When Spirit & Cerridwen when told me that I'm a Druid

If you read me previous blog then you'll know about Cerridwen giving me two symbols (The Spiral & Triquetra) and how I managed to figure out what each symbol meant; the spiral for the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing & The Triquetra for the Ovate path of Druidism...Anywho, I've had trouble with sleeping & meditation because I kept 'hearing' things, noises only I could hear & it was beginning to effect my sleep, I got some advice from some friend in one of my online groups, telling me about grounding, centring my energies and shielding (being an Empath I should of being doing this away but I'm such a scatter brain!!) So I thought I'd find myself a nice guided meditation to help me relax & sleep. Somehow I ended up on OBOD website again & started reading there section on 'Druidry & Meditation' & on there page are two audio mp3 guided meditations, 'Clothed with Flowers - A Journey to the World of the Ovates' caught my attention right away. So I plugged in my headphones, settles & listened. In the meditation you are lead into a forest clearing with a pool, it's night time, & you're watching an Ovate holding up herbs to the moonlight to be blessed, then she lays them on the ground to be blessed by Mother Earth. The Ovate then recited a charm over the herbs & it was with this charm that realization hit me like a truck. Now when Spirit sends me messages the thing it is trying to convey comes in threes, like I will see an animal three times or see a number three times during that day, always threes. In the charm the Ovate says 3 things that immediately caught my attention; Vervain, Elder & Cerridwen. Vervain is Cerridwen most sacred herb, Elder is a tree I most resonantly with also one I connect with the Crone aspect of the Goddess (Cerridwen being a Crone goddess) and Cerridwen herself, my patron Goddess. Then I heard that little voice of intuition 'You're an Ovate'...I was moved to tear, it felt as if I had found something long lost about myself, something that had always been their but I never had noticed it...It's funny, it was Druids that had leaded me to my path in the first place & even when I look back, they'd had always been part of me & my life. Even when I was very young my favourite Disney movie was 'The Sword in The Stone', I adore Merlin, Arthurian Legend & stories, Stonehenge, Iron age Britain, all of it an invisible figure in the background, guiding me, and now I've come full circle.
 Don't get me wrong I loved being a Witch but it always felt like something was missing & I was always saying to myself "am I this kind of Witch or this kind or this?" Like a piece of the puzzle as missing.
When I went back to the Ovate part of OBOD to re-read it I came across this..."The Ovate seems, in many ways, to conform to the type of person most people would describe as a Witch"....No wonder it took me this long to figure out I thought haha
 I could not express how wonderful it felt & how if all feel into place perfectly in line with the New/Dark Moon in Scorpio, I was super pumped by it all I feel super charged during the Dark Moon & that it as in my moon sign too, SUPER CHARGED! New moon, new focus on my path =) I am so very blessed

With Love, Light & Green Blessings ☽/|\☾

Raven

The Cloak of Haws & The Keeper of The Cauldron

Samhain Blessings Everyone, seeing as I haven't wrote a blog for awhile I thought today would be a perfect time to tell you all about the story of how I met my patron Goddess and how she open my path to me.

Goddess Airmid

  I've always had a love of herbs & I decided that I wanted to pursue herbal medicine, I've always felt myself to be a healer & herbal medicine seem to resonate with me, so I started doing my research into herbal home remedies & came across LearningHerbs.com and started watching their Youtube video, which lead to me to discover the wonderful Susun Weed who made me fall in love with herbs all over again, and my interested increased tenfold. It was as this point I decided to find a Goddess who would help me on my path of herbalism, I came across Airmid, The Irish Goddess of Wort Cunning (herbal knowledge) & Leechcraft (Herbal Medicine) I thought she was perfect! So I spoke to her in my prayers, dedicating any & all my herbal research to her & for the good of all, but no matter how many time I tried to speak to her or ask for guidance I felt nothing (being an Empath I've 'finally' figure out most of my messages & signs are felt) But I kept trying, at the time I didn't know what the presence of a deity 'felt' like.

My Sacred Centre

Goddess Cerridwen

   One night I was laying in bed listening to music; (I have a very active mind & some night it doesn't want to settle & music is one of the things that help me relax); So I'm finally beginning to relax when this song comes on. I begin to drift & a scene forms. I'm in my sacred centre, my little cabin in the woods by a stream (found that picture the other day, it's almost identical to my sacred centre) I decide to go gather some herbs from the surrounding forest, so I pick up my basket & boline and set off with my companion a white wolf called Airmid (she named after a character in a book of the same name as the Goddess, she's one of my Chakra Beasts which I will discuss in another blog) So we head off into the forest herb collecting as I go; what herbs I don't remember, mebbe vervain?; then I come across a cave, I've never seen this cave before, then again I don't tend to venture out when in my sacred space. I stand on the threshold & peer inside, there I find an old woman standing over a huge cauldron, she's dressed in purple robes the colour of violets & has long silver hair. She looks up & smiles at me, a welcoming smile like you'd get from a grandmother & she beckons me to come in. I step into the cave & look around, the walls are lined with animal skulls & bottles. Herbs are hung drying on the ceiling on the cave. She gestures for me to sit on a rocky out cove opposite the cauldron, I smiles sitting & Airmid the wolf sits on the ground beside me. I watch as this old woman add ingredients to the cauldron, she never speak only smiling at me every now & then. The it dawned on me that this woman is in fact the Goddess Cerridwen, Keeper of the Cauldron of Awen; her sacred white sow is laying on the floor beside her warming itself by the fire of the cauldron. After sometime Cerridwen gestures me to come over, so I rise and stand on the opposite side of the cauldron, she takes of my hands & holds them over the cauldron, I can feel the heat of the brew on my palms, it's warm & tickles;.I think a spell was spoken but I don't remember but when it was done she turned over my hands, on my left palm was a spiral & on the right a triquetra. I look up at her & she smiled warmly, I knew I had just been given a gift, I cannot tell how honoured I felt at that moment. I felt I had to give her something to thank her, so I gave her the herbs in my basket, I gave her my thanks & left the cave to return to my sacred centre.

Now Cerridwen isn't the kind of Goddess who just give you things easily, oh no, these symbols were a puzzle I had to figure out & it was from this point that my path began to open up to me. The first thing I really noticed after meeting Cerridwen was that everytime I did a meditation or visualisation I always saw myself in a red cloak, the red of hawthorn berries. This was strange to me, red is a colour I had never been drawn to but now I'm wearing this bright red hooded cloak and I have no idea why. I continued my researching in herbal medicine, learning some medical jargon, when & what time to harvest herbs, how to prepare them as medicines. You can imagine how please I was when I found out Susun Weed had wrote books, so I picked up her 'Wise Woman Herbal Healing Wise', I adore this book, in introduces you to common 'weeds' and tell you how you can use them as food & medicine. There is a section in the book that describes the three traditions of healing; Heroic, Scientific, and Wise Woman; This is what written on page 11..."The symbol of the Wise Woman tradition is a spiral.  A spiral is a cycle as it moves through time. A spiral is movement around and beyond a circle, always returning to itself, but never at exactly the same place. Spirals never repeat themselves. Spiral reminds us that life is movement, that each movement is unique, and that form is the essence of transformation"....it's also mentions that the Wise Woman wear a cloak of red, who's thread bind us all...My jaw dropped & I was in awe, the spiral meant the Wise Woman Tradition, and it's such a beautiful tradition & I fell in love with it. 

Cloak of Haws

  Now the second symbol was tricky and I racked my brain for months trying to figure out the connection, I had gotten the spiral so quickly I eagerly wanted the know the second, I feverishly ask Cerridwen to give me hints & clues, but she wouldn't give anything away. The triquetra is a symbol I've loved for a long time, when I first saw it on Charmed I wanted it as a tattoo on the back of my neck (still do LoL), I am the oldest of my 3 sisters and thought this symbol perfect. When I got older the symbol, for some reason made me think of Druids, I've always loved Merlin (Sword in the Stone being my all time favourite Disney movie) It was actually Merlin & Druids that sparked my spirituality after reading Bernard Cornwall's Warlord Chronicles, and Manda Scott's Boudica Series both featuring druids. So along with herbal medicine I read alittle into Druidism, I was reading this book 'The Path of Druidry' it took me 2 years to finish as I kept picking it up & putting down as my interest waxed & waned, for some reason I found it hard work. Towards the end of the book is talks about the 3 grades of Druidism; Bards, Ovates, & Druids; straight away Ovates caught my interest, so I went over to OBOD and began to read up on Ovates, this made the penny drop...seering, healing, divination, communicating with the Greenworld (nature), Ogham, it as all there, everything I was studying was there. I cannot tell you how crazy happy I was in that moment. I began reflect on everything that bought me to this point, my favourite character in the Boudica series was a woman named Airmid, she was a dreamer, my mother told me she believed me to be like the dreamers, I have very vivid lucid dreams, I always have for as long as I can remember and often dream of the future. It dawned on me that a dreamer was another name for an Ovate. The first time I discovered Ogham was in a game my mother was playing, I help her translate ogham fews, and I was good at it, and it was from then on that I looked into Ogham & found out it was an oracular and that it resonated with me & of course the icing on the cake was that Ovate were the healers & they practised herbal medicine. I was beaming, I still am, this amazing Goddess gave me so much with only 2 little symbols, it was from then on that I named her as my patron Goddess & I love her dearly (I call her Grandmother Cerridwen), I feel her when I talk to her & she comforts me then I'm upset, I'm so grateful for her & will honour her for all of my days~

With Love & Light

Green Blessings ☽/|\☾
Raven

Weed Walk

Being the hebal lover that I am I decided to (finally) got round to taking photos of the herbs around where I live. There are field minutes from my house, & myself and my brother walk the family dog there everyday. One of the books I read about Druidry says about getting to know your local area, so everyday I have been making a mental notes of the plants, herbs, trees and flowers I have seen on my travels, then I'd begin to deduce what they could be. I've been doing this for months not, walking the same route & noting my findings and I have identified (hopefully correctly) a fair few herbs. 

First off (one of my proudest finds) is this Yarrow plant =) It grows on a sloping bank beside the pavement, I can't express how pleased I was to find this feisty little herb.

And here (along with my finger, opps) is some of her sisters, on closer inspection the slope had more yarrow plants then I first thought.

Next to some steps that lead to the road you cross to enters the fields, I found (today in fact) this little pact of Eye Bright (I know the picture isn't the best, I used the camera on my phones & it can be a little hit and miss) 

Here some Common Cat's Ear on the beginning of the foot path

Some Ragwort amongst the Nettles (she is abundance here Ol' Nettle)

Here is a view of the field, littered with Queen Anne's Lace and Cat's Ear

This is a view of one of the pathways, up there are some Elder trees, I have plans when Lady Elder's lush berries are ripped in the Autumn 

Here's some Agrimony 

Some Hogsweed,  it's almost all died back minus a few flower head bunches

Clover, the ground is covered in the stuff, the Red Clover too

Fireweed, this one was a tricky one to figure out

Mr Crow, there is nearly always are least one crow on the path way, crows always have so much to say

Plantain or Ribwort, I took some seeds heads ( and a dandelion puff) and scattered them in the garden, I'm going to do it to a few other herbs when they're ready to set seed, step one to apothecary garden heehee!

This is a big patch of Nettle just before you exit the path, they leaves are shivered & heavy with little green seeds, when autumn round in the seed can be harvested =)

So that's my weed walk, there a  alot of other plants but I have not yet identified them & I do love the challenge!

Green Blessings with Love & Light

Raven

The Illusion of Light and Dark

So last night I was laying in bed after my nightly meditation when a question popped into my head "What is dark part of the Craft?" It's a term I've seen alot in my studies. "People tend to focus on the light side of the Craft" blah blah, you get the idea. So I laid there and thought about it, doing the whole Winnie the Pooh think think think bit. I couldn't, for the life of me think of anything "dark", I went over the thing other may consider "dark" death, darkness, the night, but I turned each subject over in my mind and said "Nope, not dark" and then it dawn on me...there is no dark and there is no light. When I look at the Craft I don't see light & dark, I see oneness, a whole, a cycle; this is no diversity. Light is in the dark as dark is in the light, there are always shadows in the day and there is always light in the night time. So there you go, I would consider this a big step, and I felt it was a wonderful discovery on my path =)

With Love & Light

Green Blessings
Raven~

HEY LISTEN!!!!

So the Full moon is almost here & if you're a sensitive soul like myself, you'll be feeling it affect, most of you probably feel energizer but me...I'm the opposite, I feel empowered & energizer during the waning & dark moon (mebbe I have a croney soul heehee) Anywho...So I'm going through the motion, feeling exhausted, frustrated, irritable and...paddling in the negative kiddie's pool (don't ask where I got that analogy from it sounded awesome in my head) I said doubting myself, second guessing myself & ignore my intuition...I know, I know bad Raven...
 Anyway each week I've started to draw a card from my Harmony Angels tarot deck for a little guided for the week ahead, this week I got Angel Raphael I thought "Oh perfect, master healer & patron of healers!" (I've started doing research and study into herbal medicine) .The card also prompts you to heal yourself! So Friday rolls around & the negative mood shift comes in and I'm quetioning my whole choice in herbal medicine, comparing myself to other & the whole "Am I good enough?" comes into play, so I'm posting my uplifting & positive post (I like to make people smile ^-^) and one of the pages Angel Messages comes up in my newsfeed with it's daily Angel's Message and the messaged was...
~TODAY'S ANGEL MESSAGE~
..........•*¨`*•.........
(¯`'•.¸ //(*_*)\\ ¸.•'´¯)
*`• .…* * *… •´*...

-CALL UPON ARCHANGEL RAPHAEL-


Now For that last few days I've been drawn to the colour green, I happens to me every so often when I become so attracted to a colour I can't ignore it & I changed my desktop theme & Facebook to match the colour...So I see this message & I'm like "Wow..." Then! about 20 minutes later this beautiful image of the Goddess Pele


appears in my feed & all of a sudden I get a flash back from a dream the night before, a group of young girls were talking about Pele, so I rush to Google to look her up and on a friend's blog page Kitchen Witch : School of Natural Witchery I find the article " Pele - She Who Shapes The Sacred Land"...So I read this wonderful post and near the end is this..."Pele reminds us to believe in ourselves, to be who we are, who we want to be, to acknowledge our connection to the Divine and therefore to understand and accept the Goddess within."....At that moment my heart did a little somersault & I smiled thinking. "Okay Spirit...I get it, I'm on the right track...Thank you"


Love & Light
Raven

I've come so far...

I have to admit, I've been having a hard time since the Super Moon. I get effected by the moon as it is but when I found out that it was a Super Moon and also in my moon sign (Scorpio) I thought "Uh oh I'm in for a rough ride". I could feel it, my mood & positive mind set slowly on the declined as the moon began to wane. Then this weekend BAM! I was knocked flat on my arse with a bombardment of intense emotions, old hurts & wounds began to surface and the tears came and flooded...but then it passed because I released it was all part of the healing process, in fact I had dreamt it, that I was going have my inside turn up & inside out all the dark & negative would surface to be touched, felt & healed. Dark Night of The Soul. Two years ago I would of turned complete inward & been consumed by the negative thoughts, my mind would be a choir of endless chatter "You're not good enough" "You're useless". But not this time, because now I don't fear the dark places as much as I did, I'm not blinded by my emotions or deafen by the chattering ego. No, I'm stronger then I was two years ago and I know myself better and I have The Goddess. When the day came when I decided to pursue my path, I knew it was the beginning of transformation, that it would be long & difficult at times but it would be worth it for self discovery & creation. And that day I began to rise and the muddy bud was born...And what have I learned?...To trust myself, one of my biggest hurdles, I'm always second-guessing myself & turning to others but I shouldn't...I know...I'm working on it...honestly =P This little raven...I think...is stretching her wings...not yet ready to fly but she's aware of them...only time will tell when she'll be able to fly again


Love & Light~
Raven

The Goddess & Me

I watched a wonderful documentary last night, the first part of three called "Divine Women" This first part was call "When God was a Girl". Historian Bettany Hughes goes back to the beginning of time and visits the world's oldest religious site to find startling evidence that women were part of the very birth of organised religion. The earliest known religious site, Gobekli Tepe in south-east Turkey, which predates Stonehenge by 7,000 years, had an arresting figurine of a woman – either giving birth or being penetrated – at the heart of the temple, suggesting that the first gods were, in fact, goddesses.

So this got me thinking about my beliefs...Now I've never been a religious person but I've always believe in an Afterlife, otherworldly beings such as ghost & spirits & a life creating entity. The older I got the more I explored, balanced is important to me in all aspect, mebbe it's to do with the fact I'm a Librain? And because of this fact monolithic religions never made any sense to me. A man created all living beings...alone? It never sat right with me, to me one cannot be without the other, yes is it the woman whom carry & gives birth to life but in order to create you need a man's seed. So when that fateful came when a certain pentacle on a page caught my eye leading me to go on & read about Wicca...the great "AH-HA!" moment came & it have felt like I had come home to myself, at least a part of it =)

So onto the Goddess, well, to me there is a Great Mother Goddess as there is a Great Father God and all the gods & goddess are aspects of the great two. Together they are the Spirit, the life force of the Universe.
 To me the Goddess is gentle, loving & nurturing but at the same time she is powerful & fearsome, one not to be trifled with.The Morrigan springs to mind at that, she was one of the first aspects of the Goddess I was drawn too since I have always admire powerful women. Airmid is the other aspect I am drawn too, being the goddess of wortcunng (herbal knowledge) and leechcraft (herbal healing), I adore herbs and I reveal in any little tit-bit of information about them whether it be healing, magick or cooking, I even used to watch a TV show called "The Herbs" when I was a child, heehee. I love how once I find these gods & goddesses it'e like they're always been with me and they seem almost familiar in a sense, like I've recovered from some kind of amnesia and remembered who they are.

With Love & Light

Raven