On Foundations...

On Foundations

The Tower tarot card shows us a stone tower crumbling. Our first thought: Disaster! 

 

2020 was indeed a year of toppling Towers. And now in 2021 it looks like the house of cards that was erected in place of The Tower is also toppling. What will we build in its stead?

 

The Tower card in the Smith-Waite deck (a.k.a. Rider Waite or Universal Waite) shows a burning tower that has been struck by lightning. People are hurtling towards the Earth. But if you look closely you will notice that they fall through many yods. These yods may look like flames but are actually the Hebrew letter that is the beginning of the Tetragrammaton, the unpronounceable name of the God. 

 

And if we examine Pamela Coleman Smith’s artwork carefully we see that The Tower rests on a foundation that is incapable of holding it up.

 

It might be lightning that sets the fire, but it is the faulty foundation that gives us little alternative other than jumping.

 

We can compare our lives to the Tower—especially when the unexpected arrives. We want to know that we can make it through. We want to know that our foundation is strong.

 

This is why when I designed and taught Priestessing Your Life (2010 – 2020), I developed a set of practices based on the skills of grounding, and centering and, incorporating my years of training with T. Thorn Coyle, integrated alignment with our Divine selves. These are, I believe, the foundational skills any a spiritual path. I taught them at the beginning of the program and we practiced them throughout the training.

 

Then, a few years ago the Wild Ginger Witch Camp organizers noticed an assumption that we had been operating under. We recognized that when we were newbies on our spiritual path, we learned the fundamentals. We learned to ground. We learned to center and to anchor our work in our bodies. We learned these skills thoroughly until they became second nature.  They were so ingrained; we assumed that everyone walking a spiritual path shared our understanding, practice and skill. 

 

Then we looked around. What were people actually doing when we invited them to ground at the beginning of ritual? We realized that we so weren’t sure.  So Wild Ginger began to offer these fundamental skills and understandings to offer the possibility of self care so necessary to walk a spiritual path.

 

In a similar vein when I brought my work online, my co-teacher and I offered a course called The Basics. We needed to know that everyone was starting on the same page. Surprisingly, a number of seasoned practitioners as well as first time students took the course. 

Now we have expanded this offering to include additional skills of deep work in trance or journeying along with grounding, centering and body awareness. 
 

To my surprise and delight I recognized that by expanding the practice to align ourselves with our Divinity and to open the conversation between our innermost self and our outer world self, this course became a place where some of the Priestessing Your Life skills can find a new home. 

And thus, Foundations was born. 

 

Learn more about Foundations and
how to sign up on my Announcements page.