The warm breezes of late summer carried the scent of pinion pine, juniper and sage across the mesa top. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote began to howl; soon its call was answered by others as they joined together to create an ancient song. Only a few feet from us, beneath a pinion tree, a doe stood, softly murmuring to her young fawn. There was energy in the air, swirling and growing, needing release. We waited patiently, silently, for the drama that was about to unfold. Suddenly, a streak of light flashed across the mesa top, shattering the illusion of darkness. It was followed by another, then dozens, even hundreds more, many of them cutting across the sky, others crashing to earth. During these brief, blinding flashes of light, we could see the gods of Navajo oral history revealed within the rock formations and the clouds. From our vantage point at the top of the mesa we witnessed the display of raw power as it blazed across the expansive horizon, completely and utterly surrounding us from every direction. My dear friend Bonnie and I swung silently in the hammock on the back porch, not needing to say anything to one another, but able to share the power and beauty of the experience without words as we watched the thunder beings dance across the sky.
My mind often wanders back to that magickal summer night in the high desert country above Moab Utah. This was to be the last such night I would spend on my beloved mesa for almost five years. Of the many things I longed for after I left the area, I may have missed these evenings the most. To some, it may seem like an odd fixation, especially considering that one of these storms left me critically injured and nearly took my life the previous year. But it is one of the many magickal things about the area; and it is one that deeply touched my soul, influenced my magickal practice and recharged my batteries so to speak.
I am not alone in my fascination with the power and energy that these storms bring. Thunder figures prominently in the Navajo oral history and represents healing and growth, the giving of life to the land. An example of this is "The Twelfth Song of Thunder," which is often sung to bring the life-giving rains during the Mountain Chant Ceremony.
The voice that beautifies the land!
The voice above,
The voice of the thunder.
Within the dark cloud
Again and again it sounds,
The voice that beautifies the land.
It is said in some stories that thunder is caused by the beating of the wings of the thunderbird, and that bolts of lighting flash from its eyes. Many cultures, ancient and modern, recognize a similar magickal creature. As a Scorpio, I am all too familiar with the association of my Sun sign with one of those, the phoenix, which is said to die and burn and rise again. One of the challenges of anyone born under this sign is that often, life circumstances give us cataclysmic change, and we are faced with many spiritual deaths in one lifetime.
Last summer I began a yearlong cycle of death and rebirth that I seem to have emerged from only slightly singed. As I approached the end of this cycle, I was able to reflect on the lessons I had learned and some of the choices I had made that led to the series of events that was the catalyst for change and growth.
Not long ago, as I was nearing the completion of this cycle, I looked in the mirror one day and said, "Who in the hell are you? I don't know you, and I'm not sure I like you." It became apparent to me that I had not arrived in the Pacific Northwest a whole person, at least not the person I was before I came here, and that I had allowed myself to become even more damaged after my arrival. How in the hell can we do magick if we're not ourselves? The answer is we can't, at least not effectively.
I realized that when I had hastily left Moab for a new job, stopping only briefly to pack up my stuff, that I had left more than a little bit of my heart there. I had left some significant pieces of my soul there as well. My spirit of adventure, my self-confidence, and other important parts of my soul were gone. I was a shell of my former self, and because of that, had allowed myself to make bad choices and fall into negative associations almost immediately on my arrival here almost five years ago.
I had also driven myself to mental and physical exhaustion by filling every moment of every day with work or responsibility of one form or another, in order to avoid realizing that something was missing. I honestly don't know how I kept up that pace for so many years without causing myself some serious harm. I had pretty much already "crashed and burned" and once I recognized what I had been doing to myself, and how much of myself I had lost, I finally realized what I needed to do. I needed to make room for that phoenix to grow and spread its wings, but in order to do that I had to give it a healthy place to do so.
Since I've had some training in soul retrieval, it seems that it would be simple to get the "old me" back. All I needed to do was journey inward, travel back to the times and places where the "soul fragments" were lost and reintegrate them. I have done this before for myself and others, and thought it would be easy to find the various manifestations of the "old me" that had been lost or wounded through trauma, miscommunication or a feeling of having been wronged. I would then allow them to confront and take charge of any issue that caused the fragmentation and invite them back with me, thus filling up the empty places where they used to reside.
The ancestors and the gods were having none of it, however. Nothing of this nature is ever simple for me. I have never worked magick the way others teach or explain it. I don't "see" auras, I feel them. Meditations don't usually work when I set out to do them intentionally, but I have had some extremely profound visions in the bathroom. My "second sight" is never straightforward, but instead presents its self in the form of a riddle to figure out. Heck, my banshee doesn't even wail. True to my Scorpio nature, my life lessons have always been intense challenges, which in the past have often manifested as serious physical injury and near-death experiences. There is no reason that I should have thought this would be easy.
I found a quiet place and attempted to do the journeywork that would facilitate the soul retrieval process. No matter how hard I tried, all I got were visions of the desert and visions of the woman I had been at one time. She was there, but in the distance, frustratingly out of reach. I saw the woman who rowed the rapids of the Colorado River without fear, the woman who laughed too loudly with friends at the Moab Brewery and the woman who lived her life on her own terms, passionately, and did it without apology. I remembered the woman who found joy in every sunrise and sunset, who was moved by the way the red canyon walls were reflected in the surface of the river and who practiced a balance between work and play and give and take. The most important thing I found was the woman that liked and respected herself. Damn I wanted her back.
Suddenly, I was faced with one last image of the "old me" before she faded away. I got a brief glimpse of the woman who used to jump in her truck at the drop of a hat and take off on cross-country road trips. So I only had $12 and an almost maxed-out Chevron card. The woman I was going back to find wouldn't have let that stop her.
One Saturday morning I hopped in my truck and began my journey. Once the constant barrage of cell phone calls from friends checking on my safety and questioning why any "sane" woman would even consider driving thousands of miles alone abated, the journey began in earnest. As I drove I could feel my muscles relaxing and my energy centers opening. The stress of the last five years was being released. Rather than leaving me empty, this release was creating room for fond memories, anticipation and a place for that little phoenix to begin to grow.
It was then that I realized that I was experiencing each of the elements in the weather patterns. This was one of many epiphanies I would have on this trip. I always use the four elements when blessing or cleansing a sacred space or ritual item. Is my own soul any less sacred and worthy of cleansing than a new apartment or deck of tarot cards? Obviously, before I could reintegrate fragments and heal my soul, I needed to bless and fill it with those same elements to create a place for healing and growth. I began to notice the patterns of the elements I was encountering along the way and allowed them to do their own magick. Snow fell on Snoqualmie Pass, clouds that looked like dragons chasing each other across the sky greeted me in Eastern Oregon and dust devils danced across the highway in southern Idaho. The only thing that was missing was fire. There was no lighting.
I came to understand that since moving to the Pacific Northwest I had placed myself in somewhat of an "elemental imbalance." Down in Moab, being surrounded by the red earth was like being held in the embrace of the mother. Fire shone down from the sky in the form of a sun hotter and more intense than we know here. It also manifested in the powerful thunderstorms that cut across the summer skies. Here in the Pacific Northwest, I deal primarily with the elements of water and air. The fire element seems almost absent at times and the earth itself is covered by vegetation. I made a mental note to myself to bring more fire and earth into my life upon my return.
I spoke to my friend Bonnie the next afternoon and she told me that they were experiencing one of the thunderstorms that we loved so much. I could feel the power and excitement even from several hundred miles away. I couldn't wait to get back and experience it. When I arrived on the mesa of Canyonlands National Park, I was disappointed to find that the storm had already blown through. Where were the thunder beings?
My minor disappointment was soon forgotten as we sat on the back porch drinking wine and watching a spectacular sunset the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else on earth. Later that night, stars that can only been seen in an area at high elevation and devoid of light pollution graced the sky and filled my spirit. How could I have forgotten all the nights I spent in the southeast Utah wilderness under those stars? It felt as though bits of my soul were reintegrating, even though I wasn't doing the formal work or facing the "old me" as I had been trained to do.
The next day we went hiking in familiar places. The smell of cliff rose wafted through the canyons. Indian paintbrush, globe mallow, and scorpion weed colored the sides of the trail as the hot summer sun warmed our shoulders. Every plant, rock and bird felt familiar, and I could sense the spirits dwelling in the canyon greeting me like old friends. I felt an increasing fullness in my heart and a sense of well-being. Another piece seemed to have reintegrated itself without my knowing it. I could deal with the fact that the soul retrieval wasn't working like it was "supposed to." I'm used to that. I never seem to sense or do anything the way other people do. But something was still missing. I looked out at the La Sal Mountains, and knew that the thunderheads were not building up for a storm as I had hoped.
The following evening we drove down into town. My heart began to swell as we crossed my beloved Colorado River, and that recurring fullness and increasing wholeness told me that yet another piece had settled into place. Perhaps everything I had been taught about soul retrieval just didn't fit in this case. I didn't have any specific trauma or wounded selves to pick up. The things that fill my soul were all around me, and I just needed to be open to them.
I sat down to dinner with several friends on an outdoor patio overlooking the red rocks and discovered more and more pieces of my soul. They weren't just in the canyons, on the mesas and in the river. They were in the memories of my friends and in the eyes they saw me with. There were tall tales of river trips and rescues in the parks, funny stories and gentle teasing for dumb things we had all done and memories of Full Moon bike rides and raft trips. As we shared pizza and beer through the warm summer night, more and more of my soul seemed to have reemerged. As the stories were told, it struck me. I didn't need to journey inward. I only needed to remember who I was. Our perceptions of ourselves are distorted by our own critical natures. Sadly enough, when we look in the mirror, most of us don't see the good and beauty in ourselves that other see.
I spent another week and a half visiting friends, hot springs, mountains and places that are sacred to me in Utah and Colorado. With each visit and each story that was shared, my reintegration became more complete. It was as if I was picking up a piece of a puzzle from each person and place I visited.
Soon it was time to head back to the Pacific Northwest and to life I had created and then re-created for myself here. As I crossed the Colorado River Bridge, I felt a slight tugging at my heart, but it was not painful like the first time I left. I was leaving as a whole person, and somewhere I heard a voice say, "You'll be back." As I drove north across the desert, I could see a thunderstorm in the rear-view mirror. I could hear the thunder beings laughing as if it was all a good game. They stayed with me all three days of the return trip, teasing me with raindrops and the occasional clap of thunder and flash of lighting, but all the while staying back. I could feel the phoenix stirring, but it was not yet ready.
Almost a month later, as my friend Barb and I were sitting at Point Defiance Park listening to music at the "Taste of Tacoma," a strange and wonderful thing happened. I became acutely aware of the earth I was sitting on; the moist scent of hummus was strong, and I felt a gentle buzz of energy. A quiet mist was falling from the sky, which only moments ago had been warm and sunny. The air carried the smell of cedar on gentle breezes. My energy centers were blissfully open, and a great sense of peace and relaxation coursed through me. The energy soon changed and became more intense. Thunderheads built up in the summer sky, the winds began to howl, the trees began to sway and lighting began to crackle all around. Thunder shook the ground and rain began to fall. Someone in the audience had been blowing bubbles, and hundreds of them were swirling in all different directions, carried in a frenzied dance by the erratic winds. It was as if the nature spirits, enjoying the music, were having a party. As others ran for shelter and the band began to cover their instruments, I felt the phoenix take flight, and knew that I had come full circle. Then, I sat there in the rain and laughed.