SECTION IV - THE CAULDRON - PART 2
Lady of the Fae - DreamDancer
Meditations and Affirmations - Lynn Andrews
Poems from the heart - Janina Majeran
Personal Power And Mastery - Lynn Andrews
Tarot links - Cheryl Lynne Bradley
Sacred Balance - Lynn Andrews
Emotions - Lorelei
A call to Michigan Pagans - Sienna Shadow Flame
Meditations and
Affirmations
By Lynn Andrews
The following daily meditations and affirmations, from Lynn's book, Walk in Balance: Meditations with Lynn Andrews, are relevant to the season of Summer:
NEW WORLDS ARE BEING BORN (June 27)
The road to self-realization is steep and treacherous. You may react and become scared because you sense your vulnerability. You may talk constantly and become angry, but few initiates will listen and realize that new worlds are being born.
Twin Dreamers
Star Woman
YOU CAN GIVE AWAY YOUR POWER - THAT'S YOUR CHOICE (July 4)
A magical child of light is preparing to be born. All forms of life, even if they are imbalanced and dark, fight to survive. That is why we feel resistance. The womb is giving birth to the time of the child. It means that we are all responsible for the reality that surrounds us. We make our own problems; they don't happen to us. If you are giving away your power or not, you are still responsible. What anyone does on this earth is remembered. Now you will reap the effects of your acts. That is the meaning of the child.
Ani
Windhorse Woman
DARKNESS DEFINES THE LIGHT (August 21)
Don't you understand that darkness defines the light? None of us is perfect. We are striving for perfection. By denying the darkness of our own souls, we create a negative energy in the world. All of us have felt jealousy and greed. All of us have lost our way at one time or another. It is a very good thing to witness someone walking down the wrong path. If there is love in your heart, you will do what you can to bring that person back to harmony and balance in life.
Shakkai
Shakkai, Woman of the Sacred Garden
POWER DANCES (August 25)
When power comes to you, be still with her. Don't discuss it and bleed the energy away. Just hold it. Slowly she will begin to dance with you, but only if you are patient and listen for her voice.
Zoila
Jaguar Woman
From WALK IN BALANCE: Meditations w/Lynn Andrews
Copyright © 1994 by Lynn Andrews Productions
Poems from the heart
By Janina Majeran
Faith
If I
complete the task,
run the race,
conquer the demons,
learn the lesson,
love my neighboor,
find happiness,
and sacrifice myself for others,
may I leave?
My solace
is in the elusive you,
your divinity,
your knowledge,
your humility,
in your undying
patience and love.
Can I
bend a shoulder,
borrow an ear,
shout at injustices,
wreak vengeance,
stone the cathedrals,
and still be considered good?
If I
am your child,
a beautiful creation,
a dutiful servant,
your relentless pioneer,
then
why
must
I
bear the pain,
take the risk,
carry the weight,
find the fading truth,
and still keep the faith?
So please
send me a sign,
give me hope,
lend me a hand,
be my savior-
the way you promised to be-
pick me up off the floor-
and show yourself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God
In that year when
I still believed in God,
I learned to ride my bike
without training wheels.
My brother,
my teacher
taught me to ride alone that day.
I figured-why not?
I let my sister pull my teeth.
Climbing onto my pink
Huffy, my brother-the boy inside
a mans body gripped
the back of my pink leather seat and
jogged behind me.
Encouraging me.
Promising not to let go.
In him I trusted
and off I went.
He let go
And I kept right on going
"Keep pedaling!" he shouted.
And I did-
straight into the white, concrete, mid-thigh level
statue of Jesus Christ.
Bruised,
I put my bike away
for the rest of the day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Goddess
She wraps me in compassion: a mother to a child.
She wraps me in pure light,
shielding me from the cold.
She is the maiden
the mother
the wise old crone.
Teaching me the Old Ways,
filling me with magickal power,
washing away the past and
enabling me for the future.
Listen, she whispers in the wind, you only need listen
to hear me. For I am all around you,
calling upon you in the gentle sway of the tall,
tall green tipped trees; making music to you
in the symphony of a cricket.
Feel me beneath your feet, supporting you
and all that you do. Feel me in your heart,
breathing the fire of desire into you.
Open your eyes for I am before you in the green,
green grass; in the stars shining above you,
in each salty wave that splashes at your feet.
Open your heart
Open your eyes
and you shall never be alone.
Personal Power And Mastery
By Lynn Andrews
Dear Friends:
This is the second of the seven Seasonal Messages for Autumn 2001 from Lynn Andrews. The theme of this Autumn series of messages is PERSONAL POWER AND MASTERY.
Namaste’ and many blessings to you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FOUR FACES OF THE GODDESS
I'm going to discuss the four directions of the Goddess, which I have talked about before in Jaguar Woman, but I'm going to go over them in a little different way this time.
In the North on the sacred wheel is the Great Nurturing Mother who looks to the South to Death Mother, her negative aspect. In the East on the sacred wheel is Rainbow Mother who looks to the West to her opposite aspect, who is Crazy Woman – a very powerful place.
Even though many women have felt that they are a combination of the Great Nurturing Mother and the Rainbow Mother, really everyone's basic nature lies with one or the other. I want you to get a sense of whether you are the Great Nurturing Mother or the Rainbow Mother, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman. Then I would like you to contemplate, meditate on, your wound as the Great Nurturing Mother or Rainbow Mother.
The great Nurturing Mother is the pillar of our society. She is the woman who takes over, what society calls, the natural role of woman very early in life. She enjoys groups of people and fitting into society's idea of what a woman should be. She's often a cheerleader, gets really good grades and gets along well with her peers. She usually marries her childhood sweetheart and very often has children right away. As you can see, she has an easy road early on in life – things just kind of go along for her. She loves to go to PTA meetings; she loves to cook. She nurtures in the traditional way by feeding and caring for the emotional and physical nature of her family. She doesn't mind being on a schedule, in fact she feels much more secure and safe if she is on a schedule. Our society, unfortunately, has denigrated the role of Nurturing Mother quite a bit. But there is no question that the Great nurturing Mother is the Power Mother. Everyone wants a Nurturing Mother for their own Mom.
The difficulty of this position does not come into play until later in life – unless, of course, there are untoward events – like deaths or something really unusual. When she's in her forties and her children go off to college or marriage, when there is no one left in the home to nurture, she comes face to face with herself and her own demons. Death Mother in the South faces her squarely and challenges her. She feels that her life is over. After all, when her nurturing is over, what is the reason for being alive? It’s then that she must find another way to nurture beings in the world and herself.
The wound for the Nurturing Mother is the issue of control – the need to control her environment and the people in it. If you decide that you are a Great Nurturing Mother, this is what I would like you to meditate on. If your ability to control is challenged, perhaps not allowed by your role in life or perhaps someone is controlling you, then contemplate what other avenues you have taken in your life to compensate for not being able to control. For instance, you marry a man and his mother lives with you, and maybe she controls you and your husband. What happens to you? Do you take your husband and leave? Do you leave without him? Do you get sick? Do you become a career woman and a workaholic? Contemplate the situations in which the issue of control comes up in your life and what have those situations produced – whatever they may be. What mirrors do you find yourself looking in if you are a Great Nurturing Mother?
The Rainbow Mother is quite a different person. A Rainbow Mother who is brought up by a Nurturing Woman or a Nurturing Father is going to take on different aspects of the Nurturing Mother, but these aren't truly native to her spirit. She usually never fits in. She loves her family and her children, if she has them, but she may forget to feed them. She nurtures through inspiration, feeds them ideas. She is dedicated to the growth of spirit, the growth of creativity. She may or may not get good grades in school, depending on how interested she is in the subjects that she's studying. She may have a boyfriend; she may not. When she gets into her twenties, she probably doesn't get married. She may look for a career, which she could readily find. Her problem, of course, is choosing that career. She has great difficulty following a schedule, cooking day after day, night after night. It’s not something that she naturally tends to do. She's liable to eat at 3:00 in the morning, and sleep until noon. A Rainbow Mother may try to fit into the Nurturing Mother role. She may marry, but usually to the wrong kind of person – maybe a wonderful person, but not right for her. They drive each other crazy right off the bat, then have some children, and then split up. She likely wont have gone through college, and wont have a career. She's there with kids and has no way of living. She will likely have bouts of alcoholism, and will take Valium and pills to quiet her nerves, because she does not understand the deck of cards that life has dealt her. It’s really very dangerous. It can ruin her whole life.
This is when Crazy Woman faces Rainbow Mother from the West. Crazy Woman is like the Medusa, or the hermaphrodite. She is seductive, and lures Rainbow Mother to the edge. All of society is against Rainbow Mothers. The pressure of unsuccessfully trying to be a Great Nurturing Mother, not being supported by society, and not being able to make a choice can drive a Rainbow Mother insane.
By her thirties, unless she has totally flipped out into alcoholism or drugs, Rainbow Mother usually begins to get her act together. She realizes that it is okay to not be like the Nurturing Mother, to have a career, and maybe never get married. She begins to stand in her own power. By the time she is forty, if she has the good fortune to find a teacher who will help her to make an Act of Power, she will be in very, very good shape. She will definitely be a Power Woman because she has incorporated her creativity and her inspirational nature into her life.
The wound for Rainbow Mother to contemplate is her need and her difficulty in being able to commit to an Act of Power, to commit to one single focus in her life, to elevate her spirit and manifest her dreams in the world. Because she has so many interests, she usually never does anything. If you decide you are a Rainbow Mother, meditate on what you have produced in the world, instead of your Act of Power, and how that has affected your life. For instance, let’s say that your parents always wanted you to be a lawyer, but all you every wanted to be was an artist. So you become a lawyer and you're miserable. You think, "My God, why didn't I become an artist? Why didn't I go to art school?" That is what I want you to meditate on. If you feel that you have made your Act of Power, then contemplate the mirrors that has brought up for you. What difficulties, what struggles have you had to deal with? How has that strengthened your spirit?
For those of you who still persist in the feeling that you have combined both of these Mothers, in your life, that both live within you in a really meaningful way, then meditate on the struggle between the two energy forms of the Great Nurturing Mother and the Rainbow Mother, as well as Crazy Woman and Death Mother. How have they torn you apart and put you back together? Contemplate both of the wounds – control, and the inability to make a choice, to make a true commitment. If you really feel you've combined the two, you must have had a lot of conflict in your life, and a lot of fun, too. Meditate on the whole circle.
For a man, your meditation should be on that feminine part of yourself that has been in conflict or struggle or pain. How has it been affected by the world? What has been your struggle to manifest balance between your male side, your ego, and the receptive side of the female instinct within you? How has the struggle of the women in your life affected you? Remember that there is a Rainbow Mother or a Great Nurturing Mother inside you. The same applies for both men and women in this system, although the problems may be a little different because were operating in a patriarchy. The energy in terms of society is at least with men. For women, the energy is usually against you.
It would be wonderful for you to do this contemplation exercise with a partner. Go outside, find a comfortable spot, and sit back to back. If you do it alone, then find a tree to sit against. Each of you contemplate your wound as a Great Nurturing Mother or Rainbow Mother. Afterwards, share your thoughts, any revelations or messages which came to you. Write them down. Contemplate these issues in your life regularly and it will help you to stand in your Power Woman in the world and to make your Act of Power.
In Spirit and Light,
Lynn Andrews
Sacred Balance
by Lynn Andews
Dear Friends,
This is the fourth of the seven Seasonal Messages for Summer 2001 from Lynn Andrews. The theme of this Summer series of messages is SACRED BALANCE. This message explores balancing the microcosm of who you are and your life as you create your own sacred altar.
Namaste' and many blessings to you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FACES OF THE EARTH - A Teaching on Altars
This teaching is about altars. When I use the word altar, every one of you probably has a different impression of what I mean. An altar, to a shaman, really means the "face of the earth." This is because the firstness of woman, the femaleness of Mother Earth, brings your power into your altar. An altar is a place where one can tune into the powers, the healing energies, and the balance of Mother Earth - our primal source of energy.
Altars are exceedingly important at this time in history. Your own unique power as a healer is represented on the altar by your shaman face, your mask of power. When initiated through the imagery work we did at Joshua Tree in 1990 and 1999, which is also described in my book, The Mask of Power, your mask can become a bridge between the physical world of everyday life and the spiritual world that encompasses the healing dimensions of reality. Ideally, each and every person would have an altar and a shaman mask as a means of healing ourselves and Mother Earth.
An altar can help you focus your energies into sacred prayer - "prayer" here meaning ritual and ceremony and the healing process. A ceremony, however, is only as powerful as the person performing it; so, too, our prayers are only as powerful as the intent, emotion and integrity with which we send them to the Great Spirit.
An altar can act like a battery, collecting power and energy from the universe. As we learn to be shamans and healers, we learn to use our bodies and spirits as instruments and learn to coordinate them with our altars. We lean how to project our healing power into the world.
The altar design that I am teaching you is the ancient altar designed long ago in the way of woman and the Sisterhood of the Shields. This is not a traditionally native altar, although it may resemble some. Remember all of the time that we are of this time, of the new millennium. Most of us are not Indian. This is not traditional Indian knowledge that I am imparting to you, but, instead, it is the knowledge of truth as memorized and taught by the Sisterhood of the Shields through the ages. It is indeed the ancient and secret power of woman.
I want you to visualize the design of your altar. See that it is rectangular in shape, with lines drawn from corner to corner dividing this rectangle into 4 triangles. It is like looking down on top of a pyramid - the four sides making four triangles. Visualize arrows just outside this rectangular altar pointing towards it, signifying energy going into the altar from all directions. Basically the design of the altar is comprised of four pyramids, laying flat, points facing in towards the center, so that the energy and power of everything placed within those pyramids moves towards the center to create a vortex of power. In the center, of course, is your shaman face. The bottom triangle is the Shaman, or Self, side. The top triangle is the Universe side. The left triangle is the Negative, or Death, side. And the right triangle is the Positive, or Life, side. In each section, you place things - empowering objects and bundles - that make this altar a reflection of who you are. In the center is your shaman mask, and something that represents your essence. A little bit above center is traditionally what is called the hermaphrodite, which is both male and female. You, as the shaman, sit at the bottom - in front of the altar.
Color on your altar is very important. The Death side is usually black, but it doesn't have to be. The Life side should be a color that represents life to you - white, yellow, green, any color. It will be different for everyone. The Self side color should be your favorite color, a color that empowers you, and similarly, the Universe side should be a color that represents the Universe to you. The Center, too, has a color, the color of your essence.
When you create an altar with this design you are building a battery. You are building an altar that literally retains energy and power. It will take a lot of effort and intention from you to get this to work properly.
One of the most important things you need to remember with your altar is that it should be balanced. The balance should be both emotional and aesthetic. Beauty, color, scent, light, sound, power objects, and aspects of the sacred - meaning your prayers - are all a part of your altar. What you put into your altar has to come from your shaman center. You have to be able to infuse that altar with power, knowledge and emotion.
At each corner of your altar stand your guardians, who, like soldiers, protect your sacred space. When you build your altar, the first thing you do is you put your guardians at the four corners. Perhaps these guardians are your animals in the four directions of your personal medicine wheel. Perhaps they are angels. Whoever they are, find something to symbolize them and place them in the four corners. Then, in the lower right corner, place your medicine, or power animal, bundle.
In the Center is where you will put your shaman face - your mask. It is also where you might put something that represents the essence of you. If you were a priest in the Catholic Church, you would have a crucifix there. If you were a crystal healer, you would probably have a crystal there. What the mask and the center of your altar does is translate all the energies coming in from the four sides into a vortex, into the sacred spiral.
Then you need to wake up the spirits of you altar. This is really fun. You spray water on it, with your fingers or with your mouth. Then you light candles because the spirits of place love light. Then you burn copal resin, sage, cedar, or
sweetgrass. (I have found that the western spirits do not particularly like East Indian incense. They like things that are of this time and of this soil.) Then as you are smudging your altar with the smoke, the spirits of place will begin to wake up and look around, and you will begin to see these spirits. They are something like the little people. You might see lights as they dance over your altar. They will want to hear you, they want to hear sound. So sing to them like you would to a lover. If you hear a shaman singing to his or her altar, it's as if they are seducing that altar. You will see the spirits and start to speak to them. Wait until you feel the energy coming. When the energy is coming, you know that your altar is awakened.
Then put flowers on the altar. These spirits love color. Make it gorgeous. Then you should put some sweets or sugar on the altar, and some alcohol, which seems to make them happy. Say your prayers for protection. Bring in the Great Spirit, Mother Earth, and the powers of the four directions. Do your normal prayers for any ceremony that you do. Then lay out your bundles and objects in the four triangles.
In the Self section, you put anything that empowers you as a shaman, self-objects, and objects that pull your energy into the altar. Shooter crystals - male crystals - are very good. These are crystal points that take your energy and shoot it out into the world. When you sit before your altar and you start pushing your energy into the altar, you are helped by the things in that triangle. To balance the energy that you are pushing into the altar, you place things in the Universe section, like candles (always at least one white candle), staffs, arrows, feathers, prayer sticks, and anything else long and tall that brings down energy from the universe as antennae. You also need something on the Universe side to hold the energy that is being brought in. Female crystals, which are implosive, are very good, as are any kind of precious or semi-precious stones, which tend to hold power and energy. You should feel the balance of the universe coming down with the energy that you're pushing out.
In the Life section, you put anything positive in your life - your healing crystals, objects that are full of life. Perhaps something from your children or beautiful precious stones. Pictures of saints or your teachers. Something which symbolizes your Act of Power. In the Death section, you put anything negative in your life. These could be objects which represent your grief, your anger, or your fear. It is very important to balance your negative bundles with positive bundles. For example, if I were to place sand from my mother's grave on the negative side, I would place something powerful from my daughter, or from the Sisterhood, on the Life side to balance it, as there is a tremendous amount of grief in my mother's death. This balancing is the most difficult thing for all of us to do because we tend to avoid looking at the dark side. We always try to think positive thoughts, and we don't, certainly, collect anything that has to do with darkness, or negativity, or death. But it is very important that every time you put something on your altar on one side, you must balance it on the other side.
Your altar will give you power and will bring down answers from the universe that you didn't know you knew. Think of your altar as a way to heal Mother Earth, for you to get in touch with the elementals, with the spirits of this land. These spirits need to be healed and this is one of the best ways to do it. Even if you just set your altar for yourself.
I'm sure that there are many of you who are very interested in shamanism and the balance of yourself as a being with Mother Earth but are not, perhaps, interested in actually healing someone. That may not be something you want to do, at least not yet. So use the altar so that you can make a microcosm of who you are in this life. Use the altar for you. Heal yourself. If you have a question about your life, or you're going to change your job, or maybe you suddenly have an illness that has come into your life, them spend some time in front of your altar. Work with the powers that be.
The altar is for you in any way that you want to use it. My teachings are to help you to become healers - but healers not only of other people, but also of yourself, of the planet. So, don't feel pressure to use your altar to heal others. Just know that you can. To heal Mother Earth, we must first heal ourselves. And that is a very tall order, because perhaps we have been on this earthwalk a thousand times before. But there is a reason that you have chosen to be born at this time on this planet. And the reasons are clear. You have been born in a time when the healing of Mother Earth is imminent. And you would not be reading this if you did not have certain abilities.
The altar is for you. When you sit down at that altar, somehow your incredible energy changes. You will sit and look at your altar and say, "Oh yes, now I remember what my life is about." An altar is the microcosm of who you are and your life. Everything in your life should be represented on that altar. It is a most magnificent endeavor. Your task is to bring this altar together for yourself - not for anybody else - just for your own empowerment.
Copyright © 1992 by Lynn Andrews
