Psychic Beginnings
I was no more than 10, sitting on the back steps that led into the old extra room, really a storage shed, tacked onto the farmhouse at Hillshore. In there, we kept our piles of chopped wood for the ancient black cook stove, “Beulah”. It was also the place where Rocket, our large BullMastiff, used to sleep with Patsy, the small black Labrador cross, tucked in near Rocket’s tummy for warmth. Our stolid bodyguard of a cat, Sir Pook of Quinte, would ensconce himself on Rocket’s back and in this fashion the trio would settle in for their night’s sleep. Came the day, however, when Dad tore down the old shed with its step, and we could go directly across the small gulley to the apple orchard. Rocket was allocated his own suite of rooms in the barn for winter, Patsy was given hers, and Sir Pook of Quinte had by then inveigled himself into becoming a House Cat….
But the old steps and shed were still there when I settled in that evening in the late fall after supper. It was almost dark, and a light mist had fallen over the Bay. It was quite usual for me to find an odd spot to ponder things. I was a thoughtful child, very interested in the deeper questions of life. I read everything in my parent’s modest library which included samples of Tolstoy, Hugh MacLennan, Hemingway, Pearl S. Buck, Thomas Costain, John Steinbeck, Maugham and mom’s Best Loved Poems of the American People. The larger ideas about life and death, and what Hannah Arendt called “the life of the mind”, formed my natural habitat.
So as I sat there on the old steps, I was fascinated by the large auras of mist around the trees that lined our Bay waterfront and stood in groups in our apple orchard. I felt a kind of acute awareness, attunement, to those misty apparitions, and as I gazed at them, a series of pictures began to form in my mind. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was going to be the first time I would experience “the teaching pictures”. It would be many years before I experienced this again, in meditation. Later still, I discovered that the pictures would always be there on request, when I gave professional “life readings” whether in person, or far away.
The pictures that evening began with a blackboard, very much like the ones I looked at every day in the one-room country schoolhouse just a mile up the road at Mt. Carmel School – with its 8 grades and 17 students! In the first picture, “someone” had drawn on the board a simple tree, showing deep roots below the earth, and branches fluttering outward ending in leaves. That “someone”, whom I could not see in the picture, held an old-fashioned pointer, gesturing at the tree and using chalk to illustrate Life Cycle of the tree.
First came “Birth”, as the sap running up the trunk in spring, out into the branches, the buds and leaves appearing…and then “Death”, as the fall winds blew all the leaves off. Yet, as they fell, the leaves covered protectively the roots and then provided, as they decayed, nutrients for the roots below. This was the “Rest” part of the cycle.
Then, once again, in the spring, the enriched and life-giving sap would rise again up through the trunk, and this was Rebirth. This, my invisible teacher imparted to me, was how it was throughout all of nature, with nothing ever lost but only changing and reappearing within a cycle which was always a dimension of Life – even death. Above all, I sensed at once that everything in nature was part of everything else, serving a beautiful, simple, highly intelligent purpose within the magnificent Life Cycle.
As I watched, my Teacher then drew a stick-figure of a human being in the corner of the picture, and I sensed, rather than heard, these words: “Now, why would human beings, part of God’s creation too, be an exception to this Great Life Cycle?” Using the pointer again, Teacher pointed to the parallels between the tree’s Life Cycle and those of a human being, showing how we too are born, rise up through ourselves, and out into the self-expression of our branches.
Then, in old age or whenever it is “time”, we drop those leaves, a few at time at first, and then more and more. Finally, when Death comes, the branches are bare; but the leaves are not lost. They are our life experiences, from which wisdom is distilled. As our leaves of life settle on the earth around the roots, they gradually change into the rich “soil” from which – after resting and learning – we start out again.
In our next springtime, the sap rises up through the Old Trunk. Once again the process repeats, as the tree of Self grows larger, stronger, and confident in its place in God’s plan.
As the pictures, and my Teacher, just naturally faded away, I knew for once and for all that we are part of a Great Life Cycle where “death” is just a phase in the cycle, a time of rest, another point on the circle…but most important of all, I knew that all that we do, all that we feel, and all that we learn, travels onward with us as we move through the Great Cycle. Nothing is wasted, nothing is without dignity, nothing is without meaning.
I learned then, and it has stayed with me all my life, that we are cradled by the same great Laws I observed around me that night at Hillshore – spelled out for a child of 10 in the mists over Quinte Bay.












Welcome all! I have been away for awhile, and am glad so many of you are enjoying my blog, especially the themes of the Sacred Feminine in all Her forms…
They have forgotten my name
His name is known
The mourner who remembers
I am She of the Seven Horns, or She who Lays by the Two Horns
Golden they call me











From the Shaman’s perspective, there is an ongoing struggle within each of us, and within each culture, between the Dark and the Light. Language is one of the places where this battle is ongoing. Each time we speak, we send forth psychic energy into the Temple of the World, creating Word Deeds. We are karmically responsible for our Word Deeds, in whatever days may yet be. But even now, as they pass through us into the world, our words – dark or light – burn their images into the walls of the Temples of our Selves.
The Word Deed
And when we are alone, within the Temples of our selves, how do we talk to ourselves about ourselves? What words are we using when we "think" – which is silent speech – about our place in our own lives, our place in the world, in God's garden? We need to examine this inner dialogue, for it is "casting a spell" upon us and our lives as surely as if we had secured the assistance of a Shaman high in the mountains of Peru. 













"What is not conscious will be lived as Fate..." Carl G. Jung


Embodies the feminine principles of creativity, understanding, self-reliance, serenity, and love. Represents education, knowledge, wisdom, secrecy, and esoteric teachings. Aquarian Tarot
Here is an excellent Beginner's Series in Astrology - all free, and online - at
Aquarius, the natural Fool in the Tarot, sees life as a dramatic adventure, with the Road always beckoning towards far-off horizons. The Seeker (Fool Card) from
And with that, Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on the shore of another time, and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all. Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
"In psychic readings it seems taken for granted by one's guides that as individual souls we forge karmic bonds with soul groups - ethnic, religious and political entities. Whether we are presently incarnated within them or not, we remain connected in a psychic way to their history - past, present and future. In time, however, our karmic bonds dissolve, leaving us free to move on."
