and expressing itself on a multi-dimensional level.

Imagine having your character broadcasted as something you are not. Imagine being afraid you might encourage another person to go down the wrong path. Imagine hating this and not having the funds to change the tattoo.

This is where spiritual activism comes in. Sometimes we can do ceremony for others. In this case, we just need to fund someone’s blood ceremony of transformation.

I am donating to Redemption Ink, a nonprofit collective of tattoo studios that are removing symbols of hate for free. Please join me.

Social change happens when people change on a deeper level. Imagine the change.

https://www.redemptionink.org/

COVID-19 Pandemic

Mind your Altar

Leave a comment

If you keep an altar, formal or informal, it is most important right now, especially in the pandemic when many of us are cooped up inside that you tend to it. Left unattended, an altar can become a drag on your energy rather than a place to go for refreshment and clearing.

Altars are magnifiers of energy. Some have open portals. In one sense they are a way to communicate with and receive from the unseen. In another sense, they are a reflection of yourself, where you are and how you are feeling.

Untended altars can have residual spells left from long ago, doors left open that should have been shut. They can be holding onto energies that helped you in the past but because you have changed, no longer serve you.

It’s easy to forget. We all do it. Life is so full of challenges and things to mediate. I’ll tell you my story so you know that we are in this together.

This morning, I was feeling claustrophobic, as I usually do on New Year’s Day, looking at the holiday decorations and lights. I put them away. With great effort, I dissembled two jigsaw puzzles that had carried me through the solitary holidays. Things felt better already.

Now that the way was clear to my altar, so I took a look and noticed – oh my goddess – an offering for the dead from Samhain! I saw a mini-altar set up for a friend a month ago. She is ok now. She doesn’t need it. And the water had long dried up in my wild mountain creek effigy. The candle holder I was using was made of rock salt. I never really liked rock salt. Why do I have that up there?

In less than five minutes, through removing everything that felt energetically “dead” to me and restoring the foundation of the altar, it started humming along. My entire apartment immediately felt significantly better! Wow! Such little effort with a clear focus and I am back on track. At least for now, right? This pandemic is really hard!

Take a look at your altar. Does it need a little freshening up? Bless you for taking care of yourself.

Tasara Jen Stone

COVID-19 Pandemic, Healing

Sacred Found in Holiday Blues

1 Comment

If you are having a hard time today, whether you are feeling alone or actually alone, I extend my circle to yours, if you allow it. I do this because I have been where you are, many a year, hearing the inner screaming while the forces try to pull me down into a whirlpool of despair. I could be there right now if I didn’t maintain and guard my sacred circle.

So take my hand. Join me. I will show you how to get here.

First you have to make your own circle.

Draw it around yourself with your finger, perhaps a silly flapping sock, a butter knife, a piece of Lego. Dance a jig and say,

“This is my space, my place, my space!”

As many times as you want, but make sure you get the blood moving.

Light a candle in your space. If you don’t have a candle, focus on the lantern deep inside yourself and give it some room. Air it out. Let it glow.

Spin your arms and whoosh the circle out to protect your entire living space. Stamp on the ground or clap your hands and say it, with conviction,

“This space is safe! Only good cheer can stay near! And my kind good cheer, no other!”

Now, start naming the things you love in this earth. Say them out loud. Take your time. Let them embody you. Relive those wonders. For me it is always a particular forest, a time with a friend, looking at how far I have come in life, even when it doesn’t feel so great. What is it for you?

Good, now. Good. This is your good cheer. Not only do you have hope but you know what you have. Now you are strong enough to reach out.

There is a vast circle of people who hold sacred space together, consciously or unconsciously. Some call this space the web of light, some call it the Circle of Circles. It has many names and many interpretations.

Imagine your circle extending to this sacred space. Perhaps the edges will meet. Perhaps your circle will transport. You may get there by rattling or dancing, or maybe humming or rocking. You might close your eyes and feel the grounding cord from the divine above, through your body, to the divine below and know yourself there.

Just writing this for you is making me feel better. I will feel your presence on the other side. I will know you are there and be nourished in that knowing. We will shine upon one another, fueling our living rooms with the connection of tenderness and light. We will send out hope to others who are struggling, drawing them near, into the protection of our togetherness.

So.. join me. We are not alone. We are blessed.

Blessed Be, and fuck to the Christmas you didn’t want in the first place.

Tasara

(Modify if need be to make the most meaningful for you.)

COVID-19 Pandemic, Seasons - Sabbats

Yule in the Pandemic

Leave a comment

Darkness deep.
Ordered nights across a gaping void.

Some of us are safe.
Some think we are more than can be true.
Some have tumbled into the black, beyond.

Each night shifts the dark,
and the Great Mother, she speaks out loud.

I W A N T T O K N O W Y O U .

The you that breathes again
when the screen is finally closed
the movement of the air
as your heart glints in secret
over the smallest things.

The landscape that grows around you
when you move towards your joy.
Which longings are true?
Where is your delight?

Allow the light to return,
to you.

Remember your innocence
and sing for me, my love.

Sing for us all.
Sing for your bones.
Your glow will soothe the world
As you are in it.

Healing, The Great Wheel

How It Happens

Leave a comment

Sometimes we wrestle with demons in order to show them -and ourselves – who we truly are. The demon is annihilated or transformed or disappears into a mist.

Sometimes the battle coming on is old and too similar to ones we have fought before. In these times, we kick ourselves and murmur, “Let it go!” after which we can simply turn the page and move on to a new chapter.

Sometimes change comes upon us like an avalanche, an earthquake, a tsunami. We are torn apart and have no choice but to survive it and later, languish on the road, waiting for rememberment. We may find a few pieces and put them back together but more likely, we encounter ourselves in new ways, finding our flesh growing back over our bones all on its own.

Sometimes we hear a click in our mind and the whole world changes. Old patterns are no longer compatible, old friendships drift.

Sometimes the need for change, it’s shape and the way to it have been sitting our doorstep for a long, long time. An event in our lives pushes us into a situation where we have to make a choice. Allow the change to enter or endure a suffering that has nothing left to teach us.

I heard somewhere that wisdom is not a collection of knowledge but rather a shift in perspective, again and again until all the perspectives fit together in a great flow upon the earth that sings under the cosmos. I heard somewhere that peace is riding the wheels of change.

COVID-19 Pandemic, Healing

You’ve Come So Far

Leave a comment

And She said,

“There will be times in your healing process when you will be reminded that you don’t need to fight anymore. You don’t need to endlessly scan the land, looking for trouble, as you once had to. Each gate you go through, there will be a clear sign of certain dangers falling away. You will forget those signs and need to be remembered.

But here’s the clincher. In the lack of danger, there will be a void that will seem as frightening as your life was before. You will feel like you are floating out into space, into the unknown.

Remember your mantra, ‘If lost, return to self.’ 

There is always something to hold onto. It is you. The gorgeous light you have found inside yourself. Sing your song. Kiss the blessed earth and don’t forget to enjoy the garden you have cultivated within. Survival skills do not understand gratitude practices. They seem ..not very useful when things need to be done.

Walk into this terror. Feel it enliven your body. It is the first good terror you’ve come across. Remember the gates. You know what you have survived, what has left you and what is still to be mastered. Trust the truth of what you have accomplished. Trust the changes you have already made in your life. 

This work you have done – you have earned your own trust, so use it.
What does life have to offer when there is not imminent danger? It is not what they tell you. Go find out for yourself. Go make the life you wanted when you were held down.”

Spiritual Activism

Trump’s Illness and the magic of the Election

Leave a comment

Yes, I laughed my ass off when, half-asleep, I opened my laptop to find that Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19. I didn’t want him to die, but I couldn’t bring myself to the shore of other people who were truly concerned for his health.

Now it’s been a few days and it’s become real. It is no longer symbolic or part of the game of politics. It’s about a human being. I was able to shift and put out a message on social media saying,

“I envision that Donald John Trump receives the care he needs and the outcome of his illness is aligned with his pure soul’s deepest desire.“

Lots of people are having moral conflict in their own reaction to Trump’s hospitalization. I completely understand. After he bullied Biden in the debates, as he puts his own staff at risk of infection, it is hard. But this is a test. As you are concerned about ethics, and karma, and the trajectory the world is on, this could be a turning point on your spiritual path. I am not perfect. I think that writing this is helping me get to that shore, so bear with me.

We created this situation with our political apathy and cynicism. If we don’t want this person to be the President of the United States, we are meant to use our power and vote in someone else. We can even reach across state lines and reach people in swing states. There is still time to make this happen. See the links at the end here.

But wishing someone unwell is a malevolent use of magic. Period. It is in times like these, time of crisis and real feelings of life and death for our planet, ourselves and our brothers and sister, it is times like these when people can sooo easily turn to using their metaphysical abilities for harm. Doing so sets off a whole chain of events in oneself, changing the shape of who you are and making the likelihood you would do such things like that again in the future. Deciding to channel your energy in a way that aligns with your true values, despite the great duress, will also shape you. Times like these reveal one’s true character, and can mark one’s character, too.

Let the forces of the Wyrd decide. We are not Gods and Goddesses. There is POTUS, and there is the man, who we know is profoundly traumatized, wounded and out of control. He is not asking for prayers, as far as I know. We do not know what his soul wants. So we don’t try to heal him, just as we don’t try to kill him. We send up a flare with an image of hope that his soul find what it needs, but we send it no where.

It is also important to decide and cement what your energetic response to his illness is, so your strong emotions and unconscious thoughts do not leak out and send energy you do not intend. Time to tell your whole confused system who is in charge and what the energetic directive of the hour is.

Keep doing what you were doing before this happened. Do more if you can. Do something if you haven’t been doing anything. Let’s invest our energy where it is needed, rather than reacting to the news. Let’s keep going. I am with you. I love you. I need you, and I see a world where were we all come together and rejoice in the relief we feel when we discover that we are working together, rather than waiting for someone to save us. And through this, we find each other and our sense of true community and family-outside-of-family is restored.

Here. Over here. Point your magic here. I need you right now. And I’m not the only one. There is still time:

https://votefwd.org/ Letters to swing states.

https://votesaveamerica.com/adopt-a-state/
Phone calls to voters.

And, Blessed Be.

Tasara

(excuse the first draft, this is a message sent when I should be getting ready for work)