Hello folks. I'm on the open road, discovering a sense of possibility and questing for a personal direction or a sense of purpose beyond the general save-the-world thing. Really I believe this means I'm looking for a place to belong to, a grounded central space to put down roots, to move and have my being. It's fitting that the tarot card I'm working on at the moment (as part of a new and exciting art project!) is the Ace of Pentacles, which embodies exactly such potential, the energy of the seed and keeping things safely in hand for another season of growth. For now each day is full and the uncertainty is a welcome expectation of change. I thank several artists for my new outlook: Ben Karis-Nix for his excellent album We Are Giants Now, a beautiful artistic rendering of the state of flow that I've been trying to cultivate. I play it when spinning poi and lately while driving. And Big Sam's Funky Nation, the New Orleans funk band that I heard live. Big Sam plays the trombone, wears sunglasses in a dimly lit bar, and dances fit to beat all in his very shiny shoes. He even smiled at me. I doubt I will ever buy a funk album because I don't see how it could duplicate the extraordinary experience that occurred in that bar. The guitar twanged away, the brass reverberated and suddenly the whole audience was swimming, as if in a fishbowl, moving through water, not air, and Big Sam performed spectacularly. He told everybody to shake it, pointing with his trombone, and they did. I swam through the best hour of my life completely sober yet in a deep experiential state of wonder, and I drove home with complete confidence, yet the familiar storefronts I passed looked new to me, like I was driving through someone else's hometown. This has stuck with me in my travels, but it began in the place that for so long I called home. Not the meaning of life, but the experience of being alive, someone told me, that's what you are searching for, what we are all searching for. An interesting idea, like a trail of incense smoke dissipating over a crowded street. Nostrils flared, I'm ready to follow it to its source.

What I thought about last night and what I am right now, these are things not taken lightly. I dreamed a burning house. I was the house and the dreamer. I burned myself and I was relief in the wake of those ashes. The clarity. And I think that the house was unwanted. And if there was anything that I needed, I didn't need what was in the house, the house was wrong.
There are hours of the day where I have time to myself. I go infinitely in, like the hanged man on the card. If there was something for me to do I would keep it to myself. A true meaning presents itself. And the fortune on the cookie left ripples in the air. If there was a message written on a little slip of paper... A man reads a fortune cookie and has a perfect realization. What happened, what brought him to that dawning? What were the events that made so much sense when he read that slip of paper? If we could be so lucky, our lives would fit like novels into sense and cohesion, ended by two books, one beginning, one closing, and all the threads neatly tied. But the center of self cannot hold in coheshion without sacrificing a swim. The neurotic drowns in water he was meant to swim in. The mystic swims in the sea. I think I'm setting out in a boat. If all the docks are dry where do the ducks go in winter?
I am on a journey. What house will I build to replace the one that burned? I think I will live in the old and worn house of Joseph Campbell. I will walk the tattered floor where I felt vertigo. I will converse with pale clapboards and the slate-grey sky. I will associate with the wind.

Offering Healing Sessions & Tarot Readings

Hi folks,

Most of you know how concerned I am with the fate of the environment and with the large social rifts that keep our society separated from nature. I have been developing tools that I think can be applied to help heal the environment, to heal individuals and to heal wounds in our communal psychology. In addition to finishing my formal schooling for conservation and ecology, I have had the privilege and the good fortune to be in the exact right place and time to receive instruction in Plant Spirit Healing from an excellent teacher, Pam Montgomery, and in permaculture design from Starhawk through Earth Activist Training.

The courses I have been taking have been amazing, and I'm eager to share and explain and geek out to anyone even half-interested. AND: I have mostly paid for the tuition for these classes, and I could use a little help making ends meet.

Here's where your support can help me:

I offer to share my services in these new skills I am learning, and you can support me in two ways: by asking for my help, you will give me a much-needed opportunity to practice, and in exchange for my services I am requesting donations to go towards paying the balance of my tuition.

I am offering consultation sessions in PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE. This alternative healing modality gently and powerfully works on an energetic level to heal the spiritual and energetic causes of illnesses. I am just learning these techniques, and I would be delighted to work with people who understand that I need practical experience and who are open to healing in whatever form it may take, even simply an honest dialogue. I will of course remain completely confidential.

I am ALSO offering TAROT READINGS for those interested. Tarot is a divination tool that reveals how to bring into balance the symbolic archetypes that are influencing your life. More than simply reading your future, tarot maps the forces converging on your soul's path, and can shed light on how to navigate those forces.

Typicaly a professional healer charges $60 per hour, or they may have a sliding pay scale, and a professional tarot reader charges $40 for a full reading. Because I am in training and I view this as a learning opportunity for myself and a charitable act on your part, I suggest donating whatever portion of the fee that you feel is feasible, but I would really appreciate $20. And keep in mind that donations will be used specifically to pay for the healing courses I have described.

You can contact me by email: daniellemarielaberge@gmail.com, to arrange a meeting, or to arrange a time for a phone conversation. Please do not feel shy about asking me, and thank you for your support.

Keep shining!

Love and Thanks,

Danielle

The chariot

I see the charge of my task as a rocking horse on the tidal sands of a beach. This horse is stationary like the Chariot in the tarot deck, yet they both contain the meaning of direction. One foot in water, and one on land, the charioteer brings together opposites, light and dark, to guide them in the same direction, steering opposite forces to move in a productive direction. At the moment, I stand in an estuarine environment, a changing borderland where forces impact and diffuse, bleed one into the other. The question that the charioteer must answer: does this movement carry me closer to my goal? And then comes the knowledge that headlong pursuit may be ruinous. As the chariot draws up alongside its opponent it is victorious. The chariot says that victory is what happens after the battle, the governing of a new kingdom, and drawing from that polarity into a united directed purpose.

I've been reading tarot cards a lot lately. I received a beautiful set called the Spiral Tarot, with art by Kay Stevenson, as a gift. I have heard many rumors about the correct way to treat a tarot deck and the manners in which it should be used. One such myth says that a tarot card must not be purchased by the user, but should be received by some other means. I take this to be the same kind of superstition that says you should never buy opals for yourself, because it's bad luck. Then again, I have never bought myself anything with opal gemstones... However, this deck matches my own character fairly well, I find the spirals on the back cover personally significant, and the paintings are rich and organic, almost overflowing (yes, there are pastels and flowers and it's very optimistic, but I'm a pisces, ok?).
I have friends who do not want to know their future (a perfectly respectable attitude). When I consult this deck for practice and give myself personal readings, I've heard people remark that it's dangerous, as if I'm tempting fate by looking too often into something best left alone. My counter is that I don't know anything more about my future than before I read the cards. I get a hazy impression that certain forces are present, forces which I have already identified to be working in my life, and it is those forces to which I attribute the cards' meanings. Once I have read the cards, I incorporate the images into my story of the present moment, and they fade into my memory, leaving only the impression of mysterious knowledge, acknowledgement of hidden meaning. No wonder fortune tellers can create such a veil of mystery around them, the meaning of the cards is so opaque that one forgets the significance even as one discovers it. I am not certain that tarot cards tell us anything beyond the symbolism that speaks to our unconscious in the present. By doing frequent readings on myself, I am learning what the cards mean in the context of my experience, so I can understand them better. I am learning the language of the symbols.
The card I'm concerned with today is the Moon, one of my favorite cards in the deck.
Thirteen's observations on the tarot are very apt for this card. I'm especially enamored of the description of the moonlit landscape as a land of lunatics and poets. This is a card ruled by Pisces, and it is incredibly beautiful, powerful, and dark, ruling as it does over dreams and nightmares alike. You can become lost in this darkness and wander aroud howling at the moon, but this card has real guidance in it as well, if you will listen for it. Let yourself be guided by intuition through the emotional and mental rollercoaster ride that will surely follow. For surrendering and following a higher purpose through the night, allowing yourself to be led, your reward will be inspiration, visions, and creative genius. I also see the threefold Feminine Mystery represented in this card, and note that the moon has a light and a dark side. It's power lies in receptivity and reflection. The lunar cycle aligns the tides and our own bodies. This is a card of artistic vocation, though you must decide whether to listen to the voices calling you and take up the endeavor. You are not in control of the nighttime muse, though you decide whether or not to become a vessel for her.