Reflecting On My Journey

– and on the writing of it here

I'm surprised and a little confused that I set out to write about my journey in magic, as many people had requested, only to find myself sharing other aspects of my life – family stuff, student days, love and marriage, psychotherapy....

Perhaps this makes more sense if I regard my journey as being about healing, a broader focus which includes the magic. Like many witches, I see magic primarily as a tool for healing. And of course I have others, most notably Reiki but not only that. I have learned and often incorporate a variety of other methods of energy healing, too. Also the psychic readings and mediumship, in the way I do them, are forms of counselling.

I could even include poetry. It's my art before it is anything else – and as well, many times in many situations, it has been healing for me to make it. Other people sometimes tell me they experience it as healing to read or hear. I don't do it as therapy, for myself or anyone else, but it can and does serve that purpose.

One of my life cards in the Tarot is the Hermit, the Wounded Healer, who is also the Way Shower. Looking over my life as I have started to write it here, I see very clearly that it has been a journey of self-healing on many levels. And I see that it has not been solely for myself. While it has indeed been for me, that's not where the story finishes. The message of the Hermit card, particularly as interpreted by my favourite Voyager™ Tarot, is that I learn how to heal myself so successfully that I can then show others how to do it for themselves.

And then – saying the same thing in a slightly different way – my Spiritual Astrology book tells me that, as life goes on, I will find that all the things I accomplish for myself are actually meant to be shared with other people. It happens that I teach Reiki, Tarot, Creative Writing ... and have done so for many years.

What I've written at this blog so far is clearly a first draft, or worse – a hodge-podge, jumping all over the place chronologically and in its focus. But now that I've understood the pattern and (unconscious) organisation of my life, I think it will be easier to structure a final draft later.

My dear friend Katherine, a healer and visionary, told me long ago, 'You ARE Reiki. Poetry is what you do; Reiki is what you are.'

My magical mentor, Ridge, once channelled a message for me: 'Your value is not in your poetry! But it is good that you continue to play with your poetry.'

I didn't want to hear those words. A poet was THE thing I most wanted to be since I was a child, and that has never changed. And I am that; I have spent my life on it, with no regrets. Poetry is my joy and my purpose, my reason for living, the thing I can't not do, that which would make my life worthwhile even if everything else were stripped away. When you come right down to it, I do it for me.

Now, after all, crucial as it is, it turns out to be part of a much larger context and direction for my life. How about that! Now that I see it, it's just so obvious.

Mind you, my other life cards are Death, which means drastic change, transformation, rebirth: still suggestive of healing – and The Moon, the Muse of poets! (Smile.)