Spark of Active Creative Stellar Consciousness

As those who read my blog may recall, I recently ordered my own set of underworld Dreampower divination cards following my first exposure to them during a Druidic Samhain ancestor offering ritual. Well, my own set arrived! This is my very first reading on myself using them.

Ace of Fire

First card in the Stone Realm (the realm closest to the surface) reveals one's personal story, family or true career work, opportunities, health/body and surface life. Also shows inherited patterns, knots and repetitive spirals from early life and previous lives. I drew the Ace of Fire.

The Ace of Fire is the originative vibrant power of burning brilliant illumination. It is the Spark, ignited and aroused. Appearing in the Stone realm, it is very close to me, Heid, the Bright One. Just under the surface of normative awareness, it burns with a burning red and gold background embracing the central flame. A perfect draw in complete harmony with my Sacred Teutonic Name.

7 of Fire

Second card in the Pearl Realm reveals inner life, inner hidden heart, the light of midnight, personal inner truth, creativity, and the energy that flows through inherited patterns. These patterns open, untie the knotted bundled information to bring liberation, reveal knowledge and transmit mysteries. I drew the 7 of Fire.

The 7 of Fire is Response, Feeling, Intuitiveness - these things imply conscious apprehension of the inherited patterns ignited and burning as noted in the Stone Realm. Moreover, the 7 of Fire in the Pearl Realm indicates that this conscious apprehension flows with creative energy and esoteric inherited ancestral knowledge - my birthright, my ancestral wisdom. My conscious awareness, through this divination reading, touches and reclaims this deep ancestral wisdom as my own. I claim my birthright.

The number 7 in many mystery systems pertains to spiritual completeness and perfection.

The Whirlpool

Third card in the Whirlpool Realm reveals the life of the spirit, the reality of Being, the source of many outer lives, reflects the deepest potential, and carries inherent stellar power of the universe within the individual. I drew The Whirlpool, the trump in its natural realm.

The Whirlpool in its natural realm pertains to Star Consciousness, connection to Universal power and stellar consciousness. In a reading this card reveals subtle far-reaching energies beginning to surface into and permeate life. Taken together with the first two cards, what is beginning to surface and become known in my life is conscious intuitive apprehension of inherited ancestral knowledge, unfolding into an illuminating creative flowing energy from my deepest Source of Being into my everyday mundane reality.

How awesome! So mote it be!

Samhain Dreampower Divination - part 3, The Whirlpool Realm

The Tangler

Following creation and incubation in the Stone Realm, and pre-manifest revelation in the Pearl Realm, we now come to the threshold of manifestation in the Whirlpool Realm. It is here in the Whirlpool where chaos creates manifest reality.

In a state of unity, quantum mechanics tells us that energy (from which everything is made) can be in many places simultaneously. It is through chaos that potentialities decohere into being one thing over fuzzily existing as everything - in other words, all possibilities collapse into a single definite something.

In our reading, the Tangler sits in the Whirlpool.

The Tangler is a male figure, wrapped in many strands of white, red and black. 

The energy coming through is active (male) and it is embraced by the protective threads of wyrd weaving into manifest reality.

His hair is a glossy olive green and massive, in snaky locks

like the bed of moss in my offering to the Ancestors.

The strands of red, white and black are tangled then braided into his locks, set with many tiny pearls.

The strands of wyrd are weaving into the realities of all in the group (a single something consisting of) pearls of deep ancestral healing wisdom and memory (as uttered by the Teller in the previous card) for each of us.

This an AWESOME Samhain configuration and divination. We have indeed been blessed!

Hail the Might Ancestors, hail the land wights, hail Frigga, hail Freyja and hail Hela!

Samhain Dreampower Divination - Part 2, The Pearl Realm

The Teller

In my first experience with Dreampower Divination, the first card from the previous post pertaining to the Stone Realm can be likened to the darkness and lunar shadows, hiddeness, and to the womb where enlightened communication is sourced.

In the solar Pearl Realm, what was incubated in the Stone Realm, is brought forth and revealed. In our Samhain reading, the card for this realm came out as The Teller. The Teller embodies the Voice of One (as discussed in the previous post). Importantly, the Teller

communicates ancestral memories to you; these may include recovery of part lives, your own or those of others. 

How very encouraging and affirming to me that my offering to my Ancestors has been, not only accepted, but that the Ancestors will grant my request - a gift in acknowledgment of the gift of the Soul Retrieval oil, specifically. My Ancestors will aid me (and all involved in the group reading) in my (our) work to recover and heal the deep wounds of my (our) soul (folksoul). Not only has the Teller told me so, but the Teller has uttered it with the Voice of One into my (our) reality.

Hail the Mighty Ancestors, the land spirits, Frigga, Freyja and Hela!

Samhain Dreampower Divination - Part 1, The Stone Realm

The Choir

I attended my first pagan group ritual with the ADF (Druid) in a nearby town. The Samhain ritual we did to honor and give offerings to our ancestors was led by a woman who is also involved with Northern Tradition practices (and Seidr), as our ritual very closely resembled a blot to the ancestors (which I really loved).

My offering to my Ancestors, land spirits, Frigga, Freyja and Hela included:

a whole bottle of honey wine
a length of handspun wool yarn
amber gemstone
black jet gemstone
crystal quartz
9 sacred herbs of Northern Tradition shamanism (with a small pentacle in it)
high john root
3 British sixpence coins
Soul Retrieval ritual oil
9 rosebuds
a bed of moss

Following the giving each of our offerings, the leader of the ritual did a tarot reading using the Dreampower deck by R. J. Stewart (which I liked so much, I just purchased one myself). Here are cards and positions in the reading (my own interpretations follow):

The Stone Realm - The Choir
The Pearl Realm - The Teller
The Whirlpool Realm - The Tangler

The Stone Realm

In my mind, the Stone Realm pertains to the deep place of prophetic utterance, of the Ancestral Voices, and to a state of consciousness where the Voices of the Ancestors can be perceived as the Voices of the Many, the Voices of the Few, or the Voice of One which R. J. Stewart distinguishes as conditions of being. The card drawn for this realm therefore, speaks to which state of consciousness is operational to each "hearer" in the reading.

First Card Drawn - The Choir / The Cacophony

The Choir is a group of assorted animals singing loudly. We see a donkey, cow, sheep, pig, goose, cockerel and duck. There is a cat playing the bagpipe. Within this cluster of animals, all leaning onto one another, extending their necks and singing loudly in harmony, we also see some small creatures: a mouse listening raptly, a spider within her web spun between the horns of the cow and in one corner a small baby sleeping peacefully in a wooden cradle. This Trump works on several levels and we may use our overall idea of the Three Realms resonating through each card (with each Trump at home in one particular Realm) to examine the levels. 

On the surface, this card brings up the Voices of the Many. However, in the description of this card, I was caught by the phrase "a mouse listening raptly." To me personally, this is the Voice of One "when the Ancestors speak within the first condition, the Voice of One, they are the land."  This card to me, seemingly uttering a cacophony of Voices, is asking the question, "hey you, what do you hear?" and "hey you, what do you see?" The challenge of this card is hear the Voice of One, to hear the Ancestral stream as it is uttered from within "the first condition of Being" amidst the cacophony of Voices. Despite the cacophony, I hear, I see the mouse, my fylgja, listening raptly. Here is my poem, written decades ago which pertains very exactly to this card in this realm:

SUDDENLY

hey you, what are you looking at
the mouse seemed to say silently, to me one day
hidden in the closet, coming close to see
where land meets sea, isolating some field of awareness
distracting the mind toward some special duty
hey you, what did you say
you talkin' to me?

hey you, what do you hear
the mouse seemed to say silently, to me one day
hidden in the closet, coming close to hear
wandering around this anomaly of conversation, suddenly plucked up
toward the task at hand, wiping off all others
hey you, do you hear what I hear
who goes there, talkin' to me

Paternal Ancestral Ethnicities & Folk Soul Impulses

As some who read my Facebook may recall, I recently learned from my father that my paternal line hails from the Cumberland Gap in Appalachia, making it very likely that some of my paternal grandmothers were Appalachian root workers known as granny witches, and practitioners of ethnic Appalachian folk magic.

(In honor of my Appalachian roots, over time, I will be adding a focused line Appalachian folkish conjure formulas to my Etsy shoppe!)

The oral tradition of my paternal family - that as being primarily of English, Irish (Scots-Irish as well, given my confirmed autosomal genetic link to Scotland) and German descent, as well as having American roots in the Cumberland Gap deep in Appalachia, and into Appalachian Kentucky, as well as having some Native American American (Cherokee and Potowatomi) family members - fits exactly with the historical ethnic makeup reported by Kentucky Emigration and Immigration Department -
 

Pre-statehood settlers of Kentucky were mostly of English, German and Ulster Scots descent who migrated from the Atlantic seaboard states. Immigrants from North Carolina and southwestern Virginia came by way of the Cumberland Gap and over the Wilderness Road. Immigrants from Maryland and Pennsylvania came on flatboats and rafts down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. Other early immigrants included small groups of French, Swiss, and Welsh. During the mid-19th century the Ohio River brought many German immigrants and settlers from New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Many Irish settled in Louisville during this time.

In 1790, historians estimate Kentucky's population was English (52%), Scots-Irish or Scots (25%), Irish (9%), Welsh, (7%), German (5%), French (2%), Dutch (1%), and Swedish (0.2%) in ethnicity.

1820 statistics vary slightly: English (57%), Scots-Irish or Scots (18%), Welsh (9%), Irish (8%), German (6%), French (2%), Dutch (1%), and Swedish (0.2%).

Native Americans were the indigenous population also living in the area with the immigrants, giving support to the oral family tradition of having some Native American family members. As a small child, I grew up around one aunt known to be a full blooded Cherokee. She was known by the name Palace. The clannish rural area I grew up in (often humorously called Taylorville - my birth surname is Taylor) was one in which many families in my father's extended family lived in homes and properties clustered together in proximal concentration. Even today, several families of the Taylor Clan still live here in proximally clustered homes. This clannish way of living, also fits well with ethnic Appalachian ways of living.

No one in my family has, in oral family tradition, ever been Catholic Christian - I was raised as a Protestant Christian (where Protestantism in my mind is the first major successful impulse of the Teutonic folksoul to return to its native Pagan roots, and to throw off the yoke of the non-native religiosity imposed on the people via the Romanization of Pagan Europe). The religious affiliation of Appalachia with folkish Protestantism also fits with the ethnic and religious history of Appalachia and the oral traditions coming from my paternal family.

German Appalachian Folklore

Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore

New addition to my library - Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore by Gerald C. Milnes.

The persecution of Old World German Protestants and Anabaptists in the seventeenth century-following debilitating wars, the Reformation, and the Inquisition-brought about significant immigration to America. Many of the immigrants, and their progeny, settled in the Appalachian frontier. Here they established a particularly old set of religious beliefs and traditions based on a strong sense of folk spirituality. They practiced astrology, numerology, and other aspects of esoteric thinking and left a legacy that may still be found in Appalachian folklore today.

Based in part on the author's extensive collection of oral histories from the remote highlands of West Virginia, Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore describes these various occult practices, symbols, and beliefs; how they evolved within New World religious contexts; how they arrived on the Appalachian frontier; and the prospects of those beliefs continuing in the contemporary world.

By concentrating on these inheritances, Gerald C. Milnes draws a larger picture of the German influence on Appalachia. Much has been written about the Anglo-Celtic, Scots-Irish, and English folkways of the Appalachian people, but few studies have addressed their German cultural attributes and sensibilities. Signs, Cures, and Witchery sheds startling light on folk influences from Germany, making it a volume of tremendous value to Appalachian scholars, folklorists, and readers with an interest in Appalachian folklife and German American studies.

Avalon - Sully Erna

Lyrics to "Avalon"

A veil of sparkling white soothes and bathes me in the light
It feels me with the suns and visions of the ancient ones

Descend to me, and sooth my disarray
And so it's done-Hear my words Avalon

Fields are swaying like dancers in the moonlight
Rivers field with dreams-Unbroken and still promising

Descend to me, and sooth my disarray
And so it's done-Hear my words Avalon

Warm inside-open the way in
Float into the night-Embrace what's to be

Avalon 

From Age to Age, Consciousness of the Ages

Excerpt from my poem, Chamber of the Nest, describing one of my pre-incarnate memories:

and reflecting then
on the thought, shaking my tail
vowing remembrance

of my own story
through the fire river around
the world I came in

remembering back
before, how I can I tell it
my whole story, how ...

Excerpt of my poem, Dawn of the Ages, describing another one of my pre-incarnate memories:

we sang together
at the dawn of the ages
from the night I was made ...

In Tropical astrological reckoning I am a Capricorn. In Sidereal astrological reckoning I am an Aquarian. In the Hebrew calender (itself based upon the ancient Egyptian mysteries), I was born in the month of Tevet which corresponds to Capricorn/Aquarius. Interesting, is this overlap of Tevet with times part of Capricorn and part of Aquarius.

I was there, aware at the Turn and the Dawn of the Ages, as the once-new Age of Capricorn initiated, and as the once-again-new Age of Aquarius initiated. Interestingly, and related to these turns of the Ages, is the fact that in Northern Tradition mythology, my fylgja is a mouse-like creature associated with the beginning and rise of the New Age of Mammals following the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs.

On the turn of the ages and prehistory:

The Platonic (Mayan) Age of Capricorn so began, when historical man Homo Sapiens differentiated from his environment and first became 'different' from its homo relatives, like Homo Neanderthalensis.

The Platonic Age of Capricorn ended so 130,000 years ago and began the Platonic Age of Aquarius, the latter establishing Homo Sapiens in coexistence with the now different other species of homo and other genuses. Up to this point in time, the Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals used similar tools, but in the Platonic Aquarian Age, Homo Sapiens improved its technology and sophisticated its awareness of applicable tools.

Remembering back before, how can I tell it ...  I was there, aware before "historical man Homo Sapiens differentiated from his environment and first became 'different' from its homo relatives."

My patroness Hela is Giantess-Goddess.

Twelve Platonic Cycles are 311,040 years and 311,040 years ago the DNA-architecture of what was to evolve into Modern Man became inducted by what is mythologically called 'Lemurian Root-Soul-Energy' and also as the 'giants' and the 'Sons of God' impregnating the 'Daughters of Man', say as in your Genesis encodings Genesis.6.2-4.

Indeed, even before this, I was there, aware ... my fylgja (a personal aspect of the folksoul) is the mouse-like first mammal to arise following extinction of the dinosaurs. This mouse-like creature is the Ancestor to all mammals living today, including humans.

You might now understand that this encoding describes something before the Noahic 'Great Flood' and something after the 'perfect ten Noahic generations' redefined the 'Age of Man' as 120 years from a previous 'longer lived' generation and bounded by Methuselah's 969 years as the 'oldest man' who ever lived. So now some of you may understand the archetype of the 'Great Flood' as the nexus point in the human history, when a previous hominoid evolution became terminated and replaced with a new one. The previous hominoid generation was Homo Erectus culminating in the Lemurian archetype and then continuing in a multifaceted fashion with concurrent homninoids like Homo Neanderthalensis and 'great apes' like Gigantopithecus and after having itself evolved from Homo Habilis and Australopithecine ancestors dating back so 12 Grand Cycles earlier to 12x311,040=3,732,480 years.

The mysteries of time, the evolution of consciousness, and the mysteries of the soul are all interwoven.

we sang together
at the dawn of the ages
from the night I was made ...

From before the previous Ragnarok (reformation of the entire Cosmos), into the world I came in ...

remembering back, before, how I can I tell it ...

U5b and V Migrated with Viking I1a

In follow-up to an earlier post where I reported that Saami major mtDNA motherline 2 haplogroup V is also found in my family, and given that both my own U5b haplogroup and haplogroup V are linked together in the Saami, it is interesting to note that both U5b and V are again linked together in a second group - this time in migration with male Y-chromosome haplogroup I1a, which has "been described as the Viking haplogroup."

It is believed on the basis of correlation analysis that (mtDNA) haplogroup V and U5b migrated together with male haplogroup I1a ...

and

(Y-chromosome) haplogroup, "I1a", which has been described as the "Viking" haplogroup because of its prevalence among men of Nordic extraction.

Swedish Saami Haplogroup V Also Among My Family

In earlier posts (for example, Saami Major Lineage One Mitochondrial Cluster) I've discussed that my mtDNA ancestral genetic motherline haplogroup U5b1b1 is the foundational lineage (within U5/U5b) of Scandinavian Saami (alternatively, Sami) major motherline 1.

U5b is the dominant mtDNA haplogroup among the Saami, while mtDNA haplgroup V (another rare European haplogroup) comprises Saami major motherline 2. On the population genetics of the Saami, it is known:

Classification of the Sami mtDNA lineages revealed that the majority are clustered in a subset of the European mtDNA pool. The two haplogroups V and U5b dominate, between them accounting for about 89% of the total. This gives the Sami regions the highest level of Haplogroups V and U5b thus far found. Haplogroups H, D5 and Z represent most of the remaining averaged total. Overall 98% of the Sami mtDNA pool is encompassed within haplogroups V, U5b, H, Z, and D5.

Although a small proportion of the Haplogroup U (mtDNA) among the Sami falls into U4, the great majority is U5b. The percentage of total Sami mtDNA samples tested by Tambets and her colleagues which were U5b ranged from 56.8% in Norwegian Sami to 26.5% in Swedish Sami. Sami U5b falls into subclade U5b1b1. Haplogroup V is by far the most frequent haplogroup in the Swedish Sami and is present at significantly lower frequencies in Norwegian and Finnish subpopulations.

While my own ancestral genetic motherline is U5b1b1 (placing the origins of my ancestral maternal lineage among the Saami), mtDNA haplogroup V (another Saami maternal lineage) is also found among my family members on my maternal side - through my relative Benjamin Franklin who belongs to mtDNA haplogroup V.

I am the 6th great grandniece of American founding father and statesman Benjamin Franklin through my mother's father's mother's line. This is the line of my relationship to Benjamin Franklin:

Cheryl Collins (my mother)
Sydney Oscar Collins (my mother's father, my grandfather)
Agnes Yoda Franklin (Sydney's mother, my great grandmother through Sydney)
Johnathan Freeland Franklin (Agnes' father, my great great grandfather)
Charles D. Franklin (Johnathan's father, my gggreat grandfr)
David Franklin (Charles' father, my ggggreat grandfather)
Jonathan Franklin (David's father, my gggggreat grandfr)
John Franklin (Jonathan's father, my ggggggreat grandfr)
Josiah Franklin¹ (John's father [Benjamin Franklin's brother], my gggggggreat grandfr)
Thomas Franklin (Josiah's father, my ggggggggreat grandfr)²
Henry Franklin (Thomas' father, my gggggggggreat grandfr)³

Benjamin and John Franklin were brothers, both sons of Josiah. My maternal line relationship to Benjamin Franklin comes down through Benjamin's brother John. My sixth greatfather was the brother of Benjamin Franklin.

Now, even though males do not pass on their mtDNA to their children, I think it's interesting that the maternal lineages in my maternal family line that I've discovered so far all carry Saami-linked mtDNA. Moreover, my own autosomal deep ancestral root has been localized to Sweden where

haplogroup V is by far the most frequent haplogroup in the Swedish Sami.

Taken together, the presence of both U5b1b1 and V in members of my family from my mother's side, coupled with the fact that my deep autosomal ancestry (from both parents) localizes to Sweden, makes it even clearer that my "clan" comes from Scandinavia generally, and Sweden more specifically.

Footnotes:

¹ B 23 Dec 1657, M 25 Nov 1689, D 16 Jan 1744/1745
Born: in Ecton, Hamps, England
Spouse: Abiah Foulger in Boston, Suffolk, Mass.
Children (2):
John Franklin, B 7 Dec 1690, Boston, Mass; D 30 Jan 1756, Boston, Mass
Benjamin Franklin, B 6 Jan 1706/1706, Boston, Mass

² B 8 Oct 1598 D 24 Mar 1681/1682; Ecton, Northhamptonshire, England (B); Banbury, Oxford, England (D)

³ B 23 May 1573 D 23 Oct 1631; Ecton, Northhamptonshire, England (B & D)