Category Archives: Path of the Witch

Embracing Slow Living: A Spring Break Reflection

1 Reply

Hi ya’ll. Haven’t visited WP in quite some time. I’m reveling in the quiet meanderings of spring break. Yes, it finally arrived, and not a minute too soon. My pup, Poppie, is visiting till Friday. She is the best-est companion, happy little sassy soul. To savor slow living is truly the greatest gift of all.

During my morning meditation and reading, the Opulent card came forward (Magick of You Oracle). There are times when I draw a card that simply doesn’t resonate as much as the others in a reading, appears the opposite of what I’m thinking and feeling, and likely for good reason! Here is the insight offered in the guidebook:

There is great wisdom in going with life’s flow and choosing battles, conflicts and accepting change wisely and peacefully. There is also a time to assert your authority and trust your wisdom and leadership skills. People and situations are now looking to you for guidance. Wear your success and assets proudly – they are well earned. It’s time to be a light so that others may follow.

The girl of Opulence wears the lavish golden crown of leadership. It emits a radiant glow and signifies spiritual enlightenment as well as earthly accomplishment. Being in an exalted position gives you the opportunity to be a wise leader and help others, much like happiness is only real when shared, and being exalted only meaningful when it helps others.

I’m not a leader of anything, except that of my own life. Wear your success and assets proudly – they were well earned, resounds. What I’ve accomplished over the past three years has been no small feat. “Being in an exalted position” speaks to me of privilege. Using my position of privilege means helping others. Since childhood, I’ve felt a deep call to help others. I didn’t know then what I know now, however, that helping others comes at a cost – that of your own health and wellbeing if not tended to properly.

There is a ritual included with each oracle card, and this one is: The Light of Leadership. It calls the querent to write a list of their personally perceived best assets and accomplishments, then ask someone who knows you well what they think your best assets and accomplishements are. Finally, the querent is called to ask a stranger what they perceive might be useful and advantageous to you. So, I ask, dear reader, if you might be so inclined to send what you perceive might be useful and advantageous to me. I would sincerely appreciate it. No inappropriate comments please, as they will be promptly removed. This is the initial part of the ritual.

Here is what I came up with regarding my list of personally perceived assets and accomplishments:

  • Wisdom
  • Kindness
  • Compassion
  • Musical ability
  • Resilience
  • Strong intuition
  • Achieved LCSW | earned somatic sound practitioner certification (ugh another certification)
  • Wrote a book
  • Divorce
  • Independence and freedom
  • Confidence
  • Motherhood

The purpose of the ritual is to shine your light into dark places where needed. Subsequently, an opportunity to allow yourself to shine may appear in which you can be of help to others. Whether you believe in magic or not, it’s a fun little ritual that can only bring more light into the world.

Perhaps the call to assert your leadership skills as indicated in the meaning of this card symbolizes the need to be the leader of my own life, to claim my personal soverignty and power. After all, I am finally free, well mostly free. It took forever to get here, and I must carry on.

FYI, oracle cards are highly subjective and intuitive. They do not predict the future, but encourage self-reflection and honesty with oneself.

Cheers!

Glorious Music

4 Replies

Have you ever been so moved by a piece of music that you cry? I have. I do.

For days, I’ve felt drawn to listen to Max Richter’s, On the Nature of Light. Are you familiar with it? It’s easily one of my favorite contemporary classical pieces of music. I love all of Max Richter’s works Too busy to tune in earlier, as I wanted to give the music my full attention, I found the quiet of this morning the perfect time. I sat with headphones on, hands crossed over my heart, and let the music hold space. I literally shed tears, so captured was I. I felt so many different emotions simultaneously. In my journal I made a list: ecstasy, sorrow, despair, sadness, transcendence, love, intimacy, desire, longing, yearning, hope, sublime, magick, forgiveness, tenderness, tolerance, caress, breath, movement, darkness, light, breathlessness, expression, expansion, transformation, warmth, belief, faith, embrace, connection, self-love, heart, grief, loss, glimmer, truth…And yet words are truly insufficient to describe this kind of magic. I had this piece on repeat as I flowed through my morning tarot read. The first card, Art (Temperance in RWS system) – Making anything you do a work of art; friendship between mind and heart; rest and activity; light and dark; self and others; taking a creative or aesthetic approach, viewing the situation with an artistic eye.

Music saves again and again. My first love, likely my last! I recall playing the piano for hours, eyes closed, in a tiny practice room at Centenary College. Just me and Beethoven or Chopin, or Mozart. No fear or judgment. No pressure to please an audience or play perfectly. Connection to the keyboard, sound, frequency, vibration. It was sublime. In today’s heavy, heavy world, music is the only perfection, always a safe connection.

I stumbled upon an artist new to me, Yannic Lowack. The piece featured below is called Leuer, another work that brings me to tears. He posted a small sample of an orchestral version, no piano, on his Instagram – you can find him on YouTube and IG.

I hear the piano calling to me, calling me back to who I was, a musician and lover of the expressive arts. I’ve been away far too long.

things inspiring me at the turn of a new year

4 Replies

The turning of a new year feels like a threshold. A liminal space where the old hasn’t fully released and the new is still forming. I’m approaching this year with reverence and a willingness to listen.

I’m inspired by emptiness and pause, by moving slowly enough to feel my breath, my body, and the subtle ways intuition speaks. Though I’m nearly 60, this season is teaching me that becoming is a spiritual process, not something to force, but something to tend. I often feel like I’m learning things I wish I’d practiced in my 40s.

Music, art, and tarot are my spiritual anchors. Music connects me to vibration and frequency, but also to younger years, to innocence and curiosity, adventure and fearlessness. Music brings me back into rhythm when I feel scattered, and art is a devotional practice, a way of communing with the divine through color, texture, and movement. It allows emotion to alchemize into meaning without needing explanation.

Tarot is my sacred mirror. Not a tool for prediction, but a language of images and symbols that invite dialogue with my soul. Each card is an invitation to slow down, to notice what is stirring beneath the surface, and to trust my inner wisdom over all the external noise.

My rituals tend to be simple yet intentional. Making my morning cup of coffee. Lighting a candle before I begin. Playing music with awareness. Creating without an outcome in mind. Pulling a card and sitting with its message as a form of prayer. These practices ground me in the present moment and remind me that spirituality lives in attention, not performance, and for one who has struggled with crippling performance anxiety, it is an invitation to let go.

This year, I’m choosing devotion over productivity, alignment over striving. I’m honoring rest as sacred and simplicity as a form of truth. I’m learning to recognize the divine in ordinary moments: A familiar melody, light through my window, the quiet companionship of my beloved pup.

As I step into this new year, I am trying my best to do so with soft faith. Trusting timing, the unseen, and allowing life to unfold as it will. Let me be guided by sound, symbol, and creative spirit, for they are truly the languages through which my soul remembers what it already knows.

Down memory lane. Oh, how I loved classic rock growing up. This playlist stirs up cherished memories, a sense of innocence and curiosity, and the wild, adventurous spirit of those years.

 

Honor Rest & Renewal on Samhain

Leave a reply

Today, I pause. I breathe. I rest and honor my ancestors on this blessed Samhain.

I’m grateful to have the day off – to simply be. To sit in stillness and solitude without the weight of expectation feels like a blessing in itself. The veil is thin today, and I lean into the presence of those who came before me – my birth mother and father, and the lineage of ancestors whose names I may never know. I honor them, and I honor the mystery that connects us across time and space.

Lately, life has felt full and demanding. I’m working full-time again, and though I hoped summer break would bring the restoration I so deeply needed, fatigue seems to have returned too soon. Halfway through the fall semester, I find myself wondering how to sustain balance – how to counsel others, meet the demands of my current job while not forgetting myself.

My dream remains clear: To eventually transition into full-time sound therapy work. Supporting my adult daughter these past two years has delayed that shift, yet I hold faith that in time, things will align. When she finds her footing, I’ll be able to step more fully into the work my heart longs for, creating healing spaces through resonance, stillness, and sound.

Despite the challenges, I’m proud of the small steps forward. I’ve completed my website, OM Sacred Sound Journeys, a milestone that feels like planting a tiny seed. Beginning next February, I’ll offer bi-weekly sound therapy sessions, a sacred rhythm I hope will grow into something sustainable and nourishing. 

I’m reconnecting with my musical roots, singing and playing for a herd I once worked with in equine-assisted psychotherapy and slowly returning to my guitar after years away. These small acts of reconnection remind me that healing unfolds gradually, as does starting a private practice.

Self-employment feels both thrilling and terrifying. The freedom to follow my calling is overshadowed by the very real worries of bills, rent, health insurance, and all the practicalities of life. Yet amidst uncertainty, I sense that this path is where I’m meant to go.

So today, under the quiet light of Samhain, I choose rest. I choose reflection. I choose to listen deeply to the whispers of my ancestors, to the call of my own heart, and to stillness. May this season bring renewal, remembrance, and faith in what is yet to come.

Photo by Catherine Crawford on Unsplash

Lotus Summer

2 Replies

Greetings! I’m enjoying the last few days of summer before I head back to work. Tomorrow. I must say, I look forward to Fall and the change of season. Mabon falls on September 22nd, which gives me something to look forward to. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, summer has been immensely restorative; I’ll refer to it as Lotus Summer. Lotus flowers are deeply symbolic in many cultures. Lotuses grow in murky, shallow waters. They rise from the mud without stain, and are therefore viewed as a symbol of purity. Because they return to the water in the evening and open their blooms at the break of day, lotuses represent strength, resilience, and rebirth, as well as transcendence: The lotus symbolizes the human spirit transcending over worldly matter since it blooms from the underworld into the light. I feel, in many ways, like the Lotus.

It’s been a summer of exploring themes around death and rebirth, cycles, beginnings and endings, blooming, rising up from the mud. When last semester ended, I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. It dawned on me recently how little I accounted for the impact of divorce on my wellbeing. I was functioning on adrenaline those first several months of the divorce proceedings. And when it wore off, I plummeted. I’ve discovered that there’s much literature on the impact of divorce on individuals, how it affects their work lives, relationships, and emotional and physical health. I grossly underestimated my ability to manage work, the loss of my dog and support of my daughter, financial instability, three moves, starting over. I thought I was stronger, better, more capable, more confident. But I sank, and I’m usually a stronger swimmer than that.

It’s now late summer – Rebirth. I am standing, not sinking. The divorce no longer feels like a black hole. There are moments of deep sadness and grief. I’m not sure one ever gets over it completely. That’s just me. A friend of mine, a psychotherapist who divorced years ago, told me to expect a three-year-mucking-through-shit; my sound healing mentor, also divorced, said give it five. I rolled my eyes. How little did I know. It’s year two.

I read recently,

The lessons we learn along our journey and the pains that come along with them are but stages on the wheel of regeneration.

Death Doula Oracle – author & photographer – Theodore Saint & Chris Williams

Indeed. So much gratitude for the time off to recover, to regenerate. Solitude and rest were the medicine, and making the request to change my 12-month contract to academic year may have saved my life. I have spent everyday this summer writing and recently took to collaging my journals. Can’t wait to collage my next. Also into drawing dragons of late. Interestingly, I barely listened to any music; much more preferred silence. The only other time I could not bear to listen to music was after the death of my first dachshund, Peppermint. I’m slowly weaving my way back to some favorite artists and bands from the 80s – that era holds a certain nostalgia in my heart that’s quite comforting. And, I miss my younger self. I’ve shared a few moments of summer inspiration here.

And, on I go. Wishing you all a beautiful day. Stop and marvel at the tiny things that bring you joy and pleasure. May you tend to the soil of YOU!

-Photos above were taken at Laguna Beach, CA, by moi on a venture with a friend.

-Yummy matcha coffee & garden pics taken at Anima Mundi Apothecary in Venice, CA.

-My collaged journal-Summer theme: Death/rebirth/exploring the shadows within.

-Little dragon ouroboros drawing-not yet finished, but I’ll eventually get to it.

-Purchase the Death Doula Oracle cards here. They’re powerful cards for working with themes around transition, transformation, death, endings and are absolutely gorgeous.

Feature Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash