To Be a Queen of Fire

I feel like I’m neglecting this place (Syrens, on the other hand, is getting updated like crazy…) so I thought I’d ramble a little bit about tarot cards and the kind of space I’m in right now.

I’ve written, before, about the tarot deck I use — the art work is lovely, and the images talk to me really well (I think I got lucky that way — I found my talking deck pretty quickly, whereas I know there are people out there who go though half a dozen sets of cards before they find one that speaks clearly to them).  I’m glad I’ve got it.  It’s… providing some inspiration in the rest of my life.

See, I’m trying to explore and develop my own sense of power – in terms of personal empowerment, yes, but also in terms of influence on others.  And what is Fire but the suit/seat of Power?  Fire is Action.  It’s confidence and drive and expansion, and all the rest of it, and those are things that I really need to be cultivating in myself right now.

The Queen of Fire in my deck is named Sharing. I love the description of her as one who lives so expansively, who is so sure of herself and the abundance within and around her that she just doesn’t think in terms of fear or scarcity or shame.  These days, I’m trying to hold her up to myself as a model of how to act in the world, in my home, and inside my own head. It’s a very new situation for me because, all my life, I’ve understood my own strengths through the lenses of Forest and (even more-so) Ocean. Now here I am trying to work Fire into myself (it feels a bit like I’m playing a really high-stakes game of rock-paper-scissors, actually).

Wish me luck.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden

Hematite (And Some Serious Woo)

So. I recently made something for my girlfriend. She’s been under a lot of stress lately and she needed a little help carrying it.

Out of the blue she asked me what hematite is, because the word just floated through her head unbidden.  I told her it was iron ore, that it absorbed negative stuff, that it’s a good grounding stone and, incidentally, that I also have a heap of it in my beading bag.  How convenient.  Of course this was exactly what she needed in her life right then.
So I made her a hematite pendant (three, stacked 8mm hematite spheres on a twist of silver wire) and strung it on a strip of red leather lacing (personally significant, plus the colour looks really good on her), and she hasn’t taken it off since. 🙂  She’s says it’s really doing the trick, which is excellent news, and I don’t mind telling you.

 

It’s funny. As a jeweler, I pull these groups of stones together and, by and large, I’m doing it for aesthetic reasons.  I don’t think (much, if at all) about what kind of influences I’m sending off to be hung from the ears of strangers.

Take, for example, my piece “The Sea with it’s Deepness” (yes, I did a collection based on the poem in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Even with all the very xian references and the Noble Savage tropes in the actual book, I’ve still always enjoyed that poem).  I made it from lapis lazuli, iolite, and pearls.  Near as I can tell, I’ve managed to make a pair of earrings that would work for fostering healing and compassion in their wearer. Unintentionally.

 

So that brings me to a question: In magic, Intent is a significant part of the deal. But I’m wondering: Have you ever been in a situation where (to pick an example totally and completely at random) you badly needed to learn how to communicate or desperately confused by the swirling maelstrom inside your own head… and also found yourself going “Oo! Shiny!” at every piece of Sodalite you came across?

I wonder if we aren’t drawn to certain stones (or plants or whatever) because they correspond to something that we need to strengthen in our lives.

 

(How weird is it that I can yack about spell-craft and ingredient lists and correspondences in the practical sense of things, but when I start talking about “manifesting” things into your life I end up going “Okay, this is too much Woo for me…”. Anyway).

 

So that’s my thoughts about that.

 

– TTFN,
– Meliad the Birch Maiden