All posts by tasara

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Clearing the Medicine Channels

2 Comments

As long as many of us are sitting around at home these days, I want to bring up something that causes spiritual gunkiness. I do still work full time, but the free time I have is mysteriously vacuous. That is why I am able to write this.

There is a law of energy which states that while we are in our human bodies, there is a limited amount of attention we are able to give. It’s similar to the limited amount time we have per day, but balanced with our energy levels. No kidding, right? Pretty boring. Tell me something new.

Well, I won’t tell you anything new, but take a good look at your altar. Is it cluttered? Is there stuff there, that has blank or dead energy? Take it off, then, and see how your altar feels. Look at your medicine bundles, talismans and sacred items, on your shelves, in your drawers. Are you in the plenty with magical items?

Now ask yourself, “If I were going to give proper care to all of these amazing beings, do I have the time to do all that?”

Which items are not even energetically open to you, and which are sleeping, waiting for another chapter in your life? The ones that are not open to you simply do not belong in your house anymore. Heck, I know this. I kept a gorgeous crystal for ten years trying to like it, trying to connect with it, but it wasn’t until I gave it away that it came to life. Years later, it was returned to me and my relationship with this stone person was totally different.

There is a difference between hosting a family of helping spirits and collecting amazing items because they are beautiful. As practitioners, we are tenders and students of the talismans we keep. The stone people need conversation and clearing, or they will remain static. Talismans need recharging, animal totems need offerings and they all need love. Our relationships in our magical support team need to be constant, in and out of ceremony and developed over time. So, just as there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, too many lovers, there can be too many teachers, too many children, too much medicine.

I’m thinking, healers in subsistence living probably only have as many magical tools as they can carry in a satchel, or for community ceremonies, what their assistants can bring along with them. The core of a healer’s power is in a raw hunger for connection with the Spirits of Kindness, an inextricable relationship with the earth. The rest, though sometimes truly critical, is supportive.

Having all this stuff can create a heaviness in the air. They sit there and breath in and breathe out and don’t say very much. The crowd can cause us to have superficial relationships with many spirits, while our deeper relationships are neglected. This can make it difficult to enter clear, strong invocational spaces. We might feel a longing for the times when we felt the spirit running strongly in our bodies. It can be confusing when beginning ritual if we are not sure which items are needed. There can be an oppression of choice, instead of feeling our old friends leap off the altar.

If this hits home for you and you are thinking, “Yes! I need to gift my medicine items!”, keep reading.

There is a proper way to move magic. If you are moving stones, love them and and clear them. There might be energies in them that you don’t want to pass on to your friends – lingering emotions, stuff from old ceremonies. If you are parting with a talisman created for a specific reason, perhaps it serves no more purpose. Perhaps it needs to be dismantled, returning its energies to earth, air, water, fire. Put that time of your life to rest with gratitude and new understanding. Seashells might want to go back to the sea, stones back to the great outdoors. If it is a totem, sit quietly with it in sacred space and whisper to it your feelings. Ask it where it wants to go. Then when you gift it to someone, don’t expect them to keep it. Magical items are just that, magical. It might take a few passes for them to wind up where they need to go.

It’s a lot of work, right? Yeah, that’s what I am thinkin’, when I look around my sacred space at all the preciousness I have collected and feel stuffy. Too much work.

It’s time to lighten the load, keep the energy moving and open up our lives for new inspiration, new vision and a new sense of freedom.

Blessed Be.

Tasara Jen Stone

COVID-19 Pandemic

She Is Here – I

Leave a comment
She whispers, Do you notice more, now? Does the kitchen table have more substance? 
Do your books send magic off the shelves, into the living room air?
Are your interests dwindling to just a few, laden with suggestion? Sense the fresh in the quiet, she tells us. 
It could be ancient or new. What do you truly need to survive?
What clutter has been swept away? Do you want it back?
Or do you feel free? Has the voice from deep within you become more clear?
And when your loved ones speak, can you hear their depths? Keep listening, friend. I have always been here.
You have – we have always been here.
COVID-19 Pandemic, Grandmother, Mediumship

Sweet rain during the pandemic

Leave a comment

Shh, shh, shh, shhhh.. she says
Go deeper.
But, bu, bu, co, corona-
She says go deeper, now.
Breathe.

Earthen cool rain
Quite flame
What you left on the loom
From the past, comes the pain
Go deeper.

Who am I?, again.
What have I done?
Where was I headed
before we
let the rest of nature out of quarantine?

Making do
Discoveries anew
Can you hear the calling?
Why do I not hear the calling?

Shh, shh, shh, shhhh.. she says
Go deeper.
But, bu, bu, co, corona-
She says go deeper, now.
Breathe.

5 Lughnasadh: Reaping, COVID-19 Pandemic

Hold on, my friend.

Leave a comment

My heart goes out to those who are emotionally suffering under the “shelter in place” order. I know. It can be excruciating to stay present while in the depths of one’s own disorganized self, especially if one has known great tragedy. And who in this great world has not? If not in our families and relationships, by the influences of corporate greed, which has swept us away, again and again from our true heart needs, while gouging Mother Earth, who literally is us in every way imaginable.

Maybe there is some energy rerouting that can happen. Think of the awe-inspiring, creative force each of us contains. We all have designed our own flow to keep our lives stable, investing our energy in chosen places, people, media, activities and mental structures. Now that our normal balance is upset, our energy might be spilling over, stopped up. It might be striking out. It can burrow down and create depression. Or it can just freeze and all those things we have been avoiding are right here, maddeningly in the forefront.

Hold on, my loved ones. This is a rare visit to the sacred forge of transformation. The power is building up and the heat is rising. This is the time to use every tool in your toolbox, every lesson you have learned about taking care of yourself, to rest, to ground, to breathe deeply and to listen. To dance, speak, sing, to ponder. To let yourself freak out. To write, break bonds, reach out or let go. You know what to do.

The quiet voice that has been whispering to you, all this time, is still with you. Listen. Listen. Allow true inspiration to come from the depths of yourself, the earth, just as the Spring tendrils curl and reach upwards in a dance towards the coming sun.

I know you. You can do this.

Tasara Jen Stone

5 Lughnasadh: Reaping, COVID-19 Pandemic

Prayer for Us All

Leave a comment

Great Mother Earth, I am listening. Your cry, your warning could not be clearer, your Spring ever sweet in your instruction.

You have taken many lives in the wildfires, storms and floods. Now you take more in this pandemic.

I call out to the Spirits of the Land. I have not forgotten you. My heart aches for your resurgence. I call out to the Fey, to revel bright, to strengthen Mother’s voice for all to hear, to feel in the winds, to taste in her precious foods, to be intoxicated by, when her blossoms give and give yet again.

May we learn our lessons gracefully this time. May the need for drama and extremism fall away. May the stillness be long enough for us to hear our heart of hearts. May we listen. May we turn the tides gracefully and with ease and wisdom. May we tend to all the sick of the world, human and other, with grace. May those that pass on, pass gracefully, and may they find their way to the other side by the grace of the Spirits of Kindness.

May we remember our citizenship in this world. May we level our eyes to every living being. May we wield with love and bring ourselves back into balance, before it is too late, before she balances for us, and we must start again, as we did millions of years ago. May this be the time that we listen. May this be the time that we understand.

Tasara Jen Stone

COVID-19 Pandemic, Sabbats - seasons

The Season of Goodness

Leave a comment
(Imbolc, 2020) Blessed Imbolc, my companions. The Earth, she turns for us. For the North, ’tis Spring – for our relatives in the South, Fall. We notice the buds on the trees, the longer stands of sun, the song of returning birds, the budding of flowers…and the unprecedented outpouring of generosity. The deep mother hands the reins to the gentle father and we are on. Here comes the sun. ’Tis the Season of Goodness.
Now is the reign of the Sun, who pulls us gently towards his heat, who is soon to intoxicate us with offerings of new life. May our expressions be joined with these forces that reach ever upward at this time. May we be slow, to listen, be wooed into the magic and be lulled by the song of our own hearts. There is much to fear, yet the season of life continues. What passion rises in you? How may you share it with the rest of us?
Now is the time to express. Blessings on our journey through these times. Please, Spirits of Kindness, look over us. Stand by those under ventilators, isolated from their worried families.
Make visitation with our distraught families, soothing, circulating through the empty spaces, putting the old things to rest. Rest deeply with our medical providers and give our leaders strength as they navigate the governmental powers on our behalf. Remind us to listen for the Spring in each other’s hearts, to breathe deeply, to wait for the silence in our conversations, to bridge the long held distance we have had while jostling so close together. May we learn to integrate with our hearts this time, as is in our nature, as is in the nature of nature, to grow. To continue on in newness each time. The seeds are in the air, looking for fertile ground.
Open, my friends. Receive, take root and blossom for us. We need you.
Blessed Be. ~ Tasara
Seasons of Healing, Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology, Untangling

Unraveling the Curse of Original Sin

Leave a comment
One of the greatest curses cast upon the human race in the last few thousand years is the concept of original sin. Some religions insist it is incurable. Others claim that it can be wiped clean with baptism. Regardless of theological interpretations, many of us who are laypeople carry a deep-seated sense of being an awful, rotten, bad person. Shame is the great motivator for many of our actions, often without our realizing it. This curse struck not only those who believed in original sin, but everyone else too, as it was distributed through the collective psyche. Too often, events, people and situations are qualified as good or bad, which traps them in a fixed state, not allowing them to be multi-dimensional. When we are good, we can look down on the bad, while still afraid of being bad. When we are bad, we can never be good. Either way, we cannot grow. I cast down this curse. You are not bad. There is no mark on your soul…. Tasara Jen Stone More in The Ancient Bones of Ceremony, found in paperback and eBook at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Audiobook in production.
7 Samhain: Shadow and Descent, Sabbats - seasons

Perching Before Samhain

Leave a comment

Grandmother pulls her shroud
and the rains, the warm rains,
it rains inside this endless cup of grey.

Grandfather blows his crisp leaves
and the smell, the earthly smell, 
the smell brings me to myself.

Tis the blessed season of endless twilight, 
of richly dressed sunrises,
of memories fine, memories drawn,
memories, ancient borne,
come from the crack of the horizon.

As I gaze through branches brown,
sienna tangled in my hair
I know my home, my home,
my earthly, earth home.

She waits for me in the shape of a rook,
on the other side,
in a cave,
in the dank
the darkness.

And I savor the moment, her beckoning,
for she is no longer my huntress, my dread.
She is my mistress, my mother, my crone.

For I have been through canyons dark, seen mirrors sharp.
I have walked the valley of the dead,
been tangled on the rocks with no matter,
I have been, again and again.

Under the wraiths’ long cry,
the songs I could not hear
the banshee did not lie,
and then I found my footing.

She has shown me the way, through myself and back again.
And this time.. I relish the time, the time.

Tasara

3 Beltane: Blossoming, Reverence, Seasons of Healing

The White Bird Rising

1 Comment

I am the white bird rising, she who rose in the sky over my body when my back was broken, whose feathery gust sent grace into my life.

I have listened to the cackling of crows.

I have risen from the cauldron with the white raven,

and now, I am told, it is time to be these things I so love,

to fly,

to bless,

to spread grace.

Ancient Bones of Ceremony

The Bundle of Songs

Leave a comment

Now that you have taken the journey with The Ancient Bones of Ceremony, I have created a place for you to add your own inspired ceremonies to the collective Bundle of Songs. Hold the essence of your ceremony in your hand, blow it into a seashell, and place it here, so we may all grow together.

Feel free to tell the story about how it came to be and how enacting it changed you, or just offer the bare bones. Whatever feels right.

Blessed Be.

Tasara