As I walked down the hall to the wooden chest where I keep my tarot cards, companions now for over a decade and my hotline to the divine, I was saying a prayer to Hestia and Hera, two heavenly sisters I've suddenly grown quite close too. I feel almost as if they're with me as my family and friends are not. Or maybe I'm just reaching out more thanks to the near crushing loneliness. Whichever. I asked them for guidance and honesty as I shuffled, to help us make the right choices for our family. I prayed for their help, for stability, for a Home most of all. It's very rare I ever ask anything for myself; I'm used to using my cards as a way to help others and this is very much like that. Everything we've been doing the last six months has been on the path of What Is Best For Our Family and like I said, it's been a windy road.
So I asked, and did they answer! From the moment I flipped the first card onto my purple, black and white celtic patterned cloth I felt buzzing with energy. I asked and flipped and wrote insights down and kept going until my mind felt both empty and full at the same time. They were powerfully clear and helpful. Everything we've done so far has been in preparation for what's coming. The two cards I pulled and placed on the altar last week during the full moon were the rune for Movement and the Morrigan, more hints of what's to come. The move from Nanaimo to Victoria, the uncertainty, even my job loss from Alpine, has just been more preparation. If I still had my cushy job with them I wouldn't be so strongly considering a move to Ontario. If we hadn't left Nanaimo to come here for the assistant manager job, Ryan wouldn't even be considered for manager job in Kitchener. If we hadn't come to the Island in the first place, well, who knows where we'd be?
After some much needed lunch we went to the library grocery store, then on the way back stopped to pick blackberries growing along the fence by our building. They're big, juicy and sweet right now, perfect for the First Harvest coming up tomorrow. As we picked I talked to Gabe about how important harvest time was to our ancestors, and for him to imagine what it would be like if the only food we had was the food we could grow and pick ourselves. Harvest time would be really important, he said. He said if we didn't work hard we'd starve in the winter. He's right. You have to work hard, and sometimes even then your best isn't good enough. Locusts or drought or flood can wipe out your harvest. Shit happens but being resilient and having a good support structure around you makes all the difference. We picked and I told him I was making sure some of the really good on the altar as an offering to the Creator, as a way of showing that I was thankful for what we had. I ended up baking cookies this afternoon too, chocolate chip ones that are soft and goey inside with extra chocolate, and I made sure to put one of those there for the Goddesses I've been working with as well.
I was struck while baking that if Hestia had a modern persona, she'd probably be a home-schooling mom, one of those 'I grow it, bake it, preseve it, sew it and craft it' myself kind of women, busy on Pintrest and Facebook and with the kid's Parent/Teacher Association, and of the two Goddesses probably appreciated the cookies most. Hera, on the other hand, would be a high powered business woman. She drives a nice car, wears Pepper Pots style outfits, carries a cellphone and is equally at home in the board room or working hard in her own office space on her own projects. She sips a pricey latte and smiles at me over the top of her PDA but the rich chocolate in the cookie rivals that of a dried out Starbucks offering, and she's pleased.
Sorry for the rambling, but I had a lot to get out there.
