Category Archives: Enlightenment

All Roads Lead to Greece

1 Reply

It all started with the oracle cookies. I was Googling around and stumbled upon a chapter from Colette Baron-Reid’s book, Messages From Spirit: The Extraordinary Power of Oracles, Omens, and Signs, in which she describes Aleuromancy, or divination by flour. Intrigued, I read on and learned that the ancient Greeks wrote symbols on pieces of cloth or papyrus and rolled them into dough balls and baked them. The balls were then passed around and questions were asked of the Divine.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the cookies. Colette includes instructions for making a modern version of these confections using a big white bowl, a wooden spoon and a few very specific ingredients. I went back to look over the recipe and a sentence about Apollo and the Delphic Oracle caught my eye. I felt compelled to look up the Oracle immediately, and when I saw the image of the Pythia, I saw myself. I was transfixed.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) John Collier

Priestess of Delphi (1891) John Collier

I immediately did a screen grab of John Collier’s painting and sent it around to five of my closest friends asking them to tell me if they ‘got’ anything from looking at the image. That’s all I said; nothing more. Todd wrote back within five minutes with this: “It’s you, isn’t it?” And a week later when my trusted friend and mentor Angelika finally looked at the image, she started shrieking, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”, and she told me I must go to Delphi, I must go soon, and I must go alone. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Stephanie, a natural clairvoyant and healer, wrote: “Wow! This is a powerful image. I can see you in there––aspects of your strength that were still intact before there was a distortion. Reconnecting with this aspect of yourself will begin to heal the distortion that occurred between then and now.”

I never made the cookies. But I did book my trip to Greece.

The Journey Begins

2 Replies

I’ve felt a blog coming on for a very long time. I’ve managed to avoid it until now, but at last I feel I have something I want to share.

Let me start by telling you about the Blessing Moon. In Scott Blum’s book, Waiting for Autumn, a homeless man named Richard introduces him to a ritual that involves breathing in the energy of the moon. Our agrarian ancestors called the full moon in July the Blessing Moon because it’s the time of year when the earth begins to yield her bounty. According to Blum’s homeless friend, the Blessing Moon is the perfect time to begin a spiritual journey.

And so it was that I found this story on the very day of the full moon in July. I was entranced with the idea of breathing in the moon and I wanted to experience this ritual myself, perhaps because my own ancestors farmed land in Minnesota and in Norway. That night when the moon began to show itself, I positioned myself on my back porch and watched as it rose slowly over the treetops. When it was in full view, I raised both hands up on either side of my head, palms open, facing the moon just as Richard described to Scott. Then I lifted my head back and squinting at the moon, I breathed in the cold, crisp air.

I wish I could tell you that I experienced instant enlightenment, but of course, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us. I did feel slightly invigorated, though, and I vowed to revisit this practice each month. Since then, I’ve begun a meditation practice, I started a course in hands-on healing, I’ve begun working with my animal spirit guides, I’ve started writing down my soul, and I’ve booked a pilgrimage to Delphi. I have much to tell you about all of these things and more. And I have to tell you that at times I’m terrified! But that’s a good thing, right? As Duane Garrison Elliott, my former boss at Tiffany & Co. used to say,  “Do what terrifies you most––everything else is boring.”

So please join me on my journey. And as we go along, I hope you’ll share your stories with me.