At the time this anecdote recounts, my day job was at the home of an elderly couple. They had recently taken down a mature maple in front of their house that had been hit by lightening. My task was to turn the debris into a flower garden that would grace the top of their driveway: a 60th anniversary gift from husband to wife. It was a small-ish job so my crew worked on other job sites while the husband worked alongside of me.
The technique had worked.
It was awesome.
It was terrifying.
And, most of all, it was incomprehensible.
The technique is surprisingly simple and involves the usual grounding and centering, emptying oneself, inviting, allowing. It’s also one of those things that comes with the warning label: Don’t Try This At Home, Kids!
The way these things turn out is frequently amusing. Here I was, an earthy type, living on the top of a (small) mountain, and working landscape. I assumed that I would call Gaia or some being like that. But when it came down to it, it was Athena who came through. And basically She gave me marching orders. Things like, “See those people out there…” (we were on a high overlook perhaps like the Acropolis) “take My work out to the people…”
I had no idea what She was talking about.
What’s more, when I took the aspecting skill back to my friends and tried it again, Athena came, looked me up and down and said, “Go away! I already talked to you!”
So I pondered and I thought and I talked with my peers in the study group. We were all pretty clueless.
I went home. And I thought about it.
I took care of my kids. And I thought about it.
I worked in my own gardens. And I thought about it.
I went to work. And I thought about it.
Over the weeks as I worked on the job of converting the maple debris into a garden, working side by side with the gentleman who had hired me, I learned a bit about him.
He was, it turned out, a retired headmaster from a Waldorf School in another state. He and his beloved wife of many years had moved to the hills in search of peace and quiet.
Their place was on the edge between forest and the nearby village, up a steep switchback driveway. His yards and gardens were vibrant. Among the most vibrant I had ever worked. While we worked on this project, we talked about Waldorf education and Rudolf Steiner upon whose philosophy the schools are based.
I knew only a few bits and pieces about Steiner or Waldorf education, gleaned while visiting a biodynamic herb farm in Rhode Island years earlier as well as from chatting with friends who had tried it out for their young ones. One of the agriculturally oriented bits I had heard about was the Steiner system of planting by the Moon, a more detailed and sophisticated planting system than I could manage. The other tidbit I had gleaned was about the complex herbal preparations Biodynamic farmers and gardeners used in their compost and, presumably, gardens.
So I asked him about the compost additives. Yes, he had used such preparations. But, no, he hadn’t actually made them.
He knew about the Elementals and knew that they lived on his land. But, no he had never seen them. Although some of his former students who visited claimed to have conversed with such orders of beings.
Our conversations as we worked to create his garden had been intriguing.
After sitting with my experience with Athena for several days, puzzling over what it all meant, the final day at this job site arrived.
When I got there that morning no one was around. The garage doors were open but no car was inside.
I pulled my truck to the side of the turn-around at the top of the drive and off loaded masses of plants. A while later the gentleman, we’ll call him John, sauntered out of the forest to the North.
“I’ve been out pruning the hemlocks,” said he. The hemlocks were to the South and East . Turning my head to reassure myself of where the hemlocks actually were, I saw not one but two cars in the garage. No one could have come or gone without my having seen them.
Strange.
As we worked I considered confiding in John about my experience with Athena. Finally, in the end, I did.
I wanted this venerable old guy to tell me what it all meant.
His first response was to chuckle. “Well, look at who you’re talking to.”
Life continued, as it does.
Many years went by.
My marriage folded.
The kids grew up.
I continued my magical trainings, found the Reclaiming Witch Camps and had many experiences fabulous and mundane.
Over the years I fell in love again, an occupational hazard of being me I guess.
This time my partner was a woman from Canada. I resisted as hard as I could leaving the life I loved, but eventually I moved to SW Ontario where, of course, I had to reinvent my life out of whole cloth.
And I did. Employing my magical training, Masters Degree in psychotherapy and about 40 years of sitting meditation, I found myself teaching, writing and offering counselling.
I had been doing this work for maybe five or eight years when John’s words echoed in my mind, “You have no need to know what it means. You just have to live your life. In about, oh, twenty years or so, you’ll look back and recognize what it was about.”
After doing a bit of quick arithmetic, I gasped. It had been close to 20 years since that conversation. And I recognized that the life I was living was what had been foretold way back when.
I laughed out loud. And kept on keeping’ on.
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