A lesson I have yet to learn: other people’s advice is never as good as my own intuition.
On Saturday night I went with some friends to their belated Full Moon ritual. They’re just starting their ATC practice, so it was the first time they were doing an ATC Full Moon ritual. It was pretty damn powerful, and inclusive — when I corrected someone’s assessment of me as female, the high priest said “Thou art Goddess and God” when greeting me at the the entrance to circle, and the high priestess also greeted me. Count that as the first time I’ve actually felt welcome at a Neo-Wiccan-esque circle.
The high priestess brought, on a whim, her tarot cards, and it was decided she’d do a reading for each of us and that would be the working. There were only 6 of us including her, so that was actually quite feasible.
Spooky. Spooky how damn accurate her reading was for me.
“You have suffered a betrayal; this person was Brutus to your Caesar, and it went exactly like that.”
“This betrayal is poisoning you; if you don’t let it out somehow — whether that’s through blogging, or actual communication with this person, or primal scream therapy — it will continue to wreak havoc with your physical health until you cannot take it anymore.”
“Someone — a woman older than you, who thinks she knows more than you do about this — has been giving you very bad advice.”
I mentioned briefly this betrayal on this very blog, back in April. I wasn’t entirely clear; this person was not just a friend. She was a romantic, non-sexual partner, and for all intents and purposes it was a poly relationship I was in.
She attacked my mom professionally.
If you know me at all you know that an attack on my mom I consider an attack on myself; if you know me at all then you know that that sort of betrayal I would see exactly like a Brutus/Caesar situation, and that would not be an exaggeration in the least.
Yet I’ve been miserable since this happened. I thought it was because I missed her so much. I even tried to reconcile with her this past week, going so far as to apologize to her for ‘being a bitch’. I haven’t heard back from her, and so my question to the cards was “Will I ever reconcile with [this person]?”
Their answer was an emphatic no, and that furthermore — this was a good thing.
It took this reading to realize that I didn’t miss her. I was miserable because I’d been betrayed by someone I let so far into my inner circle; I was miserable because I missed having someone so close to me who fulfilled relationship needs that my boyfriend can’t (and that I don’t want him to). It wasn’t her I missed; it was the belief that I’d finally found this person and I didn’t have to search any longer.
This misery has been poisoning me, which is no doubt what led to my experience at Mysteries with Hera:
In my dream I stood in front of the Shrine, and Hera came out and looked right at me. “You have poison in your skin,” She said, “and it will seep into your bones and kill you if you do not expel it.”
The high priestess’s words about the poison mirrored what dream-Hera said to me so well that it was eerie.
This misery has been poisoning me so much, and has been so apparent to others around me, that other people appeared in the reading. A friend who has been giving me advice to try and reconcile with the ex — I’m sure she meant well, and maybe I needed to attempt to reconcile to even figure out that I really shouldn’t and it would be a very bad idea, so I hold no animosity towards her — and my boyfriend.
My boyfriend, the Ogre, doesn’t express emotions well. So it took a tarot reading to tell me how worried he is about me, and how he has no idea what to do about my spiral into self-destruction, and how he’s trying to fix it but nothing he does helps.
It was apparent to my mom, too, who was the person who first asked me to reconcile with the ex.
I guess people seem to believe that reconciliation is always the best solution. Sometimes it’s not.
My ex is a dead branch, filled with disease and rot. If I do not cut her off my trunk, my core will become poisoned, and I will die.
And because of this reading, I know now what I have to do.
Blog about this. Be brutally honest.- Continue to write, all the time. Let writing fuel my life. (There was more to the reading that I’m going to talk about in a separate post.)
- Search for renewal from Gaia.
Check.
This is a multi-faceted approach to healing. Seeking renewal from Gaia means not only going out into the wilds and letting myself become one with the dirt and soil, it also means putting good things of the earth into my body — tea, fruit, salad, high-quality chocolate, good meat — and in moderation. It means letting my skin soak up the sun; it means letting my body be cradled by the love of my Lord, Manannan, by swimming in the ocean and trusting in its might; it means gardening, and watching my plants grow and bloom, and taking joy in the dirt under my nails; it means slippery, celebratory sex with the man I love more than life itself; it means reading books and thanking the trees that gave their lives to give me knowledge; it means drinking a lot of water; it means going to physiotherapy, getting myself healed, and losing some weight so I’m not in pain all the time; it means doing divination.
It means being honest.
The earth is not a liar. It does not deceive. It is cruel, and it is loving. It is paradox. It is always brutally honest.
If I am to heal myself, if I am to expel this venom, I must be honest. I must be like Gaia Herself — the primal One, who binds all Others together, and who Herself is held by the vast, holy sky.
And now I know why I blog things. To tell myself what I already know; to keep myself pure and clean; to affirm that I am always right about my own shit, and that my intuition is worth the advice of a thousand gurus.
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