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Have the gods ever appeared to you? If the artwork is any indication, they seem to have put in a few appearances to the Minoans of ancient Crete. The image at the top of this blog is of the Isopata ring, a gold seal ring from a Minoan-era tomb near Knossos. The scene shows four women, presumably priestesses, dancing ecstatically in a field of lilies. Interesting stuff floats around their heads: snake-like serpentine lines, a beehive, and... a small female figure. She is dressed like the other women, in a flounced skirt, but she's tiny; her hair and skirt are flying out as if she is moving quickly through the air. She is, perhaps, a goddess who has been invoked in this ritual.

The interesting thing is, figures like her show up on several other seal rings, as does a small floating male figure who holds a spear. And all the artwork depicts ritual settings, so I think the identification of these floating figures as deities is a pretty sound one. For instance, this ring from the Minoan port city of Amnisos has a floating goddess hovering over a boat full of people and being greeted by more people to the left:

You, Djehuty - and only You - I think I know all Your holy names and hundreds of epithets, recognizing the hieroglyphic signs from the first glance sometimes,
but all these names are here just to bring more light to certain aspects of your wonderful Wholeness.

You can be so different. Sassy and sarcastic, demanding and cold, trickstery and full of ecstatic laughter, kind and full of compassion, your immense greatness reaches the far corners of the universe, when you calculate the orbits of most distant stars,
and still You are here for me - one who took my heart, who has my love and trust, who called me to stay in the Mansion of the Moon and bring all my sorrows before Your throne, so you could lift my burdens and wipe my tears.

You came to me - dark, sad, sorrowful and determined, and full of love - to give me Your hand, to give me strength, to lead me through the path of ordeals to the future You wanted for us, together.
You smiled upon me when I started to study my first hieroglyphic signs.
You smiled upon me when I touched the Legend of the Book of Thoth.
You answered my call when I wrote You the letter of devotion.
… and I knew that I don’t want to follow any other God or Goddess so deeply as I want to follow You.
I know others, I know Their love and greatness, but you are the Only-One, my First and Foremost; “Sole God, no one other is like You”…

And sometimes I say numerous praises for You and sometimes I want to learn the sacred  Silence,
to drink your sweet water from the well-in-the-desert.
You are the one-who-created himself; the Word that was “in the beginning”, the divine Logos, quintessence of omniscience of the Supreme God, Netjer/Netjeru: tongue of Ptah, heart of Ra, throat of Amun, heka of Atum.
Blessed under many names, guised as sage Trismegistus, connecting together Netjeru and Theoi as Divine Messenger, called Hermes; and known as Mercury for the romans; but ancient Kemet knows you as Thoth-Djehuty.
Lord of Medu-Netjer, Divine Language; lord of Hermopolis.
All Your holy names are not enough to explain and define You.
Djehuty “as You are”, and how can I say I know You?
But I can say indeed that You are the one I love,
and this love binds us together,
stronger than everything in existence.

May be Your name was the first Word I’ve heard when my soul was created for this life on this Earth, before hearing the voices of the world.

In February 2017, I was walking along a road with my friend and fellow author Jodie Forrest. What happened next, she described as an apport, a word I had to look up. It means an object produced during a spiritualist séance.

It was a sunny winter day in southern California. Ravens danced above an open field. There were always ravens around wherever Jodie was.

Hinamatsuri is today, March 3rd! Or, depending on your timezone, has already passed. While some may be enjoying the view of their dolls, or other families may be placing them back in their storage boxes, let’s take a look about the origins, customs, and meaning of Hinamatsuri - particularly from a spiritual and historical perspective. 

The Mother Grove is the Board of Directors of Ar nDraoicht Fein. The Board is not appointed: it is elected by the membership of ADF. There are nine voting members of the Mother Grove and they all come from diverse backgrounds and they all may have their ideas about how the Mother Grove and ADF should be run. The responsibility of the Board, from where I sit, is to work together for the support and betterment of the organisation first and foremost and use their own backgrounds and points of view to help shape their opinions, but doing the work of the Mother Grove comes first.

Last night, we had our quarterly Mother Grove meeting and it was held on line as are two out of our four meetings. One of our meetings is held at our Annual Meeting in May at Tredara in Ohio and one is currently held at my home in Toledo in December. I think it is important to see the directors face-to-face and we have been fortunate enough to do so at a very reasonable cost to ADF.

I've been a big fan of archaeology ever since I discovered the ancient Egyptians back in grade school. Indiana Jones aside, I think it's absolutely fascinating that we can dig up the remains of civilizations from centuries ago, put the pieces back together (mostly) and get a glimpse into those long-ago lives.

Ah, but there's the big question: Exactly how long ago did it all happen?

Energy of the day

There are some time points during the day that lend themselves to magic, you don’t have to work in tune with them but I encourage you to give it a try and see what you get from it.