Hello again my beautiful natural medicine tribe!
Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am to be a part of this community? It's a LOT of gratitude...thank you all for helping build the bridge of humans to lift each other up!
This box was a gift from my dear sister and shining light, Shanda, who has been in my life 25 years. It has become the perfect place to keep all my visual aids and to remind me to listen to my higher self.
Many of us understand that we have an inner voice, a connection to higher self that helps to guide us through this world. Many different spiritual paths teach us about this voice through different names, but the concept is the same, whether it be interpreted as inside of you or outside of you. We are given guides to help us navigate this life and the better we listen the less pain and suffering we endure.
Often times that voice is barely a whisper, and it takes a lot of focus and openness to hear it. Over time, if we are unable (or unwilling) to listen to that guidance, it gets louder ~ but at a cost. Many years ago, the way my reiki master explained it to me was that if our higher self has to shout, that is when we end up with a physical lesson to get our attention; the sooner we listen the smoother our journey is.
During my late teens I began searching for tools to help interpret that intuition, though at the time I didn't realize that was what I was doing. And there are so many options for this! I have come a long way since the young girl who did her best to move through the world on faith and wonder, and I have learned a lot since then ~ and my higher self has done plenty of shouting along the way to keep me walking on my path of beauty.
Divination is one word for what I describe, but the simple understanding I have come to is that this type of tool is a visual aid to help us translate the wisdom being presented to us. I have come to the conclusion over and over that it's not the particulars in what type of aid you use, but rather the willingness to be open to the message being sent.
It was a lot of fun trying to lay everything out for one photo! Can you tell I was standing on the couch looking down?
When I was more openly being a conduit and using these aids to help others receive messages (a whole other story for a whole other day on why I closed off for a while) there were many times I would do a reading for someone, they would get very clear messages from what I saw and told them, and then I would not really have any idea what I said, or what they got out of it. That was pretty cool, because it really reinforced the idea that messages of spirit are very personal, and while I was open to translating the messages into this realm, they weren't for me so I didn't retain the information. It was kind of fun, and also kind of eerie, to run into people months or even years later (at that time I traveled a lot) who would say "Oh wow, Spring, what you said to me changed my life because _______!" but I would not remember anything about what I had said to them, or in some cases I would not even remember the encounter or even that I had met them.
My understanding of using any visual aid isn't about a "positive" or "negative" lesson. Any message from spirit is going to be slightly different depending on whether you are in balance with what's going on (which can change from moment to moment), combined with the understanding it's a little helper for whatever lessons you have learned, are currently learning, and how to navigate forward to the next lesson ~ not a "tell the future" magic wand. The future is always a mystery, and the key is not to try and know the future but rather how to make the journey into the unknown with faith and willingness to embrace what life has to offer.
Here is a short description for each of these visual aids I have collected along the way. I still have a lot to learn and some of them are more complex to use than others, but I am extremely grateful for the help from each of these for me (and others) find the way forward with love.
Medicine Cards is the first deck I ever worked with and it is still my favorite. The cards are all animals,with them presented as teachers. It is centered around different tribal teachings from around North America and it has been wonderful to learn many stories from many different traditions and then as those lessons are retained, to be reminded of them every time I encounter an animal.
This is Sacred Path Cards, created by the same person who made the Medicine Cards deck (Jamie Sams). It is also based in many different tribal lessons. Often I will use this deck in conjunction with the animal deck, to have a teacher and a lesson presented. The teachings are very much food for thought and an opportunity to grow as a person, in each understanding.
I know many of you are familiar with runes and they certainly are effective at bringing messages from the spirit. This set is made from jasper and was a gift from dear friends during a very trying time in my life.
This deck, called the dream inspiration deck, was also a gift. They are perhaps the most challenging deck I have, because each card has one word and a very Dali-esque type collage of artwork to describe that word, and the "book" has only a tiny bit of help to describe what the creator met with them. It really took quite a while of working with them to understand how to use them solely as a visual aid, but it was also nice to hone my intuitive skills to such a level, trusting even more in spirit.
There are many different versions of Tarot decks out there, and this is my favorite of them all. As I described, I use cards as a visual aid, so I do not consider myself a "Tarot reader" despite having several styles of Tarot. While Aleister Crowley is a very controversial figure in any circle of thought (and I will not get into that here), I believe the artist who created this deck for him (Frieda Harris) really fully captured each card in a way that is undeniably of spirit and I have found this deck to always be reliably and completely accurate.
I have no idea where I got this deck, or who created it (and dear reader I just tried searching for it multiple ways online to no avail, as the box is so old it barely holds the cards), but the imagery on the cards is a beautiful, colorful, modern interpretation of the major and minor arcana.
As I have always admired Leonardo da Vinci, this deck (which was originally a gift from my mother) is unique and enthralling. I have never come across anyone who is familiar with it, but since it is the normal major/minor arcana it works just the same as a regular Tarot.
While this is loosely based on the "tarot" deck, it is a completely different interpretation. As I was already working with cards based on tribal teachings, when my best friend introduced me to this one I immediately fell in love with it. She passed on in 2007 and this is actually her deck, which I am still grateful to have inherited.
This is a fun deck, using fairy imagery and with lots of positive messages to share. I haven't used it a whole lot but I really enjoy it and the good-natured feelings it invokes when using it.
This deck was a special gift from one of my dearest brothers in House Raven, as he knows the author well and when she created it he was blessed with several copies to share. You can really tell a lot of work went into making this deck and opening up messages from spirit to come through in a new language that is tied solidly to traditions around the world. It also seems to be very feminine in nature and so I have really connected to it through that as well.
Thank you for reading! I look forward to some comments on this and am open to begin sharing any of these with this community if there is an interest.
Remember to
special thanks to @riverflows for this beautiful banner to add to my posts ~ she even found a picture of my higher self to put in the stars behind it!!!
